A Vague Shade of Blue

Well, that was nice

2008-09-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

I had previously asked that a staffer throw us a bone and hint at the magic number (ideology, cod piece, what have you) that would make the Sacto machine come to life again. And we kind of got one. Not a leak, exactly. Well, not even a little bit of a leak; I was asking for a drip, if you may. No, not that, and I'm not sure where I'm going metaphorically, but have recently read an email dropped by Perata saying hey, forget about taxes. Let's just make a deal.

Because borrowing is so much better, don'tcha know.

Starving the beast. Which would be so much more effective if local dollars were protected from the state general fund. Which they are not, at least not in California (full disclosure: I have no idea if they are protected elsewhere). But if they were, then local property tax increases and sales tax quarter-cents and so on and so forth might actually feed the beasts that spawn them. Which they will not. Not now. Apparently, I might add.

Leaving Karen Bass alone on the mount waiving the flag and looking behind her -- perplexed if we are generous -- at what she could have sworn just yesterday was more than her shadow.

From the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass

2008-09-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

"Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men. Go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families. Re-examine all that you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman

Backtracking

2008-09-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

The wills and trusts lawyer wanted to know: what's up with the budget. Why can't they just pass one already? And here I was, the ex-government worker, trying to explain.

"It's just stupid," I said.

But of course that wasn't enough. But why?

It's hard to describe, I said. But I gave it the old college try. Okay. So when I worked for legislators, around this time I was going to the bank every Friday to get my payday loan. But how come I had to get loans and the legislators were still getting paid? They weren't, I said. Because they didn't. They don't. We were all relying on the Banks of Americas and Wells Fargos to advance our no-interest loans in through faith and loyalty and... well, knowing this happens every year, and whatever, that we would eventually get paid and all would be well.

So why don't they just pass the budget already?

Well... because they need a 2/3 majority to do it. Which means they need, what, 4? 6? 8? republicans to do it. And the only republicans willing to do it are the ones who have nothing to lose, like the ones who are terming out or the ones who have had it and want to move on with their lives, because if they vote with the democratic majority, you can bet that the republican leaders will turn their evil eye on their districts and get their butts voted out so fast they won't even have time for a rope burn on their butts. Spoiler power.

And what bothers me about this year is I don't see the secret 2 or 3 things that the republicans need to cry uncle. Like the boat tax, for example. Was it 1994? Let that stay at the low level it was at and throw in a couple of bon-bons, and you've got yourself a budget. No, this one's ugly. No-budget-through-Christmas ugly. If it's not ugly, I'd appreciate it if some less-hard-hearted staffer would let that leak so the rest of us can just wait for the magic number. Because I don't see any boat tax or happy medium coming our way, just a lot of day care centers out of business and support services biting the dust. And I'm the idealist who heard some republican softening the no-uh-uh-no-way-no-how no taxes not this year language and thought I heard a clock ticking, but for all I know they were leaning toward a tipping point and the guv'nor pissed someone off by ashing his cigar upwind. I'm that out of touch on state winds, what the hell do I know? I just don't like it, that's all.

And so, like everyone else, I wait...

Newest Adventures

2008-08-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

Sophia is now almost a year and a half old. So much happens in the first year and a half. Not that we have much to compare it to, but still... from a little blob of a thing to a person with thoughts and feelings and Very Definite Opinions.

She had her first public meltdown this afternoon. We bought her a "popper" thing -- one of those things where you push it and the little balls pop and pop and pop in their sphere. She has one at daycare, and loves it. She loved this one as well. So much so that when I tucked it in my purse (Babies R Us doesn't make bags that big except at Christmas-time), she howled and cried and whined because she couldn't Have It. It's an indoor toy, so she wasn't allowed to play with it outdoors. Hence the drama.

At home, she was all smiles. She dragged it hither and thon and up and around and back and forth and so on and so forth. Such a wondrous toy. We're thinking maybe we'll get a copy to leave at her grandparents' house, along with one of those booster chairs that you can adapt to a regular chair, a $20 addition to their home rather than the $100-plus that a real high chair would cost. Not that they'd never need another one, not soon, but just sayin', not trying to leave any hints or anything, maybe in another year or so...

A child of passion. She loves her toys, loves them with a love that is deep and true and quite long-lasting and quite vocal, if I do say so myself...

The Princess Sleeps

2008-03-29T10:18:00.001-07:00

9 a.m. Saturday morning, and the Sophia is down for her first nap of the day. It used to be we were barely waking up at 9 a.m., but those days are over. Avelino took Sasha out for her much-loved weekend morning walk, and I clean the kitchen and start a jalapeno-egg bake, all of which Sophia watches from her playpen.

She's walking now. Not well, and not for long, but she'd much rather be upright most of the time than crawling around. At Target yesterday, she decided she'd had enough of her cart seat when I was in the books section. This happened last time we were at Target, which is how I broke down and bought the newest Sue Miller hardcover (doesn't fit in a purse) because it was there and I knew I'd like it and it didn't look like we were going to be there much longer. This time, no book; the three books I could grab the quickest were unappealing because (a) it seemed depressing, (b) I didn't like the prose I turned to at random, or (c) it seemed like too much of a "chick" book.

So she grabbed my finger and we walked slowly through the aisles. She peered solemnly up into people's eyes as we passed, then would look back down, focused as she was on this new walking situation. She looked over to her right and tentatively pulled open a shiny blue book at baby-level, but she's a good girl; I said no, and thanked her when she closed it. Then - Papa! She squealed in delight and pulled away from me, holding her hands up and close to her chest and burbling to herself as she toddled quickly up the CD aisle toward her father.

Avelino and Sasha come home. Sasha bursts in and heads straight for her water dish, and then partrols the kitchen for any crumbs that might have escaped her last night. This is our chance to finish up what morning rituals we can with Sophia quietly sleeping on a blanket the living room floor. Sasha tiptoes gingerly to the edge of the blanket -- she is so careful about everything related to Sophia -- and sniffs in her direction. No, better to go back to the kitchen for any possible treats. And Sophia sleeps.

Eating, Sophia Style

2008-03-22T09:56:00.001-07:00

Sophia has definite opinions about what she wants to eat: it has to be tasty, it has to be different from last time, and it has to be what you're eating.

All the baby books are full of advice and good intentions. Introduce foods one at a time. Mix everything with breast milk or formula. Feed your baby separately from your mealtimes. Etc.

About the only thing that has worked "normally" for us has been the schedule of introducing new foods that our doctor gave us at one of her well-baby check-ups, and mainly because that's not really up to her. If the doctor says no egg whites before one year old, guess who's not getting egg whites?

An egg yolk, on the other hand, is something our baby happily and delicately nibbled from her spoon this morning, along with half of a slice of toast that she pinched carefully between thumb and forefinger before definitely -- but sometimes awkwardly -- placing into her mouth. Of course, Mom was having buttery garlic bread and generously seasoned eggs, but it looked close enough to what Mom was eating, which was good enough for her. And she didn't know that the liquid in Mom's mug is coffee, so she was fine with her water, although she still prefers a regular cup to her sippy cup.

Several of the babies in the day care are approximately the same age, and we compare notes like we're gossiping about women's shoes at the mall. Yours flings spaghetti and spits out macaroni but loves bow tie pasta? Mine refuses dark meat but will eat strips of white meat as a finger food. Have you tried using a Magic Bullet instead of a food mill for a chunkier texture? Does yours like basil?

Although her meal is much smaller, it takes her longer to eat it. But eventually, she was sagging in her harness, and while she was still pounding on the table to ask for more food, her poundings were half-hearted and her cries were closer to whimpers. She stared out the window at the finches that come by to steal dog hair to insulate their nest, and she wiped sleep from her eyes and smiled at me.

I went online today...

2007-05-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

...and as requested, here are some baby photos.

Brain Fuzz

2007-01-01T20:52:00.000-08:00

Being sick is boring. But sick I was last Friday, channel-surfing through the several hundred cable channels we now have because I asked my husband to find a cable package with Turner Classic Movies. That's all I wanted. And he wanted National Geographic so he could watch The Dog Whisperer. So I came home one day to find a strange new silver box under my TV and instructions and three different remotes spread out over the coffee table. Turns out that, for an additional $10 a month, we get much more than we bargained for and the ability to essentially Tivo 100 hours of programming, 10 or so of which are now taken up by The Dog Whisperer, 2 for Audrey Hepburn's "Sabrina," and another 3 for whatever that Bowl was that SJSU won.

None of which was on while I was sick. Daytime TV is a slow death no matter how many channels you have. I even gave in to my wonk/hack/whatever side and surfed C-SPAN and the California Channel, where even I couldn't get all that excited about slow formaldahyde gas emissions from hardwood floors or the internationalization of the California Lottery. Where's Senator Kuehl scolding the writer of the new worker's comp laws when you need her?

But there was one bright spot in the dark, slow morass of televisionia. While far from a Scalia fan, turns out the ACLU had a pretty good annual leadership dinner where the President of the ACLU went one-on-one with Justice Scalia about a long list of Supreme Court Cases and whether the Constitution was a living document a-la some kind of natural law or original intent. It was a nice break from the short attention spans and gotcha headlines of the newspapers (as the press person, I get to scan a dozen or so every morning at work) or the black and white natterings of the current events blogs ("You're evil." "No, you're evil." "I'm better than you because I'm decent and can get along with people, and you can't." "I'm better than you because you're uneducated and naive, and I'm not." "You're stupid." "No, you're stupid." Etc.).

