A Treasure Found at Home

a wonderful gift for hamster_grrl.

glowing brains! 

dude, y’all, i’m in contract.

gulp.

yay.

last night at my hippie dance community’s annual member meeting it was announced that our next quarterly celebration will be called sparkle! acrobat suggested i charge for royalties.

as everyone and their brother was announcing the “evolution” of their relationships (read: breaking up/taking space), acrobat leaned over to me and reminded me that he and pilot’s five year wedding anniversary had just passed. rock on you guys!
i am going to write an offer on the loft condo in jack london square. i can’t get too excited about it anymore, but the location ends up being better than i originally realized. i’d be a hop skip and a jump from bart and a stones throw from the company shuttle pick up point.
meanwhile, on the east coast, my friend at nicolasix spent the day at the dc peace rally.

i swear the woman on kqed just sang, “lost a friend that needed losing”. she’s not repeating the line, so i won’t be able to get a translation; i’m not sure i want one, honestly.

i was watching this same performance of somewhat over dramatically staged irish music at some castle somewhere in ireland when ctg’s friend called and asked if i’d be interested in going to see an irish band at an irish bar. well, i had just been thinking how LONG it had been since i’d been in that crowd (hellos, over seven years).

the one very drunk and unbalanced girl didn’t even mar the evening - she managed to miss our coats every time she spilled her drink. i didn’t talk to her although her also very drunk boyfriend did try to pass the job of holding her up, er, dancing with her to me at one point. i declined.

the band, Culann’s Hounds, played a version of a song that i used to love in high school and college.  it got me to thinking and to the web. unfortunately the only page i could find for ceili’s muse seems to be no more recent than 1997! oops. i wonder if i could still write to them and get a copy of one voice on something other than audio tape. i hope to ceili they burned a cd.

i’m still singing to myself: I’ll tell me ma, when I go home,
The boys won’t leave the girls alone.
pulled my hair, stole my comb,
but that’s alright till I go home.
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She’s the belle of Belfast city,
She is courtin’, one, two, three,
Please won’t you tell me who is she?

searching for the lyrics brings up a site that lists a number of artists who recorded this song. one of the albums looked especially promising as it’s called ‘fibb’nacci sequence’. i clicked on the purchasing info and found this:

• List price: $14.99
• Used price: $57.45

maybe it will be a good investment?

but, it’s not the same. that cd won’t have the beautiful, heart wrenching, a capella recording of the tinkerman’s daughter.

i’m searching the internet for answers today. i’m not 100% sure what the questions are so that’s making it hard to find the answers, as i’m sure you’ve all experienced at one point or another.

what about the loft in jack london square? will i love it? will i be happy there? will i find more friends who love to just hang out and don’t have to have every minute booked? will i meditate more? will i learn to cook? will i design the best kitchen ever and raise the worth of my condo by $100,000 easy? will i become a fantastic photographer and also suddenly know how to paint ~ and then be allowed to leave corporate-land? will this loft bring me my life partner?

or will i miss out on all those things if i take it?  can i only get those things in sf? will i feel even worse if i write on it and don’t get it, or write on it and mom flies out and hates it?

it seemed a little dark but, y’all, i saw it AT NIGHT! no big surprise there.

there are some things i’ve learned about life as i’ve grown older. and there are some things i struggle with. sf is certainly the city of arrested development in a lot of ways. many adult professionals need their parents’ help to buy a first home, which is the same price as a fifth home if you’ve made very good real estate investment decisions in most other areas. middle aged people with good jobs have housemates and will never buy.

in the midst of all the house hunting and housing issues that are keeping me feeling far from independent i find other little ways to remind myself i’m grown up.

