Once Upon a Time

I thought I'd share this photo of me. It's VERY old. Ha ha. It's unusual because my mom usually had me dressed in girly clothes, although my hair was short as a boy's. To be fair to her, it was my preference to wear "girl" clothes, because I got mistaken for a boy if I was in jeans, cords and tee shirts. I'm pretty sure I'm wearing my friend Mason's hand-me-down shirt--he lived in the same apartment complex we lived in and was a few years older than me, and we would run around together because there weren't boys his age for him to play with.

Blind Packaging, Gambling, Rainbow Toys

I've been bitten by the bug that is blind packaging. It all started (for me) when DD started working with Be@rbricks at work, showing me how there are several different bears in a series, and they all come in the same box, and you don't know which bear you're getting till you actually buy it and open the box, at which point you're either thrilled because you got one of the ones you hoped you'd get, or slightly disappointed because you got one you already have.

The small thrill I get from opening the mysterious toys is similar to the small thrill I get, say, scratching a California Lotto scratcher with a coin, or pulling the handle on a slot machine. Yes, blind packaging taps into the parts of us that want to gamble all our money away in a windowless, smoky casino. It's a powerful urge. Combine that with cute colors and faces, limited runs, and I'm hooked like a largemouth bass.

In general, I try not to "collect" stuff. Keeping my apartment, closets and life clutter-free has been an ongoing project/goal for several years now. But the lure of these toys, called Wish Come True and made by Strangeco, is too powerful to resist! I now have three of them, and at odd times during the day and night I find myself thinking about all the remaining packages of them and what might be in them... it's not so much that I want the whole series, I just want a FEW more. Ha ha.

Miss Manners says: go directly to Hell (do not pass Go)

It was such a beautiful day, and DD and I had frozen yogurt with fruit for lunch, which isn't much of a lunch, so we decided to go to dinner right after work at a restaurant where there is an outdoor patio eating area. The thing with going out to dinner right after work is that there are always a lot of 1) old geezers and 2) couples with young children having dinner at this time. If you eat dinner early, you're with the geriatric and pediatric crowd. That's fine, it's just funny to hear the typical San Francisco middle aged parents ordering a fancy fuji apple and daikon sprout open-faced grilled cheese sandwich for their little daughter-- hold the sprouts, can we have the apple on the side, and "Don't worry honey, we can cut your sandwich and fold it so that it's a NORMAL grilled cheese sandwich." Did I ever eat at fancy fusion restaurants when I was six, with a yuppie mom and dad who catered to my every whim and ordered a whole young Thai coconut with a straw sticking out of it for me? Oh, hell no. My mom was a struggling, single, early twenties schoolteacher. I ate what I was given, we never ate at restaurants, and we only had fancy extras like cookies and string cheese when she got paid, which was once a month, and the fancy stuff lasted about three days. I'm not complaining, I'm just comparing and contrasting my experience with Little Miss Fuji Apple Grilled Cheese Sandwich's experience...

Yet I still think I had the better childhood, for I did not have a disgusting, horrid father who BLEW HIS NOSE REPEATEDLY at the dinner table, out in public. She does.
Why do men do this? And it's always men who do this, never women. Even with my tummy full of fried food and coconut ice cream and espresso, and the beautiful warm evening, I got FURIOUS when this man started, and continued his nose blowing. I wanted to tell him what a gross, nasty, entitled f*ck he was, but I didn't want to traumatize Little Miss Fuji Apple Designer Grilled Cheese Daikon Sprouts. Never thought I'd say it, but I'm kind of glad I grew up poor and grateful and eating foods that are considered "weird" or "exotic". And I'm glad my dad was clean and well mannered. Sheesh!

The Purgatory Bed

Back from a week in NYC (that warm, humid, exciting city) I was struck by a few realizations. One, there is no summer in San Francisco. I know, it doesn't snow, it doesn't freeze... but it's all cold, damp mist and mold about fifty weeks out of the year.