Not that I could evoke it again for you all in this blog. ConLaw was something like four years ago for me, and the depth they were going to was beyond what I was able to glean during catch-as-catch-can studying. It was nice, though, to revisit the foundations of a lot of the issues I deal with on a mundane, day-to-day basis, in an exchange between two people that was competitive and combative, yet still respectful and engaging. Equality. Due process. Basic fairness and intent. Goals and limitations.

And then it was over, and I was stuck trying to find something else to hold my attention. At which point I gave up trying to watch TV and put on a music channel, and took a nap.

Ode to the Ice Cream Maker

2006-09-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

I did consider dashing off a haiku or limerick or something in honor of my new ice cream maker, but the thrill didn't last much longer than trying to figure out if "Cuisinart" was three or four syllables and exploring a few quick rhymes (Heart? Start? Um... fart?)

Anyway, yeah, definitely liking the new ice cream maker. Especially since I ended up with all the leftover pears from my coworker's tree, and we have a few too many mangos after a recent trip to Costco. Until yesterday, we were mixing chocolate chips in with the pear sorbet, and today we swirled it with blueberry sorbet. In a few days -- in go the mangos.

In other earth-shattering news, that "Chavez Calls Bush 'The Devil'" headline was pretty exciting for a moment there. At least, until I figured out it was Hugo Chavez during a speech at the UN.

My Life In Development

2006-09-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

And now back to my thesis. Er, I mean blog.

I think it's been something like three weeks since I started at the new job. So far, so good. Great co-workers, especially my supervisor -- it's a real pleasure to be able to work with and learn from someone who is so knowledgable in her field. Unfortunately, I'm not much help with the big grants right now because I'm so unfamiliar with the details of development in the nonprofit health field, but she's okay with that, and is fully willing to feed my inner nerd with as much background reading and I can take, along with trainings, meetings, and even a few baby grants to practice on. With events or PR, she's hands-off; I've thrown together enough of those that she's happy to think about other things.

Our CEO is a mix of go-go-go enthusiasm and down-to-earth charm; very straightforward, apparently impossible to rattle, and very focused on her work. Also a pleasure to work with. And I'm starting to get to work with some of the other people who will be really helpful with the grants -- our CFO, Program Director, Nurse Health Educator, etc. And IT, of course -- without them, we're all on typewriters. And they know the ins and outs of the reporting system.

My parents came to take me out to lunch a week or so ago, and they like the area. It's a lot like East San Jose, except there's a real lack of food diversity in the immediate vicinity. It's basically either Mexican or McDonalds. They ended up taking me over the freeway to eat at the Four Seasons. And, like in certain parts of the East Side, I wouldn't go walking around by myself at night.

Fortunately, foodwise, we have a very large refrigerator and a good microwave, so it's easy to bring lunch (and breakfast, and snacks, and... hey, a food drawer is important!) And we're close to the freeway, so when, say, I just HAVE to have Vietnamese food (and not the chi-chi/ritzy fusion food you find on University -- $12 for lemon grass chicken?), I can run down to Mt. View. It's not super-convenient since with side streets and parking it's about a 30-40 minute round trip to get take-out, but it's nice to get out rather than eat at my desk.

Overall, it's been a good move. I actually almost went into development a couple of years ago around when my first Legislator was terming out, but had some issues with the nonprofit after doing a little more reading up on it. Plus, for something like this you have to really be into the subject, and I was just kind of so-so on that one. And then I ended up staying with the Legislature, which in the end was a valuable experience (although I could use a lot of other words to describe it), and when you can at least say that, it's all still good.

Panting, Peeing, and Assorted Doggie Mysteries

2006-08-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

The dog peed in the livingroom last night. Twice. And left one sizable -- and fortunately chunky -- pile of poop.

Our dog is adopted. Our cat was adopted as well, but that was more of an open kidnapping, and we know his traumas: four rambunctions kids, the amorous attentions of his brother, being cast out of the house as the less-loved cat, etc.

Not so the dog. It will forever be a mystery why she fears enclosed tile spaces and loves five-spice powder, or why she loves to be rubbed on her ears or hindquarters but yelps in fear if you rest your hand on them, or why she hides and hyperventilates in the farthest, darkest, highest corner of the apartment when the wind blows too hard.

They have some similarities. They both view an open can of tuna as their god-given right. Neither likes to be the first to investigate a scary noise. Their favorite past-time is a walk around the apartment complex. They prefer to pee outside.

At least, they're supposed to. But last night, the dog's fear of the wind outweighed her peeing preferences, and so... well, you know.

The last time the dog had an indoor issue, there was no wind. And she'd just had a walk outside the building. There was no excuse for doing that in the Senator's office.

Ahem.

Umm... anyway, seen the most recent anti-Arnold ads? If I were them, I'd have him come out in a Terminator outfit and say, "Phil -- can't even pretend to save the world." Not that I'm advocating anyone do that. It just seemed like a natural comeback.

Back to School

2006-07-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

Had another school dream last night. Very annoying. It's because I was worrying about a deadline that's coming up soon, and put all the real work off until today, which I really shouldn't have done because I'm usually a portion-it-out-before-the-deadline kind of person rather than a cram-it-all-in-at-the deadline kind of person, and there was really no reason to cram it all in other than general laziness and prioritizing the portioning of other projects (how come I suddenly have so many projects now that I'm unemployed? Or, rather, on vacation -- that's what you are when you're not at work, right?)

Anyway, yeah, my fault for all the subconscious worrying. So I had to sign up for some math class (I think it's was some kind of Algebra, so I'm guessing high-school, except it was on my elementary school campus), and no one I talked to knew anything about any of the professors. And I talked to a lot of people. And I finally just picked a name at random and decided to hope for the best.

My clue that it was current subconscious issue rather than some latent insecurity was the level of effort I put into figuring out which professor would be worthwhile. When I really was in school, I only kind of half-assed looking onto professors since I was a night student and really, what kind of choices would I have anyway? And when looking for past jobs, I'd either stick to internet research or leap empty-handed into the void. Having decided it now takes a village to find a new job, I I took a multi-pronged approach to my job search -- everything from emailing my resume to everyone I knew to inviting people out to lunch to pick their brains to... well, let's just say I was busy. Add to that all the internet research and whatnot that I normally did.

What was this all about? Oh, yeah, my dream. See what happens when you call your blog a freewrite?

Actually, this blog might be even longer than my dream.

Pick a Loser

2006-07-22T09:57:00.000-07:00

Today's paper tells me that our good Governor has decided to go with a drug plan. A drug plan for low-income Californians. A good drug plan. A just drug plan. A drug plan with teeth.

Too bad he didn't like any of the other vastly similar drug plans that were proposed over the last few years, but it's an election year and, damnit, it's time for that drug plan!

Which got me thinking about elections, and campaigns, and the good of mankind. You know that co-worker you have that never does anything until anyone else does it? Come on, we've all had that co-worker. You and said co-worker are assigned similar tasks --or even teamed up on the same task -- and Co-worker will dawdle and watch you from the corner or his/her eye or whatnot until you start doing something, and then suddenly Super Coworker springs into action by doing exactly what you're doing, and then later will prod you to ask if you did whatever it was you were doing, and what were the results, and look, here's what s/he did. And don't be surprised if Super Coworker knifes you in the back by saying s/he led the project. Which is why it's always good to document your work and, say, use email for another part of your task that Super Coworker can't overhear and therefore doesn't pursue. That really takes the air out of Super Coworker.

Anyway, I digress. Back to campaigns. A few years ago, the Governator was just getting into office. He had Big Plans. He was going to blow up the boxes (which, if you looked at the plan, was just streamlining and centralizing the system, which is what we did last time we "radically" remade government). He had to lay out a plan and stick to it. Now, he's running for re-election. His opponent has a snowball's chance of beating him. However, that pesky gnat is out there redefining health care and making it one of his platforms. Suddenly, Arnold's gotta be strong on health care. Not his forte in the past two years. But I'll bet you he's got an enthusiastic (or not -- they burn out) staffer who knows all s/he needs to know about health care, and can spell out for the Governor what's going to go over well in the polls.

I'd always wondered why someone would run a losing campaign in a big arena like the California governor's race. Usually, once they finally win something and are noticed and loved and interviewed on the subject, they talk about how the losing campaigns were such great learning experiences, and how they cut their teeth on those campaigns and how the mistakes they made back then helped them be so successful now. Which sounds very nice and all, but that's a lot of donated money they blew and time they spent away from their families and, if we're to really believe them, then maybe they should have put together a more experienced campaign team to support them.

And again, that's a lot of donated money they blew. Time and experienced staff be damned, there are people who always give to party candidates no matter what, and there has to be a reason for it beyond party loyalty. Okay, so there's one benefit that I knew of -- there are organizations out there that raise money for candidates, and they absolutely track this stuff and always hit the same donors, and are really interested in said donors' opinions.

