Tuesday, May 31, 2011

5/31/2011 - the case of the missing buttons. . .

On the mornings when I work out, I usually wear my shorts and T-shirt to the gym and bring my work clothes with me.  Therefore, I have often forgotten essential bits to my outfit, including a belt or dress socks, once even a proper shirt.  Sometimes, the pants are wrinkled, or the sleeve has an inexplicable stain on it.  This morning, I brought a shirt I couldn't even button up.

After an admittedly half-hearted workout, I went through my usual routine, drying off and getting dressed in front of my locker.  As I started buttoning my shirt, I noticed that it lost a button by the collar.  Luckily, it was near the top, so I figured I could just go sexy today and leave it open, but then I realized that the third button down was also missing.  As was the bottom button.  And the three spares that came with the shirt.  As well as one on my sleeve.

I stood there for a moment, not quite sure what to do or make of the predicament I found myself in.  Did I pull my shirt out too fast from my bag?  I checked the bag.  No buttons.  Were they somehow in the locker?  I pulled out all of my stuff.  No buttons.  I then looked at the little nubs of thread where the buttons used to be and noticed that not a thread was frayed.

Ah.  Grr.  Of course.  Of all the times he laid in the closet, innocently sleeping or smelling our laundry, at least one of those times must have been devoted to carefully chewing off seven selected buttons from one of my favorite and most comfortable work shirts, leaving behind these:


I had a day full of meetings, from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, so I didn't have time to bike home, grab a new shirt, give Grr a dirty look, and make it back to work in time.  So I put my T-shirt back on, threw the work shirt over it, buttoned the three buttons I could and slinked into work.

Fortunately, most of my meetings were over the phone, so I stayed shyly at my desk, walking briskly down to the hall to get water or go to the bathroom.  But my last meeting was my team's weekly check-in meeting, and I had no excuse not to attend in person.

No sooner had I walked into the conference room, Sarah looked at me and said, "Oh, you forgot a button."

So I explained Grr's fascination with what Sam and I have given the misnomer, "phalanges:" any piece of dangling fabric, from towels to drawstrings to thread, as well as anything that deviates from a smooth surface, such as buttons on a shirt.  I recounted the story of how Grr managed to chew on and unravel about a quarter of an old runner rug while crated in my parents' kitchen, resulting in a decent pile of fluff and decidedly non-rug.  He couldn't resist.  There must have been frayed phalanges sticking out already, calling to him like sirens to a drunken sailor.

When my parents, who weren't actually too upset, confronted him, he and Elliot both hopped on the couch and looked like this:


There's Elliot behind him, probably thinking, "Finally!  Misbehavior that can't be pinned on me!"  And Grr, our dear pup, leaning against the couch with his big eyes and serious eyeshadow--how can anyone be mad at that face?

Truth be told, after I conclusively determined that Grr was responsible for the case of the missing buttons, I called Sam with the news.  He laughed, and I laughed a little myself.

And after I explained what happened to Sarah, she laughed as well and said how cute he must have been, nibbling diligently at my shirt, getting just the buttons off without a single mar on the shirt itself.  "This how you get stories to tell people!  Probably worth much more than those seven buttons."  Sarah: always at the ready with positivity and goodness.

This is how it all starts.  Soon, even serious offenses will seem adorable and worthy of praise.  Who knew I would be an indulgent parent?  Sam is no better.  We are definitely sparing the rod. 

In the act, though, he probably was mighty cute.

Monday, May 30, 2011

5/30/2011 - Happy Memorial Day!. . .

Outside of a few sick days, a day off for my movie-making excursion, and the recent trip to Palm Springs, today will be the first holiday that I share with the rest of working America in over three months.  Happy Memorial Day!

On the last long weekend Sam and I had, we spent it with our friend Allen having lunch, hopping from furniture store to furniture store, and ending with an obligatory visit to a thrift store.

Allen is an expert in thrift shopping, having memorized the days when certain stores receive new inventory, runs specials, goes on sale.  A trip to the Salvation Army or Out of the Closet guarantees a minimum time investment of two hours and quite possibly a return trip later in the day.

Sam and Allen had a falling out a few months ago, the kind that began with a minor but perceptible squabble which eventually, to borrow one of my favorite lines from Leonard Cohen, blossomed like tumors.  I'm sure if I asked either of them to pinpoint the exact moment things went south, neither could wade through the subsequent muck of passive-aggression to really say for sure.

In the following weeks, they ceased all contact with each other; I, therefore, lost contact with Allen.  I imagine a divorce lawyer would describe this situation as a single-property versus community-property dilemma.  Allen is technically Sam's single-property friend, brought into our relationship by Sam.  Though I easily considered Allen to be my friend as well, his fallout with Sam grew so quickly and in such magnitude that it seemed wrong to continue with Allen as he and I had previously done.

I, too, have experienced these kinds of fallouts, and they always began with a misinterpreted comment, a small but significant (at the time) offense.  When I think back to those people I've lost, I always regret the way I let things develop, so full of indignation with a healthy mix of apathy.  My friend Liz was one of my closest friends through a very important time in my life, yet she disappeared in a way that did not do justice to the friendship we shared.

I did not want Sam to look back on his relationship with Allen years later, remember how things fizzled without a proper sendoff if there had to be one, and wish that things could be different.  I gently prodded him to make an effort to contact Allen, and I even sent Allen an e-mail explaining how to best crack through Sam's diligent and heavily-fortified defenses.  But both are equally subborn, and I can't throw stones as I would not be thinking of Liz in the way I do now if I had been more pliant in my thinking.  So weeks went by with no contact, a couple of months, I think, as I still remember the day that Sam told me of his fight with Allen, the air outside freshly chilled from a northern wintry storm system.

Since then, I've thought of Allen often.  When I Project Runway'd my old Rent shirt, the first person I wanted to show it to was him, as he practically made all of his T-shirts that way, patched plain ones together to create couture.  Without his example, I don't think I would even have thought to do it myself.

Miraculously, Allen called Sam a few days ago, and they spent 20 minutes talking, catching up, filling each other in on all aspects of their lives, but neither addressing the rift that threatened the very possibility of that conversation.  Sam does not believe that they can return to the depths of friendship they once shared, and maybe he's right, as some things, once broken, simply can not return to unity.  But even so, I believe that they did each other right.  No disappearing, no fading away, no apathy.

In a Silence of the Lambs way, I felt freed from the demons of my own failed friendships and the way I let them fail.  In preparing to write this post, I thought of them, remembered them all and imagined how less my life would be now were it not for how they changed me at a time when I needed to be changed.

(Happy birthday, Steve!)

Sunday, May 29, 2011

5/29/2011 - the moment I saw the ocean. . .

Grr was quite the pill this morning.  With a full night of sleep behind him, he was overexcited about everything and zealously mischievous, nipping at the drawstrings of my pants, refusing to sit when I told him to, and just trying to be as underfoot as he possibly could be.  If I took the effort to look into his eyes, which was difficult given his unstoppable velocity, his pupils would likely have been the size of dinner plates.

In order to preserve our sanity, as well as the hardwood floors, which his nails clawed at mercilessly for traction to sprint him from one end of the room to the other, Sam and I knew we had to take him out and let his energy dissipate.  So, after breakfast and a Law & Order rerun, we drove out to Fort Funston.  The sun shone at full force, but the day was deceptively cold.  When we stepped out of the car, I think we both realized how far we were from last weekend, when we would have already been sweating in the 85-degree, mid-morning air of downtown Palm Springs.

Though we have our usual paths through Funston's maze-like trails, we let Grr lead the way today, tromping across fields of ice vines that eventually opened up to a beachfront cliff about 50 feet above the water.  The ocean was particularly turbulent this morning.  When we approached the edge, I looked out across the horizon and saw a procession of waves, outlined by frothy white lines, rolling toward the sand, like an incoming armada of marauding ships.

It was so beautiful, majestic and ominous.  Though I stood safely perched above it all, the movement of the ocean seemed strong and wide enough to sweep me out simply because I bore witness to its arrival upon the land.  Grr, however, couldn't have cared less, if he even saw it at all.  He was too busy racing up and down the sand dunes, climbing to the top and charging to the bottom.  Sam wondered why he enjoys hills so much.  The only explanation I had was to compare him to a child running as fast as he could down a hill, feeling as though he could fly if he just put his arms out and believed.

The wind was loud in my ears, and the sun hung low in a crystalline sky.  We took our sandals off and walked barefoot across the sand.  Every so often, we would step into a warm spot, a patch of ground baked in the sun and shielded from wind, and for those brief moments, I could imagine my feet sinking into the beach on Waikiki.  But then, almost immediately, I would also know that it would not be as much fun, not filled with nearly as much wonderment as the moment I saw the ocean, really saw it today, when Grr led us to it, eager to see and smell and be a part of all that there ever was and likely ever will be: sand, ocean, sky.

* Not from today, but a picture I like of my two best pups.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

5/28/2011 - back to the Wynn. . .

