and i laughed and laughed....

monday night i laughed more than i've laughed in a very long time. because monday night i went to 'get mortified' at the makeout room (a bar in sf). mortified is a show in many major (coastal) cities where individuals read from their adolescent diaries. you have to audition to get in, and they choose only the choicest material. my friend marta's sister was performing. the lineup included the following:

1. a broken hearted 17 year old and her first meaningless fling.
2. a nerdy 8th grader's aggressive 7-day plan to get aaron rosenberg to like her.
3. a stalker/16 year old boy who buys a mini camera to secretly photograph the object of his affection.
4. a reclusive poet who writes bizarre odes to the woods (animals, trees, etc.) in rhyming verse.
5. a really angry korean teenager in texas and her first acid trip.
6. a cheerleader from ohio and her romance with the football coach (ending in a football-themed rhyming poem for the broken hearted).
7. marta's sister, and her letter to herself in the future (written when she was in 8th grade) - "Dear Me,...what i most want to ask, what i really want to know, is are you still ME, ME?"

am i forgetting one? i might be. they were all hilarious. and the BEST part about the whole night was the combination of friends (new/old/different friend groups) who were there. and *i* didn't even facilitate their hanging out together. who knew? just one year after moving here, who knew that i would a) have friends and b) have more than two friends and c) that they would hang out together?! oh, and d) that they would all be such cool people? seriously, they're great.

shame!

i am shocked, shocked at the lack of sympathy i received from all of y'all last week. my toe hurt. now, where's the love?

saw ben kweller last night at the fillmore. ben kweller is the best. if you haven't heard him yet, check him out. fun, poppy music with a rock edge. even if you don't know the songs, i guarantee you'll like them. so much fun to see live, too. they even did an impromptu cover of "enter sandman" (they started the guitar riff to "back in black" but then couldn't remember the rest of the song). it was hilarious.

i went with tracy, tracy's 13-year old daughter caitlin, and caitlin's 13-year old friend fay. it was really fun. i absolutely dont' remember going to concert halls when i was 13 - with or without my mom. i also don't remember having cool music taste (um...showtunes and oldies don't count....right?). but caitlin and fay knew most of the words to most of the songs (about the same as me). i had to provide the chutzpah, though. when the show started, i was the one who led us through the crowd up to the front. at the end of the show, when ben was signing merchandise, i had to lead them to the front of the signing table (elbowing my way past several fans), talk to the talent, and take a picture of the two of them with ben. but, it was fun. and in the end i got a nifty poster.

cars.

on friday, the following scene took place while i was sitting (at a red light) in my car with the windows down.

i was, as usual, late to an appointment and trying to do three other things while behind the wheel (check my phone messages, look for my wallet and drink from my water bottle). as i was bent over my bag, i heard someone talking to me from outside of my car.

me: (looking out my window to the left) "whaaaaaa---?"

guy driving a pickup truck next to my car: (pointing at the sticker on my rear windshield) "i'd like to buy a smith college alumn a drink!"

me: "oh. um........(high-pitched nervours voice) not while i'm driving, (nervous laughter) AHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA."
(pretend to be looking for something in my bag)

guy: "so......what do you do these days?"

me (still stopped at the bloody red light): "oh. um...i work at fort mason."

light changes. i speed off.

it was really strange. and kind of brightened my day. but also kind of freaked me out. this kind of stuff never happens to me.

ow! my toe!

yesterday i stubbed my toe. seriously stubbed it. i was walking in flip flops on the sidewalk, and slammed my big toe into a slab of sidewalk concrete that was slightly raised above the others. and it HURT. reminding me that stubbed toes are one of my least favorite things on earth. when i was a kid, i used to stub them all the time - in the summer when i walked barefoot EVERYWHERE even on hot blacktop. and always stubbed my toes in the parking lot at our swim club. so last night i limped home and whimpered to my roommates while i swaddled my toe in ice and watched 'grey's anatomy' (who writes that crap, anyway?). ouch.

Work, work, work.

i keep having dreams about work. it's crazy. i mean, i recognize that getting all the arts residencies at sf schools up and running this fall is frustrating - it requires a lot of back and forth between our office and artists, as well as our office and school officials (teachers and adminstrators). imagine a world where no one is easily accessible via email or phone because they're teaching all day.

i just had no idea that it would start invading my sleep. two nights ago, i dreamed that a residency we've been having trouble establishing (due to classroom scheduling issues) miraculously worked out fine (happy dream. until i woke up and realized that everything was still a mess). last night i dreamed that a friend of mine from high school had started working with elderly people doing arts residencies and my organization (which was actually my old office at harvard, with the old executive director) co-opted her program and took over the residencies without my knowledge. (anxious/conflicted dream. until i woke up and realized that it was a dream).

i think the bottom line is that i feel like i have too little control at work - everything depends on someone else's decision, or someone else's response. That's just the nature of the work. but it's starting to get to me.

sunRISE lakes (not sunSET. still beautiful.)