But now I'm fascinated by this other benefit. People have been trying to get Arnold to do stuff on drugs for years, but he wasn't into all that. Then, along comes what Asm. Frommer calls "Extreme Makeover -- Political Edition." Angelides wants health care? Well, then, Schwarzenneger will show you health care!

Heaven and earth couldn't move a sitting governor to pick drug benefit legislation, but a campaign can. A political challenger's campaign. A good campaign. A strong campaign. A losing campaign, but still, a campaign. Makes me want to run out and send a check to Angelides.

Not that I'm going to. I'm still unemployed. Fortunately, in other news of the world, I got a job! I'll be doing grantwriting and program development for a local health care nonprofit starting August 14th.

Keeping Up

2006-07-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Wonkette, you, too, can visit No Moo-Lies to learn how dogs do, indeed, bark rather than moo (i.e. "because that's what dogs do).

And why does No Moo-Lies want you to know this? Because cows moo. Because that's what they do. Which is why those people who tell you gays are gay and cannot change to straight are wrong WRONG. Anne Heche did it. The penguins in New York did it. Your favorate gay person, therefore, can do it, too. And, therefore gays must therefore be denied domestic partnerships in Colorado.

No, not kidding.

Presumably, gays can get domestic partnership benefits by turning straight and entering into a straight marriage, thereby not needing the domestic partnership thing. 'Cuz that's what people do.

I'm guessing here. They don't spell it out on the website.

Rilke

2006-07-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginnings of all peoples? The myths about dragons that turn into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible in our lives is only something helpless that wants help from us.

"So you must not be frightened when a cold wind rises up larger than any you have ever seen; when a restlessness, like light and cloud-shadow, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you; that life has not forgotten you. That it holds you in its hands; it will not let you fall."

-Ranier Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet

School Daze

2006-07-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

Several years ago -- wait, it's more than several; it was the late 90's -- I had what I thought was my last school dream. You know the dream: you're in the classroom and the professor is passing out the final, and you realize with a certain mounting sense of terror that you have no idea what the class was about. Yeah, that dream. After the professor gave me my final, I looked at the gobblygook and decided that since I didn't know anything about the class, I had probably never signed up for it in the first place, and if I was registered for it then I would work it out with Registration later. And I got up, and someone asked me why, and I said something like I don't need to take this final because this is not my class. And I left.

This time, it was a law class. The final was going around (which I suppose was my first clue -- in law school, they have Proctors), and I was thinking that maybe this was the class where I only went for the first month, and then stopped showing up so I could focus on my other classes, and that I'd never gone over all the notes and things I was supposed to study to get up to speed for the final. And then I thought that I never approached a class like that before, so why would I have started now? And then I thought, "Wait -- didn't I already graduate from law school?" And I realized that yes, I had indeed graduated from law school, so taking this class or being registered for this class or whatever made no difference. So I left.

It's a World Cup World

2006-07-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

"I can't believe it's over," my husband said morosely as we sat entangled on the couch late last night watching the last of the news feeds. After a futile search for a place to watch the World Cup that (a) had seating, and (b) didn't smell funny, we ended up back at the apartment where I made coffee and whipped up some almost-virgin blended Mai-Tais for breakfast.

We watched the game on ESPN because the morning feed on Telemundo is fuzzy. My husband tells me watching on ESPN is a radically different experience than Telemundo, where the commentators know background on every player (or, at least, their speedy assistants do) and offer play-by-play commentaries, whereas on ESPN he sometimes wonders if they're just talking to fill in the space, and even during games where there is no American in sight they will talk about the US players and the US games rather than the play on the field. My Spanish is to the point where I can follow about half what is said -- however, when that means only understanding half of the words in a given sentance, it really doesn't get me very far.

Dramatic events will get their attention, though, so Zidane's head-butt was good for at least 10 minutes of speculation (meanwhile, the game played on). Yet not once did they mention the white elephant in the room throughout the Cup this year: that racism has finally become a major issue for FIFA, and that it was most likely a racist comment that set him off (Read more about the head-butt heard around the world at http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/41790.)

After the game, we did the requisite couple things: ate, went to the mall, etc. All this in time to come back to watch the game on Telemundo, where the feed really was much clearer and sounded much more exciting (again, through my half-comprehending filter), and where you couldn't help but notice every time there was a "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!"

Again, the head-butt. I asked my husband if he remembered back when we first got our cat, back when he still didn't like him, and how the cat would try to get my husband's attention by head-butting him in the back of the shin (usually when he was trying to do something, like washing dishes or cutting something on the cutting board for dinner). And then the head-butt started to look kind of cool. Maybe that's a terribly un-cool thing to say, especially with everyone saying his career is going out like a whimper rather than a bang, but really, who ever ends their careers with a savage-looking head-butt?

And yes, at midnight it was still easy to surf the channels and find someone somewhere showing footage of the head-butt, or the final goal, or the Italian player getting his hair cut off, or the fireworks from the stadium, or Shakira doing the opening act, or this or that or the other thing. And yes, it's over again. Over for another four years.

Nesting

2006-07-07T11:42:00.001-07:00

Beware of nesting, a friend told me, "...it's a seductive life, soon you'll forget about the rest of the world."

I can see that. Here I sit in my sunlit kitchen with my laptop and my dog, a cup of coffee to my left and a tree with ripe fruit just off the back porch. There are dishes to be done. Wouldn't hurt to vacuum. Still need to walk the dog and meditate. I've read most of the paper, but saved a few sections for when my husband comes home for lunch.

I think it's safe to say I've emailed my resume out to everyone I could think of to help with my job search. There are a lot of eyes out there for me. Plus some volunteer opportunities, and opportunities tend to lead to more opportunities.

This is a holiday week, so for me it was mainly about laying the groundwork. Next week means more follow-up: follow-up on job applications, hound the EDD until I can get through their perpetually-busy phone lines to find out what's up with my UI claim, actually leave the apartment to visit the people I said I'd visit, etc. All in good time. A friend of mine said the last time he was out of work, he decided to spend the time golfing because he didn't know when he'd ever have that kind of time to himself again. It was Winter, which meant hitting into fog-enshrouded hills and often ending up with more balls than he started with.

Until then: nesting. Cleaning, hanging out, painting, reading, emailing, or whatnot.

Coffee's done. Time to move on.

Dad's New Cat

2006-07-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

She's still drying, Dad.

Back After This Short Break

2006-06-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

Statcounter tells me there has been increased activity on my blog. Not statistically significant increases necessarily, but enough for me to say with some conviction that I can thank my mother, father, and brother for checking in. I appreciate your faith in my returning to blogging after getting off the campaign.

For the rest of you -- not a clue who you are. The GoogleBot hasn't been through lately, and I didn't know I had family in Switzerland. But thanks for coming.

My jump off the campaign has not yet resulted in a soft landing, but rather at a few near-landings. A series of interviews didn't yield a job in that office but instead unearthed some seriously snazzy openings in both the Bay Area and Central Valley, and various inquiries spun me off on some pretty interesting tangents. And a near-hit that, in the end, I'm happy not to hit.

Too vague? I'm in government. We get that way. Fortunately, I am not authorized to talk to the press, and that makes me happy. Not that the press would get anything useful out of me. I only know gossip and innuendo.

So, yeah, blogging. Not sure how much of that I'll be doing. Still working on a painting commissioned by Dad; the first layer should be dry (enough) tomorrow, so I can start on the second. Don't worry, Dad -- that's one long, thin cat.

And reading. And lunching with friends. And trolling the net. Indeed.com is my new favorite job search site.

I think the dog is learning to play.

Old Times

2006-05-20T22:26:00.000-07:00

So I called my old boss today. My Old old boss, not my old boss – the one who was at a press conference with my new boss this morning, and who would rather have no staffer than me as a staffer when all the staffers on her payroll were unavailable to take her to the event with my new boss, which may have to do with me but I bet has more to do with the fact that she was offended that none of her staffers were available for a last-minute staffing assignment. But that is another story.

This is the second time this week I talked to my Old old boss. The last time was when I asked for his endorsement, which he told me he was delighted to give, and said that my new boss, "is gonna win. She will be Mayor." That was unusual for my old boss, who excelled in passive voice. Although, now that I think about it, he once edited a letter for me (from him, obstensibly), and that letter was all about active voice. So perhaps it was my old office that excelled in passive voice. Again, another story.

This time, I called him up and asked, quite conversationally, how are you? To which he said, fine, and asked me how I was. And of course, I was fine.

I mean, what would you say?

So, all those niceties out of the way, I said, I’m calling about the part you like least about campaigning.

And he said, what?

And I said, I’m calling about the part of campaigning that you like the least.

There was a pause.

Money, he finally said.

Yes, I said.

Another pause.

How much is this going to cost me? he asked.

The maximum is $500, I said.

I’ll give you half that.

Okay. I’ll need a credit card number.

I don’t like to do that.

And then I explained that we were one hour from the deadline to accept contributions. And so, grudgingly, he consented.

There better not be any unauthorized charges in the near future, he said.

I assured him there would not, and that I would tear up the piece of paper with his number on it and throw it away into no less than three separate garbage cans.

I’ll need the number off the back, I reminded him.

That’s a number I really don’t like to give out.