Two-- unlike the amazingly comfy bed they had at the hotel in which we stayed, so plush and amazing it's apparently trademarked the Heavenly Bed, our bed at home is not heavenly. (No, indeed. In comparison, our bed is hard and cold; spartan; monastic. We've nicknamed it "Purgatory".) The first thing I did upon waking up in the hotel room after our first night was to start peeling back the bedding, counting the comforters and looking for name brands on the sheets so that I could replicate this heavenliness at home. All in all, it was a mattress with a pillow top thing on top, a bottom sheet, a top sheet, a down "blanket" they call it (not as heavy and thick as a comforter) another sheet, a "hypo-allergenic" comforter with a duvet cover, two hypo-allergenic firm pillows and two down filled soft pillows. Three sheets-- it's like a club sandwich. They actually sell the bedding and the bed but it's very expensive, so I'm going to have to go about replicating the heavenly bed on a budget. I was actually relieved to discover that the thread count of the heavenly sheets wasn't so very high. Last night I went to a discount linens store and got a new duvet cover and two new pillows, went home, washed them and used them right away. The thing about discount stores is they don't usually have terrific colors and patterns, but if you don't mind off-white or white or pink or celery green you can find 400 thread count bedding for a dramatically reduced price. I would have been okay with off-white or white but luckily for me they had chocolate brown, which I much prefer. Little by little I plan to make our bed over so that it's no longer akin to purgatory.

In my recent bed research I also learned that there was once a size called an "Olympic Queen", made only by Simmons, which is six inches wider than a regular Queen. A Queen is 60 inches wide and 80 inches long. A Standard King, aka Eastern King, is 76 inches wide and 80 inches long, while a California King, aka Western King, is 72 inches wide and 84 inches long. Too bad the Olympic Queen didn't catch on--it seems it would be just right for me and DD!

Be back in a week!

I'm off to NYC early tomorrow morning!

Someone's Got Tarina Fever

Lily Allen (top photo) is adorable, and it's not like I'm a fan. I did try to listen to her album a few times but it just made me irritable. I just don't see how anyone can deny that she's adorable. Her face looks exactly like those plastic dolls from the craft store that my nana used to crochet outfits for. I liked my nana's crochet work a lot. For some reason all her stuff came out too small, even though she measured us carefully. She measured me and she measured my dad, but I ended up wearing the fisherman's sweater she made for him, and that's when I was in second grade. But getting back to the point, Lily Allen looks like an adorable little Kewpie doll.

She apparently went to some Glamour award thing the other evening with pink hair, a bruise on her arm, a white satin dress with a bleeding deer complete with splashes of blood print, and aqua satin sandals. Maybe she's been reading Francesca Lia Block novels lately; maybe she's inspired by jewelry designer Tarina Tarantino (bottom photo). I just think Lily Allen should be wearing a piece by Tarina Tarantino in homage; at least acknowledge the inspiration lest people miss the reference.

There's a pink-haired Tarina Tarantino Barbie coming out soon. I've always disliked Barbie, but I want one. I shouldn't say I always disliked Barbie. I did have several or a dozen at any given time during my childhood, and I liked to experiment with their joints, but that's another story for another day; maybe tomorrow.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys: Work!

Three weeks into my new job, and all the happy shiny newness has worn right the fuq off. These people don't even have a SERVER. They share documents on google docs. My docs don't sync with my boss's... we just keep e-mailing versions of docs round and round. We use gmail instead of Outlook, except the CEO and the IT manager, who "can't deal" with anything that's not Outlook. Okay, so what makes them think any of us can deal with not having Outlook, if they can't deal without Outlook? And I am producing a business plan with many colors and spreadsheets and bars and detail on a low-end home office printer.


Boss: Why did you change this double line to a single line?

Me: I didn't. It's a double line on the computer, but because this printer sucks, the two lines are bleeding together and making a single line.

Boss: Well, can't you DO something about it?


Okay, the something I would have done would have been to have finished it two days ago and sent it to a professional printer.

_______________

Later On...

Me: Hey, I have So-and-So Bigshot on the phone for you. Want to talk to her?

Boss: NO! She's a narcissist psycho! She's insane!

Me: uh, okay.

_______________


I could go on and on, but the point is, I realize I left Hell and simply entered another dimension of Hell. Not the same Hell, a different Hell. Old Hell had a nicer scanner. Sweet computers. A SERVER. A SHARED DIRECTORY. Microsoft Outlook. Jesus, look what they've reduced me to... I'm an evangelist for a Microsoft product. New Hell has nice, genuinely awesome co-workers. A nice CEO. (Is that an oxymoron? Nice CEO? But he really is.) Toilet seat protectors... ohhh yeah....sweet, paper-covered CIVILIZATION!
But everything's so fuqqing inefficient, and my boss... oh, wow.

What to do?

In general, I try to use the word "totally" very judiciously. (It's difficult. I, like, grew up in Southern California during that time.) So, I save the T word for when I really mean it. That said, I am SO TOTALLY going to see the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum next week!