Six months ago, Sam, my sister Linda, my parents and I belatedly celebrated Linda's 21st birthday with her first official, of-age gambling trip to Vegas.  It turned out to be a mellow trip, with a side excursion out into nature (a first for me when I go to Vegas), minimal drinking, and only moderate amounts of gambling, most of which we concentrated at what is affectionately known as the 'WynnCore' by Steve Wynn's fanboys: twin hotel/casinos that sit on the north end of the Strip and generally considered to be two of the highest end properties in Las Vegas at the moment.

Though I would hardly call myself a fanboy of Steve Wynn, from what I know of the city's history, I definitely appreciate all that he did for the famed Las Vegas Strip, beginning with the design and construction of the Mirage property.  I'll spare you the details, but Vegas would not be what it is today were it not for Wynn's vision to bring a Polynesian theme to the Mirage, to bathe some sections of the casino in sunlight, an idea unheard of at the time, and to elevate the levels of customer service to the highest strata of expectations.

He then went on to design some of the most iconic and well-received properties in Las Vegas, including the Bellagio, which stages intricately choreographed fountain shows in the lake outside.  All of my best memories of Vegas happened near these fountains, from discovering them for the first time and feeling overwhelmed by the grandness of it all, the soaring vocals of Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman and the force of the nozzles that propel streams of water up dozens of feet in the air, all the way to the last time, when Sam and I sat outside at a restaurant on a seasonably warm October evening, stealing away for a long weekend, and every other time in between.

(You know, after reading the last few paragraphs, maybe I am a fanboy after all. . . or at least vying for a position on Steve Wynn's marketing team.)

Anyway, when we all visited last December, the Wynn casino held a promotion for new gamblers who signed up for their slot machine players' club: earn 500 points (which, if I remember correctly, is $1,500 played through their slot machines) and receive two free buffets (which, if I remember correctly, can be had for about $80).  I hatched the genius plan for Linda to get five copies of her card so that all of us could play under her name, thus spreading out the risk a little bit and getting her to those "free" buffets that much sooner.

Two hours later, she got her points, her buffets, and four of us walked out of the casino with more money than we brought in.

And because of the amounts of cash we cycled through in the span of those two short hours, Linda received a letter the other day inviting her back to the Wynn hotel this summer for a couple of complimentary nights, as well as some money to gamble with and a meal or two.  Apparently, we all triggered something in the system, flagging Linda as a high(er) roller.

She won't be turning down this offer, and though Sam and I would have to pay for our own room should we decide to go, we probably won't be turning down a reason to return either.

Friday, May 27, 2011

5/27/2011 - a critical period for reinvention. . .

Twitter's headquarters will be moving into a building exactly four blocks from my house.  While driving home from the dog park yesterday, I pointed it out to Sam and noted how awesome it would be if I got a job there and could just walk to work (because, you know, I can no longer be bothered with my current 10 to 15 minute bike commute).

Though I threw the comment out there flippantly with no real intention of pursuing anything with Twitter, I have been considering a change for quite some time.  I haven't looked for a new job in about three years, ever since I began with my current company.  I started here with a loose five-year plan (with basically means: stay with it for five years), and I tried to convince myself that this whole business of insurance was something that I could grow to enjoy and develop an interest in.  Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly, that has not come to fruition, and the only thing I find enjoyable about the work I do is the people I do it with.

Yet I hesitate to go back out into the market and search for a new job.  The rejection is demoralizing, my options seemingly limited, and I don't imagine the economy has improved enough to a point where my experience and education could lead me to that elusive "dream job," especially when I am not even sure I would recognize one if I found it.

And though my friend Steve used to say that it is never too late to reinvent yourself, I think there is a critical period for reinvention, and if I stay in this insurance industry for much longer, I will one day find that this critical period passed me by without so much as a tap on the shoulder. 

My sister Linda sent me a message saying she received her first post-college job offer earlier this morning, and I could practically hear the excitement in her text.  She deserves it too, made smarter choices with her pursuits than I did.  When I left college, I had not one but two enriching but otherwise useless degrees in hand, and I was completely unsure of where I would land.  Avenue Q had it right: what do you do with a B.A. in English?

Well, work in insurance companies, apparently.  And though just the other day, my boss Sarah came by to randomly announce to our team how great it was to work for a boring but stable insurance company, I have found myself slowly wanting more from my job, from my career, than just stability. 

And I blame this blog.  I blame writing.  I blame my decision to not only graduate with two useless undergraduate degrees, but to then turn around and pursue a largely useless post-graduate one.  I blame my desire to now put that degree to use in a way that extends beyond this writing experiment.

So with these thoughts, I stumbled into work this morning particularly disgruntled.  And right when I thought I just had to suffer through nine hours of a workday before I reached my long weekend, Sarah popped her head into my cubicle and whispered, "Since Monday is a holiday, feel free to leave early.  Like at 3:00."

Sounds like I just scored myself two free hours of time to update my LinkedIn profile, resume, and apply for that open copywriter position I happened to see at Twitter.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

5/26/2011 - I love Lady Gaga. . .

My opinion of Lady Gaga comes, of course, with heavy subjectivity.  As a gay man, I find it hard to say anything negative about a woman who managed to get a song with the prominently featured words "gay, straight, or bi, lesbian, transgendered life" onto Top 40 radio stations across the country.  That she makes good music and can sing the hell out of a phone book are bonuses.

She is particularly on my mind today after Sam and I spent the seven-hour drive back to the City from Palm Springs on Tuesday with her new album blasting in the car twice over.  Maybe three. Months ago, before it was released, she touted it as the album of the decade.  I wrote it off as damning bombast, but after hearing the finished product, I could easily be convinced otherwise, if I even need convincing at all.

However, beyond what I felt was an album filled with song after song of aggressive beats, catchy hooks, and the provocative weirdness that defines Lady Gaga, the performance she recently gave in the UK at a local radio station's music festival simultaneously justified and enhanced my adoration.  I know that I already wrote about her sometime ago, but I just feel like the statement bears repeating: I have not felt this way about a pop star since my early teenage years when I discovered Madonna, Erotica, and her mildly scandalous "Girlie Show" concert tour. And that was some discovery. . .

All to say that I love Lady Gaga, and around every turn when I feel like I can't respect her more as an artist, she decisively proves me wrong.

Her performance for Radio 1 in Carlisle, England, included all the theatricality one would expect from a Lady Gaga show, including an entrance by way of a coffin with an obviously pregnant (and prosthetic) belly, a cross emblazoned across the crotch of her panties, and an orgasmic writhe on top of a baby grand piano.  She also sat (mostly) properly at the piano and played a beautiful acoustic version of her newest single, "The Edge of Glory," bringing herself to tears.

In an interview for NME magazine, she was quoted as saying, "If you fucking rip my hairbow and my wig off my fucking head, my shoes, my bra, every single thing on my body, and you throw me on a piano with a microphone, I will fucking make you cry."  Hearing her massage the chords out of her piano and singing to a crowd of 20,000 as intimately as she would have to a group of 20, I kind of did myself.

I have long had a weakness for female singers and a piano.  I think it goes back to the makeshift piano bar I frequented years ago in the early evenings at a gay club in midtown Sacramento, where I first heard Jason Robert Brown's "Stars and the Moon," a ballad that described a woman's journey through life looking for fortune and prestige from her relationships, only to achieve both and realize that she sacrificed love and passion along the way. I sat pianoside, watched the girl sing, listened to the maestro pianist accompany her, and helplessly felt a moist twitch behind my eyes.

Much like how I felt watching Lady Gaga at this performance.

At one point in the show, she brought out a jazz trumpet player for a cover of "Orange Colored Sky," telling a story of how she was in the jazz band in high school, and this song was an homage to that awkward time in her life when she was a self-professed loser and generally thought of as weird.  Then she launched into the song, and I thought, "How many miles away this is from those high school years, from her first single, from her last single, from anything any young female pop star is doing right now." I hoped it was prophetic in some way; after Lady Gaga is done with this iteration of fame, made her millions and cemented her solid and loyal fanbase (in which I proudly belong), I look forward to more of this acoustic aesthetic she showed, one stripped of backup dancers, elaborate sets, and publicity stunts--just a woman, a piano, and the memory of the girl who started out as a lounge and cabaret-style singer.

Flash, bam, alakazam indeed.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

5/25/2011 - other people's vacations. . .

I would be somewhat remiss if I didn't spend the first post after going MIA for two days explaining why.  And taking into consideration how people absolutely love to hear about other people's vacations (or not), I will keep this (mostly) short and to the point, going into detail on just the high points of what was, in every way, exactly the kind of getaway I wanted. 