like dinner. i don’t eat much at night and most restaurants serve much more food than i am able to eat in one sitting anyhow. the solution? only appetizers and dessert. it’s the perfect size, there’s more variation, and it ends up being less expensive most of the time (though, not all of the time). plus, it’s fun to share your food with your dinner buddies. finding what works and what is less wasteful is part of growing up, to my mind anyhow.
i’m not the only one thinking about growing up, though. i, asshole posted a link to a wonderful set of rules about being grown up. many of which i wholeheartedly agree with. let’s just say, my little drivers (when and if they come along) won’t be allowed out on the street if they can’t find their own fuses ~ literally and figuratively.

it’s back to the second layer of maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (here all this time i thought housing was in the first level. guess it’s been a while since i looked at this.) i guess it’s sort of halfway between both. i have a place to live, but it’s really cold and the paint is peeling off the ceiling and it’s moldy and i’m afraid to use the kitchen after the sewage incident. and the owner takes so little care of the place that the backyard has become completely overgrown.

yes, i know one of the reasons it’s peeling is that they painters just painted glossy paint right on top of glossy paint. strange that the owner, who is a contractor, didn’t catch that, eh?
there’s a place here in sf that’s nice enough, except for the tandem parking bit and the part where my bed won’t really fit in the bedroom and i’d have to downgrade to a full sized bed if i wanted a little dresser… but, it has it’s pluses. an enclosed outside area for g, a fantastically large storage room in the basement area that would be mine-all-mine and includes a full sized washer and dryer. it was even warm in that room. i could see that becoming my favourite room very quickly.

but the disclosures aren’t ready and realtor e wants me to write on it and turn in an offer before they’re done. he wants me to take it on faith that there’s nothing wrong, the selling agent told him it was mostly boilerplate. (then why is it taking so long?) i’ve had a selling agent try to convince me that a garage was really a three car garage when it was clear that the cars might be able to get in, but they’d never be able to open their doors. and that the big crack down the wall was because, ‘the paint must have shrunk.’ wtf? obviously this would be easier for everyone if i were an idiot. too bad, y’all, i know paint doesn’t shrink and crack walls, i know car doors have to be opened to get in our out (unless you have a hatchback, which i don’t anymore), and i know better than to write on a place without seeing disclosures.

and now we’re expanding the search (again) to include the peninsula (for the first time). mount view? paul alto? meny park? deadwood city?

when we start talking about me living so close physically and so far emotionally and mentally from the city, i start to wonder again about portland. portland has em, b, and baby; h and fiance; c; housing i can afford… and also this. it’s starting to look like whatever i do i have to move away from the city that i love.

i read over my old entries and realized i’ve been tired since i started this job! renting closer to work would help with that, but then what would i do with all that extra time and energy? watch tv? teach g to walk on a leash?

to sum up: i hate house hunting.

i’ve seen this article referenced twice in blogs already today. the first was in a blog dedicated to information about drugs (mostly meds) and what they do to people. (like, i learned that the reason dramamine knocks me out is that one of the two active agents is basically benadryl.) the second reference was on boing boing.

now, there were two major reasons i became vegitarian. the first was that i don’t like a lot of meats, and the second was that cheeseburgers were the top of my list of favourite foods and i lived practically next door to a wendy’s. if i was going to stop having a cheeseburger for dinner almost every night, i needed to just cut out all meat cause without the cheeseburger, what was the point? (i consider myself a catholic vegetarian, i still eat fish and seafood. get it? no meat fridays…) it wasn’t a political or religious decision.
last year i read fast food nation. as a consequence this article in rolling stone about pig farming doesn’t surprise me, but it reinforces my conviction that if and when i ‘cheat’ on my vegetarianism, i will only eat meet from small farms where the animals are treated better, hopefully fed organically grown feed, and certainly not given antibiotics.

supporting the small farm keeps us all healthier. really. think about where your meat comes from and if you want to be eating something that was hardly able to walk itself to slaughter because it was so ill; alive only because of a cocktail of four wide spectrum antibiotics, only one of which is given to humans. not to mention, the smaller farms also don’t have as negative an impact on the environment.

there was a lot going on in my dreams last night.

