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Long day

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5:15 – Wake up. Make coffee.

5:30 – Realize I’m supposed to be at the TV station fifteen minutes earlier that I thought. Shower quickly.

5:50 – Leave the house.

6:10 – Arrive at Channel 2. Sit. Wait.

6:45 – Interview begins.

6:47 – Interview ends.

6:48 – Leave Channel 2. Grab breakfast. Kill time until library opens.

7:30 – Go to work.

10:30 – Leave for oral surgeon.

10:45 – Arrive at oral surgeon’s office. Complete paperwork.

11:05 – Begin examination.

11:07 – End examination. Pay $88.00 to find that my dentist was mistaken and that there’s nothing wrong with me.

11:15 – Leave office. Grab lunch.

12:00 – Back at work. Actually get things done.

3:30 – Start a project that really could have waited till tomorrow.

4:30 – Do not finish said project. Leave work. Drop coworker at mechanic.

4:45 – Home. Beer. Leftover soup.

5:30 – Really creepy movie on TCM.

8:00 – Too early for bed. Too late and too tired to do much of anything else, though I’m seriously contemplating doing at least one more thing that lasts two minutes but requires an hour’s prep.

Ten years after

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With all the family drama this week, I managed to miss the tenth anniversary of my milestone departure from San Francisco after thirteen years there. I had originally planned to get all philosophical about it, but the past few days have been really exhausting and frankly I’m just too fucking tired to bother tonight. Maybe later this week. Probably not.

For now, suffice to say that even though things didn’t turn out exactly as I’d planned ten years ago, I still think this move was one of my better decisions in life. San Francisco was over for me; it was well past time to leave. Despite the fact that a lot of really shitty things have happened to me (personal, health-related, and familial) in the past ten years, a lot of really good things have happened, too. I am pretty genuinely happy with where I am and who I am now. And that wasn’t really something I could say in San Francisco.

For what it’s worth, I’m not as fat now either, although I have managed to find some of that weight I lost over the past year or two.

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If you’re in the mood, please feel free to relive the cross-country excursion, with all its neon signs, roadside food, and automotive drama.

For reference…

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Random thoughts for a Saturday afternoon in a semi-rural hospital setting:

  • Involuntary commitments done through a hospital are much easier than those you do yourself at the magistrate’s office, but they take just as long. And I very much wish this were not something I knew firsthand.
  • It takes a special kind of person to be a hospice worker. Seriously.
  • It’s in the middle of nowhere and visiting will be a pain, but you gotta love a hospital with its own lake.
  • Way too many people who work with dementia patients cannot distinguish between a crisis and a problem and act accordingly. Hint: precious few things really qualify as crises.

From the archives

i’ve been thinking about instituting a feature here to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the website, in which I would link back to favorite posts from the past two decades. I was even thinking of developing my own Twitter hashtag and encouraging my seven readers to post their own favorites. But every time I get ready to start, it seems a little pretentious and self-involved so I stopped myself.

That said, last week’s backtrack inspired me, so here’s another one.

I think this post, of which I was reminded when a friend posted this on Facebook,  still holds up pretty well too. I do like that the author of the Guardian piece stated specifically that “it certainly isn’t positioning monogamous people as more blindly traditional or less emotionally evolved than you.” That’s always been one of the things that irritated me most about proponents of polyamory, in much the same way that it galls me when anyone has the audacity to try to create universally applicable rules or definitions for any relationships other than their own.

I really don’t think this requires a hashtag, though I do have another social media-inspired backtrack post in mind about how not liking “gay events” does not necessarily equate to “internalized homophobia.” But I don’t have the attention span for that tonight. Besides, my traditional Sunday night soup was extra good. I used Italian sausage. I may have to have more now.

I love LA…

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Now that my first tenure portfolio draft is mostly behind me, I’m letting myself get excited about my trip west. I’ve pretty much officially decided not to go northwest toward Seattle and Portland after the conference. It’s just more driving than I want to do; I’ll probably do them on a later trip, maybe next year and maybe involving a side journey to Alaska. Yes, that’s a pretty big maybe.

I’m really looking forward to some significant time in Los Angeles, which is someplace I never seem to get enough of. Also on the agenda is some road-tripping around the other parts of California that I actually miss and haven’t had a chance to see since I moved.

I probably won’t be spending any real time in San Francisco or the Bay Area except for the few days I’m in Oakland for the conference. I may do a little exploring in the East Bay, but that’s about it. I may spend a day or two in Sacramento as well, and I may actually venture southward on the 99.

I should probably book a flight this weekend. Should be a fun trip.

Gate City Boulevard

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Word on the (ahem) street is that High Point Road and Lee Street in Greensboro will become something called “Gate City Boulevard” starting this summer. This does not thrill me, as I’m generally not in favor of changing longtime street names in cities just on principle. I’m especially unimpressed when there’s no good reason for the change (like, say, to honor a historic individual or event) or to make navigation easier. This change will do neither.

I think this post from six years ago still holds up pretty well with respect to changes on the main drag of my old (and once again current) neighborhood. I still say High Point Road could stand a helping hand, but all in all, it’s a street that works well for its surrounding area and I’m not in favor of some grand scheme that will ultimately fail by trying to transform it into something it’s not. High Point Road is a working class boulevard serving an extremely diverse population from a variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds. It’s never going to be an upscale retail strip, no matter how many trees you plant on it. I’m all for adding desperately-needed sidewalks, and I’m fine with some cosmetic upgrades, but I don’t want to see the city lose sight of the fact that High Point Road is not some abandoned ghetto strip. It’s a street where most storefronts are occupied by businesses that employ people and serve the area. Any changes need to take these current occupants into account.

But back to the whole renaming thing. Greensboro has generally been kind of anal about renaming streets to serve navigational goals (i.e. not having streets change names every few blocks like in Charlotte). Your urban spatial history lesson for the day:

  • The most ridiculous example is the extension of Elm Street south of its form intersection with Eugene. The two streets did not intersect until Eugene was extended out from downtown in the early 1970s, at which point the city felt compelled to rename five or six miles of Elm Street south of the fork “Elm-Eugene Street.”
  • Holden Road used to run only from Friendly Avenue to where Wendover Avenue is today. The thoroughfare now known as Holden Road consists of new roadway plus chunks of what used to be Oakland Avenue, Pinecroft Road, and Osborne Road.
  • Friendly Avenue is made up of what use to be known as Gaston Street (downtown), part of Madison Avenue (Sunset Hills and Westerwood), and Friendly Road (from Aycock Street west).
  • Church Street downtown south of Summit Avenue used to be known as Forbis Street, while Summit Avenue from Elm to Forbis used to be called Church Street. Confused?
  • Randleman Road was originally Ashe Street within the city limits, and Ashe Street originally ran all the way downtown, ending along what is now called Federal Place.
  • Most of Merritt Drive was originally known as Pomona Road. the part that was actually in Pomona had another name, whose name escapes me now.
  • United Street was originally the westernmost of Oakland Avenue until the connection was broken by Wendover Avenue and the new Holden Road.
  • Yanceyville Street south of Wendover (through the Aycock neighborhood and by the old stadium) was called Bagley Street.
  • Murrow Boulevard was formerly part of Pearson and Percy Streets.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive was originally called Asheboro Street.
  • Vandalia Road contains pieces of what used to be Rocky Knoll Road and Freeman Mill Road. Creek Ridge Road and Branderwood Drive also have chunks of what used to be Freeman Mill Road.

I’m sure I’m missing a few. Feel free to chime in. And if you’re interested in seeing old maps of the city, this link should be fun for you.