I'll even bullet point the list for you: 
  • Sitting in the passenger seat of Sam's car with the radio playing some pop ditty, a bag of snacks on the floor, and pastoral field after pastoral field rolling by our window on I-5, each mile brought us closer to our destination.  We often sang along together ("Taaaake me, t-t-take me. . ."), and I was never more glad to have him as my travel companion.
  • Within minutes of arriving at the Holiday Inn in Cathedral City for our first night's stay, we jumped in the pool and floated about with the late afternoon sun on our lily-white shoulders.
  • For dinner on Saturday night, we headed to a shopping center in the ritzy city of Rancho Mirage not knowing that it was the destination for the local high school's prom attendees.  Seeing all of those kids out in their best formalwear waiting for a table at P.F. Chang's brought me right back to my own prom some 13 years ago, the nearby Olive Garden and the excitement of sliding into a limo for the first time.
  • Our second hotel was a beautiful Westin resort in Rancho Mirage with sprawling golf courses, outdoor bars, and numerous pools scattered throughout the property, all of which we got for $65 a night on Priceline.  Where did we spend the most time?  In the "family" room playing free games of Galaga and 9-ball, where Sam proceeded to demolish me in five consecutive games.
  • On our final morning, we attended a 90-minute timeshare-like sort of presentation.  I managed to say no, even after finding out how affordable it was, how tempting the offer, and especially after Sam showed weakness and the salespeople pounced on us like lions to an injured gazelle.
  • In the two full days we had in the Palm Springs area, we managed to hit up all five of the local Indian casinos, receiving a total of $70 each in free slot play after signing up for their respective loyalty programs.  I walked out with about $200 of actual money, even after leveling out some of Sam's actual losses.
  • The aforementioned Showtune Saturday, as well as Musical Monday at a different little hole-in-the-wall gay bar in downtown Palm Springs.  Though I could have stayed much longer, I already had a mish-mash of showtunes ringing in my head, and Sam probably could not have handled much more vibrato for one evening.
  • Not purely because I was hypnotized by showtunes, though it certainly played a part, I loved the area so much.  I have always found San Francisco, as much as it is my home, to be too big for me, the community too sprawling, the people too fast.  With the quaintness, the mid-century/modernness, the pace of Palm Springs and the adjacent desert cities, I now feel more out of place in the City than ever.
  • Two blogless days.  The freedom of it.
  • A lengthy but enjoyable drive home, made sweeter by Lady Gaga's new album.  "Born This Way" and "Judas" are not the album's high points, of which there are many.
And finally, probably the best of all--coming back to work today with an Outlook free of meetings, just empty space and time to settle in, to reacquaint myself with my computer, my cubicle, and my lunch hour, where I was able to relive the entire trip, if only for 40 minutes, if only on paper and only in my head.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

5/22/2011 - Showtune Saturday. . .

Four years ago or so, my family and I took an extended vacation to the New York area, traveling from Niagara Falls down to Manhattan, and though I look back on it with very fond memories, I often felt claustrophobic during.  Not that my family and I don't travel well together--it's just that I am a very particular traveler and need some semblance of control over my itinerary., of which I had very little on that trip.  My dad, as excited as a boy on Christmas morning, packed as much as he could into the time we had.

I did, however, manage to work in one night in Manhattan to myself, and I chose to spend it at Splash Bar, a popular, touristy gay bar just off of Union Square.  Because of my stellar planning, I went on a Monday night, when Splash holds what they call "Musical Mondays," an entire evening of video clips from various Broadway performances, Tony Awards, and movie musicals.  In other words, my Mothership.

As soon as I walked in, I saw three giant screens at the front of the bar playing the Tony Awards' performance of "It Sucks to be Me," from Avenue Q.  I didn't even notice any of the muscular and shirtless (as well as pantsless, for that matter) bartenders until the song ended.

I spent the next three hours in the midst of a crowd who knew every word of every song, every nuance of every singer, dancing along with modified Fosse moves and raising their fists to the sky at the power ballad that is "Defying Gravity."  A girl named Rani adopted me into her group, mostly of theater people and gay men, and I learned that I was an amateur Broadway lover compared to these people.

I left the bar that night with not a drink in my body, yet I buzzed all the way back to the hotel on an irrepressible high.  I fully expected to have a great time when I went in search for Splash on a Musical Monday, and it did not disappoint, but imagine how awesome it would have been if I just stumbled upon it, had no idea "Musical Mondays" existed at Splash and discovered it in person.  Imagine the purity of my excitement, then, stepping in with no idea or expectations, and you will pretty much have a picture of what happened to me and Sam last night at Toucans in Palm Springs, a welcoming but somewhat tacky little gay tiki bar.

By the time Sam got a drink and we found a table, Dolly Parton's "9 to 5," The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas' "A Lil' Ole Bitty Pissant Country Place," and "Maybe This Time," from Cabaret, had all just finished playing in succession, and when Glee's version of "Don't Rain on My Parade" came on next, I reached my conclusion that we had inadvertently stumbled upon some unofficial "Showtune Saturday" at Toucans.  I couldn't believe our good fortune.  I looked at Sam with a healthy dose of awe in my eyes.  He responded by rolling his and saying, "Guess I'll get to have another drink."

The unexpectedness of it all only enhanced what already would have been an awesome evening of entertainment.

And about an hour and a dozen Broadway clips later, Showtune Saturdays came to an end, but not before finding out that another gay bar in town does a Broadway happy hour on Monday evenings, our last night in town.  I can't think of a better way to close out what is already shaping up to be a great weekend in a beautiful desert city.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

5/21/2011 - a heaven out of hell. . .

New Zealand seems to still be standing in good health and has not been transformed by cataclysmic earthquakes into a post-apocalyptic S&M chamber full of atheists and gays, so I'm going to take a leap of faith and say that we in heathenous San Francisco will be alright come this evening when the prophesied (by an Oakland cult leader?) Rapture comes a-calling.

For that, I am glad.

I am not tremendously religious, though I respect those who find comfort in it.  I am also not superstitious, though I did read up on The Secret a little bit once and sent all of my positive energies into the fortune-yielding universe after buying a 300 some-odd million dollar lottery ticket.  (Obviously, I didn't think positively enough.)  All in all, I would dare say that I am a mostly well-adjusted, rational person.

But over the last few days after reading so much on the end of days, information both confirming and refuting it, I couldn't help but let a little bit seep in.  Not in the sense that I started to believe it per se, but I began to wonder and imagine a world in which this could happen.

I know for a fact that Sam and I will not be raptured, not so much because we are those homosexuals that Harold Camping claims is the cause of this whole thing (which I find strange, since isn't the Rapture supposed to be a good thing?  So if gays hastened the coming of the Rapture, shouldn't Camping be thanking us?), but because Sam is actively anti-religious, while I am apathetic about its place in my life at best.  I doubt God (or Jesus or Mary or whoever is the project manager for this little effort) is looking for types like ours.

If 'legend' holds true, then all of those left behind will be subject to months of pain and torture until some months later, when the world will ultimately cease to exist while those raptured will spend eternity listening to harp music and bouncing around on cloud trampolines (which almost makes me want to get raptured, if only for the clouds), basking in the air that holds happiness itself.  Pretty good stuff, and if I tossed a hail mary (the football play, not prayer) and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior today, like right now, I could go there this evening.

But Sam wouldn't be with me.  Nor would most of my friends, I imagine.  Nor my mother or the majority of my family, or many of those I have known throughout my life and loved.  John Steinbeck in his The Grapes of Wrath said that maybe, if we wade through all the biblical musings and rhetoric of those appointed to 'lead' us, the holy spirit is nothing more than the human spirit, the collection of all of our flaws, the best parts of ourselves, our capacity for boundless good and our weakest moments.  If so, then my post-Rapture world couldn't possibly be that bad if I could keep company with all of those human spirits, the ones that together become holy.

On the contrary, though, I wonder how one of Camping's believers would feel when 6 PM rolls around (or whenever it is supposed to hit given the time zones, which was so sagely accounted for in a prophecy written before time zones) and he still remains on this planet, can not hear harps and is still bound to this Earth in his stupid body and all its oppressive weight.  Traffic still crawls down the highway, smog looms in the skies and cancer still kills one person every single minute.  And the people!  All the people that still surround him, us people with our petty problems, our anger management issues, the very smell of us, and if he ever read Sartre, these words would echo in his head: Hell is other people, and he'd sit, wondering what he did to lose his spot in Heaven.

Either way you look at it, looks like we're here for a while.  And who knew an impending Rapture would make me so literary all of a sudden, because the first thing I remembered when I learned of this Rapture was this quote from John Milton: "The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven."

I think it's going to be a beautiful day.

Friday, May 20, 2011

5/20/2011 - sun in the morning. . .

In 24 little hours, Sam and I should be approaching our weekend destination--sunny, arid Palm Springs.  The eight-hour drive seemed more palatable after we tacked on an extra day, and I loaded up my iPod with what I hope to be an equally palatable combination of showtunes and electronica, a cappella and pop.

The plan for the weekend consists of nothing more than playing in the pool, a few rounds of tennis (something we rarely do at home, but now seems irresistible on vacation, kind of like how I [shamefully] feel about flossing), and getting enough sun so I might just stand a chance at starting one summer of my life with a healthy-looking tan. 

But what about the blog, you ask?  Well, I'm actually not sure.  I am bringing my laptop with vague intentions to keep up my pace, though probably with shorter and less-polished entries (assuming my normal, day-to-day entries are well-polished, anyway).  Throughout this past week, I thought to prepare enough posts to last me through the weekend without having to write any new ones while on vacation, but it never happened.  As soon as I finished each day's entry, I couldn't help but bask in the glow of accomplishment, and I certainly did not want to ruin that by turning around and embarking on another day's post.