there was some sort of revolution building. and the mall was four blocks deep. i met my mom for lunch after almost leaving the mall, but coming back. after lunch i met with the revolutionaries. scott, their leader, was talking about things. and i was falling in love with his second hand man, but we told no one. not even each other, though we both knew. i stood next to him, strong and supportive.

but, they were captured! and burned alive in the local cafe. they burned a few people and it was very sad, then it was time to burn the man i loved. scott’s brother (why he and i weren’t being burned wasn’t clear) was next to me. i crying when they brought him out. then the put the burning shirt by his feet and doused him with alcohol (tequila? they were clearly mexican, even scott). i started to scream and scott’s brother held me as i cried and my heart broke and i struggled not knowing what i could do; losing the man i loved and having to watch him burn alive.

i left after he died and didn’t stay for scott’s execution. later we all met at another restaurant and were sad together. everyone was calling scott ‘che’ all of a sudden. scott’s brother told me they didn’t know how much in love me and second were. (in my dream, he didn’t seem to have a name.) they took me in as family.

then, suddenly, as happens in dreams, i was a french woman of some status traveling through mexico. i stopped for food and the chairs were all tilted so that you could only really lean against them and not sit flat. they had big cushions that slipped against the seat. i ordered a small glass of wine because everything else was beer, and french women like me do not drink pivo (which is the russian word for beer, i realized once i was awake). an american family drove up in a van just as the people seated behind me were finishing up. the american dad was played by the guy who plays the dad in 7th heaven. that guy recognized one of the people who were leaving as someone famous. he begged to let his children meet him, and the guy agreed. first the 7th heaven man blessed the car of famous guy and family. then he and his kids got in. the inside was some sort of recording studio. the 7th heaven man blessed the turntables and mixer and then declared that he was going to steal them next. he stacked a turntable on a mixer and walked out. he put them down in his mini-van. he turned to walk back to get the other turntable and no one was stopping him because we were all too surprised at what was happening.

that’s where i woke up.

i wonder what it all means.

i worked from home today because i’m feeling poorly. my cat loves it and is currently curled up in a ball next to my leg snoring. too bad my camera is in the other room. i’d wake him if i got up to fetch it, so i’m not even going to try.

it’s amazing how much a girl can find out about the world while sitting in her bed. i actually am working, too, but it’s a long repetitive task i’m working on currently so i’m inclined to take some breaks. it means i’ll have to work a little later tonight to get this one thing done, but i’d rather do it this way.

points of interest (to me, maybe to you):

• i’m firming up dates for my show; looks like may. that’s great for me cause i can use that time to do some things specifically for the show. i’ve got *ideas*; we’ll see how much comes to fruition.
• I’m a Jewish atheist who has read and written many a plus-sign and not once have I felt oppressed by the Christian overtones of mathematical notation.
• i installed skype! if you have an account, send me your name-o. i also discovered my computer *does* have a built in microphone. that makes things easy. now if i can only rig up an easy way for the webcam to work with the laptop, i’d be set. i need a clip on cameraholding shelf or something.
• portlanders don’t know how to drive on ice, apparently.
• the cat empire will be playing in sf at the independent on jan 31. i haven’t heard them yet, but hamster_grrl has been talking about them since her goat gig in australia last our winter their summer. i hope to go, but it is a wednesday. i have to talk myself into it.

the culling is calling to me again. but the call to be warm is overpowering and i tend to stay wrapped up in blankets while i’m at home instead of taking boxes/bags of stuff to my car for ootc. < -- beware, the music is bad, but blessedly brief. i just think i would be more active if i lived somewhere warmer, but i the urge to leave sf is still small. i mean, i'm still house hunting here even if that is taking forever and a day. i can't help but get a little wistful when i see a sun dress, though. plus, i wonder if the men would have more courage somewhere else. a friend of mine was commiserating with me about a guy she knows who says he's interested in her but never calls or sends email or ... just talks to her when they're both over visiting mutual friends or at the same event. what's with that? anyone, anyone?

now i'm babbling and that's never pretty.

things i’m grateful for: