Halloween Take 1

I was in a costume-crisis. Friday night Odette (of Melt! fame) invited me to go with her to an all-campus Halloween party at Stanford (where her friend's friend's girlfriend is a grad student) and I had nothing to wear three hours before we were set to leave. Thinking on the fly I decided to cut a green pillowcase ( tube top) and wear a purple sheet ( wrap-around skirt) to be a Project Runway outfit gone wrong.

Unfortunately this was an uber-lame party with no alcohol. It also made me feel so beyond college. I realize I am technically still in college but this 6 month hiatus + the fact that all my friends here have graduated makes me feel much older. The party was a freshman-year esque blow. And as one of the guys in our group said, "This party is like an abortion." Amen? After 5 minutes we were like, let's go, and the Palo Alto bar (think an Evanston bar a la 1800 club) and at a pizza place (where I sluttily allowed a man by the name of Manuel to hit on me and kiss my head for a free slice) were better. Also the Stanford campus is BEAUTIFUL. Plus, I cannot fathom going to a school with good weather all year round.

Adding to the lameness of the night no one thought I was dressed up! Now I can take this as a compliment that "I made it work" and my costume looked like real clothes. However, I know this is not the point of Halloween . Anyone have last minute suggestions for my hopeful Halloween Take 2 in the Castro?

10 things of note

I have nothing to write so I will write this:

1) My quality of life decreased ever so slightly tonight because I found out Grey's Anatomy was a rerun.
2) I haven't been that stressed about post-grad, since I'm not in the stress bubble that is Northwestern, but then I started getting stressed about not being stressed enough. Who am I?
3) I'm newly obsessed with the song "Blankest Year" by Nada Surf that randomly appeared on my mytunes. I think it was on the Lollapalooza mix we got at the festival, maybe? I love the line "I saw life turn into a tv show" since I ALWAYS think that. But my mom made a good point, maybe life's not like tv but they base tv shows on life.
4) The girls at work were talking about how after staring at the computer all day at work they can't even look at a computer screen when they get home. I can't relate. I (gchat)heart the internet.
5) At the gym I occasionally notice people wearing the free t-shirt we got with gym admission. Socially acceptable, yes or no?
6) I'm slightly sick. Not really sick, but legit enough to take a sick day in 3rd grade if I had had a stay-at-home mom.
7) Halloween crisis! I don't know what I'm wearing OR what I'm doing. I want to go to the Castro, maybe, since it's supposed to be ridic and a to-be-experienced once thing. I thought I passed a costume shop every day, but I went in today and it turns out it was a costume shop for PETS. Last year I didn't dress up at all since I just went to homecoming on that Saturday and then my POZ feature was due on Nov. 1 and I obv procrastinated it.
8) I just joined Myspace today. I think it's time. But I didn't make a profile yet, because it's not time for that. Related: read this funniest thing ever about profile no-nos, courtesy of craigslist.
9) I finished writing the art gallery article and I have absolutely no clue what to do at work tomorrow. Maybe I can go home early. ugh, i hate being a cubicle monkey, but TGIF.
10) I'll try to get better about putting pictures up here. I'm just not a visual person.
xoxoxo, diana

Yeah, I met the Cho brothers

So for the past six weeks I've been watching the quite excellent reality show the Amazing Race. My roommate Erica saw me watching and casually mentioned that her friend's boyfriend's roommate is on the show (Godwin- one of the Asian brothers). I filed this into my random quasi-celebrity connection to save for an anectdote but didn't think it would affect my life. However, three weeks ago Erica said her friend's boyfriend's roommate hosted a viewing party every week. "AND ARE WE GOING?!" I asked before she could saw any more. "Yeah, of course." she replied, slightly taken aback by my overt enthusiasm and not yet aware of my extreme love of reality tv and meeting celebrities.

The Cho bros didn't host the party the next two weeks, but we went at the first available opportunity, last night. SO FUN. It was great watching the show on two big screen tvs (the Amazing Race interrupted the world series...I'm sure the rest of the bar patrons were happy about that) with people who were actually on it and 40 of their closest friends. I won't bore you with plot details, since I'm guessing most people don't watch it, but thankfully Erwin and Godwin have made it another week. And I got to meet reality tv contestants! They were very nice, though in our extended convo w/Godwin he talked about boring investment banking and asked Erica about working at Google and didn't reveal too much about the show (except that the one legged girl's boyfriend was much nicer than he appeared on tv). I didn't take any pictures, because the mood didn't quite strike and I already felt quite tooly especially because when I left I said, "Congrats on making it another week." Um, who am I. But all in all, it was a night to remember. Erica's friend Amanda noted that it was more fun to watch my reaction then to watch the show, similar to the reason parents take their children to see Sesame Street Live.