It just so happened that I was in Los Angeles when the exhibit was at LA's Museum of Contemporary Art this past December (2007), so I got to see it there; however I didn't feel like I had as much time to look at everything as I would have liked. It will be so interesting to see some of the same pieces and how they look at the Brooklyn Museum; there were several HUGE sculptures; one of them ("Mr. Pointy") is 23 feet high. Someone told DD that there are only four museums in the world that can accomodate the @Murakami exhibit (we haven't confirmed the veracity of this yet), so I'm thrilled that I'll get to see it again!

@Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum, New York
Through July 13, 2008

The Price of Tea in China

So, gasoline is now around $4.27 a gallon in San Francisco. I know that Europeans pay a lot more for gasoline than US Americans do, and I know we've been getting gas at a low price for many years, but I'm still so glad and grateful that DD and I both work WALKING distance from home, and our car kind of can just sit in our carport most of the time. Sure, there's a dead, dessicated seagull blocking the forest path where I walk on my way to work, and it's not like I can go around, since the path is a foot wide and each side is WALLED with poison oak, but hey, walking to work makes me feel alert and cheery at work in the morning, not to mention it makes me hella smug.

I'm also seriously annoyed that gasoline prices are around $3.87 per gallon in Los Angeles. What the heck?


This article, which is a Q&A with an economist, explains the gas price thing succinctly, and even I could understand it easily, which is good because I'd generally rather be reading novels with pink covers.

Vegan Virgin Valentine

I read this novel over the past couple of days. It's good; it's about (spoilers alert) a high-achieving "good girl" named Mara Valentine and what happens when her bad-girl niece V comes to live with Mara and her parents for a school year. It's kind of a classic sisters story, where very different sisters who kind of hate each other realize that each person has good qualities and they actually do care about each other. Mara lets loose a bit and V cleans up her act a bit and everyone feels good.

The one thing I didn't understand was whether Mara and her boyfriend James ever actually ended up having sex. The description of that was odd. They were both fully dressed and dry humping and it seemed like an orgasm happened, but it was somewhat unclear. What a rip off. Wasn't Forever by Judy Blume controversial because it had sex and the Pill in it? Circa 1975. Surely today's readers of adolescent lit deserve a little more than dry humping, no?! No?

The movie was just...meh

After much anticipation, I saw Sex and the City, the movie, yesterday after work. I thought I was going to love it! I was prepared to love it, I expected to love it... I was kind of disappointed and it was really long...2 hours and 22 minutes.
The HBO episodes were a half hour each, so this was like watching almost five of them in a row. I have watched three of them in a row before, but never five, and I think it was just too much for me. It felt really long, the character of Samantha basically had only enough storyline for one of the 30 minute TV episodes, and Carrie's story dragged way beyond the point where I cared anymore. I enjoyed some moments, some jokes, Charlotte, and the fashion (a montage of Carrie trying on gowns and another of her trying on her old clothes are just awesome!) but not enough.

There were hordes of homogenous women at the theater (possibly because of the area we were in, in addition to the movie itself), and about three men. DD was one of them, which was pretty funny. The theater smelled like pancakes because they serve caramel popcorn there. At first I was annoyed that the screen and actual theater were so small, because that can be charming and you accept it at an older theater, like the Piedmont Theater in the East Bay, but this is a brand new theater, so it was actually recently designed like that.

M.E.H.

The Men of Sex and the City

Tomorrow I go to see Sex in the City, the movie. We already have tickets for a 7:00 showing, right after work, and we're going to a theater walking distance from our work, so nothing can possibly go wrong! (Knock on wood.) My three favorite men from Sex and the City were Smith Jarrod, because he was pretty much flawless in looks and in character, and because he was open to dating older women. Hey, I take that very seriously now that I'm friggin' thirty-five.
The deliciously bitchy stylist Anthony Marentino was definitely one of my favorites. Every time he was in an episode it was so good. He was the bitch I want to be in my next life (just as soon as I finish my tenure as POLLYANNA REINCARNATE); to just act out and say what I'm REALLY thinking at any given moment; to be mean 'cause it can feel good.

My number one favorite man from Sex in the City is Stanford Blatch. He was adorable and loyal and insecure, and just so cheerful and perky. I'm so excited to see the movie tomorrow!

Felt Sew Good

I love Etsy; an online marketplace for handmade things. I got two pretty little felt roses, one red and one purple, from Felt Sew Good at Etsy. They arrived beautifully wrapped in pretty tissue, and I've already worn them several times over the past few days!