But he gave it to me, and wished me well, and we parted ways.

Then I found out I needed his address. So I called again.

Hi, I said. It’s me again.

Okay, he said.

I need your address. The one associated with the credit card.

Oh boy. This was really something. He told me again that if there were any unauthorized charges, he would have to come after me.

In that case, I said, I would have to make some unauthorized charges. After all, that looked like the only way I would see him.

He laughed. And I got the address, and he wished me well again, and that was that.

Happy Easter. Happy Sunday. Don't worry, be happy.

2006-04-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Tonight we're having Easter dinner at my parent's house. And it's great that it's Easter and all, although to be completely honest we're not having dinner because it's Easter per se, but rather because it's a holiday and everyone's off and it's a great excuse to have dinner. At some point, you just take what you can get.

I was supposed to go to church. And, again, in the vein of complete honesty, not because I'm Catholic or even wanted to, but because my husband is Catholic and because he wanted to, and it was important to him and therefore important to me. I was just going along for the ride. I never really know what to do in church. There's some pagentry to it, and I prefer the midnight mass to the Easter mass because of all the singing, and because I know the songs, although once the Messiah comes, I'm pretty much done. I think only the faithful should really be singing that kind of stuff. Then I start looking at the statues and stained glass stories of Jesus, and all the other neat architectural bits around the church. My husband goes to a church with lots of neat architectural bits.

Although, this God, he works in mysterious ways. I ended up not going to church because we brought the dog with us, and since my parents were out when we got to their house, we couldn't just leave her there in an empty house full of unfriendly cats. So I went to work, and he went to church, and on the way back he got us a nice lunch at Foster's Freeze.

So here we are. Dinner's done. Game's over, so I guess we're going home soon. I started a painting because I had time on my hands and tools at my disposal, but my mom works with oils instead of acrylics so there's only so far you can go in one sitting. Which means I have to visit a little more often so I can add stuff to it. I hope I did it right. I have never in my life worked with oils before, and I had some vague idea of mixing the paint with linseed oil, which I did right onto the canvas, which I hope is okay. If not, it will probably crack or something, but I guess I could work with that. It's not like I know what I'm doing anyway, so how bad could it be?

Anyway, Happy Easter. Or if you're not into that kind of thing, Happy Sunday.

Floating through cyberspace

2006-04-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

Boo.

Don't get all excited or anything. I'm not going to write much.

Besides, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Better be. You're not going to get a thousand words here.

Here are a couple of pictures from the campaign.

Sasha visits the office (again).

Besides, every campaign needs an office dog.

Avelino and I prepare for precinct walking.

Moving On

2006-02-23T17:19:00.000-08:00

One more day!

As of Saturday, I will officially move on to campaign work. And yes, I said Saturday. It's a campaign. I might as well say, "See you in June."

Sure, days off happen. To other people.

Secrets

2006-02-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

Parking in Sacramento sucks. I tried a couple of early-bird lots, but one only had 30 slots at the top of a 6-story tower, and the other uses parking attendants to move the cars upstairs, and in doing so they swiped my rear door (and I'm still waiting to hear back from them on how they will cover it). However, after 2 months, I'm closer to finding all the secret 10-hour, 50-cents-an-hour street parking sites south of the Capitol building. Here's a not-so-scientific list of sites:

- 14th & P
- 13th & N
- The park around 16th & Q

Parking is not on every corner or side of the street near these intersections. They are merely pointers; if you go near these intersections, you will find your parking.

To complicate things, the meters only accept quarters, although they say they accept quarters or debit cards. And most of them are not marked with signs. You will have to park, get out of your car, and peer down into the parking meter to see if it says in tiny letters, "10-hour parking."

But hey, it's worth it. And it's the only exercise I get.

I've been DSL-ed

2006-02-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

We have officially joined the world of DSL.

And not a moment too soon. I have a work project and on-line volunteer project and all that other project crap that, okay, I agreed to do, but wouldn't we all rather sit on our butts on the couch watching the Olympics? Or, I guess, glide on the glider behind the couch, which I keep meaning to use, and have actually used. Twice.

The whole DSL installation thing wasn't that bad. We got a smallish carton in the mail with an installation disk and all kinds of other wires and boxes and whatever, all adorned with brightly colored ATTENTION labels to tell us to leave this on for 10 days or connect that to a surge connector and so on and so forth. And the very user-friendly animation told me exactly what to connect where, and while it was loading or checking or modifying or doing all of its busy busy things, I would help Avelino rearrange the living room around the dog crate.

Turns out Sasha is a fan of the dog crate (so long as it's not locked, of course). Her crate is now in the corner of the living room stuffed with all of her toys and a cushy pillow and covered with a thick fuzzy blanket, and I have to admit it does look like a tempting alternative to the couch, although if we leave the room we're just as likely to find her there (and then she will look at us guiltily and jump off to run into her crate). Max has officially checked out the crate, but is reluctant to go inside and seems to vastly prefer stretching out on our bed.

Anyway, back to the DSL. We have SBC , so we added on the Yahoo!/SBC DSL service, which will now come nicely bundled in our monthly phone bill. And that's exactly how they get you. But in this case, I don't mind so much being got.

Sasha

2006-02-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

So we were thinking we'd eventually get a new dog. Even though it's pretty early, we'd heard it can take a while to get the right dog, so we decided to get into the system. And then, there she was!

This is our new Husky, Sasha. We adopted her from the San Mateo shelter on Saturday, and she is slowly settling in. Her last home wasn't the best, and after she got out and her owner denied ownership, she ended up at the shelter last October with two big cysts on her back. Then, she got attacked by another dog, who punctured her neck. She's all better now, but has some bald spots from surgery.

There are several great Malamute and Husky rescue groups in the area like Malamutes Unsettled Seeking Homes (MUSH) or Bay Area Siberian Husky (BASH). We worked with them and also looked on Petfinder to find our new girl. We initially went to the Human Society of Silicon Valley to look at a dog named Apollo who was there, but it turns out that the manager there is hostile about Nordic dogs and apparently thinks they're all vicious killers, and very rudely refused to consider letting me adopt him since we have a cat. Apollo is now in a Husky rescue and they are fully willing to let him be adopted into a home with cats and even small children since he lived with both in his previous home.

Sasha is about 4 years old and nearly 50 pounds, although she's overweight and will soon drop some weight to regain her girlish figure. She's is still pretty timid, although she's slowly getting better and starting to open up. She's fine with Max, and yesterday they both went on their first walk together. Today she's at work with me, and is snoozing on her blankie. She's a real sweetheart and loves to give kisses!

In Memory

2006-01-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

Tahoe

1991-2006

Why I Love the LOB

2006-01-17T14:42:00.000-08:00

Five random reasons why I love working in the Legislative Office Building, despite the remaining asbestos insulation and windows that last sealed properly in 1960:

1. The 6th floor cafeteria includes a 25-foot salad and Chinese food bar, where, okay, the Chinese/Asian/Hawaiian fusion food is hit-or-miss and they almost never have my chocolate Old Fashioned in the morning, but where I can get two slices of bacon and a couple scoops of grilled potato wedges for less than the cost of a latte and where my lunch that consisted of potstickers and cucumber salad and various kinds of chicken and included an honest-to-God scary-hot fried bird chile cost – no kidding – $3.16.

2. It’s full of neat Capitol people but is actually across the street from the Capitol, which means I can watch the white marble dome change colors in the sunlight on my way to and from work, but as soon as I step into the lobby, I know I’m entering a drama-free zone.

3. I’m in a cubicle in the middle of a 5th-floor office down a hallway full of identical offices, which means I can do things like leave scissors on my desk without fear that an angry spouse of a domestically-abused constituent that we’re trying to help will come in and throw them at me, and that if anyone tries to shoot up the Capitol like they did years ago, the bullets probably won’t reach my window.

4. You can feel the burn almost immediately when climbing the narrow, winding stairways at either side of the building.

5. Suddenly, the Daily File makes sense.

I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care

2006-01-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, that’s not strictly true. I care. I may care a lot, or some, or a just little bit, and maybe almost not enough to be a little bit, but I care. Sure I do.

What’s with the pissy attitude, you may wonder? Fortunately, it’s not really pissy. It’s just true. Let me start by saying this: a wise person once said, "The more you learn, the less you know."

I have been quite comfortable with this statement for a long time now. It has gotten me through many things over the years calmly and perhaps even with grace. And that is perhaps why, after doing my new job these last few weeks, I have settled comfortably into my role.

This place is busy, and it’s not even really the busy season yet. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do. So sure, the state budget just came out and made a splash in the media – a splash which usually sets me off finding every analysis and counter-analysis and spot quote and news story and blog and whatever, not to mention downloading the budget itself the moment it’s released on the server, all of which I would usually actually (so not kidding) read – but which I missed this year because, well, I was busy.

And it’s not like my other office isn’t busy. But that office usually hums along at a steady pace and then goes feast-or-famine; we can quickly be overwhelmed or find ourselves sitting around watching paint dry. This other place is constant motion.

