san francisco treats (part I)

The lecherous, entirely un-seductive looks that the waiter at Ghiradelli's kept giving me. And my boyfriend.

The awesome old houses scattered everywhere in the city.

The hills--when they're not making my companions feel violently vomitous.

The sea lions lounging around Pier 39 like fat broads on a beach.

The she-man who tried to pick Jed up while I was in the bathroom. Back off, bitch/man-ho!

The joys of a hookah, apple-flavored tobacco, hot tea and baklava.

The horror of eastern European chest hair tangled in gold chains.

Funky Feroshus Sizzle sax solos.

Pimps and hos in the Tenderloin district.

Bouncing from hotel bed to hotel bed. If you know what I mean.

thoughts of shopping

The secret to renting from Blockbuster is to not frequent it very often. A long hiatus allows time for desirable movies to pile up on the shelves, creating the illusion of good selection.

God I hate Best Buy. I can never focus on any one thing without feeling woozy and the giant spots of colored linoleum in the corners of the store’s walkway overwhelm and disorient me. Everywhere you look there are over-priced television sets, computer systems, gadget phones and Gwen Stefani music videos, but the coolest thing by far was the seven foot tall sales rep in the kitchen appliance department.

I have forgiven In-n-Out Burger for its hamburger evangelism. But only because I like the fries.

I stepped in something at Target. It was squishy but not slippery. I scuffed it off my shoe onto the carpet in the underwear section. It looked like mashed bologna. I’ll bet it was dog barf from one of those annoying little yippy chihuahuas these Cali bitches are always toting around in their purses. I don’t think it was from a kid. They usually spray puke everywhere instead of leaving it in neat little piles.

Aron Ralston sure is a hard ass. But his book came out really fast. He must have had help typing it.

cruel amusements

softball tip

If you show up halfway through the season, having begged out of previous games due to an ankle injury sustained on the putting green 2 months ago, and you break out the full softball regalia complete with jersey, overtight pants and Red Sox hat, and you drink 3 Heinekens within 30 minutes right before the game, and you brag about your awesome skills and try but fail to blush sheepishly when your girlfriend brings up your countless softball trophies and shiny new bats, and you strut around the infield during warm up, whipping balls as hard as you can just to show everyone how tough you are--you better bring it. Because there's nothing worse than disappointment. Especially when it flies over your head, or bounces into your chin, or misses your glove by inches over and over, or whizzes by the first baseman (missing him by four body lengths), or hits you right in the ass when it ricochets off third base.

Not that I expect you to show up again, considering that we lost by a humiliating 19 points and that just isn't your style. I just thought you should know.

four magic beans

When I started working at this company 6 months ago I was told that because we were small we had to think on our feet and take direct responsibility for hands-on problem solving. Great, I thought—room to think, room to grow, room to do my thang.

For the first three months I was left pretty much alone. I was given tasks and allowed to run free—FREE!—and develop my own processes, create my own financial tracking systems and accomplish whatever I thought needed to be done. Every once in a while my supervisor (Kat) or my boss (Tim) would stop by and bless whatever I was working on at the moment, but I was essentially autonomous.

One of my duties was coordinating reports with the engineers, which basically means that I was authorized to annoy them until they gave me all of the information I needed to submit the deliverable to the customer. Because they’re so caught up in the technical aspect of their work and get distracted when it comes to writing things down in plain English, I allowed a full week time-cushion in the schedule for them to submit their stuff. Combined with the usual 3-day delay that Fred (Tim’s boss) takes to actually submit the report through formal channels, this leaves just enough time to get things out on time.

Shortly after the beginning of the year Tim asked Kat and me to start coordinating with each other on all of the reports. Since we were already doing this we just nodded and smiled and continued on our merry way.

Then he asked us to send him the reports for approval before we forwarded them to Fred. This was annoying because we’d just grown accustomed to Fred’s upper-management time delay in getting the reports out on time, and we knew that Tim never read his email and takes forever to respond even when he does. Whatever. I added a couple more ‘delay’ days to our report schedule and we pressed on.

Then two weeks ago Tim told us that Linda (Fred’s boss) had directed him to appoint a liaison between Kat & me and the engineers. This is SUPER annoying because the only person available for this position is Bobo, the smarmy office idiot who doesn’t know anything about what the reports are about or what the engineers are working on and never shuts up never never oh god he just keeps talking.