"That's not sketchy, that's modern"

Let me just note that since my vow last week to improve my social life, I've seriously doubled my number of friends, or at least cruise friends. In case you're wondering, cruise friends are friends you use to have fun when you're in a specific situation (ie. a cruise) with no reason to keep in touch after the duration. Sometimes cruise friends morph into real friends, but that is not a requirement. So this week two new interns arrived, so now there's a great group of four girls to eat lunch with and go post-work drink 'n bitch. And on Friday I went out with new friend Odette (coffee shop enviro) and a couple of her friends and had much fun, attending Melt! Friday open mic night (far superior to Monday actually), went bar hopping and smoked pot (!) on her roof (!!!). And I still love my roommates, who I am even more grateful for after meeting Odette's roommate, who she also found on craigslist, but who resembles a serial killler.

However, I still wanted to meet lesbians, and with the exception of my roommates' rugby friends, I really hadn't met any. Not that I have many gay girl friends at school, but I'm aiming higher here, since it is San Francisco.(Preface: I was so only going to tell this story to select people since it seemed sketchy to a non-gay audience, but as my friend Rob said when I told him, "That's not sketchy, that's modern" so instead I will tell EVERYONE).

So last night with no plans on the horizon, except the always available possibility of going to Melt! (which is a last resort, let's be real. Even the guys in Cheers wouldn't go to Cheers if they had something better to do). So, bored, I happened on craigslist w4w. Sifting through the "My boyfriend's gone tonight, want to play" and "I want a girlfriend now-NO MEN" varieties, I saw an ad from a girl trying to get a platonic group together to go to some club opening. I responded, and I talked to this non-sketchy sounding girl who offered to give me a ride. I IM'd everyone I thought wouldn't judge me, to get approval, but no one was there, so I just went with it, hoping this chick wasn't going to steal my kidney.

She didn't, and the group of 4 of us hung out all night at this really fun club with a great mix of music and girls. Two of the girls I came with were great (one girl, also new to the area and apparently more cautious/less lazy than me, met us at the club). The other non-driver: um, ok, think about a 15 year old boy, in appearance and personality. I'm convinced she didn't have any friends to go out with because they all refuse to be seen with her. As we were walking into the club, she's like "Who's going to carry me back to the car when I'm too drunk to walk?" LOL, we thought. Um, no, this bitch got shwasted and left perfect strangers circa 5 hours earlier to carry her to the car. However, she claims she got three phone numbers, and I wouldn't have believed her except one called while we were driving back:
Choice excerpts we heard:
"Um, who is this?"
" I don't remember you."
"Do you have text? I won't remember any of this so why don't you text me this and we'll go out."
I did not get any numbers (maybe my next week goal will be not to be awkward). However, this girl's mad skills confirmed for me that I just need to be more confident, because if she can do it, I certainly can. But still, it was really fun! It was great music ("Summer Lovin' from Grease remix!), great people, and now I have dykes I can call to go out with for my remaining weeks in the city.

You really can get everything on Craiglist.

I do have a job

I realized I havne't actually written about work. This is 1) because we were told not to, 2) nothing uber-exciting's going on, but also nothing's bad. But since I spend quite a bit of time there I will give it a shot:

If San Francisco Magazine were a person it would be a San Francisco socialite. A straight white 36 year old woman who got her degree in English from UC-Berkeley. She's married to someone who makes enough money that she can devote her time to "philanthropy" and creating a jewlery line. She goes to all the art galleries and show openings, is politically active (liberal, of course) without losing sleep over genocide in Sudan. She wants to know what's going on around her, and she loves the Bay area. She has enough disposable income that she can do whatever she likes without really thinking about money. She is fashionable, without being fashion obsessed and is a complete foodie who probably never cooks because she's so busy eating out. She'll have children, but not yet.

Keeping this in mind, every article I've written so far has been about art or theater. Which is cool. My first big story is "Top 5 affordable art galleries" but when I say "affordable" this is SFMag affordable which is like when Sarah Jessica Parker says she doesn't only wear expensive clothes, she also shops at Club Monaco. To me, $3500 for a painting is expensive. But that's just me. Still, it was really fun to go to all these galleries and chat with the owners. I tried not to seem too stupid when they asked what kind of art I'm interested in. But this totally inspired me to acquire some design sense and buy art when I have a permanent home.