Anyway, I did all my things and hunted down background information, and even entertained a few lobbyists on things that are still gasping for breath from last year. My analysis for my boss got some of them to converge on me minutes before the meeting, and they convinced me that my proposal was really not really a good idea after all. Most were reasonable and willing to have the discussion; after all, the bright light of truth does not shine as brightly as those who love their ideas might think, which means pretty much everything requires a reasonable discussion if reasonable people are to agree. So I passed a note to my boss, and the proposed proposal disappeared back into the ether.

To go back to the more-you-learn-less-you-know thing: I do not know everything. I am okay with that. Therefore, if I don’t see something the same way someone else sees it, I’m happy to admit it and outline my thought process so long as I'm reasonably sure I can expect an actual substantive argument and not just hand-wringing to make me change my mind. You cannot simply be frustrated in my direction in order to get a result; you gotta have a reason.

And the state budget? A blip on my radar screen, but not a big blip. I printed out one analysis, and I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. Governor driving a motorcycle without a license? Yeah, I heard about it, but it’s more water cooler talk, and I keep forgetting that we even have a water cooler (and, more importantly, that it has one of those faucets that gives hot water). Boss’ work in the news? A bigger blip; we actually made it into a real news story, and not just onto the editorial pages where they sometimes seem to rely on hand-wringing and innuendo. Sometimes I think the editorial pages are nothing more than the precursor of the "news" blog. I’m much happier with an actual news story, which requires attention from a named reporter who does research and which gets some fact-checking, and, more importantly, actually seems to get read by regular people.

So anyway, just doing my job. And there are all kinds of interesting things going on around me, all of which I care about to one degree or another but are secondary to whatever it is I need to get done at the time.

So, yeah, I care. I care enough.

The Place Where You Live

2005-12-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

This is the place where I live: right on the water between San Mateo and Foster City, surrounded by a bend in the lagoon that is popular with a rich blend of waterbirds. This was the scene outside my bedroom window on a relatively calm morning recently, about 5 a.m., and not during one of the dive-bomb sessions where the ducks and sea gulls tag-team whatever unlucky water creatures lurk in schools below the surface.

This was not the view outside my window this morning, though; a minor storm blew through last night, so we woke on and off through the night wondering if the wind was going to knock out the windows, and the cat decided to be an indoor cat for the night, and today's sky is full of heavy, dark clouds alternating with bright blue sky.

The wind and rain churned up the water, so today's lagoon is crowded with flocks of every kind of bird that wanders through here, with the exception of the Canadian Geese, of which I only saw two when I took the cat and dog on their walk, and no songbirds, to the disappointment of the cat, and the one white crane which stalks haughtily just off shore. (Actually, the cat tries to stalk all of them, but he only really seems to have a chance with the songbirds; the geese will eventually wheezily fly away, and he runs when the crane stops to size him up.) The dog looks sideways at the seagulls, but their squeaky cries seem to annoy him.

The New Guy

2005-12-29T17:31:00.000-08:00

Yellow Cat

Aim High

2005-12-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

...because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.

- Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter VI

Lilac Woods is back up

2005-12-21T16:07:00.000-08:00

Well, kind of... I bought the domain name again, and now it contains a series of links to family websites. I guess that makes it more of a cover page.

Anyway, you can yet again go to Lilac Woods here. And please feel free to forward any family or friends' sites to my for inclusion.

What's up? Nothin'. What's up with you? Nothin'...

2005-12-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

Such was the gist of the conversation I had with a friend I hadn't seen in forever at a party last night.

I mean, not that nothing nothing had happened. Things had happened. But it was a party, and there were people crammed into every nook and cranny, and something like three tables piled high with barbequed meats and salads and chocolate delights, and a caroler wearing two jingle bells around his neck hunting for a moment to burst into song, and a guy calling himself "The Wine Pusher" wandering around with several empty cups and a bottle of wine looking for people to pour for, and somehow it didn't seem like the most opportune moment to have a heart-to-heart.

Plus, it was a hodgepodge party for at least half a dozen democratic parties, so there was also a guy passing out "The One-TERM-inator" buttons (I have one for you, Mom), and I got to talk taxes with an assemblyman who recommended some good books to me. And then there was the requisite back hallway hissing when a republican candidate strolled in with her husband.

This is no place for a republican, said one.

It's an open party, said another.

And besides, I chimed in, it's a non-partisan seat.

This is a democrat's party, said the one. We should only have democrats.

Well, I'm going to go say hi, said I, and did, and so we ended up talking about salsa dancing.

So, back to my friend. She and her wife came in just as I was leaving, so I stayed and chatted a bit. We talked about chatty things. Work (kind of). Christmas shopping. Cats. Then I said I was going to go home.

Well, good luck with that, she said.

By the time I finished with a few hugs and chats and whatnot and had gotten within 10 feet of the door, there she was again, positioned this time closer to the dessert table. And we of course got to hug again, and say goodbye again, and she cheered me on as there was no stopping me now.

Except that the doorbell rang just as I opened it, and of course in steps another friend. But Lo -- she had a boy with her! Which meant she was occupied, which meant I could just chat briefly and be on my way.

There was a guy outside standing in the middle of the street smoking, but I'm pretty sure he was only someone I knew on sight, so he wandered off between some cars, and I was able to get to mine without further incident.

Not that I don't like parties. And not that I didn't like that particular party. As far as parties go, it was a good party. People had fun. The food was awesome. It was just that day and that night in particular that I was not in the mood to go out to a (quite lovely) house in a relatively unlit bit of wilderness about an hour from my home, especially since I had to avoid The Wine Pusher (whom I like) because, well... I was an hour from my home.

Okay, maybe I'm whining a bit. It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to...

Hey Mom, New Paintings!

2005-12-11T21:19:00.000-08:00

http://Geocities Home

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2005-12-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

Please accept my most excellent wishes for a Merry Christmas. Please accept these wishes without obligation, express or implied, and in the alternative please accept my best wishes for a socially responsible, minimally-stressful, green, non-addictive, and gender neutral celebration of the season coinciding with the birth of a/the Prophet and/or the winter solstice as practiced according to the traditions of any religious faith of your choice, if any, keeping in mind my full respect for any religious or secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, I myself being a member of a non-Judeo-Christian faith, or, should you choose, to practice no religious, secular or formal or informal traditions at all.

Further, please allow me to wish you all a cheerful, fulfilling, financially pleasing, crime-free, and medically uncomplicated beginning of the culturally relevant calendar year, including, but not limited to, the Christian calendar, but of course not without due respect for the time markers of choice of other cultures and societies.

The preceding wishes are extended without regard to the race(s), creed, color, age, physical strength or handicap, religious persuasion, or sexual preference of the wishee.

Thank you.

The Maine Coon

2005-11-24T12:02:00.000-08:00

This 4-year-old, 20+ pound, super-sweet male Maine Coon will be full grown next year. Probably. It takes them a while to get to their full size.

The Bombay

2005-11-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

They call me Batcat.

The Cult of the Big "L"

2005-11-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Is it really so hard to get pity? I ask you...

The CHP motorcycle cop who does our building security (sometimes -- when he's not training rookies in, say, Richmond) strolled in around noon today as we were scrambling to finish copy for our education forum next week and asked, innocently enough, what's new?

What's new, huh? I answered. Hmmm... I thought about that for a second. Oh, hey, I know -- I failed the Bar.

No kidding, he said. So now what?

Well, you know. Study again. Take the February test. Wait another three months, get the results, and if I don't pass again, take the July test.

You gotta pay each time?

Oh yeah. $500 bucks a pop. I'm free to take it as many times as I'd like.

Well, good for you, he said

Yup. Just trying to do my part to support California's court system.

So what's changed?

Changed? Dunno. Nothing, really.

And if you pass?

Well... nothin'.

Well, there you go, he said. Have a good day.

The public pass list went online Sunday, and after perusing it for the oh-so-many names that, like mine, were not on the list, my husband took me to a cat show. Ironically, it was at the same place where I took the Bar. Same building, even. But, you know, it had cats this time. Super-cool cats, even. My husband fell in love with the first Maine Coon cat he saw, whereas I developed a thing for a Bombay kitten. Little freak. If our camera wasn't in my husband's car, I'd post a picture.

Other friends did not make the list. One friend who did not make the list works with an aquaintance who did make the list, and she said it looked like he was going to try to give her a hug, but fortunately he didn't so she didn't have to try to get out of that. Not that we don't like him, but he has some awkward social skills so it's just best if she just doesn't go there.

She, like me, will not experience any earth-shattering changes should she eventually end up on the list, so we're trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. Do we study now? It's kind of too early, but how could we just not do anything? So I signed up for an online mini-prep course, and she's looking into it.

And another friend is pissed off and cranky that her life is still in limbo. She is in the same boat as most of the people in the Cult of the Big "L" in that not having her Bar card means not moving on. Those of us with full-time jobs -- especially interesting full-time jobs with good pay and benefits -- are few and far between.

That is why Mr. CHP Man has no pity for me. His daughter may go to law school, so he's been following the nuts-and-bolts of it all for several years now.

Not that I got no pity. I got some pity. I probably could have gotten more pity, but I didn't try very hard.

At least I've got my flash cards. That will be me, member of the Cult of the Big "L," checking my flash cards as I stand in line for my groceries or while I'm waiting at the gas station.

A little pity wouldn't hurt.

Move Along. Nothing to See.

