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Randomly Monday

Saw the new Sylvan Learning Center commercial this morning, featuring yet another annoying, doe-eyed, blonde Mormon child and his annoying, doe-eyed, blonde Mormon mom. When will they just go ahead and start using the tagline “Sylvan Learning Centers: Fixing all the damage those horrible brown-skinned children have inflicted on your child’s education”?

Or maybe: “Sylvan Learning Centers: Cheaper than White Flight”…

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Every time I walk by the old Pacific Stock Exchange and see how it’s been stripped of all its dignity and transformed into an upscale gym, I think about how I’d almost rather that they’d torn the damned thing down. Even if you aren’t a supporter of capitalism — and I realize that a significant number of San Franciscans are rather ambivalent about this particular economic system — you have to wish they could have found some better use for a building with that much history than to turn it into a trendy latter-day sweatlodge for vain, self-obsessed yuppies…

Alas..

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I finally asked around and found out that yes, there is in fact a San Francisco city ordinance responsible for the fact that every building in the whole bloody city is freezing cold all winter long and stiflingly hot during September and October.

Enacted a year before I arrived in the city, the Structural Temperature Equality Ordinance of 1991 required that no heating or air conditioning system of any sort be employed in any San Francisco building unless said system were designed to REDUCE the temperature during the winter and ELEVATE it during the summer. It further stated that no variance of more than three degrees shoud be allowed between the outdoor and indoor air temperature within any building designed for human occupancy…

I think it had something to do with preserving the sensibilities of homeless people without heated or air-conditioned shopping carts…

And yes, I’m making this up. However, keep in mind that (a) there really DOES seem to be no discernible climate control anywhere in this godforsaken city, and (b) our Board of Supervisors is NOT above passing really silly and pointless legislation…

January Past

The Ghost of Mid-January Past:

  • Twenty-five years ago today: I was in high school, worried about getting my first “D”…
  • Twenty years ago this week: I was depressed about unrequited love and that sort of thing…
  • Fifteen years ago this week: tearoom sex at UNCG…
  • Nine years ago yesterday: This website made its debut, albeit under a somewhat different title, URL, and format…
  • Five years ago Sunday: I bought my current G4, and it’s definitely due for a replacement, despite being very dependable and in damned good shape for its advanced age…

I feel like I should do something important and journal-worthy today, but I’m not sure exactly what…

San Francisco 100, Me 0

So this past weekend, after several years of fights and struggles, San Francisco finally won and I was ready to admit that the city had finally sucked all the life out of me. It wasn’t a big deal, really, and I don’t even care to elaborate. It was just one more weekend’s plans and excitement thwarted by various factors that normal people living in normal cities don’t have to deal with, and I finally just cracked…

I know a lot of completely reasonable and rational people who like it here. I wish them well as I prepare to free up one more mildly substandard and somewhat overpriced apartment in a couple of months…

Thanks to my wonderful husband for putting up with my breakdown this weekend. I promise I’ll be better as soon as the doctor ups my thyroid medicine just a little more, baby…

Vehicles That Taste Good

Y’know, for my money, nothing says “style”, “elegance”, “sophistication”, “class”, and just plain old “good taste” quite like a big honkin’ SUV limo…

Taxation Without Morals?

So has anyone on the SF Board of Supes considered that the proposed 17-cent grocery bag tax (oh wait, I mean “fee”) will — in much the same manner as high cigarette taxes — place the city in the rather sticky position of depending on commodities it theoretically despises just in order to collect additional revenue?

No. Probably not…

The Weekend

 

Things I enjoyed this weekend:

  • My long, pointless, and aimless Saturday drive which ended in Sacramento, and involved taking lots of pictures, some of which I may post some day…
  • The new Target in Albany, with its two levels, its cheap food department, and its seeming lack of long lines…
  • Even more cheap stuff at the new Winco in Vacaville…
  • Lunch at one of the only Chick-fil-A outlets in California…
  • Dinner at Gaspare’s Friday night with Dan, Jamie, and Eugene…
  • The Three Faces of Eve…

Things I could have skipped this weekend:

  • Doing emergency repairs on the kitchen sink — using a combination of duct tape and electrical tape — in a valiant effort to keep the damned thing working until we move into an apartment in Charlotte which (we hope) doesn’t have 90-year-old plumbing…
  • The traffic on the Bay Bridge last night as my cheap frozen food from Target and extra Chick-fil-A takeout began wilting in the car…
  • Having to wrap myself in two comforters because I (a) have no circulation to speak of lately, and (b) had no boy to snuggle with…

The Joys of Lowered Expectations

The other night, I went to dinner with some friends. I was all giddy when we found a parking space only three blocks away from the restaurant. One of the things I’ll really miss when I leave The Land of Lowered Expectations™ is this ability to get all excited about small things that people in almost any other city would find quite unspectacular…

For example, any of these can give me that warm, squishy feeling of being the luckiest guy on earth right now, but it probably won’t be that way in Charlotte:

  • Going out to the car and discovering that it hasn’t been broken into.
  • Coming home and not finding someone smoking crack or shooting up on the doorstep.
  • Going to the supermarket on a weekend and actually being able to find bread and milk.
  • Having a bus arrive on time and actually being able to sit down once on board.
  • Walking a whole three blocks without being spoken to by a single homeless person or Scientologist.
  • Getting through a day without having to smell marijuana smoke nor urine in any public place.
  • Visiting heated and air conditioned buildings with adequate plumbing.