I'm really enjoying writing these pieces, and what I love about magazine writing is how I can play with every single word and really use my own voice. I love being able to be witty and sit for 20 minutes figuring out sentence structure. And I feel like learning about art will definitely prove to be beneficial to my life. But while I don't regret coming here AT ALL, I think my future lies in less fluffy writing. I think I want to write about politics. Like, I care about politics way more than most people (I think secretly because all of politics is just gossip dressed up as something more important). I was discussing the elections with environmentalist friend, and I assumed she'd know all about it because, she works for the Sierra Club, but she didn't know that Lieberman is from Connecticut. And I don't blame her, it's not actually important, it's just important to me, the way knowing who plays on the San Francisco 49ers is important to other people. But I just find politics really really interesting, and I'm thinking maybe I should go to D.C. after graduation.
Thoughts?

Blogging binge continues

Whelming. adv. Exactly as expected. Not good or bad. Sentence: Open-mic night was whelming.

So I went to open-mic night (which I spelled wrong in the last post. So embarassing since I pride myself on being/looking like a good speller) at Melt. And, the host aka "the black guy" gave me a special shoutout when I walked in. Melt has decided to enter the digital age, and were podcasting the open-mic night. I'm sure that will really get a lot of traffic, especially since I can't find it online, and we all know how good I am at googling. The audience was pretty similar to the crowd I saw yesterday. The performers were a few old men playing self-written songs on a guitar and "The Holy Man" as he is known reading Ginsburg poetry. My hopeful bff (the neurotic environmentalist from Cornell) didn't show, and other than the delightful, motherly bartender I was the only female. So after an hour I was like, let's go. (Plus the Bachelor was on).

I'm sure I'll go back. Board games and wine are some of my favorite things, and it's a wonderful place to go on a lazy Sunday. But I kind of am not sure if I belong there. Scratch that, I belong there, since anyone who wants to belong there can belong there. But sitting there, in this welcoming, warm environment watching these people pour their hearts and souls out, I felt like a detached, elitist anthropologist (which is not helped by the fact that I'm writing this down). Still being there made me happy because it's nice to know that i every city there must be places like this where anyone, no matter who they are, can have a place to gather and be with other people and perform and never have to be alone except for after 10pm on weeknights and midnight on weekends.

Why today was amazing

So I'd been mildly depressed the last couple weeks, just like, ok, I've been here a month, the city's awesome,f but I haven't really met anyone I'd clicked with, and will it be like this the whole time?

But after sleeping til noon then online communicating with some of my favorite people in Evanston and ny I ventured out of the apartment and on my way to pick up pictures I developed (since my digi is ghetto) I was DRAWN into this coffee shop a block from my apartment. As I sat near the counter reading "Running with Scissors" (good/weird) I saw this normal looking girl with non-blowdried hair sitting at the counter look up from her book to discuss the weather with this older french woman. The weather? That's a conversation I can handle, I thought, so using my empty tea cup as an excuse I finagled my way into their conversation, ("yeah, I'm from NY, and I'll never be able to face the cold after being here," I offered.) And so it began.

At the risk of being completely cliche, this coffee shop/wine bar is like Cheers. By the time I left four hours later everyone shouted, "Bye Diana, see you later!" though I, a little embarassed, can't remember everyone's names. Everyone includes:
-the friendly possibly alcoholic Parisian woman, who I bought a drink since I needed a minimum $10 to charge my glass of wine to my credit card.
-the Kevin Smith lookalike in tyedye who attempted to improve my backgammon skills and I tried to prevent from flirting w/me.
-the black guy whose only job I can gather is hosting the coffee shop's open mike night (which I will be attending tomorrow) and who, 20 years ago lived on 4th st. between A and B and when I told him I lived 2 blocks from there this summer asked if Key Foods is still around (it is.)
-the antique shop owner who completely schooled me in backgammon and gave me his business card in hopes of being featured in San Francisco magazine.
-the British coffee shop owner who kept refilling my wine glass (hence, my current tipsyness) and also gave me her business card in hopes of being featured in San Francisco magazine.
-the cute transplanted Midwesterner bartender who works 3 nights a week and hangs out in the coffee shop the rest of his life.
- theenvironmentalist, neurotic recent Cornell grad from Jersey native who came to sf 3 weeks ago and lives in North Beach but agrees it's not her scene. It was her first time at the coffee shop too. We want to go out in the Mission (if only she were gay, and then we fell in love, but alas, life's not perfect) since we are both very not-North Beach. She's totally someone I could see actually being friends w/and she wants more friends too, since the friends she has are all coupled, and we exchanged digis and she invited me to this scavenger hunt around sf she and her friends are throwing, but I need to find a pair, which as she noted is a good excuse for a date, and is maybe finally the motivation I need to push me out of the asexual rut I've been in for far too long.