2005-11-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

A Christmas or two ago, I gave my husband a flashlight you can wear on your head. He's wearing it now to try to fix the belt on the vacuum cleaner again. Relatives coming for dinner on Saturday night and all (which, judging from the lack of email response, will be a surprise to my brother).

I realized today -- after talking with a friend about whether a retired legislator can swear me in since I turned in my background check materials late and would need a pinch-hitter swear-er in-er, and whether said friend would be my backup, he being an Honorable and all, and then us finding out only a state Honorable or court Honorable or even an apparently honorable notary public can do it, but not just any old local or federal Honorable with a district -- that I can't find out my Bar results tomorrow after all.

I mean, I could, if I could unearth a document with both my applicant number and registration number on it, but I doubt I'll find one. I have a distinct memory of throwing out my Bar Exam entry card in the last move. It had been hanging on the refrigerator since July, and me being a reformed pack rat and all, I tossed it as being just another piece of detritus sitting around from something I couldn't do anything more about anyway. It's not like I was inclined to frame it or anything. Done. Gone. Goodbye.

And it's not like I didn't try to find another document. Okay, I didn't try very hard, but I did try. Upended a box or two and all that. Checked a few email in-boxes. That's trying. But really, the CalBar site's going to be jammed all weekend, and I only have dial-up. Besides, I can check by last name later in the week, and it's not like the results are going to change by then. I took the test in July. What can change?

Success! The vacuum cleaner is fixed!

Drowsing the Day Away

2005-11-16T17:18:00.000-08:00

Thanks to that germ factory I call an office, I am sick again. And, in the spirit of partnership and equality and all that is sickness and health, I shared my cold with my husband.

Two sick people trying to make breakfast is truly a pathetic sight to behold. You know how that cold haze descends on your brain and can make you stop in the middle of what you are doing and stare straight into the complex patterns in the whitewash of the kitchen wall? At least I only burned two pancakes. And my husband volunteered to make coffee in the coffee press, and ended up pouring the hot water directly into the coffee cups.

Phenylephrine HCL is my current drug of choice. It's the new Psuedoephedrine. Take one of those, another of Loratadine, and your favorite pain medication, and you basically have Sudafed. The Loratadine is a one-time thing; it's basically Claritin. The others can be periodically re-injested.

I started working on a new painting named Fluffy and my husband settled down to read The Notebook, but the sunshine made us both a little stir-crazy. I took the dog and cat out for a walk, and when I got back, my husband requested a trip to OSH to pick up a new vacuum cleaner belt. And I'd made oxtail soup, so he wanted tortillas. And his dad had given him that recipe for pumpkins and brown sugar. And the cat was out of food. And another set of sheets wouldn't hurt. And we hadn't been to Tower Records in forever. And the turtle needed a new home. And...

Well, you get the picture. Despite our grand ambitions, we only made it to three stores before fatigue took over and we gave up on the rest. The turtle has new substrate and a lovely rectangular pot to call home, and we found the belt. The pumpkins are cooking as I write this. The cat loves hew new Oceanfish and Rice-flavored Iams. And somehow, along the way, the dog ended up with blue and black fleece booties.

Max and Tahoe say hi

2005-11-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

hello

New Website is Up

2005-11-13T23:32:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I junk my old website and put up a new one. I've switched from a personal domain back to a general (and free) Geocites site. It's still under construction, but feel free to take at look here.

The only thing that's new is a section with some paintings. I started sketching during my second-to-last semester in law school as part of my whole quality-of-life kick. I figured I needed to do something to blow off steam other than plow through a dozen fiction books every break, and started out by drawing my professors in the margins of my notebooks. Eventually I started carrying little sketchbooks around, which is how the Sebastian painting originally came about. Incidentally, my quality-of-life thing turned out to be hell on my grades, but I was much happier about it.

Painting relaxes me. That's why I was so relaxed when I took my Senator to her evening event; she was still keyed up from being "beyond staff" at her morning and afternoon policy meetings and such, whereas I was at a point where people have been known to ask me if I am stoned.

It wasn't a legislative/speechy thing, but rather a fashion show benefit to support a local leadership training organization. She modeled twice: first bopping down the stage after the school superintendent, and second after the cheetah (No, not the lady in the fake cheetah fur. I mean the cheetah).

Cat

2005-11-05T14:50:00.000-08:00

Our pets check out the neighbors.

The cat was sitting on the bed grooming himself when, suddenly, there was a sound.

Freeze. Leg raised over one ear. Big green eyes stare out into the hall. Whiskers quiver.

Then... nope, nothing. Back to grooming.

I think I must have thought the house was haunted or something, because I always felt like I had to have a cat around. They see ghosts, you know. Not that we ever seemed to have a shortage of cats. More like a shortage of ghosts.

Our current apartment is likewise short on ghosts. Lots of ducks and seagulls and raccoons and such -- though not inside -- but no ghosts.

Still, sometimes I think it would be nice to have more cats around. Max came to work with me on Friday because he was [whisper] fixed. I dropped him off at the vet before work, and then toward the end of the day a co-worker volunteered to help me pick him up since I'd parked in the $7.00 lot and had no in/out privileges. We left behind the PowerPoint we were doing on office events for our Staff Retreat at the Children's Discovery Museum next week. I'd suggested we lay the theme song to "Sesame Street" on it. "Sunny day... chasin' the clouds away..."

The cat was only in for a short time. He made a beeline for the Senator's office, of all places, where he looked quite dashing against the Mediterranean-blue carpet as he hid inefficiently underneath one of the burgundy-and-gold armchairs. Then we went to my office, where he was still somewhat freaked out but willing to at least look around first before hiding under the state-issued blue diamond couch. We all like that couch. It's cushy. Turn one cushion, and it's almost like one of Freud's.

And if he saw any ghosts, he wasn't telling.

Not Really a Post

2005-10-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

So, we went to Oahu for our first anniversary and brought my parents and hung out in the sun and (warm) rain and surf and sand and fishes and turtles all that lovely Hawaii stuff that makes Hawaii Hawaii. And then my husband started having some pretty raunchy chest pains during our layover in LAX, so after dropping off his Dad who had pet-sat during our trip, I forced him to go to his clinic which said they were no longer his clinic, then dragged him to his new clinic which he admits he now likes lots more than he ever even on a good day liked his old clinic, and even thought the Urgent Care doctor said he looked perfectly healthy and the nurse told the Cardiologist that he looked like he could run circles around the two of them, apparently it's really, really common to get blood clots during overnight flights (confirmed by a friend whose sister is in med school, so always at least go to the bathroom once during the flight, or twice if it's a very short walk), so the doctor walked him into the ER and admitted him to the hospital because, "God forbid I send you home with something that might kill you." And they kept us there for 32 hours and poked him and prodded him and measured him and even weighed him, and had the Blood Collectors circle by every few hours, and we went through three full shifts of chatty, frazzled, and very nice (except for one somewhat bitchy) nurses until they were at least pretty almost postively sure that it was just a pulled muscle or six that may or may not be irritating his lung lining, then sent us home with a prescription for Motrin, except the prescribing doctor didn't list his license number or something on the prescription, and the pharmacy tried to get it but couldn't because it was after hours on a Friday night, and how about we just get the over-the-counter type and take the prescribed dosage? And then we went home and slept for more than two hours for the first time since Wednesday.

So, yeah. Still tired. And he still hurts, but he's better. Remember, when they ask you about the Pain Scale, a 1 means a pinprick and a 10 means someone is sawing off your arm.

Another Day in Paradise

2005-10-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

Two of us went up to the Capitol today. We had a slightly complicated plan involving me driving us up and swapping him off with his old boss when our meetings were over, which was complicated more by him taking the wrong freeway to my apartment this morning. No, that exit doesn't exist on 280...

And when we got there, his old boss ended up having to leave earlier in order to get to a funeral, and so dropped by to see if it was possible to leave early. It wasn't. "I'm disappointed," Old Boss said bluntly, but was understanding. Duty calls.

And then many dutiful things called, some more dutiful than others but all dutiful nonetheless, so we left later than we'd planned. To be fair, his duties were much more onerous than my duties, so I was still somewhat cheerful as we got on our way.

Traffic was bad today. Bad bad bad. Bumper to bumper in all the wrong places.

Not that I minded. I like driving. It relaxes me. It's "me" time.

Not so my passenger. As someone who easily and colorfully accesses the full spectrum of formal and colloquial vocabulary available through the English language, he had many descriptive and actually quite entertaining things to say about traffic and the choice other counties have made regarding the definition of the carpool lane.

Eventually, he stopped counting the people in the cars in the carpool lane. Bastards, he'd said when a car with only two passengers zipped by. You can't even fit two people in that cab, he'd said of another. And even more things when we'd passed a sign saying trucks could use the lane, because he'd driven to my apartment in a big white truck.

He'd spent the weekend in Mendicino. Paradise, he said. Beautiful. Magnificent. Not so this bastion of technology and suburbia and uburbinity enmeshed in a tangle of bypasses. Not at all. Not even close.

I pointed out the fog-enshrouded Bay Bridge as we crawled across it in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Look at how it rises into the clouds, all monochromatic greys and blues. Look at how the supports stretch up and draw the eye. Wouldn't it be interesting to walk up the supports and look at the Bay?

