it's not vicious, or malicious.

Friends, i have spent the entire day on the internet. This is not a lament, or a boast: it is a simple truth.

And i found some stuff.

This lady's comics are great.

Here are some photos that are not mine:








The National Geographic Photo Contest is at it again. Have a gander!

i just discovered The Fray. It has good stories in't. Sat here reading for an hour or more.

(All of the orchids in my house are almost done blooming. Feeling poisoned from smoking too many cigarettes. i think we'll eat pumpkin pudding for dinner.)

i drank too much last night and would like for that to not happen again. There was a variety show among friends: "Africa" was covered, and Nico, as well as "Groove Is In The Heart" (complete with slide whistle). There were rum balls and Guinness cupcakes. i found a "k" in a snapped-off twig. The clouds were like cotton balls stretched out across the sky. i was finally able to say aloud to someone that i was having a difficult time getting truly involved in the 'Occupy' movement because i feel that there are bigger problems in the world... his response was that, well, doesn't the problem of the rich getting richer sort of have a hand in most (if not all) of those other problems i was mentioning (rape, slavery, lack of clean water, etc.)? It was a tough call; i had a hard time clarifying my position and verbalizing what i meant. Also, as i believe i already mentioned, i was pretty inebriated.
Oh, to have excellent speech and debate skills!

a houseguest!

Today i am picking up my best friend from the airport!* She'll be staying a week, and we have a couple of super-exciting things planned (Cirque du Soleil, a visit to the Flower Fields), as well as some less-exciting things (heading up to see the seals, drinking way too many cups of coffee, riding bikes all over the place). Hopefully showing her around town will remind me of how sometimes i can actually like it here. Plus, now my house is stocked with exotic breakfast cereals and stuff like orange juice and frozen pizza– livin' the life luxurious, we are! Not to mention i finally had an excuse to dust the bookshelves and clean out the toaster oven. Crikey, that was a fright. And on the flip side, i am filled with remorse at my lack of awesome linens (unraveling bath towels, anyone?) or even a damned teakettle. But who doesn't love to boil water in a pot and eat from chipped ceramic bowls? No one, that's who.
*Note: by 'picking up' i mean taking the bus to, and subsequently from, the airport. Aren't you glad you're not my friend?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, we saw the new Alice in Wonderland last night. It reaffirmed my distaste for 3D movies (or at least, the new ones, with the huge polarized lenses as props), but it was also the first Tim Burton movie since Edward Scissorhands that i actually and truly enjoyed. It's just such a magnificently trippy story (although the plot here differed a bit from the books and/or the original animated version), and the computer graphics weren't overdone, which was refreshing. The girl playing Alice looked like a cross between Claire Danes and Sara Gilbert, Helena Bonham Carter was basically perfect as the Red Queen, Anne Hathaway still looks like an alien and can't act that well (sorry, but it's true), and Johnny Depp looked great but his performance was a bit all over the place. Someone in our group noticed that his accent kept changing, and his portrayal of the Mad Hatter was almost too... sensible.

At the risk of spoiling anything (don't think i will?), it also seemed like certain opportunities were missed in the story-telling: free will, morality, and personal identity definitely could have been explored a bit more. All of that aside, Tweedledee and Tweedledum were cute as buttons, and the Cheshire Cat may have been my favorite character. From the commercials i was convinced he'd be loathsome. Not so, thanks to Stephen Fry's voice and some amazingly ethereal animation. Hooray! Now, to see it once more, sans 3D.

A small gripe: where were my mome raths? Darling little things.

He Was a Friend of Mine

His name was Urs.

He had curly hair, glasses, and an adorable Swiss German accent. On the shorter side of average height, and a pretty sharp (but understated!) dresser. A great conversationalist, and smart as a whip. Sweet and endearing, with his whole life ahead of him. A very bright young man who had quite a future in philosophy (or, most likely, any damn thing he put his mind to).

All of it changed when he decided to take matters into his own hands. He ended his life, by himself, of his own accord, two days ago. No one knows why. He left no note, and there were no outward indications (a break-up, an illness, a rejection letter, nothing) of anything "wrong". Seems we will never know why he left us here. In the last email he wrote how happy he was to be coming back to San Diego at the end of January, and to see Nat and i. Nat shouted to me in the other room with the news, he was so excited.

