Anniversary
Today my kidney stone and I are celebrating our one-month anniversary.
Aw.
Aw.
Cafe culture
This afternoon, I went to my favorite cafe on Valencia Street. It has some good armchairs and floor lamps. They play no music. When I order tea, they give it to me in a diminutive pot along with a cup, a tiny pitcher for milk, and a wee spoon. All this they put on a little oval tray. The cafe is attached to a bookstore. It is clearly a cafe for people who want to read. I thank them for it.
Today, the chair I chose was facing and fairly proximate to the bathroom--not in a "last row of the airplane" unpleasant way, just in a "hard to ignore the bathroom line" way. Generally, to access the bathroom, you must fetch a key from the front counter. Today, however, the door was not firmly closed, such that when cafe-novice would-be bathroom users approached, they could quite simply push the door open and walk in.
Unfortunately, when the system is meant to involve a key, and there is a sign explaining this on the bathroom door, to go into the bathroom without the key is to have a false sense of security. Really, you are open to a sudden and embarrassing encounter with someone who does have the key.
For a long while, people came in and out without incident, each letting the door fall mostly, though not entirely, closed behind them, essentially perpetuating the perilous situation indefinitely. I worried about it for about an hour and remained ever-vigilant. Finally, someone came out and pulled the door closed--click--behind him and I was able to relinquish my self-appointed role of Bathroom Door Guardian.
Everything about this episode strikes me as terribly telling about my character. I am not altogether pleased.
And now, to make me seem even worse, a small screed
Dear sir,
Aside from this one, every other cafe on Valencia, of which there are seemingly hundreds, seems primarily designed for you to come with your colleague and a variety of electronic devices and talk loudly about your business plan for hours on end. Everyone else will have their earbuds in anyway, or their own business plan to discuss, so they won't even notice.
If you feel you must do this in the one cafe for miles around that does not scream "hipster internet millionaire," I think you should have the courtesy to at least buy a cup of coffee. Seriously. Even if you don't want it. We are all renting our chairs for the price of a beverage. That's how this business model works.
I feel better now. Thanks.
Today, the chair I chose was facing and fairly proximate to the bathroom--not in a "last row of the airplane" unpleasant way, just in a "hard to ignore the bathroom line" way. Generally, to access the bathroom, you must fetch a key from the front counter. Today, however, the door was not firmly closed, such that when cafe-novice would-be bathroom users approached, they could quite simply push the door open and walk in.
Unfortunately, when the system is meant to involve a key, and there is a sign explaining this on the bathroom door, to go into the bathroom without the key is to have a false sense of security. Really, you are open to a sudden and embarrassing encounter with someone who does have the key.
For a long while, people came in and out without incident, each letting the door fall mostly, though not entirely, closed behind them, essentially perpetuating the perilous situation indefinitely. I worried about it for about an hour and remained ever-vigilant. Finally, someone came out and pulled the door closed--click--behind him and I was able to relinquish my self-appointed role of Bathroom Door Guardian.
Everything about this episode strikes me as terribly telling about my character. I am not altogether pleased.
And now, to make me seem even worse, a small screed
Dear sir,
Aside from this one, every other cafe on Valencia, of which there are seemingly hundreds, seems primarily designed for you to come with your colleague and a variety of electronic devices and talk loudly about your business plan for hours on end. Everyone else will have their earbuds in anyway, or their own business plan to discuss, so they won't even notice.
If you feel you must do this in the one cafe for miles around that does not scream "hipster internet millionaire," I think you should have the courtesy to at least buy a cup of coffee. Seriously. Even if you don't want it. We are all renting our chairs for the price of a beverage. That's how this business model works.
I feel better now. Thanks.
Thankful
I will not try to make an all-encompassing list of things for which I am grateful because A) it would be impossible and B) it would be boring for everyone but me. Maybe even including me. I try to stay pretty actively grateful year round, so for today I'll just look to the recent past and the imminent future and see what I come up with.
First, I am so overwhelmingly grateful for my parents that it brings tears instantly to my eyes to even think about it. I'm grateful they're so nearby and available to keep me company and feed me custard when I have a mouth full of newly-sewn human dermal product, even though I'm a grown-up. I'm grateful that my mother can hear all my weird issues about how our tiny three-person Thanksgiving makes me feel like a lonely spinster and then devises a Thanksgiving plan that involves swimming pools in Calistoga and going to a restaurant. Ta da! Magically transformed from sad day with not enough people to glamorous California outing. My parents totally top the list. I like them. Long may they reign.
My friends come next. I like them too. Have you noticed how good it is to have friends? I'll bet you have. You're pretty perceptive like that.
Next I'm going to say:
1. Grant, my colleague's husband, who hardly knows me but who calmly answered the phone and then drove me to the hospital one morning at 4:30am.