No, he said. Turns out he doesn't like heights.

Good Morning, Sunshine

2005-10-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday. The cat is off romping in the sun and following his girlfriend around. The dog is walking around in circles, which seems to be his thing now that he's old and doesn't see to well. If he tries to stand for too long, his back legs start to give out and he slowly tilts to one side. Although usually a finicky eater, he wolfed down his food this morning after I threw his canned and dry food on the stove and cooked it into a stew, but since staying in one place was a strain, I had to stand next to him while he ate to prop him up. I'm not sure if he even noticed.

My husband actually has the day off, kind of. He's at a unit right now talking to the police because there was a break-in overnight. And he has to go into the office later to finish up next year's budget, but that's mainly to look it over one more time and then email it to the portfolio manager. He was at work until 10 last night, and midnight the night before, but it's pretty much done now. So, otherwise, he has the day off. And he has tomorrow off, too, probably. So that's nice.

And I have a real, live, three-day weekend. No events. No office work -- well, except for stopping at the office later to print something out, but I wouldn't have to do that if I'd just printed it out on Friday, so that doesn't count.

Hopefully, we can have breakfast soon. I burned the bacon, but I'll get over that. Our gas stove is a lot touchier than the one at our last apartment. And I need to figure out the right setting for the toast. I made "french" bread in the breadmaker yesterday, and breadmaker bread tends to take longer to toast than store-bought bread. But this one's yummier, even though it's not crusty like store bread. We used it last night to make french bread pizza, and since all we that remotely resembled a topping was... well, more bacon (panchetta, anyone?)... I made bacon and onion pizza. And burnt the bacon last night, too. But it was gooooooooood...

Nope. Not posting

2005-10-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

No, Mom, I'm still not posting anything. I've been a little busy. Here's a picture of Kristine's son, Nathan, and me pushing him around.

What is all this crap?

2005-09-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

We’re in the thick of it, so to speak, and I am reminded again about the most annoying part of moving: all the little crap we can’t do without.

Really, do I need a whole bag of tea candles? Can’t I throw them out?

The Chinese really had something going there with those big cabinets full of little drawers. I think someone told me they were for kitchenware or special kinds of tea or something, but I think they were inspired by a woodworker who needed a place to put all his crap.

So… tea candles. Batteries. Tools. Pens. Vases. Stuffed animals. Dog toys. Cat toys. Paints. Sketch books. Baskets. Ornamental rocks. Ornamental anythings. Books and books and books and more books.

Maybe we should get all Japanese Austerity in our new place. It doesn’t need to be cozy. Two chairs, a table, a TV… the rest can go into storage. We can be zen.

Blasphemy

2005-09-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

I threw away four boxes of books today. Yes, I know, it’s terrible, the horror… Whatever. It’s my third move in a year. The last time I did all this moving was in the early 90’s when I moved four times in a two-year period, and by the last move could cram all of my worldly possessions into the back of my 1985 Toyota Tercel station wagon.

If it makes any of you feel better, I recycled them.

Ironically, I did this after coming home from my event this morning, celebrating the 100th birthday of the Mountain View Library. I went up after many speeches and right after two actual electeds so that I could present our rather lengthy Resolution to the library. "Here," I said, arranging the reso in front of me, "let me read this to you." Pause. Silence. "Just kidding," I said. They laughed, and I read a few sentences off of the reso and turned it over to the Director. Many speeches followed me, and what someone later told me was a Junebug buzzed by three times, hovering like a glowing green helicopter at face level of many of my seatmates in the front row. By the second pass, my neighbor had had enough, and she jumped up and went over to stand on the sidelines (subsequently escaping the sun, which was beating down on us).

The Mountain View Library is pretty high on the cool scale as far as libraries go, so if any of you get a chance, check it out. If you have a laptop and DSL cable with you, even better. There's a garden outside, so if any of you have children who are fascinated by grass, trees, and lots of crumbly dirt (as another staffer's son was), the Library is the place for you.

Anyway, back to the books. There were a good number in the back of my Tercel, but I have many, many, many more now. Four boxes is a drop in the bucket. Of course, anyone interested in some old books on, say, economics or astrology can feel free to dumpster dive in our trash area, but I kept all the good ones.

My husband tried to stop me. He didn't mind me tossing my old textbooks (although he didn't like it), but he really had trouble with anything resembling fiction. He wants our kids to be readers. They'll be readers, I answered. There's more than enough to keep them busy up there.

Besides, books breed. You buy two, turn your back, and suddenly you have a basket of eight. Every used bookstore beckons you in, and even the big chains with their Summer Reading 3-for-4 or Fall 40% Off sales are tempting (although, come on, isn't it weird to walk through the Borders entryway on University Avenue? I always think Rocky Horror.)

There are plenty of books. And there will be plenty more books. Sometimes, you just have to set boundaries and let things go.

Besides, then there's room for more books.

Beginnings and Endings

2005-09-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

Today was Madison Nguyen's swearing-in ceremony. I had forgotten, or thought it was later, or something, so when my co-worker looked at the clock and said it was time to go, I looked at my grey casual pants and white t-shirt and clogs, and realized I was so not dressed for this. I even thought of not going. But how could I not go? It was important. And besides, no one would be looking at me, and it would be my first trip to the new City Hall (which, by the way, is lovely, with its high ceilings and flowing white curves).

We left late, but in the whole scheme of things, ended up getting there early. There were plenty of seats in the amphitheater-style council chambers, and it was easy to get to people as we made our rounds. I grabbed a council agenda, which, being a process nerd, kept me occupied far more than it should have as I tried to puzzle out the schedule and simultaneously say hi and meet people. And I had to meet people. It was a local-political-people-watcher's paradise. And I had friends there as well. We craned our necks to look for his wife, and he pointed out when I missed someone waving at me. Madison worked the crowd, moving from well-wisher to well-wisher, followed by a stream of print and TV media cameras but with a staff member running interference in front of her.

We sat, but kept chatting with our neighbors until the Mayor called the meeting to order, and then kept whispering with the people around us anyway. It's just one of those things. Madison stopped making her rounds, and there was still a smattering of chanting and well-wishes for her, which she accepted graciously with a bow. And then they called up a judge and the City Clerk, and she was sworn in, which was followed by a burst of applause and a standing ovation. She looked so happy, and she made a good, short, strong speech of thanks.

There was paperwork, of course, so she and the judge and the city clerk and the mayor all signed and initialed and did whatever they needed to do. And then she walked up to the dais and was hugged by her new fellow council members. She was settled into the large black leather chair next to Linda Lazotte, where she took her first sip of water from the water bottle next to the microphone as the press clustered around to snap her picture. Mayor Gonzales finally had to shoo them away, asking that "the members of the press paparazzi please take their seats," and reminded them that she would be right there for a long time, and that they were welcome to come back anytime. She looked good in the chair. It fit.

I imagine she was a bundle of nerves. It didn't show, but isn't that how someone would feel on this day, doing what she was doing? Pride and excitement mixed with concern, and so many other emotions. Was she able to concentrate on the meeting? It's funny; I joke to people that I go to great lengths to get out of going to council meetings. But it's different when you have a specific purpose. When you're just observing, it's hard to stifle the yawns, but when you know the context and are watching for signposts, the time flies by.

The council then moved onto its normal business, which would stretch into the afternoon and pick up again after a dinner break. We left at the conclusion of the ceremonial items, and joined the group of networkers up at the top of the chamber. While my co-worker went off "being popular" as I termed it, I quizzed another staffer whose co-worker was also off being popular, and she explained the council's consent calendar, which worked a little differently from the Senate's consent calendar.

Eventually, we wandered out into the late afternoon rain. As we walked, fat, widely-spaced raindrops splattered around us amid the drizzle, and thunder roared out of the east. "An auspicious day for a swearing-in ceremony," I said. Something had happened. Even the clouds saw it.

We're moving. Again. But that's okay.

2005-09-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

We're moving again. This will be our third apartment in a year, although this move will be much less work (relatively speaking). We're only moving about 100 feet to an apartment closer to the water with many, many more windows and a nice place for the dog to hang out and watch the geese.

Although technically, we still live in Evergreen. My husband owns a house there with some of his family members. Then again, I guess technically we don't. But we do. As far as the Registrar of Voters is concerned, we do. And Social Security. I guess it depends on the technicality.

Anyway, as George Carlin would say, we're getting a new place to put our stuff. A new and better place to put our stuff. We are at an advantage in that my husband is the property manager here, so we have about two weeks to shuffle our stuff from our old box to our new box. Most of our day will be spent dealing with our stuff, so hopefully we will get to the places we need to get to tonight at roughly the times when we agreed to get to those places. And then our evenings after work will be spent dealing with our stuff. And parts of next weekend. And if my husband ever actually gets any days off, he can spend those days dealing with our stuff.

Yesterday, a law school classmate and I went to the mall to get a birthday present for my nephew and return an old gift that she'd gotten that didn't fit. We'd planned to visit a friend who'd just had a baby, but we got started late and I had to work that night and then go to the birthday party, so we just decided to run errands. "I thought we were supposed to be less busy now that we're out of school!" she said.