So I start the weekend with no safety net.  (Of course, it doesn't really matter since the world is coming to an end tomorrow anyway, which sucks given said vacation.)  At worst, my blog will sit empty for a few days, or maybe head in a more pictorial direction, but I do hope to check in every day with something.  Just know that if I don't, I am off being grateful for the time I have to enjoy the (80 degree) sun in the morning and the moon at night.

(Ever since I took that quote from Annie Get Your Gun off of my profile description, I've been wanting to work it back in somewhere as it couldn't fall more in line with the spirit of this blog.  And now, here it is.)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

5/18/2011 - back to the Prohibition. . .

Last night, I went to a 'speakeasy'-type establishment in the City with some Rapid Transit folks.  The nondescript bar sat on a corner a few blocks up from the 'loiniest' corners of the Tenderloin.  From the outside, one would never know a posh bar existed inside--windowless gray walls, an ambiguous sign, and homeless milling about in the vicinity.  Sherrie rang the doorbell several times before the hostess, a small woman who spared no detail in looking the part of a 1920s flapper girl, answered, opening the heavy wooden door just a crack.  She asked for a password, still shielding the world inside from our gaze.  Sherrie said, "books" to signify a certain section of the bar, but apparently, it was closed for the day.  The hostess told us to wait one minute while she worked something out for us.

Already, I thought that this place took itself way too seriously.  I've been to pretentious bars before, but this one took it to new levels.

The hostess returned less than a minute later and ushered us in.  Walking through the doorway, I may as well have stepped into a wormhole and been transported back to the Prohibition--the darkness, the period decor with the toile wallpaper and tin ceiling tiles, the soft way the hostess did everything, from speaking to handing us the 40-page menus.  I felt like I should be secretive about this place, walk softly and, well, speak easy, as if police officers were patrolling the streets outside. 

After we were seated, I looked around at the other patrons and felt a weird sense of camaraderie with them, as if we shared a common reason for coming, a common knowledge of the passwords needed to get in.  Of course, I probably shared very little with them as I had no prior idea that this bar even existed, much less the passwords, and I ordered a non-alcoholic, citrusy concoction that deserved an umbrella and a wedge of fruit on its rim (luckily, I was spared the indignity) while others probably partook in the vast selection of bourbons and whiskeys available.

See, I don't drink.  I used to, but sparingly and only to fit in and seem less like the stick-in-the-mud I actually was (probably still am to some degree).  The first real drink I ever had was a Midoro Sour (which obviously set a precedent for these frou-frou drink orders).  My friend Lee mixed it for me in his dorm room, and the two of us drank it like rock stars, held our styrofoam cups filled with green fluorescence like a badge.  And right under the R.A.'s nose, no less; what rebels we were.

About 15 minutes later, my face started radiating heat, and I found that inhaling required much more effort than it did 15 minutes ago.  Though I was happy, even with the subtle wheeze to my breath, to be drinking this illicit substance with a boy (we were still boys at 18, right?) I simultaneously wanted to impress and run away from, I neither enjoyed the taste nor the feeling of it.

So when I turned 21, I only went to bars if a piano would be there with me, only drank on special occasions, and never felt like I missed out on anything.  Slowly, I stopped drinking altogether.  If I really think about it and concentrated really hard, I'm fairly certain that the last time a spirited beverage (a new term I learned last night) touched my lips was back in 2007.  And where I once might have been embarrassed to admit that, I am no longer; I have become an out and proud teetotaler. 

But last night, sitting in the tight little booth with newfound friends in an anachronistic bar that also felt totally fitting and familiar, I actually wished I wasn't and had more of a reason to come back besides the truly tasty, but ever-so-emasculating, non-spirited drink I was given.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

5/17/2011 - followed by a downpour of frogs. . .

For a long time, for what feels like the length of my childhood, my aunt, uncle, and three cousins would come to our house on weekend evenings where the adults would promptly park themselves in front of the TV to watch episode after episode of Chinese soap operas that my mom would rent from a local Chinese video store, sometimes five VHS tapes at a time for a single weekend.  Bags of salted melon seeds would sit strategically throughout the room, as would piles of discarded shells.  The only sounds would be the TV, sporadic laughter, and the rhythmic clicking of teeth opening the shells and eating the seeds within.  My cousins and I would find activities with which to entertain ourselves, from computer games (Rampage kept us occupied for months; I always played George the ape) to made up ones ("Shark" was a particularly memorable invention akin to 'Tag' but played vertically on stairs).  Often, our house would be full and boisterous until well after midnight. 

Eventually, my dad bought a ping pong table and set it up in our backyard addition: an enclosed, glass-paned sunroom that always leaked and constantly had ants in its carpeting.  I had my ping pong phase, where I held the paddle like a pen instead of a tennis racket and learned how to serve like those Asian men in ping pong tournaments, but it didn't last.  I much preferred to sit by and watch my cousins play.  Some nights, my dad and uncle could be lured away from the TV, and then it would be on.  They played like professionals, actually quite like said Asian men in ping pong tournaments, down to the intense stare and sweaty brows after a few rallies back and forth.  During these matches, I would love to sit on our old green couch with the burlap-like upholstery, the one with its rear back leg missing (or broken) so the sitter always sat slightly reclined to the left, and watch.

I enjoyed these nights even more in the rain.  Water pelting the panes of the sunroom could be deafening during serious storms, like a TV with its volume on high and tuned to a channel with nothing but snowy static (do those channels even exist anymore?).  Those nights were the best, surrounded by family, those hypnotized by the TV on one side and those rapt in games on the other.  And the rain.  All of those things, the latter especially, made me feel completely safe, sheltered from the chaos and blanketed by their company.

Years later when I moved back in with my parents during my two-year stint in graduate school, I found that I hadn't changed in this; my favorite times were those afternoons when I would be sitting on the couch working on poetry, Linda on her homework at the dining room table, my parents in the kitchen, and the tumbling rain outside.

Even just this past Christmas, as Sam and I had dinner with them, I ran to the front door mid-bite when I heard a sudden torrent of rainfall wash over the house; I knew rain like that would never last.  I threw open the door and looked outside.  Illuminated by orange streetlights, sheets of water undulated in the wind like curtains.  Everyone had followed me over to the door and the five of us just stood there, mesmerized.  It didn't even look real.  I'm sure many (in Portland?  Seattle?  Midwest?) would beg to differ, but I thought rain like that could only happen in movies (followed by a downpour of frogs à la Magnolia, which would be kind of cool; maybe on May 21st, when the world is supposed to end or something).

And just as I predicted, the storm eased within a minute, and we closed the door and resumed dinner.  But I could still hear the pattering against the window, and I still felt ever so thankful that we were all together at that moment, knowing we could stay in and dry and together, knowing that for the evening at least, none of us would have to so much as step outside.

Yesterday, due to the rain, Sam drove me to and from my Rapid Transit rehearsal, and as we pulled into our building's garage, Sam noticed that all the parking spaces were occupied.  "Full house," he said.  Not only the garage, I presumed, but the building as well.  As we rounded the corner into our spot, I noticed that Sharon and Andy's black BMW was gone (yes, I have inadvertently become one of those hyperattentive neighbors).  Sharon must still be at work, I thought.  Though in no way would her presence or absence, nor any of the other neighbors', for that matter, affect me, I silently hoped that she would be home soon, out of the rain and into her house with Andy so they could enjoy the wet evening together and maybe feel how I felt 25 years ago with my family in the sunroom, how I felt as Sam, Grr, and I walked away from our rain-spotted car and back into our house last night.

Monday, May 16, 2011

5/16/2011 - the good old days. . .

On the way out of the bathroom this morning, I ran into a co-worker from a different department, and as soon as I saw him, I knew it would be no less than 15 minutes before I got back to my desk.  Friendly as friendly could be, Bryan had a smile for everyone and talked like he was at a coffee shop or a friend's house or a social mixer, anywhere but a corporate office building surrounded by beige hues, benign wall art, and work piling up on our desks.

I actually enjoy talking to him.  Surprisingly.  I tend to prefer my solitude at work, but Bryan and I are the same age (two years apart when I'm approaching 31 constitutes 'the same age') and have led oddly parallel lives starting from high school.  We both attended the same private Catholic one, though I transferred out the same year he began.  We both then moved on to UC Davis, where we double-majored in English and psychology.  We both lived in Sacramento for a year afterward, and both moved back to the Bay Area, orbiting in the east bay for a few years before taking the leap and finding an apartment in the City and closer to work.  Oh, and we both of course ended up with our current company.

Over the weekend, he had gone to Davis to visit a cousin, staying in the dorms.

"I can't remember the name of it now," he said.  "A newer one, right by Segundo."

"Primero?"

"No, those were graduate dorms," he said.

"Tercero?"

"No, that's where I stayed."

"Me too!" I said, a little too excitedly.  "I loved it there."

"Me too!" he replied, now his turn to be excited.  "But I moved out to an apartment complex down by the Safeway.  Chapparel, or something like that."

"Down Sycamore Lane?"

"Yea yea!  I definitely remember that address."

Ah, here we go.  "I lived down Sycamore Lane," I said hesitatingly. "At Temescal."

