lady and the unicorn

From an art show that I wanted to go to tonight... but fresh spring rolls can NOT be rushed:

THE BLOW - Hey Boy

AND this

True Affection

Am loving on this.

quiet

After a busy weekend...

Ra Ra Riot concert Friday, with not one, not two, but THREE opening bands (amazing to live walking distance from the venue)

Bachelorette party prep, bridal shower, bach. party Sat night

Science museum in golden gate park today, in high heels, as my overnight bag was left behind the night before in the trunk of a friend's car

... it's nice to sit with the cat sprawled across my legs, a book in my lap, and candle light flickering on the walls.

recent victories

Over material conditions:

- The bed arrived, and I put it together all by myself. Well, and with the help of some books to prop up the side rails as I fastened them to the head/footboards.

- At some point before Saturday I will have a cushioned reading chair.

- I carried a lamp home in the rain.

- Saved 15$ at Rainbow Grocery with scavenged 20% off coupons. Oh, AND turned in an application for part time work.

- The uber soft sheep rug arrived. Buju the cat luuurves it.


Over new things:

- Presented a revised version of my prospectus at the Stanford-Berkeley colloquium. And took *questions.*

- Valentine's day when not in a relationship: the roommates & I went to the SF pillow fight and to a (new to me) Mexican restaurant.

update

After a long hiatus...

I'm somewhat settled in the new apartment (Overstock.com foam mattress arrived! adorable shabby chic dresser/desk in place! $3 yard sale wood chair carried home! hamper from Ross precariously carried home on a WAY crowded bus from downtown SF!). I've had some exploring, lots of reading in cafes, some dinners out (Chaya for vegetarian sushi, Great China in Berkeley, pizza place in the Mission, vegan place back in Palo Alto), some dinners in, and some time with the roommates. As in: last night's impromptu guitar/drums/homemade maraca jam session, this morning's homemade crepes, and tonight's French dinner, thanks to Vincent, who made us a cream pepper sauce, steak, and scalloped potatoes. All I managed was the vegetables. Anyway, today's roommate bonding time has kind of made up for the drudgery of outlining a syllabus and writing a course description AND coming up with sample assignments, all in the hopes of MAYBE getting a summer teaching gig. Jesus Christ.

Also: Buju the cat has decided that my room is her sanctuary when she feels like an insulted diva.

the story of: san francisco apartment hunting

Shorter version: It's tough, despite the fact that the recession is pushing out the recently unemployed as well as the chronically unemployed hipsters who seem to be supported in part by bougie parents.

I arrived last Wednesday with 6 to 7 places to visit, and kept accumulating more as I emailed every viable post on craigslist.

the places I've been!

Saturday morning: started with a trip downtown to lower nob hill, where I visited a VERY cheap room (under 600$) right by the cable car line. Later I made my way to the mission for coffee shop hopping.

Sunday: - A great, sunny room at Valencia and 21st. Something of a language barrier with one tenant, and didn't talk long enough to the other fellow. I was new at this.

- A nice room in Noe Valley with two Stanford grads (maybe too close to home: I want to get *away* from campus).

- An evening open house right around the corner from my lower haight sublet: great group of roommates, cool cat, remodeled Edwardian...

Monday: - A beautiful place close to Alamo Square Park, on the more expensive side (1000$ with utilities). But two mostly absent roommates, one more in the 30's crazy career track.

- A, uhm, laid back apartment in the upper haight over a pipe shop and an organic grocery. Kind of too in the thick of things there. And I'm easy going, but I'm not THAT easy going. Brother crashing on the couch? Pay rent in cash? Wasn't my scene.

Tuesday: - Saw three studios in the early afternoon. But they were all pushing it financially (1100 for the cheapest, before utilities, and although spacious, the window looked out into only backs of buildings and rickety porches. And it was at like 14th and Mission, and seemed a little sketch for a one hundred pound white girl who likes to walk everywhere. Maybe.)

- A bedroom with a view of Potrero Hill, with a young lawyer.

- A nice room by Alamo Squ. Park, with two pretty artsy girls. Vaguely hipster, of the hair-dyed-black-skinny-jeans variety. I definitely didn't try hard enough to insert myself into conversations, but I felt like they'd decided I wasn't what they wanted.