Another novel I recently read, from the ever-increasing category "Chick Lit", was Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl by author Tracey Quan. It's entertaining. It's summer beach reading, but it goes into interesting issues of sexual politics, attitudes about sex, attitudes about feminity, fetishes and power more than you might expect it to. The basic premise is that protagonist Nancy is a highly paid prosititute living in New York City and juggling a fiance who thinks she's a part time copywriter. The protagonist is Chinese American, which is unusual, because the novel had mass appeal and did so well that it's becoming a film! Even more unusual--the protagonist's family is from Trinidad. Like that other beloved Manhattan girl, Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City, Nancy can't save money, and though she earns plenty, she spends it all on shoes, purses and very expensive underwear. Also, like Carrie Bradshaw, the subplots involve a gaggle of archetypal women friends and archetypal men.

Several years old already, the book now has two sequels.

In a nutshell, I could have skipped it, but I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Also, if you choose to read this novel, it will only take you a few days, max.

Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall

I read this novel a few days ago. It's a dystopian near-future story about a woman who escapes a society gone bad to live with an outlaw group of women who live "off the map" and who farm so well they're self-sustaining, even flourishing. Meanwhile everyone within the system is eating food out of cans and having their lives, work, and bodies carefully controlled and monitored. This is an awesome novel. It reminded me a little of The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood. I'm going to read Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. The woman who did my tattoo recommended it to me years ago and I never read it, but always meant to!

Upcoming USPS Stamp: Bette Davis

The USPS is releasing a Bette Davis 42 cent stamp soon! YEAH! I love Bette Davis. The only thing better would be if they used a photo of her as Baby Jane for the stamp.

Other upcoming stamps that I'm excited about include
a sheet of Ray and Charles Eames stamps, and the holidays ones include a set of four scarrrry looking nutcrackers. They're nightmare nutcrackers. I love 'em!

The Metamorphosis: Chelsea Clinton

Until recently, I always thought of Chelsea Clinton as this horsey, kind of homely, probably really smart, nice girl. A lot of people considered Chelsea Clinton to be unattractive. I thought she was cute. She's not Barbie pretty but she was never ugly; I just never understood why people said so. She's a privileged girl, yes, but she seemed like she was a nice girl. A girl you would not mind having as your co-worker, sister-in-law, or as your young child's teacher. I always felt sorry for her because her parents are so much to live up to. It's like she would have to be super successful academically and professionally and marry someone very appropriate and live within a very narrow box of constrictions. People say her parents did a good job of keeping her from the public eye, and she certainly did keep a low profile. Till now!

All of a sudden, she's emerged, campaigning for Hillary Clinton and looking completely and FREAKISHLY different; she sounds like her mother and she looks like her, too. Chelsea is a little mini-mom! It looks to me like Hillary has had some procedures over the years, and now Chelsea appears to have had procedures, and her procedures look like they were designed to make her look like Hillary... post-procedures Hillary. Like the child is carved to match the carved parent, to further the illusion that the parent wasn't carved.

My mom had her eyes done about ten years ago. She had bags under her eyes and she wanted them gone. I didn't think they looked bad. They did the bags and the upper eyelids as well. Afterward, my mother didn't look "refreshed"-- she looked like a totally different person! She has those recognizable plastic surgery eyes. I'm all for plastic surgery if it enhances the you that's already there, or makes you look better but still like yourself. It all starts to freak me out when everyone's surgery just seems to make them look closer to a certain standard. I really think Nicole Kidman looks exactly like Naomi Watts looks like Sienna Miller looks like Kylie Minogue...

Behold Chelsea Clinton! I feel like they took the real Chelsea to the special hospital in Stepford and brought this... gynoid! It's upsetting. I don't know if any of these photos have been messed-with to enhance her weirdness... do a search for "Chelsea Clinton 2008" to see lots more.

Wildly Cherry M&M's

Back when I was a tiny tot, M&M's came in plain and peanut varieties, and their colored shells came in orange, yellow, dark brown, light brown, and green. There were hardly any green in each package, and green M&M's were rumored to make teenagers feel sexual.
(For some reason, I hate the word horny. It's almost as bad as "boobs". God, I hate the word "boobs". Boobs and horny are just two very ungraceful words.)

At the time, I was told that red dye was harmful and that's why there weren't red M&M's. I think a lot of people believed that. The truth, according to M&M's parent company, Mars, is that the candies never did contain the controversial red dye, but because of the controvery, they stopped making a red shelled candy and took it out of the color mix. In the late 80's, red was brought back due to overwhelming demand.