"Yes!  Temescal!"  Of course.  "Oh my god, this is getting scary," he said, reading my mind.

"I was only there for a year, though.  In C-4."

"Man, this is crazy!  I was in C-5."

And so we went, rattling off neighborhood haunts and landmarks that other Aggies would know, finding other ways to prove that we are indeed the same person: the Death Star, the silo, the 24-hour reading room at Shields Library, though I didn't have the heart to tell him that in all four years of my time at Davis, I probably only visited the library four times.

He said that he saw a hotel on campus, right off the I-80 next to the new-when-I-was-there Mondavi Arts Center.  "A hotel!" he repeated, as if aghast at the audacity of the Hyatt to build on sacred ground.

"Remember the old Rec Hall?" he asked.  "The one with the weights on one end and the gymnastics stuff on the other?"

"Totally.  I was there every Tuesday," I said, "without fail, doing gymnastics.  Broke my fingers on the tumbletrack once.  Still hurts if I extend them in the morning when I first wake up."

"Oh, man, I probably saw you there then.  I was always there in the evenings."

"I think they moved it to Hickey Gym around the time I graduated, though.  I stopped going after I got a job in Sacramento."

"Yup," he said, tapping his temple with his finger as if pointing to the exact memory.  "My indoor soccer got kicked out of our room to make way for the gymnastics equipment."

"Indoor soccer, huh?"  I probably sounded more condescending than I had meant to.  For some inexplicable reason, I imagined lawn bowling and a scene out of My Fair Lady

"I think my team picture is still on the wall in that gym somewhere."

"The gymnastics club picture should be there as well, I think, but I probably don't want to see what I looked like back then."

"What do you mean, man??" he said with a huge smile.  "Those were the good old days!"

I chuckled.  What an unexpected trip down memory lane.  "Yea, I guess, huh?  Those were some pretty great days."

The walls around me seemed really beige, and the various office noises (typing, papers shuffling, plastic mice scurrying across laminate desks) never seemed louder.

"Well. . . have a good day, man!"

"Thanks.  You too."

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Saturday, May 14, 2011

5/14/2011 - the spirit is without end. . .

Chemistry is a funny thing.  We meet new people all the time, but only some linger in our memory without any concrete explanation.  (Sidenote: I've noticed that dogs can be the same way.  One will come bounding up to Grr at the park wanting to play, but Grr will not give him a second look.  But another one will merely walk into his field of view and they can be off for minutes at a time, running at full speed toward and away from each other.  Who knows why one dog caught Grr's attention and the other one didn't?)

And while I've always known that romantic relationships require a huge amount of chemistry and nothing short of herculean effort and amazing luck, I never thought that friendships could work the same way.  Like Brad from the dog park, with whom I felt an incredible connection just on a platonic level.  And though Sam and I have met so many people at the various dog parks we frequent, all of whom have been incredibly friendly and nice, and though we have great conversations with them and I enjoy seeing them there, I actually wanted to sit down with Brad and exchange ideas, learn more about him.  What was it that separated him from everyone else?

The other morning, I officially met a woman at the gym I had seen for months.  She walks around the weight room with a fire in her eyes, not a shadow of hesitation, and she lifts weights like the big boys, with fervor and determination.  I see her nearly every morning I go, and I suspect she is there on the mornings I don't.  She wears different pairs of warm-up pants, the rugged, utility kind, not the form-fitting, rear-accentuating lululemon kind, and a dark T-shirt that still shows off her considerable physique underneath--not feminine, but not exactly masculine either.  Just fit, borne out of dedication.

We say 'hello' when we see each other, started smiling and nodding after we realized that we were morning gym fixtures.  She had a warmth about her and made the kind of eye contact that made me feel like she really saw me, even as we simply crossed paths on the way to our respective routines.  I liked her; something about her aura (to get all metaphysical) soothed me and put me at ease.

Yesterday, we actually exchanged words, mostly inconsequential ones about Fridays, weekends, and the end of a long workweek.  And towards the end of our conversation, I remarked how great a shape she's in and how regularly she comes to the gym.  In response, she playfully punched me in the arm and said that she only wishes she started earlier instead of wasting so much of her younger years on other, more 'vice-ier' things.

It was then that I reached my epiphany, a series of epiphanies, actually.  First, she's a lesbian and totally clued in to what I am (a Gemini); her punch packed enough of a wallop to send tingles down my arm, and I doubt she thought for a second that I could be flirting with her.  Second, she was in AA, or some other kind of anonymous support group.  I don't know how I knew exactly, and I could easily be wrong, but in an inexact way, I was certain of it--something about the positivity she exuded, the openness, all of which led me to my final and more important revelation: she reminded me of my old friend Steve, who passed away a year and a half ago.  And when I got to thinking about it, I could barely believe that so much time had passed.  Or so little, depending on perspective, I guess.

It wasn't so much the punch in the arm, which Steve used to do a lot, or the AA, in which Steve dutifully participated for years, or even the friendliness, which Steve possessed in abundance.  It was all of those things and more, and it made me think of the only passage from the Bhagavad Gita that I know, thanks to Six Feet Under: "All that lives lives forever.  Only the shell, the perishable passes away.  The spirit is without end. . . eternal. . . deathless."

Maybe spirit is just another word for chemistry, then, and in some way, this woman didn't just remind me of Steve; she was Steve, or parts of him, and she brought out parts of me, and these parts together were the reasons that he and I became friends. And maybe the reason she and I will too.

I actually haven't thought of Steve in a while, and even longer since I thought of the Bhagavad Gita.  It was good to be reminded of both.

Friday, May 13, 2011

5/13/2011 - Go!. . .

As a kid, my parents would regularly make the four-hour drive to Reno for weekend getaways.  I loved Reno, something about all the lights, the fun, the energy.  Whenever I would visit my grandparents in their high-rise apartment in Oakland, I would look out of the window onto the city lights below and remark how much it reminded me of Reno’s neon and glitz, and how I wished I could be there. 
As soon as I learned of an impending trip, which could be weeks prior to the actual departure, I would tear through the house in search of quarters.  I would need quarters for the arcade, for the air hockey tables, for all the carnival games at the Circus Circus.  This hunt allowed me to channel my excitement into a physical activity where otherwise, I would have gone mad with anticipation.
One of my favorite games at Circus Circus was one my parents dubbed, “1, 2, 3. . . Go!,” a virtual horse race driven by players sitting in front of their personal pinball machine-like console, truncated to only include the iconic pinball plunger and ball.  Cocking and releasing the plunger would send the ball up to the top of the console, where it would ricochet against rubber bumpers before rolling down a narrow channel, and depending on the channel, the machine’s designated horse would gallop a certain number of steps, from one to three, on a giant digital display around a giant digital track.
The game inflamed my otherwise dormant competitive streak, that tiny, indiscernible spark that apparently only appeared when useless trinkets and stuffed animals were at stake.  My mom said that I would fall into a trance at the sound of the starting bell, eventually chanting quietly to myself: “1, 2, 3. . . Go!  1, 2, 3. . . Go!” to time my release of the plunger so not a second was wasted with my little silver ball sitting still.  I had an almost overwhelming sense of excitement as I counted to three, almost trembling at the hope that with every ‘Go!,’ my ball would tumble into the prized middle column and push my horse three steps and past all over horses, keep mine beyond reach.
How I loved “1, 2, 3. . . Go!”  And like that instant I would release the plunger and set my ball in motion, each trip to Reno ended just as quickly, and I never felt like I had enough time to play to my heart’s content.  As anyone who has ever gone on vacation can attest, an hour is not always an hour; 60 minutes are not always comprised of 3,600 seconds.  An hour can be a leisurely cocktail on a breezy beachside as the sun sets across the water, or the most spectacular story unfolding through pages of a book.  This hour is not the same hour as the one whiled away on a slow day at work, when it is nothing but minutes, nothing but agonizing seconds ticking carelessly by.
I became aware of this ‘temporal discrepancy’ early in my teenage years when I first discovered Cirque du Soleil.  As I wrote a few weeks ago, when a Cirque show came to town and appeared in my horizon, it became my singular focal point, my raison d’être.  Time could not move fast enough, but at the same time, I approached its arrival with much trepidation.  By the time I sat in my seat and Cirque’s traditional pre-show shenanigans began, I would feel an acute pang in my heart; the knowledge that what I have been waiting for, all that I have been able to think about would soon commence, soon be over, was almost more than I could bear.
Of course, as expected, I would fall into a mild depression afterwards, not because Cirque du Soleil disappointed me in any way, but because it had simply moved into the past, forcing me to ask of myself: what can I look forward to now?
Just like how I felt post-Reno.  Just like birthdays.  Vacations, weekends, Christmases, everything that had an endpoint, I mourned their passing like the loss of loved ones.  So, then, everything.
Fortunately, I got older and learned to regulate myself and appreciate moments as they unfolded before me without worrying about the moments after.  But even now, as an adult in my 30s, I still find great satisfaction in the anticipation of something, often more than the thing itself; in the anticipation, all is full of potential, riddled with possibility, and perfect.
Last night, Sam and I sat down and rattled off a list of possible vacation destinations, just something short and close to home.  Because my parents have offered to take care of Grr in our absence and Grr would likely have no objections to being taken care of by them, what seemed impossible a couple of months ago, now just needed a plan to become real. 
I first suggested Lake Tahoe, enjoy some sun by the lake and maybe a hike in the warm spring air.  Then I learned that Tahoe is still typically in the low-50 degrees around this time.  Not exactly balmy, and splashing around in the lake might not be all too pleasant.
Palm Springs is in the mid-90s, but also an eight-hour drive away, and we would essentially only get one full day to ourselves before we’d have to turn around and come home.  Santa Cruz is closer, but we’d be there in a month for my sister’s graduation anyway.  Vegas is always a possibility, but it would cost $400 for the two of us to fly there.  Hawaii is too far; Sacramento too familiar.
Who knows if we'll actually go anywhere, as we may find ourselves paralyzed by options, though really, it almost doesn't much matter.  I found myself reveling just in having options, and I could have talked all night, came up with other ones, new destinations and activities.  All I can think about now is this potential trip that we will take together, and in bed last night, I thought of Reno (even though I have no intention of going there), how I used to adore everything about it, but the planning most of all.  I may no longer have quarters to scrounge around for, but as I fell asleep, I counted silently to myself.  “1, 2, 3. . .”