But Urs will never know about that conversation. He never saw our smiles or heard our mental gears whirring with possibilities of dinners, games, journeys.

The last time i saw Urs we went to dinner with him and his girlfriend. We had Indian food. The waiter brushed against his girlfriend's boobs. It was hilarious. (trust me.) We drove home listening to "An Elvis Christmas" and then played a few rounds of Boggle. Urs kept calling it "Boogle"; as a non-native English speaker, it was not his best game but he played it well anyway. We were listening to a playlist on my iPod and suddenly he stopped and looked up at me: what is this song?

It's 'Perfidia', from th–

–soundtrack to 2046, right?

Yes! Do you know this song, Urs?

Turns out he knew the song well. And loved it. And had never been able to find it anywhere. i explained how it took me a whole afternoon/evening of searching to get it, but that i was so happy i'd found it. He requested a copy of it, and late the next day i sent him the mp3 through our email.


Sometimes i wish i'd never sent him that damn song.

Andrew Bird.

Holy moly, what a weekend.

Especially for me, someone who rarely does anything one could consider "exciting" or "inspiring". A friend of mine from the flower shop where i work was running the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco on Sunday, and since she knows how much i miss home (the Bay Area in general), she asked if i wanted to drive up. My response? "Hell yes!"
We left around noon on Friday, with two boys in tow. One was heading home up to Portland, and the other was going to run in the race with her. But wait, wasn't it a women's marathon? you're thinking- and yes, it was. But this is Pablo we're talking about. This is Pablo who flirts with boys and wears mismatched socks in pastel hues on purpose, and who has a tiny (also pastel) bike with green plastic pedals.
On the drive up (we took the 5 for time even though the 1 would have been a sight-seeing spectacular) not too much happened: we saw a bunch of hay and carrots on the road that a truck had spilled, and came this[ ]close to being involved in an awful collision. I had to listen to the Killers and the Offspring, which was rough, but hey- i'm an adapter. It was hot and windy the whole way.
Got to my good friend Addie's house once we reached Oakland, where they dropped me off. She took me out to dinner (well, breakfast: i had french toast and hash browns!), where i bought a homeless guy a Turkey Reuben. He told me whatever sandwich i ordered would be great, and since i've never (and probably will never) order a Turkey Reuben, that's what he got. It's funny, because i would never shell out $9 to someone spare changing on the street, but when someone asks me for food, there's just no question. We all gotta eat.
Saturday was alright; Addie and i rode our bikes all around Berkeley and did some clothes shopping (something i absolutely detest, but for some reason i have good luck when she's around). I finally replaced my black hoodie that was full of holes; actually threw it away in the bathroom of the Italian restaurant we ate at later that evening, where we drank miniature bottles of sparkling wine. Good times!
Then we visited our old workplace (the flower shop, where we first met years ago) and had an awkward visit with the old boss. Got some beautiful flowers, and quickly biked our way home through the chilly streets. Drank a vodka cran each just for kicks, and watched Adventures in Babysitting on YouTube. Ah, good times indeed ;) Did you know that Vincent D'Onofrio was in that movie? I'm tellin' ya.
Sunday we were up early, left the apartment by nine, and headed to the city (this is East Bay speak for "San Francisco"). The BART train was filled with nervous, quiet, staring people, so we decided to play the alphabet game. i picked vegetables as a category, which we turned into "Things you can buy at a greengrocer" just for ease of playing, and started things off with Asparagus. Addie countered with Beets. This continued:
Heather: "Chard."
Addie: "What am i on, D? Hmm. Dates."
Random Guy Sitting in Front of Us: "::turning slightly:: Fennel."
Heather: "::surprised:: Thanks, but i'm on "E"! Fennel's an awesome choice for F, though, thank you!" (We ended up using it, of course).
So it went on, and on, until we got to the letter U. For some reason this stumped us. i hinted and honted* as much as i possibly could, but the dude in front of us wouldn't offer any more help. Or maybe he just couldn't think of anything, same as us.