- An amazing room at Haight and Divisadero. It was an open house with the address posted on craigslist, though, so a bevy of 20-something girls (the ad said "preferably female") was gathered on this porch waiting for the doors to open. We attracted some attention, and male passersby were told it was their job to bring the beer to the Obama block party. It was actually a fun evening -- I made the rounds to talk to all the roommates, talked enough with a fellow searcher to justify a huggy goodbye, and seriously coveted the big, yellow Victorian bedroom. But there must have been at least 30-40 attendees over the course of the time I was there.

And lastly, a Hayes Valley studio. It was across from the projects though, and carpeted, and too expensive. Turned it down.

LUCKILY everything has worked out! The Noe Valley apt. offered me the place and I turned them down. The next day, I heard back from the great Lower Haight household, and felt like I was on some reality tv dating show:

Phone: Hey, this is Greg, on Steiner,
Me: This is Becky, around the corner --
Phone: Do you want to join our house?

It was great -- especially when Greg apologized for his roommates giggling in the background.

So now I need to find a bed! and linens! and towels! and a bench/desk with cushions! What I don't need to do: learn my way around a new neighborhood! I get to stay in the Lower Haight! With fun roommates my own age! And a chill cat!

overheard

"My mouth tastes like I licked a barbecue grill" - Mer on smoking.

"I really think the future of collecting macaroni and cheese boxes lies overseas." - Overheard on late night Food Network

"Make tea not love"

"This is an EX parrot"

"I hope that dog is in our compost and not going over to the neighbors." - Mom on relative evils.

the holidays, briefly

Christmas Eve here with the family.

Christmas dinner with Grammy in Hood River.

Crazy weekend trip to Portland: Devotchka concert, meeting up with Nate and Annie, shopping the sales. Lots of food: Henry's tavern for happy hour; Roxy's at 1 am, the 24 hour diner with suicide chocolate cake and a Jesus sculpture over the jukebox; Mother's for the best brunch in town.

Visiting Dad and going for pizza. And grocery shopping.



Things said -

"What's Benny got? Did he get a potato?" - Mom on Benny the dog stealing a potato for use as a toy.

"I thought your hair reflected in the window was a skunk's tail. That's not supposed to be an insult. Skunks have beautiful tails." - Merrie

"The question is not what my breakfast can do for you, but what you can do for my breakfast"

"What do you feel you can bring to my breakfast?"

- me and Mer, respectively

"Becky, your eyes match the wainscoting" - Andrew

elk -- kind of like reindeer, but the females don't have antlers

It's snowing like hell. We no longer leave the house.

This morning we saw an elk herd trapped in the orchard that borders our house -- the owner built a fence to keep them *out*, but now that they've managed to get *in,* it's proving difficult to remove them. Even though all the gates are open. Mer and I trudged up, waded through the snow and cold, to check, and yes, the gate nearest the woods was open, and yes, the elk went right past it. Apparently having eyes on either side of your head fucks with your depth perception, and means you don't see open gates. Or, for that matter, people standing right in front of you -- Mer and I watched an elk cow approach us at a trot, till at about 25 feet, she suddenly recognized us as *not trees.* Now they're hanging out in the middle, stripping the little cherry trees.

Anyway, this is the local drama. Because someone shot one of the exhausted, trapped elk earlier, without the owner's permission, and possibly without an elk tag. Someone else called it in, but probably nothing will happen. So it goes.

The Clientele - Since K Got Over Me

bleh

Best part of Thom Hartmann on Olbermann, as transcribed on Crooks & Liars:

Hartmann: David what he needs to do immediately is read Alexander Hamilton's 1791 report to Congress on manufactures. Hamilton laid out this six step plan to build an industrial economy in the United States and we followed it. We, Congress actually put into place in 1792 and it stood until Ronald Reagan came along and started deconstructing this, followed by George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush now and the legislatures, mostly pushed by the Republicans taking this thing apart. You could argue some of this started with Taft-Hartley. But basically the founders laid this thing out. They had it figured out and it worked. We built the biggest industrial infrastructure and industrial economy in the world.

We have gone, when Reagan came into office we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet. And the largest creditor. More people owed us money than anybody else in the world. Now just twenty eight years later we're the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods, exporter of raw materials which is kind of the definition of a third world nation and we're the most in debt of any country in the world. This is the absolute consequence of Reaganomics.

navigatin'

Where have I BEEN?