Tim claims that he fought this extra layer of bureaucracy but we don’t believe him. He’s been fishing around for work to keep Bobo out of his hair for weeks and this is the perfect opportunity for him to foist this clown onto someone else. This added another couple days delay to the whole reporting schedule (for the patented Bobo approval process, which basically consists of hitting the ‘email forward’ button to me and Kat two days after receiving the reports from the engineers without actually approving, reading, or understanding anything in them). This now means that the engineers must submit their monthly reports two full weeks before the month that they are reporting on is actually done. Oh, the glories of management bureaucracy.

So, in sum, I have lost my independence and may soon lose my mind. Between Linda and Fred and Tim and Bobo and Kat and me and the engineers I wonder how anything will EVER get done ever again. In fact, today I got so frustrated by the snippy emails shooting back and forth between Kat and Tim, and Tim and Bobo, and Bobo and the engineers, and the engineers and Tim, and Tim and Fred, and Fred and Kat, that I nearly strangled them all during the staff meeting hosted by Lupe, the high-strung technical manager who is friends with Kat but whom Fred, Tim, and Bobo hate with thinly-veiled passion. I momentarily panicked when I saw the veins in my green-tinged hand bulging threateningly, but then I realized that I wasn’t turning into The Hulk, I was merely clutching my green pen too tightly.

God bless the person who left a gigantic bowl of Jelly Belly beans in the common room. I snagged four beans and barricaded myself in the darkest bathroom stall to enjoy them in peace: strawberry, bubble gum, piña colada and blueberry.

Fred, Tim, Bobo and Kat unknowingly owe them their pitiful bitching lives.

SMA-shing, Gromit!

Forgive me, readers, for I’ve been extremely lazy. It’s been 24 days since my last post. I don’t have an excuse either. In fact, I’ve been soooo bored at work for the past few weeks that I was sucked into the delusion that I could write the next great American novel in my down time. I got about twenty pages in before I looked up the standard novel word count: a minimum of 70,000 words. Christ. That means I have 180 more pages to go. If I write a thousand words a day everyday I won’t be done until… mid-June. Considering the fact that I only embarked on this venture to keep my head out of the office’s mini-microwave oven, maybe I should just find another job instead. Food for thought, I guess.

Anyway, bitching wasn’t supposed to be the subject of this post. Rather, I was going to write something cheesy and/or humorous to mark our 6 year anniversary today, but then something better came up: (Jed, I’m sure you won’t mind being bumped. I’ve known you long enough to understand the priorities in our relationship. I’m sure you’ll agree with me.) A gigantic rabbit.

That’s right. Apparently a GIANT bunny rabbit has been terrorizing a farming town in England, eating all of its best produce—à la Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. If it sounds ridiculous and unbelievable, that’s because it is. Except there’s this picture:

Did you scream? Cuz I almost did when I saw it. It’s not that it’s hideous, or anything. Not like those obese cats you sometimes see smothering their owners on the Animal Planet channel, anyway. It’s just so shocking and… well, shocking. After viewing all of the pre-Easter pictures of baby bunnies on CuteOverload I was lulled into the tiny-baby-sized rabbit stereotype. I wasn’t expecting something that looks capable of driving a Volvo.

Did anyone have the book Ride a Purple Pelican as a kid? We’ll there’s one illustration in it that features a tiny woman riding a mouse with a saddle and harness. I was all about riding horses when I was five (until ol’ Blanco tried to scrape me off his back using the short doorway in the barn) and the thought of riding something fuzzy and mild-tempered that doesn’t wish to kill me is very appealing. This breeder-guy could be a genius!! And a multi-billionaire if he plays his cards right. Who wouldn’t want to ride a cute bunny around? They’re fluffy and speedy and cute and fuel-efficient and easy to reproduce. They could revolutionize the American highway system. Not only would there be a decrease in the need for fossil fuels, but there would be less road rage! Sure, you might still be stuck in traffic for 2 hours, but how can you get angry when you’re staring at a fuzzy cottontail instead of a GODSGR8 license plate or Vote Kerry bumper sticker? Of course, on a more serious note, this would cripple the American car industry for sure. I mean, GM might be able to scrape itself back from the edge of obscurity with some kind of SUV-hybrid, but if the Japanese start exporting Bunnyobiles GM’s screwed. Even though these cuties might poop droppings the size of basketballs, they’d still have the market advantage. Because there’s nothing that the Japs do better than Cars and Cuteness.

PS: Oh, and Creepy. (Japan-san, sorry to temper my glowing compliment with that last minute addition but I’d momentarily forgotten about tentacle rape. Seriously, though—what the fuck??)