We got off the train at Civic Center, just made the bus up Haight Street (whew!), and got off at the entrance to Golden Gate Park. The finish line for April's race was clear on the other side, right where the land ends and the Pacific Ocean begins, but we were going to get a cup of coffee and zoom on through the park. Turns out our favorite coffee spot was swallowed up in a Bermuda Triangle of sorts, so we got some so-so cups of joe and then realized we were running out of time. A harried cab ride later, we arrive at the beach and see scores and scores of runners, wrapped in tinfoil (i later learned that these help keep your body heat in, as it was easily in the low 50's that day) and boarding shuttle buses back to their various hotels. i was so upset; thought we'd missed her. But we pushed through the thousands of runners and spectators, made our way to the finish line, scanning for April the whole way. (This is a bit like if you took a "Where's Waldo?" book, removed him from all of the pages but one, and then ripped that page clean out of the book and threw it away.) She was nowhere to be seen, nor was Pablo. Add to that the fact that Pavel was still sitting at the starting line, thinking he was in the right place to see her finish before he got on a bus to Oregon, and he was upset. It seemed like all was lost.
We sat around for 40 minutes or so, but knew we would never find her. Addie and i boarded a bus back downtown, then decided to eat somewhere in North Beach. We walked around for half an hour there, looking at menus and then rejecting them as either too expensive or not enough non-meat options for yours truly... finally we found a place and guess what? We were the absolute only two people there. It was awesome :) Plants hanging in every window, an old metal chandelier hanging form the rafters, garlic bulbs hanging on every post, a tortoiseshell cat playing in the yard outside. We had such a good time, and a handsome waiter with a dead tooth who made us some pretty strong drinks.
Ambling tipsily back to BART, we smoked way too many cigarettes, stopped to give a street juggler some assorted Halloween candy that i'd picked up a bag of, and somehow managed to get home across the Bay.

Ready for the best part? i know, i know- you've been reading so faithfully, sitting through these long boring monologues, and i thank you for your patience. But really none of this compares with what happened on Sunday.

April picked me up at eleven, i said my goodbyes to Addie, strapped my bike back on the bike rack, and April and i headed off south. We were going to try and reach L.A. by eight o'clock to see a sold-out show by one of my favorite musicians, Andrew Bird. He means a lot to me, and never ever plays West Coast venues, so it was sort of a necessary sojourn. April had listened to a few of his tunes on my iPod and decided she liked, so we were determined to try and get in. We had a lovely drive down, stopping at a slightly eerie but peaceful reservoir, and driving through some cute cute cute countryside. Smell of onions in the air, then alfalfa, with cows, sheep, silos fruit stands, etc. Me likey.

Got to L.A. tired but hopeful, found the place, parked quite easily, and stepped out onto that sidewalk like we were going to conquer the world.

However.

It turns out that The Largo was closed. Just.... gone. We walked up to an empty storefront: boarded over with plywood, fabric hanging in tatters, a "Change of Ownership" sign in the dirty window.

No.......way. How could this possibly be happening? It was the worst feeling ever, even though we knew that we probably never would have got in to the show anyhow. A duck in to the comic book store next door, and the boy behind the counter gave us easy directions to the new Largo spot, only a mile away! We were thrilled. Bounded back to the car, and found the second place. Saw a whole bunch of people milling about outside, hoping (as we were) to get tickets. It was pretty disheartening, after such a long day. We sat out front so i could have a smoke, and regroup. As we're sitting there, checking out the Hollywood fashionistas, someone crossing the street towards us catches my eye.

It is none other than the man himself, Andrew Bird.

I freaked out. Pretty much just lost it. "Omigodomigodomigodomigodomigod" is all that came out of my mouth. i caught his eye for a split second, then stared at the gum on the sidewalk until April relaxed her grip on my arm and said "it's ok- he's gone." It was such a major, exciting moment for me, as cheesy as that sounds. i was so happy. So, so happy :) i was ready to leave, satisfied and elated, but April suggested that we walk around the block, just to draw out the experience as long as we could. In the alley behind the place, we discovered that there was a back door with such amazing sound, it was as if you were sitting in the front row. We decided then and there that we would hang out in the alley and listen to his set. i was so happy, again, and grateful to her for being such a game girl. We hunkered down with a bag of Sun Chips and waited for the opening act to be over.