And that, my friends, is why today was amazing. Hopefully I'm in such a good mood once all the wine has worn off and I have as much fun at open-mike night as I'm planning to.

And as per Josh's request

I got a Google shirt from my roommate. It's yellow. I never wear yellow but I plan to wear this shirt because it's from Google, which is my favorite company. I use Google for everything. Today when I didn't want to go to the gym I googled, "I hate going to the gym" just so I could see that I have 1,160 kindred spirits. I found another kindred spirt last night, at this book reading I went to, this non-gym goer read about how she never worked out and decided she was going to go on a Richard Simmons cruise to remedy this. Did you know he's not openly gay? And some of the women had crushes on him. But anywayyy, I still went to the gym since I'm attempting to be hardcore. But I hate the gym like woah. But I really like yoga even though the instructor totally decided I was remedial/retarded and took pity on me. In other news, I also spend way too much time on facebook. It makes me sad when I see the newsfeed and all my friends in Evanston are attending parties that I won't be going to. This weekend I probably would have gone to Tommy's party, even though i'm not friends with him, I know that like 20 of my friends were attending the party. And tonight I would have seen a movie w/Marcy and Erica. I really need to stop reading fbook/talking to school friends every day. But I know my homesickness for Evanston is false nostalgia since when I'm at school I'm a stressball and it's not like these social outings I'm pining for are orgasmi. And San Francisco is truly really good mostly, I'm just in a blah mood at this moment for no really great reason except that I'm in a new city where I have about 3.5 friends and I'm stream of conscious blogging which I don't usually do since I hate the emo-ness of people who do that.
p.s.I think Josh should start a blog too. It can chronicle the struggles of spending days sleeping in, "running errands," hanging out in bakeries, going out every night and facing a quarter-life crisis when Friday nights role around.
xoxoxoxoxo, diana

ranting

overheard in San Francisco:
"I don't know anyone who agrees with George W. Bush's policies. And these are people from all over the country- New York, California."--woman, Embarcadero

Ok, let's analyze this statement for a second. Let's hope that since I missed the beginning and the end of her conversation, she was using this anectdote to show how she only knows a specific subsect of the American population and NOT to prove Bush's almost dead approval ratings or to predict the midterm election results. Because as scary and improbably as it might seem to both of us, 30 to 40 percent of Americans approve of the job he's doing. I hope this woman realizes that the, maybe 500 people she has discussed Bush's politics with from the diverse areas of San Francisco, New York and even Florida, do not represent a random sample of Americans. Let's get some perspective, people.

End rant.

New rant:
IN OTHER NEWS I realized tonight why when I've told people at work I live in North Beach, I often get a groan. When I think of North Beach I think of North Beach by day. I think of the old Italian men playing checkers and Chinese ladies doing tai chi in the park and the beautiful churches and the non-chain restaurants and the charm and character. But I don't really think of the night life, since I've only gone out out in North Beach maybe 10 hours total since I've been here and since my recent epiphany that I may or may not hate going out in general I didn't want to blame North Beach. But tonight as I was walking back from the movies (The Queen- I recommend) I saw the fratty, drunken North Beach of stereotype. And it kind of made me want to vom. When I always thought San Francisco of popular imagine, I thought liberal, gay, weird, offbeat. Not frat boys slightly grown up.
NEW GOAL: Make more friends who are the type of people who go out in neighborhoods that don't resemble a frat party so I can enjoy North Beach by day but find a different scene by night. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm over blogging, but I'm not.
I don't know what to write about.
San Francisco's cool.
Work's good.
But I'm off today.
Even better.
Have you ever seen Rosie O'Donnell's blog?
It's lame
But she kind of writes like this
In short sentences
I just saw tourists taking pictures of the church
Where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe got married
I stare at it every day
But once you stare at something too much, it's no longer special
It's just there.