I guess this is growing up

K, I feel like I should write SOMETHING so here's a diana-esque late-night musing:

At work today, my fellow interns, f(our other girls who are now my bffaeae except not really but kind of), and I chatted about the potential trials of having a husband have a sex-change, wacky freshman roommate stories (I obv could share a few) and most importantly the kick-ass tree trimming party one of the interns is throwing Saturday. Then our boss walked in. Except our boss is out this week so our substitute boss walked in. She kept asking about the holiday party, ("that sounds so much fun!") kind of fishing for an invite until she shamelessly invited us to HER holiday party. It seemed weird she wanted to come to our party because she's our substitute boss, but then we remembered she's like 22. In any other setting she's a peer. And she was an intern a year ago, but if she hadn't been such a type-A go-getter and graduated from school early, she could have been one of us right now.

As I dip my toe into the real world, I am trying to gather information that will serve me well once I am a permanent resident. One of the things that continually shocks me even though it shouldn't: the narrowing of the age/power relationship gap. Growing up my parents, teachers, camp counselors were older than me. The kids I babysat for were younger than me. Throughout my entire education I was more valuable or powerful than someone a grade younger than me but less so than those a grade ahead. But that's quickly evaporating. While age kind of counts for something, merit, talent, luck and connections count for more. In the not-so-distant future I could have a boss who's younger than me or be the boss to someone who's older than me.

So moral of this story...life as I know it will very soon change forever. And in case you were wondering we decided to be nice and invite Editor to the party, though she probably won't come for very long, and it could be a tad awk, but not too much

In other news: tonight I had a cab driver who said he was 7'3 and could only fit 3 people in the cab because he has to bring his seat back so far!!!

i'm ok

Ok, so I deleted the most miserable blog post ever, because I decided it did not fit into the spirit of the blog and the careful branding of myself I've worked so hard at. So those of you who are true stalkers were graced with the dark side of me and the rest of you, well, you really should be reading regularly if you want to see these deleted scenes. And thanks to those of you who checked up on me to make sure I'm not suicidal, I appreciate it. :)

So my weekend has changed from depressed to just kind of boring. I've learned my lesson and I will be attending Thanksgivings in New York from now until eternity or until I make my own family and value my family of procreation more than the family I was born into as is the American way, (according to Intro to Sociology).

And today was pretty ok. Exhibit A: I bought a balloon Rudolph the rednosed reindeer from a homeschooled balloon artist on the bus. Exhibit B: I got a haircut with reddish highlights I always talk about getting but never do, and I basically am liking it. Exhibit C: I bought these cute shoes, and a kid at the store was like, "You should buy them. You looked happier once you put them on."

Thankgodyouupdatedyourblog.com

Last night I went out in North Beach w/my roommate and some of her friends and their friends. A member of the party train, a 30-year old male teacher I'd never met before who hit on every member of said train, got arrested. (I was "quite attractive" and received a booty dance). In case you want to spend four hours in a drunk tank in San Francisco, here's a how-to guide with last night as your role model

If you are a drunk person:
1)If you are carrying a closed beer can and Sort of Good Cop politely says, "Buddy, just a warning, don't open it" open it. Ten feet from the officer.
2) When Sort Of Good Cop's partner, Bad Cop pulls you aside for having an open beer can, call this butch-looking woman "sir." She'll really appreciate it.
3) Proceed to yell at cops. Your drunk friend/friends of friends should proceed to jump in. Except one of your top 3 friends in the city's sister, who should leave the scene because of worry about her potential political career.
4) When Sort of Good Cop tells one of your top 3 friends in the city, "You might want to take your buddy home. He's pretty drunk" your friend should answer, "Yeah, don't worry, the bars are closing soon anyway."
5)Curse at the cops. They'll admire your gumption.
6) When officer is handcuffing you, all of the members of the party train in their various states of drunkenness should try to reason with the cops, except for one who ran away because of a potential political career. My personal awesome contribution: I say, "We'll take him bed Sort of Sort of Good Cop says, "He can't go back with you. You're all drunk." I say, "Really? You mean we're drunk Saturday night in North Beach?! Since when is that a crime?" I'm sure I really helped the cause.
7) After you're handcuffed, and stuck in the drunk bus, one of your top 3 friends in the city should try to get arrested to. Out of solidarity. Actually, I kind of found that honorable, not gonna lie.
8) After that doesn't work, said friend (half-Mexican fyi) should say AT LEAST four times. "I can't believe they arrested him! He's a teacher! He lives in the city! He's white! He's from Sonoma! There are a lot of BLACK people here from Oakland who probably have knives. If there's anyone who should be arrested it should be them! Not a WHITE guy from SONOMA!" Your party train will be really impressed by your racism.

Anatomy of a bad day

Today was shitty. Nothing bad happened, it just sucked, you know, and it was totally a self-fulfilling prophecy. An Australia Day to quote my mom who was quoting the best book ever "Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good very bad day." So I woke up at noon which is not unusual for me, and as much as anyone claims differently I don't expect this to change with age. I had no forseeable plans, so I did nothing for a little while as I pondered my unappealing options- including gym and cleaning my room- when I decided I would go visit my long-lost friends the sea lions. As I was very slowly getting ready, at 3pm I get a call from my landlord.

How have I not blogged about Landlord yet? He is ridiculous. He takes years to fix anything yet is really proud of himself when he does. He claims to be working on his book about faith healing, but really he's just walking around North Beach picking up rent checks. He comes over at random hours and is surprised when we're annoyed.

So this call was to tell me he was showing someone my room in, oh, 5 minutes. But even though it was 3pm I was still in pjs. When I told Landlord this he was totally judging me. Still, I quickly throw my clothes under my bed, put on jeans to open up my home to Landlord and the prissy girl he shows the apartment to. Girl is a bitch and wants no part in small talk. I finally leave while Landlord again judges my "lazy day" which I am totally entitled to, because unlike him I actually work the rest of the week instead of pretending to make phone calls about broken sinks.