as we were folding ourselves into "happy baby pose" (on our backs with our bent legs in the air, holding onto the soles of our feet), our yoga instructor said, "i always think of this pose as the main reason why naked yoga is wrong."

i think she's right, you know.

yoga pics and things in my head

here's one pic from the yoga in yosemite trip i went on from 9/8-10. as you can see, a beautiful setting for yoga (just like in the calendars).

so...some of you know that i have recently been doing rideshare - which is a bay area term for casual carpooling. At certain points around the east bay, people line up (usually in front of BART stations) and pile 2 at a time into stranger's cars to take them across the bridge into san francisco. since the carpool requirement here is 3 people/car, this helps everyone get into the city faster via the carpool lane, and we all save some money - the driver saves on the $3 toll, and the passenger saves on the $3-odd it costs to take bart to the city from the east bay.

i've been a passenger at rideshare, but since it takes me forever to get to work on public transport, i've recently become a rideshare driver. i pick up strangers in my car and drive them into the city. sometimes we chat. sometimes i turn up npr and we all sit in silence, sometimes we listen to the president's press conferences and share mortified guffaws and comments.

This morning, as a passenger was getting into my car, i heard this strange ringing. I looked around "what is that? is that you, or is it me?" turns out, the guy next to me in the passenger side had a hearing aid, and i think my fastrak (or fastlane) transponder was setting it off. i apologized, removed the transponder from its place on the dash, and smiled. he apologized for not being a very good conversationalist. "no, no" i said too loudly, as people do when they talk to the hearing impaired. "i usually listen to the radio, anyway," (pointing dramatically to the radio).

we drove on in silence. when i got to the corner of fremont and harrison, i dropped my two passengers off as usual, wishing them a good day. the gentleman next to me got out, and wished me a good day. then he stopped before he closed the door, leaned down and said "don't worry too much about imaginary conversations. it's the sign of a creative mind."

me - slightly confused, smiling electrically, wanting to make up for my earlier faux pas and thinking i had misunderstood him, "oh...um, yeah, ok. thanks!!"

driving away, i tried to figure out what he meant. i chuckled a little, and gave up. then i glanced down at the notepad i keep on my dashboard, to record thoughts and mileage. Two days ago, I had written, "I waste so much energy on imaginary conversations."

OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH. While we were sitting there in silence, the whole ride, this gentleman had been looking around and had read my thought (jotted down just below a slogan i'd found funny from the monterey poultry company's truck - "poultry in motion"). and i don't know how long he'd been thinking about it. probably quite a while.

but it did make me feel better. i laughed on the rest of the drive to the office.

kick ass yoga in yosemite

y'all. i went backpacking. y'know, where you strap it all (food, tent, clothes) to your back and hike to the middle of a beautiful nowhere and make it your somewhere. and do yoga there. that's what i did.

a while ago i signed up on a whim with a ucsf weekend trip - yoga in yosemite. a yoga teacher i know here in oakland was running the yoga part of it, so i thought i'd give it a try. previous experience? well....i'd been hiking before. mt. monadnock totally counts, right?

i was a little nervous, having come back from the sierra's on labor day with a splitting headache (altitude? stress? dehydration? allergies? dunno). but i went anyway, drinking the whole time and gaining a reputation for the most hydrated/likely-to-have-to-pee-at-any-given-moment. and it was great 12 other people, including 2 ucsf guides (who were very cool) and the yoga instructor (also, very cool) - we camped out on friday night, then hiked in to sunset lake in yosemite on sat morning (after a frigid morning yoga class at the campground). the hike was up, up and away in the hot, hot sun. but we took it easy, and everyone was pretty good company, so it went by quickly (either that or it's like childbirth - you forget the reality of the pain as soon as it's over -- "eh, giving birth wasn't *that* painful. really, it was beautiful.").

then we found a beautiful spot by the lake, camped out, and chowed down. some went swimming. oh, and we did some restorative yoga at DUSK on a LAKE in the middle of beautiful yosemite. it was HEAVEN. next day? breakfast, yoga, hang out, swim, lunch, pack up hike out.

really there's a lot more to write here but i'm exhausted. hopefully, i'll have some pictures soon...as soon as i send my cvs camera to mom, have her develop the pics, and then send them back to me. (there are no cvs's here, and no disposable digital cameras)

whew. what a refreshing weekend! ended with a serious moment of mangia at a pizza joint on the way home. fun.

let's hear it for labor day!

i never realized how good i had it in the union until i got a job with full benefits......and no dental insurance. that's just how it works. no dental. i guess teeth just aren't that important. bummer.

things are generally pretty good. went to TWO baseball games last week. the one on friday night (both were at the a's coliseum in oakland) featured fireworks at the end ("and now, chevron presents, a fireworks spectacular tribute to the stars of motown!").

tooootally cheesy but i loved it. and sang along (with tristen and jess and dave). and bopped a little. they even played my favorite "i want you back" by the jackson five. sigh.

today i'm fighting the same headache i've had for three days. it's pretty awful. ugh. other than that, another sunny day in san francisco. what i wouldn't give for a crisp fall new england day!