Meanwhile, employees had been going in and out of various mysterious back doors, giving us sidelong glances from time to time. Finally, Andrew Bird came on and they all disappeared indoors. We heard whistling, some pizzicato violin and some lovely bowing, and then some murmuring to the audience, which was followed by laughter. It was hard not to be in there, but we were having a great time outside nonetheless. I began to write him a note that i was going to slip under the door, when a guy in a white T-shirt came down the back stairs and asked us what we were doing. "Just... listening" i said lamely. "We just drove down here from San Francisco hoping to get in but it was sold out!" April offered. He gave us an "aaallright, you're okay. No worries." and left. Thank goodness! i thought he was there to give us the boot. Which he probably was, but had mercy instead.

Fast forward to two minutes later, and someone else comes around the corner and says, "Come on. i've got seats for you."

.....!!!!!!!!!!

This was really happening.

"Leave your drinks, let's go." We obediently chucked our water bottles near the recycling bins and hurried after his disappearing shadow.

This wonderful man (no doubt tipped off by the first, also wonderful man) led us into the theater after the second song, and gave us two back seats.

I was staring at Andrew Bird onstage, who was busy shyly talking to the audience about how he was going to play some new songs, and was that okay? We responded accordingly.

Needless to say, it was a great night. One of the greatest of my life, in all honesty. Everything just fell into place. Andrew Bird truly was an amazing performer, as i'd heard, and as humble as could be. April enjoyed herself immensely, and we sat through probably 6 or 7 songs, then 2 encore songs, which were crazy good. A standing ovation later, i finished writing my note, with the update that we had been let in, and thanked him profusely for a lovely show. Walked up to the stage to throw the piece of paper near his guitar, when the guy who let us in comes over and jokes, "stop trying to steal Andrew's stuff!" i explained that i was only trying to leave him a note, and so he took it from me and put it right on top of the guitar. "He can't miss it" he assured me with a big grin. He introduced himself as Michael, and April and i fairly fell all over ourselves thanking him. He was so happy, i think, to be able to help, and could tell that we really truly deserved to be in there. He told us that Andrew was outside, in the mezzanine, saying hi to people. So April walked me over there (my legs were just about completely numb), and i stumbled towards him, shook his hand, and told him he was amazing. i thanked him for being him, and he smiled confusedly at me.

Yay!!

Success. For serious. It all actually finally happened. What an amazing night.

we walked back to the car on cloud nine, drove the last hour and a half home to San Diego (ha ha- i just called it "home", ugh), and got to bed around three a.m.

Went to work today, same as always.

Ain't life grand?
*typo left in for the sake of hilarity.

friends, and "friends"

i was that girl.
the one who everyone made fun of.
when i was little, i was always off playing by myself, looking at bugs; daydreaming. Around this time, my friends were:
~Molly, probably my first (and still one of my best, in memory) friend; her mother ran a daycare, which i was placed in for awhile. Molly and i were the same age, and inseparable. We grew up together and worked at her mom's daycare, which was very fun. We had lemonade stands every summer, supplemented with homemade cookies, in front of the Berkeley Bowl until we got "too old" for it. Climbing on roofs and finding as many snails as we could in her yard were two of our favorite pastimes. When we got older, we would ride bikes around town and spend our allowance on Mexican food (usually flautas). This was our first big taste of what it was like to be "grown-up". Her mom and stepdad (who annoyingly called Molly "Girl" 99% of the time,) took me camping many times, and even to Death Valley once, which is still one of my favorite memories. Later the neighborhood was shocked when it was revealed that her stepdad was actually an escaped member of the I.R.A., in hiding here in the States. Crazy!
~Jody, a sweet, sweet lad; also technically my first boyfriend. ;) His is another (amazing) story for another day. Our friendship ended way too soon.
~Dara, a super-blond waif who didn't hold your hand so much as she just let hers lay in yours, limply. You could tickle her merely by wiggling your fingers in her general direction. She was extremely gentle and sensitive. Had a bratty little sister named Bridget. Last i heard she had beat thyroid cancer and was married with a kid.
~Colleen, a very brief friend of mine whose parents spoiled her rotten, if memory serves. She had a doll collection, the kind with lots of curls and frilly dresses and tiny polished shoes. She also took ballet classes, which i attended one of and was shocked at the snottiness of the girls there. She had beautiful long red wavy hair, though.

