Very nice cuddly, cozy weekend with extremely good company, good food, and good music, not to mention cheap gas and free CDs. And now it’s back to work. Suffice to say I’m not in the mood…
I’ll write more tomorrow. There’s a new Simpsons tonight…
My mom and dad were married 52 years ago today. An anniversary with a number that high seems to be a milestone I’ll never achieve, if for no other reason than the fact that I’d be at least 89 when it occurred…
The rain today was amazing. There was none of that wimpy, drizzly California crap; this was the real stuff like back east. And, on schedule, the fiercest downpour hit this morning just as I was on that three-block walk between the Ferry Building and work…
Which seems a sort of piddly thing to complain about in the face of the latest news from New York. Jeez, what’s next? Earthquakes? Locusts? New Yorkers must feel a little like Californians felt in the early 1990s with the SF earthquake, Oakland fire, and LA riots, although Californians had three years to absorb all the drama…
Anyway, if this week ever ends (not a good thing to be thinking on Monday), it’s off to Fresno to see Mark this weekend. It’s supposed to be raining there too, which is not really a bad thing. I like rain…
Tonight, it’s cubed steak and gravy. I deserve cubed steak and gravy…
My first website in Spanish was particularly interesting, given that I don’t speak Spanish. A patient client is a great thing to have…
With all the rain and the cold, I was feeling sort of Pacific Northwest tonight, which sort of made me feel a little Gus Van Sant tonight. So I popped in Idaho, since I’d watched Drugstore Cowboy more recently…
I don’t think I was in quite the right mood, though. I’m not feeling terribly bleak right now. A little anxious, maybe, but definitely not bleak. All the same, I was amazed at how many obvious little bits and pieces I’d missed on earlier viewings which were crystal clear tonight. Bits and pieces so obvious that I don’t even want to mention them for fear of looking like an idiot…
More than anything, though, I realized how much I want to go back to Portland. It’s been over four years; I think it’s high time…
Just think: if I’d actually pursued a career in planning, I could have spent all my time coming up with grandiose schemes like this one, which will probably never come to pass (and probably never should)…
What is this fascination so many small and medium-size sunbelt cities have with downtown stadiums and “grand pedestrian plazas” with cutesy little concrete doodads? They’re just like those stupid “downtown mall” schemes which blocked off main steets by the hundreds in the 1970s and are now being ripped up all over the country after succeeding at little but turning Main Street into a giant shooting gallery…
And why is it that municipal governments, when faced with lots of colorful sketches of ideas which have failed miserably everywhere else they’ve been tried, always manage to convince themselves that their city is the one place in the whole country where the scheme will definitely work and will “save downtown”, as long as enough money is poured into it?
If people decide to return en masse to downtown Greensboro (or Charlotte or Fresno or wherever), it will be beacuse an interesting culture has developed there over time which provides something not available elsewhere. It will not be because of some grand city-financed “master plan” which redesigns everything and assigns it a cute little name. And spending a fortune to induce white suburbanites to use mass transit is just plain ridiculous in most cities of the south and the west; it’s never going to happen…
They’ve already rebuilt downtown Greensboro about three times since 1970. Strangely enough, its most prosperous times have been the years before and in between, when they just left everything the hell alone…
If this sounds like a rather conservative viewpoint, it’s not really. I don’t mind cities spending money. What I mind is cities spending money on complete idiocy…
It’s midnight. I was restless and burdened with overabundant nervous energy earlier, so I cleaned up the house (so as not to return to a mess on Sunday) and then popped some Dragnet into the VCR. That did the trick. What is it about old police dramas that soothes me so?
In about 18 hours, it’s Fresno, Mark, and a much improved disposition…
Y’all have a good weekend now, y’hear?
Happy belated birthday to Becky. I hope you get what you want too. It’s amazing how effective bullet points can be sometimes…
Annoyance du jour: being in a hurry and sitting on a non-moving bus for ten minutes while the driver argued with a passenger about whether or not her transfer was valid. Yes, I understand in theory how important it is for Muni to grab all the revenue it can. No, that understanding doesn’t make me feel any better about the fact that 20 people with lives to lead and places to go could do neither for ten minutes because of a dispute over a fucking dollar…
Finally, another passenger walked up to the front, put a buck in the slot, and asked the bus driver if we could please get going. We did, eventually…
Why is it that every time I leave the SF for a few days I hate it even more when I get back? Why must every little thing be a hassle here?
Popped by the miniature Safeway on Jackson Street in the Financial District this afternoon on the way home from work. It’s my secret Safeway where I avoid turkey-crazed crowds on days like today. I’d never do all my shopping there, but it’s a great little hidden place to pick up things when I’m in the neighborhood. But even it was more crowded than usual today…
You can tell the holidays are brewing downtown. The Christmas Muzak has already kicked in at Embracadero Center, and the crowds on the streets look slightly less constipated than usual. They’re all still tight-assed suit monsters at heart, but around the holidays, they’ll sometimes actually even pause from their terribly important cell phone conversations to say “excuse me” when they ram into you…
Upcoming:
- Food on Thursday, although I’m still firming up the details of where and with whom. Conflicting invites. Which is sort of flattering in a way.
- Mark’s coming on Saturday. That’ll be much fun, as will the fact that I won’t be the one fighting the traffic on Sunday.
- A visit from Mom in early December. Which means I should pay a little more attention to all that stuff that’s growing behind the toilet.
Y’know, I can’t say for sure how I’m going to spend the Friday after Thanksgiving. One thing I can say for sure, though, is that dragging my ass out of bed to Kmart for a sale at 5:00 in the morning will probably not be a part of my day…
As I’ve said before, one of the benefits of living 3000 miles from your family is that you very often get to choose who you spend the holidays with. I spent mine having a most luscious meal with Sarah and Brad, and later having a shop, a drive and a snack with Jamie. Both worked quite nicely, thanks…
Realizations:
- Sarah can cook. But I already knew this.
- High definition TV is a very good thing. I pretty much knew this too.
- Thanksgiving Day is a surprisingly easy day to park in North Beach.
- Thanksgiving Day is a good day to shop at Tower Records and a bad day to shop at Kmart.
- The Tower Records in North Beach is much better than the one at Stonestown.
- Having one’s laundry done before the weekend really starts is a significant source of contentment.
Mark arrives in the morning, and I’m now popping in a movie and officially placing myself on email sabbatical until Sunday. You are forewarned…
If anyone cares, I’m testing a new front page at Planet SOMA. I’ve decided that since I can’t seem to add any new content over there, I’ll just keep remodeling so it looks new…