5/12/2011 - the helpless hiatus. . .

This was technically written yesterday (with a few revisions made this morning), even though nothing came up on the site.  It wasn't my fault; Blogger experienced a day-long outage and went into read-only mode.  Still, I feel like I have failed in some way.  I even finished this post in a Word document so that I could just copy and paste it into Blogger when it came back up (which it never did), so I technically am still on track for my daily writing goal, but that doesn't alleviate the faint disappointment I feel that a day went by and nothing new showed up on the blog.

Not that, in the scheme of things, it really matters very much.

The truth is, the act of writing throughout this past week has been a very trying experience, a daily struggle where just last week or the week before, I thought maybe I had hit a stride of some kind.  Ideas for posts came readily, the execution relatively painless.  Seeing as how I am now officially a third of the way to the end of the year, this ease I felt with writing was an encouraging sign for the next 240 posts.

But then Sunday rolled around, Mother's Day, and I thought I would write something really sweet about my mom, as there are many sweet things to write.  But I sat on the couch, faced a blank pad of paper, and completely shut down.  Everything I wrote felt maudlin, melodramatic, and, worst of all, clichéd; my mother routinely defies cliché.  The week continued down the same path, my writer's block intensifying.  I actually considered taking a break, resting for a few days to recharge my energies and ignite some creativity.  Not that it matters much with my miniscule readership and general lack of a goal for this project.  Besides, nobody could fault me for wanting to take some time off after four and a half months of daily writing, right?

But, strangely enough, it was exactly this amount I have already accomplished that deterred me from exercising this break.  Like an addict with 132 sober days behind him, I didn't really want to have it all end with a hiatus that likely was more indulgent than necessary.

But then yesterday happened, with the error message that Blogger was unavailable; apologies for the interruption in service.  All I wanted to do after refreshing the screen several times was lock myself in the closet, sit at my desk and write for as long as possible, bring back by sheer force of will all my creativity, my drive, the steady flow of words that once did inhabit my writing process.  It was one thing for me to decide I wanted a break, but another to have the break forced upon me.

When the site finally came up this morning, I treated it as a reunion between friends.  Did I fail in my commitments because of yesterday?  No, definitely not, I recognize that, especially since I still spent time writing (and about gratitude, no less).  And it even brought me to some insight, I think; the "service interruption" made me realize that for me, writing almost doesn't even count anymore unless there is a possibility that someone might read it.

I try not to think too much about that, or about the future of this blog as a whole.  When I do, the pressure gives me a sense of vertigo.  So I try as best I can to work with a one-day-at-a-time philosophy, but I can't help but sometimes give in and muse about what it would feel like to be a writer in that professional sense, where I don't have to fit this into the lunch hour of my day job or cram it into the already-too-short hours of my evenings, where service interruptions to Blogger wouldn't matter because I'd have a much more visible platform.  And where I would know with certainty that people are reading and paying attention to me, less as a person, and more as a writer.

But that's for later.  For now, I'm just glad to have my Blogger back.  And were it not for yesterday's outage, I would not have found this renewed motivation to try harder, write harder, and appreciate the fact that I can do so.  Were it not for yesterday and the helpless hiatus I found myself on, I would not have found this sense of gratitude for the very vehicle in which I am writing about gratitude.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

5/11/2011 - the bureaucratic labyrinth. . .

Whenever a new acquaintance asks me what I do for a living, I always say "I work for a health insurance company" with a sheepish look on my face, as if apologizing for my agonizingly boring career field, as if to really say, "I'm sorry that you thought you could find an interesting topic down this path; you have made a wrong turn and should promptly turn around if you wish to leave this conversation with some semblance of liveliness about you."

So of course, I envy friends who work for more interesting industries and companies, ones that solicit a "Oh, cool!" response.  For example, one friend works for a dating site that caters to gay men with a certain muscular body aesthetic; already, without hearing anything more, I know my interest is peaked.  An old friend from years ago is a flight attendant; another works for a small social media start-up company.  Even Sam works in an industry that encourages some flow of conversation.  When I was getting my hair cut for my movie extra gig, my stylist asked me what I did for work, and after I told her, she said, "Oh, that's. . . interesting," with a discernible, pitying pause.  When I noticed and mentioned that she used a line of gel that my partner's company produces, we immediately became best buddies for 10 minutes.

The most interesting back-and-forth I've had regarding my job was with a girl who apparently just had a root canal done and didn't understand why she started receiving bills for the service when her insurance should have covered it.  I listened with my you're-a-stranger-so-I'm-going-to-kinda-pay-attention-and-pretend-I-care-because-I-want-you-to-like-me-if-only-for-these-few-minutes face, because seriously, I barely even knew what a root canal was (I'm in Marketing, for crying out loud!), much less why she would be paying for one.

This morning, I helped Sam take care of some health insurance issues in the aftermath of a brief emergency room visit last year around this time.  That day, I literally ran home from work, through Financial District traffic and up three blocks of a steep uphill grade after receiving a mysterious text message from him that said, "I'm hurt.  I need help," burst into our apartment, sweaty and out of breath, and found him curled up in a ball on the floor by our bed.  The entire ordeal turned out to be an extremely painful, but ultimately harmless condition, which is more than I can say about all the bills and troubles that followed.

From insurance company mix-ups to unpaid claims to finally a balance that went into collections over a year later, Sam never even received so much as an Explanation of Benefits.  Thinking everything was settled, he received a surprise notice regarding a long-overdue bill last week, along with a hefty fine attached as punishment for his tardiness.  Knowing something about insurance companies and terminology, I said that I would try and figure out what happened. 

After an hour or so of maneuvering through the maze they (we?) call a billing department, four different phone numbers, two of which I called repeatedly, and listening to long periods of hold music, I finally emerged triumphant from the bureaucratic labyrinth, brandishing my understanding of deductibles and PPOs and in-network benefits as weapons against the surly, surely unhelpful, customer service representative. 

Before I started working in health insurance, I could not describe the difference between a PPO versus an HMO, copayment versus coinsurance.  I've always had insurance, but it remained this nebulous concept to me, kind of like math or science or reality television.  As I tried to calmly explain to the agent why I (posing as Sam) should not have to pay $10,000 to the hospital when my insurance covers most of it, I even kind of impressed myself with how much I knew to say. 

Though I still have every intention of leaving this industry eventually (sooner rather than later, which is a post unto itself), in those moments after getting off of the phone, I wanted to dance around the nearest hillside like Fraulein Maria and sing the praises of all that I've learned about insurance companies in the last five years.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

5/10/2011 - can see myself living A.G. . . .

Not too long ago, though it feels like much longer, I would hide in the closet every evening after dinner. Sam would be downstairs loading the dishwasher, Grr would be licking at any exposed sliver of silverware, and I would be safely retreated upstairs in the closet where we had set up a modest home office. And I would proceed to stay there for an hour or two, mostly working on the blog. Every so often, I would hear Sam laugh at the TV, change positions on the couch, yell at Grr, and I would feel two things: longing to be down there like I used to be B.G. (before Grr), and guilt for wanting to be away from them.

Yes, I needed time to write the day's post, but typically, I would be finished within an hour. My guilt grew out of how I spent the rest of my time: checking e-mail, surfing online, rechecking e-mail, catching up on Facebook, and basically frittering away every usable minute of my evening in an attempt to avoid going downstairs and spending time with my partner and my dog. I couldn't put enough distance between me and them, for they only represented the life I once had that now had gone away, and I didn't want to face the reality that is my new, dog-owning life. Suddenly, I valued alone time over sprawling on the couch laughing at AFV.

With Grr, it felt like Sam and I picked up a housemate that disrupted the very fabric of our existence merely by existing himself. Though Grr didn't always want our attention, was content to sit in a corner, gnawing on whatever toy that struck his fancy, his presence was all-permeating. I know I've said it before somewhere here while stuck in my pit of self-pity, but I found that Sam and I barely existed outside of Grr. Our attentions were on him when he was around, our conversations centered around him when he was not. Where I once was content with just spending time with Sam, I now had to find room to fit this other being, this other body, this other person.