Eventually i got a boy's haircut (super-short, with a tail!) and only wore overalls, which earned me the loving title of "Muskrat!" by the local children. Often i would be asked (usually on a dare), "Are you a boy or a girl?" ::snicker, run away:: This was around the time that i played with dirt a lot and frequently shimmied up trees, taking solace in the non-judgmental branches and pinecones. Didn't have a whole lot of friends around this time, hmm..
~Alexandria, a sassy young girl who had a much older sister and brother, a dad rarely seen, and a mean (alcoholic?) mom. She lived in a huge, picture-perfect house with rose bushes in the front yard and even a white picket fence. Sometimes i would pretend like i actually lived there, instead of the loud, tiny, mold-infested dank apartment around the corner. We played with Play-Doh a lot, also Strawberry Shortcake & Rainbow Brite dolls. She and i were madly in love with the movie La Bamba, and knew every Richie Valens song by heart. I had a crush on her older brother, Owen, who used to constantly whack me on the leg with the end of a wet towel. Around this time (that would be the '80s), many wonderful things were discovered, such as: Slip 'N Slide, Atari, and Lite Brite. Also, this is when i Got Caught Shoplifting. We dressed up one afternoon and headed down to the drugstore, specifically the candy aisle. We filled our giant boots, cuffed pant legs, and fake purses with Twix, Rolos, Skittles, Snickers, Milky Ways, Abba Zabbas- you name it. Then we craftily headed up to the checkout counter with one Caramello apiece, to buy (so smart!!). We paid the .50 cents each, then headed out the doors to victory. Twenty feet out, with the rush of what we had just done really starting to buzz in our heads, from behind us a voice came, boomingly: "Your momma let you buy that much candy?"
It was the security guard.
We really should have just made a run for it, but i think deep down we really were good kids, and scared. I remember one of us saying, "Yeeeaaahhh..?", all unsure and warbly, and the security guard, clearly not buying it, just holding out his arm and saying, "okay, come on- let's go." He was trying to sound comforting, but i think we both started bawling right away upon re-entry. He marched us to the office at the back of the store, right back down the candy aisle, where i wailed: "I'll put it baaaaaaaack?" but it was too late. We were criminals. They actually took mug shots of us, with our respective piles of pilfered sweets sitting on a tray in our laps, while our parents were called. Alexandria and i were forbidden to see each other ever again, and i was grounded for 2 weeks. Even though we did see each other again, our friendship sort of fizzled away, especially since she started getting somewhat popular and i was still a chubby bookworm who ate frosting out of the can when upset. Last i heard, Alexandria had joined the Peace Corps, or something similar, and had done some work with children down in South America. Good for her.

