Pantoll Hike

Sausalito, Tiburon, East Bay
Originally uploaded by tjdee.

A true comedy of errors. First, we went to a spot in Ross that had a crazy small parking lot, so we headed south toward Mt. Tam. The second spot was lovely, but a 4.4-mile hike turned into a 7- or 8-mile trip complete with 3 miles of wrong turns and uphill backtracking. We made bad decisions to the very end. By the time we reached the car, my feet were dead, my calves were tight and as soon as I sat down in the car my stomach went crazy. I was "hecka" naseous all the way. After an hour in a coma, I got up and was fine, but I was quite worried for a while.

Lessons learned: Always buy the map, always have a backup and never go more than 6 miles or so.

I just interviewed the president and CEO of of the U.S. division of a large company about corporate America's responsibility to fund education initiatives and it went well -- he was nice and pretty quoteable. At the end of the call he said, "I'm looking at a photo of my two-year-old grandson ... " and I thought he was going to go all Whitney on me: "The children are our future ... must educate ... blah blah." But instead he said, "His name is T.J. He's in great company with you."

How cute?

(Snip snip ... yeah, that was dumb.)

Great. Just great. As if pushing me into an on-again, off-again love affair with America's Next Top Model (I loves me some Joanie) isn't bad enough, now I'm downloading episodes of BB UK. But, oy, searching mininova brings up like three shows a day. Those Brits sure love their imploding drama queens (I need bottled WATAH!).

Baby Boom

Baby Boom
Originally uploaded by tjdee.

After a two-year period that saw all of my mother's siblings have babies (for a total of five), Eileen has become the first of my high school friends to give birth. This is Isabel. Cute, right?

But jeez! We're old enough to get married and have kids? What the hump?! I guess this is fine -- Isabel is OK -- but no one else can have babies for several years! You hear me, punks?

Last night, as I approached BART, I realized I had forgotten my iPod. WHY GOD WHY?! I thought to myself. I lowered my head and whined for a bit because, seriously, I'm never without those wonderful voices in my head. But later, as I was walking around downtown Berkeley, I realized how nice it was to hear cars passing by, people laughing, crosswalk signs beeping.

I always knew how closed-off I seemed, with my serious facial expression and my headphones in my ears. It's nice to open oneself up to the world every once in a while, expecially one as bizarre and interesting as the Berk.

At Starbucks, I was doing what I do (namely, staring inappropriately at others), when I was interrupted by a barista offering samples of some breakfast sandwich. I passed (eggs, yuck) but watched as she offered mini-sandwiches to everyone else. One guy, sitting across the store, raised his arms when she came by. Both were prosthetics with hooks. She put one down for him instead of having him grab it, as the others did. I was curious about how he would eat it, so I tried to discreetly watch. The effort it took to get that sandwich out of the small paper cup literally (literally!) made me tear up.

WTF? (Or as I might say to those who know, what the hump mutter mutter?)

I listed Julieta Venegas, whom I discovered last year while watching MTV's Spanish-language video channel, among my top 15 artists a few posts back. Well, I have to amend that post as I have a new favorite song: "Me Voy." I first heard the song, the first single from her upcoming CD, "Limon y sal," a few weeks ago and, frankly, wasn't super impressed. But after a couple of subsequent listens, I fell in love with it. And the video! Absolutely charming -- precioso, como escribi en su myspace, de verdad -- and beautiful, totally matching the spirit of the song, which is about a breakup but is also decidedly optimistic.

I love the beginning of the chorus for two reasons: It sounds so beautiful in Spanish (the rhythm, the rhyming of merezco and por eso) and is so touching in meaning. "No voy a llorar y decir que no merezco esto porque es probable que lo merezco pero no lo quiero por eso me voy" translates as "I'm not going to cry and tell you I don't deserve this because I probably do deserve this but I don't want it and that's why I'm leaving."

I don't know. I just love that.

Check out el video:

Standing in line at the Espresso Roma in Northbrae, just after a woman came dangerously close to cutting in front of me and a few others to join her friends, who were paying (she backed off when we made eye contact -- I was obscenely wide-eyed), I overheard another woman telling someone the cheesepuff she had just purchased was for her dog. "Oh, yeah, he eats everything humans eat," she said matter-of-factly. "All organic and free-range. I guess this is a little treat. It's not very healthy."

Then I squinted, raised my right arm, and discreetly squished her head.

Something you don't want to hear people working on your house say to each other: "You are an IDIOT!"

Scary coming from the people who mistakenly began knocking down a beam the supports one corner of the house.