Turns out, I didn't know how to share.

And then, things started to change. I'm not sure how it all happened, or even when, but I slowly began coming downstairs earlier and earlier, until finally, I began writing and finishing the blog during my lunch hour. Grr ownership, though not without challenges, no longer seemed like the onus it once did, and I unabashedly started looking forward to seeing him run up to me every afternoon when I came home from work, still sweaty from my commute and desperate to park my bike before Grr pounced all over me. I caught myself watching him one afternoon as he stared intently out of the window at the sound of approaching sirens, his eyes wide and full of panic, yet behind the bewilderment still shone the soulfulness that defines him.

The other afternoon, Sam, Grr, and I all fell asleep in the afternoon after a full morning of beach running at Fort Funston, Grr's favorite park. Well, it was full of his running, and us meandering casually along the coastline. For a pup who normally has his tail tucked so far between his legs one can see it from his front, we both admitted that it was a nice sight, seeing him actually have fun.

Because really, I want nothing more than to see him live a long and happy life, the same one that I plan on and can see myself living A.G.

And tonight, I find myself back upstairs after dinner, back in the closet because I didn't have time this afternoon to write today's post, back listening to Sam and his TV, Grr and his jingling tags. This is the first moment all day that I've had to myself, yet I can't finish this post fast enough so I can head downstairs and spend the rest of the evening with my two favorite boys.

Monday, May 9, 2011

5/9/2011 - my rough morning. . .

So the other day, I wrote here that I didn't want to spend time on this blog writing about the simple things I am grateful for (and sometimes subsequently take for granted), and I specifically called out my health as an example of the kind of topics I would like to avoid.  Well, as it turns out, my health is an avid reader of this blog because it woke me up at 4:00 this morning with a wrenching pain in my gut, the kind that begs for attention and a sense of urgency.  Snub me, will you?

And after a harrowing 15 minutes in the bathroom (the details of which I will spare you), I crawled back into bed and dozed in and out, tired but unable to sleep, curled in a fetal position while Grr came over and played the role of the "little spoon."  He was probably heaving a sigh of relief, for once not having to shoulder the blame for my rough morning.

And now, 12 hours, seven trips to the bathroom (three of which occurred in the middle of a single meeting), and half a humble cup of chicken soup later, my stomach is just beginning to stabilize.  Probably helps that it sits emptier right now than it has for a long time.

So I would like to take this moment and rectify an egregious mistake: let the record show that I have learned my lesson, am indeed grateful for my health, for comfort, and for feeling like I can hold down (or in, as the case may be, which is just lovely) the next thing I choose to eat.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

5/8/2011 - Happy Mother's Day!

Today is Mother's Day, so it would be negligent on my part if I didn't spend this time writing about mine, but truthfully, I have already written about her several times throughout the life of this little blog (such as here, here, and here to some extent).  So I thought, instead of doing the expected and musing about motherhood and extolling the virtues of mine (of which there are many), I will recount one of my favorite stories of her, one whose specifics have grown fuzzy as the years have worn on, one that has been told so many times that the accuracy of it is questionable, but one I'm certain my mom remembers down to the last, horrifying, shameful detail.

---

When I was in high school, probably at 14 or 15 (so in other words, deeply rooted in teen angst and self-absorption), my family and I took a vacation to Vegas.  Because I was far from age to enjoy all that Vegas had to offer, we spent a large amount of time by the Flamingo Hotel's pool area--me laying out in the sun so I could tan my rail-thin frame, and my parents lounging in the 95 degree shade.

The pool complex at the Flamingo made all other hotel/casino pool complexes jealous.  With its lush gardens decorated with palm trees and patches of manicured lawn, lagoons like hidden coves around each oversized boulder, and, if I remember correctly, actual flamingos milling about, it was enough to make the neon and slot machines inside lose a bit of their allure.  At the heart of this water park sat its crown jewel: a twisty snake of a water slide that tumbled its riders from the third-story starting point until its splashy end some 20 seconds later in a moderately sized, waist-deep kiddie pool.

By mid-morning, I had already ridden it several times. My dad and sister were in one of the lagoons, unbeknownst to my mom, and whenever her children are out of her sight, she searches for them with growing concern.  Her search took her to the top of the slide mere moments after I had taken off.  She didn't want to slide down, but also didn't want to defy the attendant, who urged her to give it a try.  So, according to her, she sat down at the mouth of the slide, and without any effort on her part, was immediately swallowed by the slope and momentum, enveloped by water and rolled to a point where she lost all sense of physicality. 

By the time she plunged into the retaining pool at the bottom, who knows which end hit the water first?  She certainly couldn't tell.  I was already out of the pool when I heard the loud splash from behind me.  I turned and saw violent thrashing, ribbons of water flying everywhere, but no limb or head in sight.  Though this went on for what felt like an interminable amount of time, it ended as quickly as it began.  A figure then slowly emerged, just stood up in the three-foot pool with hair matted down to the front of her face looking like Samara from The Ring.  She opened her eyes to the small crowd of strangers that encircled her out of bewildered concern, and me, her mortified son, standing above her yelling, "Mom!!  What are you doing?!?"

She was livid, ever-so-pissed.  Later, she berated me, asking me what I thought she could be doing, flapping about like that, and why I just stood there and didn't come in and save her.  I seriously did not know how to even consider jumping into a kiddie pool to save my mother at that age, not while I was busy pretending I was in Vegas altogether without my parents.

She recounts this tale with great drama, how the speed of the slide could have challenged Galactica's FTL drive (my interpretation, not hers), how the water suspended her between worlds, not allowing her to reach the bottom with her feet or crane her neck up high enough to gasp for air.  Fortunately, there were no lasting consequences other than this story we all laugh about now, even though she still curses us for doing so. 

To my credit, I would like to note that even in the chaos, in the midst of what is clearly an embarassing situation for all involved or adjacent, I still called her 'mom.'  For a sulky, sullen, downright bitchy 15-year-old, I should have received a Son of the Year award for my acknowledgement.

(Even better, the telling of this story once won me two tickets to see Margaret Cho in concert while I was at UC Davis, so I guess that other award can wait.  Happy Mother's Day!)

Saturday, May 7, 2011

5/7/2011 - history, then as legend, and eventually. . . god. . .

Other than a lovingly lingering shot of a shirtless Thor getting dressed (as well as all other shots of his clothes clinging to his body for dear life), the best part of the movie happened within the first three minutes.

By way of explaining how the Norse gods came to be, a narrator recounted a time years ago when Norway was attacked by frost giants, harbingers of icy destruction.  Though the people fought back, they would have completely fallen to the giants' ruthlessness had it not been for the intervention of Odin, a warrior-king from another world, and his clan.  They stepped in, drove the giants back, and then returned to their own land several galaxies away.  The legacy of Odin's actions lived on as history, then as legend, and eventually, the people grew to worship him as a god.

Though I rarely go to church and would never consider myself religious by any means, I do think of the subject often--not religion in any denominational sense, but more from an overarching, spiritual one.  (Sidenote: I actually hate saying 'spiritual' as it is so commonly used nowadays to describe one's belief system that I wonder if it means anything more than just a convenient way to seem enlightened, but simultaneously allowing license to not have to go to church on Sundays or actually take a stance on anything.)

So anyway, I'm spiritual, and Thor gave me a new way to think about religion and gods of worship: What if God (and for simplicity's sake, in the Christian sense) was nothing more than an advanced being from a distant planet who came to Earth, helped humanity in some way, then left and returned home, leaving us to marvel (See what I did there?  Thor belongs to the Marvel universe, so I was being clever, which I can be with nine-and-a-half hours of sleep. . . or not.) at his powers, his kindness, and eventually to deify him in the same way the Vikings did with Odin.

Thinking of God in this way alleviates any onus, any possibility of divine retribution should we misbehave.  Why would God care?  He belongs to a different world altogether, with a different family, with responsibilities and struggles all his own.  We are no more (or less) than a people he cared enough about to assist in some way once upon a time.  Whether we live happily ever after is not up to him and is likely not a burden he wishes to carry.

And who can say that this theory is wrong?  Just like I can't say that the idea of an all-powerful, benevolent God (at least in the New Testament) who sits in heaven and waits for our souls to return to him is wrong.  Nobody knows, but I will say this: I feel closer to God, in whatever incarnation of 'God' you choose to apply, after thinking about him in this ironically more human way, which I have been since last night.

And really, were it not for this nugget of wisdom at the onset of Thor, I would have had very little else to think about for the rest of the movie.

Friday, May 6, 2011

5/6/2011 - pretentious vernacular. . .