The studio in the Haight is DARLING. 1920s apartment building, wood floors, bay windows, separate kitchen with old school ironing board cupboard... I wish it were mine. Karl is subletting it to me for two weeks. And not only is he from Oregon, but he also lived on Harvard St. for a while. A little like things aligned and the mechanism could be overheard. We had a good chat about yoga props, beta fish and reverse evolution, Oregon sports... can't wait. After seeing the place, I met up with Jill for dinner and then made my way back home.

The N-Judah is confusing. On my way toward the Haight, I was perplexed by the three DIFFERENT munis that wouldn't let anyone on, and which this older woman, who was also waiting, signaled were not the one we were waiting for. And on the way back, at Duboce and Church, I ASSUMED that the ramp was the boarding area. Until the conductor came out and told me I was on the wheelchair loading ramp. And that the place to wait was up the street, where, by the by, THERE WAS NO SIGN INDICATING THIS FACT, although this information explained all the hipsters in skinny jeans standing in the middle of the road (NOT EXAGGERATING: MIDDLE OF THE ROAD). I missed the ingoing muni by like one minute, and then had a 45 minute wait at the caltrain station --> grand total of 3 hours to get home.

The weekend was good: Met up with Julia & her boyfriend for dinner at Millennium (yum!). They make some mean beets. I was inspired to buy some over the weekend. It was like Christmas but without the extreme cold: fake snow was falling to a Christmas choir downtown.

This week it's been back to work... In good news, Coupa opened on campus and it makes my life much better. [Because I was able to have a goat cheese arepa for dinner tonight.] Had the prospectus workshop yesterday (and an evening break: seeing Lauren off), and today I met with Denise. Who said she was "pleased" and that the draft is shaping up into an "acceptable" prospectus that people will be interested in. I agreed that the process worked for me, and that the panic stage is over. And then she recommended reading that I'm enjoying.

A bit from said reading, quoting Herder:

"all passions of man's breast are wild drives of a force which does not know itself yet, but which, in accordance with its nature, can only conspire toward a better order of things."

the good and the messy

Strange times: In two weeks, I'm out of this cottage where I've been renting a room. I'll be in Oregon for at least three weeks over the holidays (have yet to book a plane ticket back to CA: maybe will take the train?). And then I'll probably be here in CA till the end of January in a studio in the Haight (sublet: I'm checking it out tomorrow... kind of an adventure to take a bus somewhere new). And then, I guess, Wisconsin? And a dissertation chapter on Dickens?

Anyways, that was all to set up the fact that, regarding the messiness of life, I love this from Forster's Life of Dickens:

A longer time afterward he recollected the stage-coach journey, and in one of his published papers said that never had he forgotten, through all the intervening years, the smell of the damp straw in which he was packed and forwarded, like game, carriage paid. "There was no other inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I expected to find it." (11)

Sloppier than I expected.

But: I went on the Target/Trader Joe's trip tonight and bought a box of chocolates that was on sale. And I was estimating the number of chocolates left, vs. the number I had eaten, and thinking, no, I shouldn't, when I realized that the box contains ANOTHER LEVEL of chocolate. Paradigm changer, my friends.

on formatting

so I was just compiling a bibliography...

so noisy at the whofo

I made the mistake of going to Whole Foods on this, the day before the day before Thanksgiving. Courtesy is no longer even a half hearted pretense. So many women (it does seem that women still disproportionately do the grocery shopping, doesn't it?) with baby carriages, carts, purses -- blocking the bulk foods section, comparing prices (altho. not as much of that here in Palo Alto), quieting children... and someone had the brilliant idea of putting out HOT apple cider with flimsy little cups. Brilliant way to burn your fingers.

Anyway, I escaped with my shampoo and mandarin oranges and easy lunch foods. And a vanilla bean (five dollars my friends: for some reason, they carry ONLY organic vanilla beans, and you get ONE per superfluous packaging). And star anise. So that I can make *this* for Thanksgiving at Jodie and Dan's:



In case that doesn't work out, I did buy some green beans...

so much cuter in french

Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

if I have a baby and show her cartoons in french, what are the chances she'll become fluent? and entertain me with crazy animal fables?

today in google books

My random subject category is "Alcoholics Fiction," featuring, Death Will Get You Sober.

the problem with google book recommendations when you're using it to read obscure 19th century self-help texts

Horse-shoeing as it is and as it Should be. By William Douglas. 1873.

upgrading

Why did I ever waste my time on the Palo Alto Baking Company's chocolate croissants, when Boulangerie Bay Bread exists, and when they sell their delicate, buttery croissants at the same farmers' market?