I go see the sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf. They are lame. Now for my first two weeks in sanfran, the sea lions were my only friends. I visited them about six times and they never disappointed. However today they disappointed. Instead of their usual cuddling and fighting, today they barely moved. Like me, they were apparently feeling blah. I wanted to tell the tourists surrounding me, "You should have been here two months ago, they were so much better." However, this seemed like nothing to brag about, so I stopped myself.

Then at 4:30 or so, wanting a plan, I decided I would take the F street car as far as it can go (the Castro) just for an activity, and once there I would have dinner. Dinner would include meat, which I was craving. However, three minutes into the ride, I heard "Last stop." Yup, I was on the wrong direction. Awesome. I took this as a sign from the heavens that my day was supposed to be blah, so I went to In 'n Out for dinner.

Ok, I didn't expect In 'n Out to be GOOD, in the classic sense, but Californians in diaspora talk about it so much, I figured it would be special. No. It's like McDonald's. I think this shows how starved we, as a people in this gentrified world, are for a regional identity. We'll grasp to a restaurant that is only a local chain because it's not good enough to expand nationally.

Then I went to Barnes & Nobles. Then I went home. Now I'm home. And I refuse to make this day better because I kind of want today to continue sucking so I can just wake up tomorrow and have a fresh start. That doesn't really make sense, but to me it does.

Pombo kills puppies

On Tuesday, I plan to join the majority of my fellow Americans and not vote. While I am registered to vote in Illinois and New York (which I think is illegal), I am currently residing in neither and since all the major races in both districts are firmly colored blue, performing my civic duty for the sake of performing a civic duty isn't enough motivation for me to write in for an absentee ballot.

My nonvoter status, however, did not stop me from trying to get other people to do as I say, not as I do. On Saturday I went with Odette, who works for the Sierra Club, canvassing door-to-door for Jerry McNerney (D), who is running against Richard Pombo (R) in California's 11th district. Pombo is a totally horrible corrupt person who enjoys killing endangered species. He's been in Congress since the massacre of 1994 and the Sierra Club and other legit groups consider him the biggest enemy of the environment in D.C (after Bush, obv). So even though his reelection was orignally supposed to be a cakewalk in this largely Republican district, environmental groups etc. got behind McNerney's campaign (which is totally 'i'm not Pombo'), Pombo got caught up in a few of the scandals spreading around Republicans in Congress like the flu and now the race is basically a toss-up.

This brought me to Pleasanton, CA, a very suburban surburb an hour north of sf. My mini-bus from the city joined about 300 people from throughout the bay area who were all part of some very Wildllife something or other coalition. I was hoping to meet a lot of crazies, but I think environmentalists are actually pretty down to earth and I met some super-cool, friendly people,

AND GUESS WHO ELSE WAS THERE?! Jennifer Garner! While a celebrity sighting was totallly NOT THE REASON I WENT (really!) Bennifer: the way-better sequel was scheduled to speak at the rally before we went door-to-door. However, Ben Affleck (a nonvoting hypocrite, much like yourstruly) was stuck in L.A. with a migraine. So his cool and hot wife Jennifer Garner came alone and was super-adorable and nervous about making a speech, since really Ben's the political one, and one wouldn't normally think to call Jennifer Garner alone for such an occassion. But they should, since she was a smashing success, and was super-adorable and down-to-earth. I was standing really close to her, but we unfortunately didn't get to interact and after her speech she was whisked away.

Anywayyyy... one of the groups part of this coalition were the Humane Society, and they're considered less political than the Sierra Club so when I knocked on doors, I said, "Hi I'm Diana, a volunteer with the Humane Society." This was a good strategy, because, really, who hates the Humane Society? I started visualizing myself as an actual Humane Society volunteer and made sure to be really nice to everyone's pets when they answered the door. One woman in particular I think really liked that, and I feel like I helped convince her to vote for McNerney. So if I convinced or reminded two people to vote for a good candidate in an important race, that totally counteracts my not voting in a not-important race, right?

Don't worry, I wasn't shot

Erica and I roamed the streets of the Castro in our nun costumes (she was a pregnant nun; I, as a jew, didn't feel that was kosher for me). We took pictures with fellow clergy, gawked at fellow costume-goers and took part in a very quick awkward "sit-in" with these hippies from Missouri who felt that nun-presence would deter the cops from closing the festivities at the 11p.m. deadline.

MEANWHILE while I was enjoying being a member of the clergy for the day (p.s. populist costumes are the way to go), 9 other people were being shot and one was being trampled. Miraculously (and I can say that as a former nun) no one was killed. The shooting honestly doesn't come as a surprise to me. While I originally expected the Castro on Halloween to be filled with lots of gay men and tourists, I didn't realize that it also attracted a somewhat seedier crowd, and apparently most of the people in the neighborhood hate it. While I didn't see the shooting, I did see a man grope a woman, who then slapped him. Instead of realizing that he was a dick, he instead proceeded to try to punch her. Luckily his friends held him back. The police were nowhere to be found, but in good cop fashion they were clumped together in groups of about 10.

Since I've never been to this event before, and am basically a quasi-tourist I can't really provide in-depth analysis of what went wrong. But if you want to read pretty racist, classist, straightphobic, and regionalist commentary of what went wrong, check out the Chron's message board. (A popular suggestion: Ban the "trash" from the East Bay from attending).

And now they're considering canceling it. So while I was told Halloween in the Castro was something to "do once" I didn't realize that that I possibly attended the last Halloween in the Castro as we know it EVER. I love being a part of potentially-historically significant events.