So, when i was about eleven, my mom left my dad. They had been separated for a few years, but this was it. My mom woke us up in the middle of the night, put us in the car wrapped in blankets, and drove us to our new home in a neighboring city, Alameda. Enter the worst few years of my life. I think my first friend was..
~Wana Chiu. Yes, i still remember her last name. For some reason it seems necessary when i think of her? Anyway, she was a small, quiet girl with long straight black hair and a mumbling way of speaking. We actually didn't talk very much. Sometimes we would go to her house, where there were always massive amount of Peeps, for some reason, which we ate constantly. Often we would just walk to the park in silence along the sidewalk, and swing for hours, never saying more than ten words to each other. Nonetheless, we were good friends in that neither of us really had anyone else. One day we were sitting against a wall in the schoolyard to eat lunch, along with many others, when some boys decided that it would be funny to torment us by throwing a basketball at the wall, hard, right next to our heads. I think we might have both been crying a little during this. Nobody stopped them, and finally the worst happened. One of the throws hit Wana square in the face, and she dropped her sandwich and cried out, as blood began to gush from her nose. The boys scattered. I ran her to the nurse's office, and she stayed home from school the next day. I can't even remember if i told, but i do remember being taunted by those boys for months after that. Either i didn't tell, and they called me a coward, or i did, and they were punishing me for getting them in trouble. Either way, 4th grade was no fucking picnic. I didn't see Wana very much after that.
~Nikki. Right around that time, my newly-divorced mom was sort of trying to get back out into the social scene (not to be confused with the Man Market). A woman she met had a daughter around my age, but who went to a different school. I remember she wore a uniform, and was very chubby, possibly more than i was. We were basically forced to hang out together when our moms would meet up. It was okay, but we never really had a whole lot in common. I remember being annoyed by Nikki a lot, but in retrospect i think it had a lot to do with the fact that she was an only child being raised by a single working mother, and likely needed friendship waaayy more than i did... Once we all went swimming at a local pool, where i rudely ignored her and swam out into the deep end (she couldn't swim yet, and was always in the shallow area, with arm puffs). My brother swam over to me with a message: "Nikki wants to talk to you", which i responded to by taking a breath and immersing myself completely under the water. i watched his legs and arms treading jerkily in the blue for as long as i could hold my breath, then came back up to the same query, repeated with urgency: "Nikki wants to talk to you!". i went under again, over and over and over, ignoring both her and her message through my brother. i think it may have been the meanest thing i've ever done, and sometimes i still wish i could contact her and apologize.
~Lydia and Faith. i lump these two girls together for a reason. They are the same girl, only with different appearances.
i can't remember which one i met first, but it doesn't really matter. Something trivial was shared in common, perhaps a fleeting interest in the New Kids on the Block, who knows, but suddenly i found that i was friends with-gasp- someone popular! And now i remember, actually. It was Lydia. She had long, rocker-ish hair, wore blue eyeliner, and had giant boobs. This was weird for an early 12-year-old, but hey-it happens! Her family lived in a bad neighborhood in East Oakland, where i saw 3 separate cats get hit by cars on her street. Her parents were some serious Harley Rock 'N Rollers from decades past, and they were pretty burned out. But also awesomely fun. Lydia and i would actually play with Barbies, of all things, in her garage with her little brother Wade. Theirs was another family i wished would adopt me, but it never happened. I guess they went to church regularly, and one Saturday night i finally was allowed to sleep over, but only on the condition that i attend Sunday School with Lydia the next morning. She really wanted me to, even though i don't think i had ever been in a church up to that point, and was scared shitless. The next morning was absolutely awful. was forced into one of Lydia's hideous, chestly-ample Sunday dresses (i was much smaller now; her mom had even nicknamed me "Feather"), and we drove to the church, where we sat at a table with a bunch of items in front of us, instructed by the headmistress to write down how each of these items related to Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Um, whaa?
I was totally lost, and of course felt guilty and embarrassed and ashamed for not knowing the answers while everyone else around dutifully scribbled down the answers. A piece of wood, a chalice, a crucifix, some other stuff i can't remember. Lydia didn't even help me cheat! tsk.
Soon after this, there was a new girl at our school: Faith. Faith changed everything; she was a bad girl at heart, under her plaid skirts and brown ponytail. She and Lydia were instant friends, of course, both rebels without a cause. "We" played a lot of tether-ball in those days, but as the third wheel i was often merely there as a scorekeeper. These two vixens became closer and closer, and thus begand competing with each other more and more, the way girls that age will often do. This evolved into a game of pretending to be nice to me and asking me to hang out with them, in order to make the other one jealous. It took me way too long to figure this out. By the time it dawned on me that our friendships were completely hollow and had nothing to do with me whatsoever, 5th grade was over, which meant that it was time to go to a different school. i never saw those two again.

I've never really been huge on friends- always tended to hang out more by myself, which is fine, actually. These days i have basically one, and she lives 448.568 miles away from me, front door to front door. In high school i hung out with quite the cast of characters, but then didn't we all? I suppose that's another (boring) story for another time.