The newest M&M iteration is Wildly Cherry, a whole package of bright red and dark red M&M's that are subtly cherry flavored. They say these are limited edition. They taste kind of weird. If you're accustomed to eating really good chocolate, you'll probably think they taste really bad. At first, you get this little taste of cherry, and you think maybe it's going to turn into a medicinal cherry taste, like cough syrup. But then it doesn't turn medicinal. It certainly tastes artificial-cherry, though.

One Week Down!

Having completed one week at my new job, I'm feeling pretty good. The people are so nice! Maybe they just haven't had time to get annoyed with me yet...but I hope the honeymoon period lasts.

I miss several of the people at my old job, and I miss my old workstation, which was more ergonomic and private than my new work area. Other than that, the list of the "pros" of my new job is astouding. They have toilet seat covers! There are four toilets and about 12 people, and the bathrooms are clean! At my ex-company, there were four toilets for about sixty people. It's like peeing in Nordstrom's bathroom on a weekday versus peeing at the first Chevron on Highway 5 midway between Nowhere and Really Nowhere in the middle of summer while you're driving down to LA or San Diego from Northern California. I know I'm more than a little obsessed with the work bathroom issue, but if you worked at my old workplace, you'd understand. Not only was the old work bathroom gross, but I was also in charge of the company logo tee shirts, which were stored in a cabinet INSIDE the smelly bathroom. I had to stand in the smelly bathroom for long periods of time counting tee shirts.

I work less than 2 miles from my apartment now, and I work on the same block as DD. We had lunch together twice last week.

Best of all,Leggy doesn't work at my new workplace! OH MY GOD... I NEVER HAVE TO SEE HER AGAIN! And I'm finally free of the devil who wears fleece.

Work Drag

Each work situation requires a different wardrobe. Or maybe it's just that I've had such a hodgepodge of random disconnected jobs that it's been that way for me. A person's resume is supposed to look like that person has had increasing levels of responsibility all within the same or similar fields... I've been a high school teacher, a person who talks about sex and sex toys and dirty videos to customers on the telephone, a friggin' "headset specialist" (including headphones and conferencers! Must not forget those!), a receptionist, a writer... everything but a circus clown. A bad resume is kind of like bad credit. You're doomed, at least for the next several years.

As I recently mentioned, I managed to score a new job despite the resume that clearly says I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. My previous job involved a wet warehouse and frequent chores such as taking out a very heavy bucket of sludgy compost, cleaning catering trays of baked-on lasagna, frittata and/or polenta in a sink smaller than the trays themselves, the high probability of finding a dessicated mouse in a long-forgotten trap here and there. Even though I worked in the office, as opposed to in the warehouse, it was not a place for fancy clothes, although someone I worked with did come to work in ugly poly-blend suits that looked, from the span of the shoulder pads, like she must have acquired them in the 80's. She also wore pumps, which sounded like gunshots when she walked on the hard floors. My work clothes consisted of jeans, clean sneakers and Juicy Couture hoodies. If I had to do something dirty and wet I would take off my hoodie and sneakers and quickly change into the beat up fleece jacket and dirty sneakers I left there all the time.

When I was a teacher, I wore suits, because I was young and teaching high schoolers. I wore nothing that a nun wouldn't wear. I didn't even wear skirt suits. Only pant suits. My mom (also a teacher) was so thrilled that she bought me a bunch of nice clothes for work. I was also super skinny then, because being a new teacher was so stressful, and I think my mom was secretly thrilled about that, too, and enjoyed dressing me up like a doll.

At the sex toy company (after my teaching stint) we could wear whatever the hell we wanted. I favored short pleated skirts and an array of slutty, expensive shoes... the kind of shoes I always admired as works of art, but didn't buy many of because I could never wear them during the work week. I worked in a little office with only other women and gay men, so it felt very safe to dress however I wanted. It was for me, and not to impress or attract or make a statement to anyone else.

This has been my first week working in Business Casual drag. My bosses are more formal, but they have titles like CEO and Vice President of Business Development. The other women who have a title like mine ("Coordinator") dress "business casual". I don't want to spend a lot of money on clothes I wouldn't necessarily wear if I had my choice, so I bought a lot of them at discount stores like Nordstrom Rack. It's black slacks and little pink sweater one day. Gray pants and little baby blue sweater another day. Pinstriped pants and cream sweater Wednesday. To make it look like I have more clothes than I do, I plan to wear the same things next week, but add different scarves and necklaces! I think Fridays are "jeans day", because I was interviewed on a Friday and I do remember seeing more than one pair of jeans that day. So today I'm wearing my current favorite jeans, flats and a loose navy blue silk tunic thing that has cream, citron and gray chevron stripes. That said, it's time to get ready for work!