2. Health insurance
3. Drugs and the kind people who administer and/or prescribe them.
I know it's a bit kidney-stone centric around here, but I am very serious about my gratitude for having access to a whole system that let me step quickly from agony to painlessness and then continue to keep the pain at bay for what is now almost a month. It's no joke. I have been thinking a lot about people who are obliged to suffer because they don't have that access. It shouldn't be allowed. Period.
Oops. I didn't mean to go quite so Power to the People there, but seriously. Health care. It's a good thing to have. Still, so as not to leave you on quite so serious a note, I will add one more:
4. The guy who just moved in next door who looks like he was sent here after an open casting call for "hot neighbor."
What? Like there's no room in Thanksgiving for a tiny bit of objectification? C'mon.
May your own blessings prove too many to count.
Happy Thanksgiving.
First, I am so overwhelmingly grateful for my parents that it brings tears instantly to my eyes to even think about it. I'm grateful they're so nearby and available to keep me company and feed me custard when I have a mouth full of newly-sewn human dermal product, even though I'm a grown-up. I'm grateful that my mother can hear all my weird issues about how our tiny three-person Thanksgiving makes me feel like a lonely spinster and then devises a Thanksgiving plan that involves swimming pools in Calistoga and going to a restaurant. Ta da! Magically transformed from sad day with not enough people to glamorous California outing. My parents totally top the list. I like them. Long may they reign.
My friends come next. I like them too. Have you noticed how good it is to have friends? I'll bet you have. You're pretty perceptive like that.
Next I'm going to say:
1. Grant, my colleague's husband, who hardly knows me but who calmly answered the phone and then drove me to the hospital one morning at 4:30am.
2. Health insurance
3. Drugs and the kind people who administer and/or prescribe them.
I know it's a bit kidney-stone centric around here, but I am very serious about my gratitude for having access to a whole system that let me step quickly from agony to painlessness and then continue to keep the pain at bay for what is now almost a month. It's no joke. I have been thinking a lot about people who are obliged to suffer because they don't have that access. It shouldn't be allowed. Period.
Oops. I didn't mean to go quite so Power to the People there, but seriously. Health care. It's a good thing to have. Still, so as not to leave you on quite so serious a note, I will add one more:
4. The guy who just moved in next door who looks like he was sent here after an open casting call for "hot neighbor."
What? Like there's no room in Thanksgiving for a tiny bit of objectification? C'mon.
May your own blessings prove too many to count.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Say what?
In a radio commercial I am hearing constantly of late, Taylor Swift informs me in the flat voice of someone new to reading aloud that:
"Wonderstruck Enchanted is the next chapter in the story of my Wonderstruck fragrance."
What? Do fragrances have chapters?
To me it sounds as though someone has taken a lot of arbitrary words and strung them together in the hopes that, for the listener, being confused will be similar to being fascinated. Bicycle tea cozy astonished dumbstruck harmonica wheelbarrow. Also, a pretty girl! Coming soon!
What? Do fragrances have chapters?
To me it sounds as though someone has taken a lot of arbitrary words and strung them together in the hopes that, for the listener, being confused will be similar to being fascinated. Bicycle tea cozy astonished dumbstruck harmonica wheelbarrow. Also, a pretty girl! Coming soon!
Holiday glow
People are all fretting about the potential shopping mayhem of Black Friday--crowds! crowds1 CROWDS!
The big secret is that everyone is flocking not to the mall, but to the UCSF radiology department. Or, I assume so, based on the fact that when I called to make an appointment for a CT scan this morning, I was on hold for an hour. It was a dramatic hold, replete with sudden breaks in the hold music suggesting that I may have been disconnected; many recorded updates letting me know that they were experiencing high call volume (a thing I was able to deduce by the very fact that I was still on hold, but thanks); and many actual rings of the phone that implied someone was about to answer, but really, just prompted another announcement that everyone was busy. It was all very exciting.
So, if you gaze into the faces of your loved ones in the coming days or weeks and see that they seem to be positively glowing with holiday spirit, it is highly possible that they have been recently irradiated.
In related news: kidney stone, joke's over. We know you're still in there, and we're coming to find you.
The big secret is that everyone is flocking not to the mall, but to the UCSF radiology department. Or, I assume so, based on the fact that when I called to make an appointment for a CT scan this morning, I was on hold for an hour. It was a dramatic hold, replete with sudden breaks in the hold music suggesting that I may have been disconnected; many recorded updates letting me know that they were experiencing high call volume (a thing I was able to deduce by the very fact that I was still on hold, but thanks); and many actual rings of the phone that implied someone was about to answer, but really, just prompted another announcement that everyone was busy. It was all very exciting.
So, if you gaze into the faces of your loved ones in the coming days or weeks and see that they seem to be positively glowing with holiday spirit, it is highly possible that they have been recently irradiated.
In related news: kidney stone, joke's over. We know you're still in there, and we're coming to find you.