Sometimes, the corporate world baffles me with its lack of reality.  We dress in clothes we would likely never wear on our own accord, work on things that likely do not fulfill us or enrich our lives, and, as I've noticed lately, say things that likely would sound absolutely absurd to anyone not embroiled in the corporate construct and in love with this style of pretentious vernacular.  Some examples:
  1. We have many masters to please,
  2. but if we want to remain competitive, we have to get on the beach,
  3. so given our budgetary constraints, it would benefit us most if we just focused on the low-hanging fruit.
In other words:
  1. People have too many opinions;
  2. we need to just get to work,
  3. but since we're broke right now, let's just do easy shit.
Some co-workers are notorious offenders, and I've taken to jotting down and tallying how many occurrences I hear of these stuffed-shirtisms throughout my day.  For example, using the word 'hat' to signify 'perspective,' as in, "We have to take off our [Company X] hat and put on the customer hat if we want to succeed," happened six times this week in four different meetings, but only perpetrated by two different people.  I've heard the "many masters to please" gem five times since the inception of this anecdotal research a few weeks ago, all from the same person!

This morning, I had to laugh after an exchange of e-mails with a particularly demanding salesperson.  She wanted some information on the project I launched earlier this week IMMEDIATELY (her caps, not mine) to give to a client.  I was already working on other things at that moment, so my bandwidth was limited (when in Rome. . .), but still, I IMMEDIATELY (my caps, not hers) began digging through my files, found what she wanted, and summed it all up in an e-mail no more than 15 minutes later.

She wrote back almost IMMEDIATELY and proceeded to extol the importance of said client, how 'high-profile,' how this information could make or break the sale, etc.  And finally, could I send this information over in "addendum" format ASAP? 

I wrote back to ask her what she meant by that and this was her reply, verbatim: "I don't know... I made it up.  Just send me something ASAP.  Thanks!"

At least she admitted that this term does not exist (how she expected me to respond to her request, then, is a different story altogether).  So I copied everything from my e-mail, pasted it across three Powerpoint slides, and sent it again.  This seemed to satisfy her ill-defined notion of "addendum" format because I never heard back from her, not even an acknowledgement of receipt.

I recognize the levels of obnoxiousness this reaches, but really, what could I do but shrug it off and accept that this is the world in which I work and the people with whom I do?

Ah, Friday, never hesitate. . .

Thursday, May 5, 2011

5/5/2011 - will you light my candle. . .

Rent changed my life.

For my 19th birthday, my ex-girlfriend-turned-best friend-turned-lesbian/kinky burlesque dancer (we obviously made quite a pair in high school) surprised me with a picnic in Golden Gate park, a nice walk around San Francisco, and last minute tickets to see Rent.  I knew little about this particular musical, thought it sounded like a bunch of slacker/hippie-types who were too cool for me to understand, and I admittedly had little interest.

Prior to Rent, I had seen a handful of musicals.  My parents, though not proactive, always supported my desire to see the latest blockbuster Broadway show that blew through the San Francisco theater scene.  We made the mandatory-for-Bay-Areans pilgrimage to the Curran Theater when Phantom of the Opera played night after night as its resident show.  I remember my fascination with the helicopter in Miss Saigon, the city-turned-barricades of Les Mis.  But aside from these spectacles and a few memorable songs, I thought musical theater was nothing more than something fancy to do occasionally in the City.

By the time Marie and I stepped into the Golden Gate Theater and found our seats, I was already eager for the show to be over so I could go home and go to bed.

The moment I reached my epiphany and regauged all expectations happened quite early in the show, maybe within 30 minutes, when Roger, the sensitive but tortured musician, meets Mimi, the friendly neighborhood stripper and crack addict.  She comes barging into Roger's apartment asking him to light her candle, and the innuendos go on from there.  I sat in the darkened theater, watched the darkened stage as they sang together and thought, "I can't believe how much I love this song right now!"

Leave it to Jonathan Larson to write a song about a drug addict needing a candle to cook her stash and turn it into a playful, flirty, endearing duet between two characters with similar qualities.  As resistant to the show as I was, I didn't stand a chance as each scene thereafter gave me new things to love.

I ended up wanting to jump out of my seat at the end of Act I, crying shamelessly through most of the second half, and felt an overwhelming need to call everyone I had ever known and loved to tell them just how much I missed them and how important they were to my life.  Afterwards, I went straight to the lobby and bought the cast recording and a white T-shirt with an artist's rendition of Mimi with the line, "Will you light my candle?" scrawled across the front, commemorating the first song that captured my attention.

The show itself certainly lit a candle for me, and it has led the way to more than I thought (now that I actually give it some).  Because of Rent, I fell in love with musical theater.  Because of musical theater, I abandoned my California teaching credential program and started working at Max's Showtunes Opera Cafe, a restaurant with singing waiters accompanied by a powerhouse pianist.  Because of Max's, I exponentially increased my knowledge of musical theater, and with this knowledge, I eventually desired to do more than just observe and listen to it.  And because of this desire, I found the Studio ACT in the City, took a class and ended up in the spring performance project of Stephen Schwartz's musical, Working, last year, and through Working, I learned that acting is not my forte, and though neither really is singing, the latter, especially doing so in front of people, inspires a rush in me incomparable to any other, which most recently led me to Rapid Transit A Cappella.

So to say that Rent changed my life is no exaggeration.  The fire it ignited in me burned for a long time, burns still, which is more than I can say for that T-shirt I bought some 11-odd years ago.  I first noticed holes near the collar, which were followed by more holes under the arms.  Then the collar itself frayed and I could see my skin through the threadbare fabric.  I had to face the reality that soon, it would simply fall to pieces.

The other night, I decided to apply my sewing skills (of which I really have none) and get creative.  I got a pair of scissors, cut out what I wanted to keep from the original shirt, and began sewing it onto another.  About four hours, needle wounds on various fingers, and a sore shoulder later, I emerged with a new Frankensteinian shirt that likely will come undone after its first washing.

Behold, my "Guys with iPhones"-inspired shot of my handiwork:


I do have to say that I am quite proud of myself.  For someone who barely knows how to sew on a popped button, I think I did alright.  At the very least, I honored the bohemian, 'la vie bohème' spirit of Rent by "making something out of nothing," as it were.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

5/4/2011 - everything kind of wrote itself. . .

What follows is today's post, written in one sitting with barely any revisions.  I mention this because I wanted an opportunity to explain its faint aimlessness while also drawing a modest amount of attention to the irony that I really didn't know what to say today, yet found that once I starting writing, everything kind of wrote itself.

For better or worse.  You be the judge; I can take it.

--- 

Today is the first day in a long time, at least a few weeks, where I sat down and had no idea what I wanted to write about here.  Not that things are going badly in life--quite the opposite, actually--but I resolved at the beginning of this blog not to just rattle off things that I'm thankful for, like my health or my job or milk for my cereal.

I am, of course, certainly grateful for all of those things, and more, as I recognize that the alternatives are dire (with the possible exception of the milk item, even though it may feel like the end of the world to be let down first thing in the morning when all I want is a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats): a friend recently broke his knee; others are struggling with employment.  Another recently came home after a vacation to find that the doggy hotel/hospital erroneously doubled his dog's insulin medication, ultimately killing his beloved pet.  Can you imagine?  And of course, now that I own a dog, every other dog becomes a representation of mine.  When I heard the news, I could only think how grateful I was that Grr is alive, safe and troubled only by his desire to live in a sleepy suburb, a rural farm, a quiet cul-de-sac, anywhere but here in the City.

But see, that's just it; I don't have much more to say about Grr other than that, nor about any of those everyday morsels of gratitude other than 'I am glad I am healthy,' or 'Thank God I have a job.'  And as happy as I was to see Sam yesterday morning after a few days apart, I have tried really hard (and largely succeeding, I'd say) to avoid turning this blog into the Sam and Austin Show, where essentially I just gush about how much I love my boyfriend.  Nobody wants to read that; people hate you for that.

Such is the danger of writing for an audience, or, largely in my case, writing for an intended, imaginary audience: you start to cater the writing to the people who read it.  But the truth is that I am happy with Sam.  I am very much in love with him, so why should I shy away from saying just that?  An acquaintance chatted me up earlier today on Gmail, and what started out as a friendly 'hello' quickly turned into a session of couples' counseling (is that apostrophe in the right place?).  Peter repeatedly finds himself in the same arguments with his partner: partner is not affectionate enough; Peter himself doesn't put out enough; they both recognize that they are not happy, but neither has it in themselves to figure out a solution to the complex problems they share.  Throw in self-esteem issues, feelings of jealousy in an open-relationship, and a growing animosity toward the inequities that exist between them, and I quickly found myself in over my non-M.F.T.-trained head.

Besides, what can they do?  They have been together for over seven or eight years, live together in a house they recently bought together, share friends and acquaintances; in all ways--emotional, physical, legal--their lives are intricately tangled.  A separation, ironically, would require a huge amount of commitment, a quantity of which I doubt either had.  I felt bad about it, worse, actually, since I listened to what Peter had to say and interpreted it all as a cautionary tale, a story of how not to be if you want to have even the most remote chance at a realistic, but still fairytale-like, ending.

Toward the end of the conversation, he asked me how things were going with Sam.  What could I say, after spending 30 minutes talking about his imperfect relationship, other than, "Oh, we're fine," even though I repeatedly thought, as we chatted, how lucky I was to be in my imperfect-but-perfectly-fulfilling one?