In a way, we are less busy. We're still always busy, but it's a different kind of busy. Less frazzled. Less pressured. The hours are full and we're still rushing from place to place, but we get to that place and have everything we need to get things done, and we're not rushing quite as fast, and we can get it all done without prioritizing as much. Again, it's all relative.

The San Mateo Roller Derby

2005-09-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

I've taken up roller skating. Not in-line skating; that's different. I mean the old-fashioned, fake white leather boots with their "wonder suede" lining.

I tried jogging. I hate jogging.

So now -- preferably at 6 a.m. when it's quiet and cool, and the joggers will nod at you when you pass -- I'm roller skating. I'd rather be swimming, but getting to a decent lap pool is inconvenient.

I went to a lecture recently where one of the pieces of advice was for "all you Type-A busy people to schedule in your workouts." If it's in the schedule, we'll do it. I think that actually works better for people who schedule their workouts in-between other things, and not at the very beginning or end of the day. It's too easy to sleep in or kick back, and then skip the whole working out thing.

Still, I try, and I have a new bump, bruise, or scar for each time I tried -- always from the narrow concrete bridge that crosses the lagoon. Ducks run from me. Geese inch grudgingly out of my way if I come to close (or give a half-flying, squawking hop if I go straight for them), and there's fowl poop on my heels. I have my favorite stretch of smooth pavement on the Foster City side of the lagoon, and my least favorite stretch of gravelly, pock-marked concrete near the entrance of my favorite stretch.

I don't know what I'm going to do once the time changes and the weather gets bad. Maybe I'll get the monthly membership at the Fairmont, of the alumni membership at SCU or SJSU -- they all have outdoor pools, but they're heated and it's nice to swim in the rain. Maybe I'll just run up and down the stairs of the Capitol more. Maybe I'll just give in and get fat. Until then, I'll keep scaring the ducks and watching out for railings.

Sick. We're all sick.

2005-09-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

A virus or two has slowly taken over our DO. One person has had sinus problems since last week, which developed into an infection this week -- she was out late last week, tried to work yesterday, then went home after a few hours. Another was sent home last Friday because he sounded like a frog (insisting that it wasn't so bad, but the fact that he admitted to feeling sick at all gave us the head's up that he was actually sick). A third was sick over the weekend, but got sent home Monday because she was just exhausted. I was exhausted at the beginning of the day, but had too much to do to just stay home. I wrapped up everything that I could by 2pm, then gave in.

There's a fifth person in the office, but yesterday he was up in the Capitol, which is where I was supposed to be today. When I sent out my email saying I was going home, one of my Sacto co-workers teased me by saying she hoped my co-worker hadn't brought our crud up with him. And three members of a different office, after I accidentally sent my email to their DO because of our auto-fill command in Outlook, told me they hoped I would get better.

So now I'm home, and sleepy. Being home sick is kind of boring. I got up at 10:30 to answer a call from the office about a site contract, which meant I missed the end of my dream where I would have found out why the old woman with bright red lipstick in the black lace dress was standing in the middle of the street, smiling. I made mac'n'cheese with Jack and aged Gruyere, and surfed for bread machine recipes and infra-red dog doors. I finished The Girl with the Pearl Earring and started up The Lovely Bones (I'm in a re-reading phase -- it's cheaper).

Yeah. Sleepy. Here's some sites (mostly blogs) I found along the way, in no particular order:

Katrina diary: http://dancingwithkatrina.blogspot.com
Honolulu native: http://oathsandcurses.blogspot.com
Chicago attorney/bike enthusiast: http://denofawkwardness.blogspot.com
Bay Area activist: http://www.martadonayre.com
Free statistics for your website: http://www.statcounter.com
Free Myers-Briggs personality test: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

I got ENFJ. What'd you get? (Mom, I made you take this once -- you're an INTP)

Too many words. Or not enough.

2005-09-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

So, like, every once in a while, I give myself a project. Like, several years ago, I decided to cut the word “like” out of my spoken vocabulary. Well, okay, like, not completely, but mostly. It wasn’t easy. It’s, like, such an easy, mellifluous word (like mellifluous, especially when spoken by James Earl Jones. But not like. You know, the “like” like. Like, you know?)

And then yesterday I declared war on the word “but.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But…

I'm worried.

2005-09-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court worries me.

The Supreme Court doesn't usually worry me. I worry as much as the next person... okay, maybe I don't. Maybe it's a lack of self-preservation or something. Or maybe it's a religious/philosophical thing (I'm a Buddhist, so it's kind of the same thing). I'm more likely to strategize than worry. It makes me feel useful. There are things that worry me. This just isn't usually one of those things.

I didn't worry -- although I didn't like it -- when Justice O'Connor announced her resignation. It was just one of those things. I followed it a bit in the paper and online and all that. There are lots of things I follow a bit.

And then Bush went and nominated John Roberts for Chief Justice, which strikes me first as a negotiating tactic. For what, I don't know -- admittedly, my attention to domestic federal politics over the past four years has been cursory at best, and before that I was more into foreign policy. It also seems like a slap in the face to the other Justices who have been hanging out in the Court all this time, which offends a basic sense of fairness I have that is bruised and battered and hanging on by its fingernails, but still there.

I don't like to worry about things I can't do anything about. So I will worry a bit more, then file it away down some neuron pathway leading to wherever it is that I file things pending an unlikely juncture in time and space with the gods smiling down on me. File it away as an influence, maybe. Filed, but not trashed. That's probably as good as it's going to get.

Floating through Errand Day

2005-09-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was errand day. Just little stuff, brief stops. "You're at work???" asked one of my friends, who had just woken up at noon (adjusting to the time change and all the walking she did in Oahu). Yes, I was at work, but jut for an hour or so. Dropping off new paintings for the office. Checking email. Re-editing. Just another stop. It was tricky getting in; they are putting on a new roof, so I darted under the suction hose and past the yellow CAUTION tape while the workmen weren't looking. The paintings were heavy; one was a newer painting by my mother, and the other was something my parents had brought back from Vietnam. There was no way I was leaving them in my trunk until Tuesday. The workers had taken off the door handle, but I had the electronic key, which automatically releases the latch. All I had to do was balance the paintings on my shoe and pull.

As a side note, the State Building in downtown San Jose was voted the ugliest building in the city three years in a row. I think we finally lost to some derelict green building up the street. But the inside of our office is pretty.

At the art store by SJSU, it took a while to pick up some new acrylics. While the tubes and jars fill three rows, with every new tube, I saw in my minds eye the colors I had at home shifting and blending into the new color. I also looked longingly at a couple of french easels, but that can wait.

Fry's Electronics is always a little uncomfortable. The Campbell store is done up like an Egyptian pyramid, which is nice, but the merchandise is jumbled together and everything always seems a little dirty. I bought, of all things, a breadmaker, because after searching for months, it seemed like Fry's was the only place that carried anything under $100. At home, it became apparent that the breadmaker was not only used, but badly used. There were scrapes in the breadpan with rust flaking off of it.

The return guy at the Palo Alto Fry's, which has a western theme but for some reason reminds me of Orchard Supply Hardware, shook his head and stuck a "return to vendor" sticker on it. Why they didn't do that the first time was beyond him. Meanwhile, two other employees kept edging us further and further down the table as they looked over a monitor that had been returned by another customer. They never even made eye contact. The guy who helped me pick out a new breadmaker -- a Sunbeam, $40 -- shrugged his shoulders and said it was a good brand. The expensive ones did all kinds of things, but if all I wanted was bread, then this was all I needed. I took it home and found out the bread recipes call for non-fat dried milk, which we don't have. So I made cake. It was good cake.

What do we say?

2005-09-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

"Caltrain station, por favor," said the tall Asian man in the ill-fitting ao dai and rastafarian hat. "Merci beau coup."

"Sure thing," said the Dash driver, and then she went back to her newspaper. He sat rigidly in the front seat, his ao dai falling in uncomfortable folds around him. It was not made for him, but it was the right color for a man -- royal blue with gold pattern -- although I haven't seen the bamboo pattern on a man before. Usually, they have the large round coin-like pattern. I grew up seeing men in that ao dai, and my uncles once fought (playfully) over my lighter blue ao dai with gold coins when I brought it to work when I was waitressing at one of my aunt's restaurants. Too bad; I am so small that neither of them would fit it.

They were Vietnamese-born, but American-bred. It makes us bigger. Although 5'2 and wearing sizes ranging from 0-4, when I went to Vietnam, the first thing I felt was tall. So I was not small to them. At Christmas, my relatives give me clothes in XL.

I don't know if the Dash passenger was Vietnamese. He may have been Chinese.

Okay, look, you try to tell me how to the difference between a Columbian and a Mexican, and I'll try to tell you the difference between a Vietnamese and a Japanese. It's a matter of degree, and what you are trained to see.

Anyway, he was polite. He was quick to get up when his seatmate needed to get off at a stop before his. And Dash passengers are in general a very courteous group, as are commute Caltrain passengers.

For some reason, I always end up mentally back in high school when I wonder what people will say. It was an unedited time. In high school, we are so wrapped up in the newness of ourselves that, while we lack the inner monologue that prefaces what we say, we have such blinders on that the bluntness lacks punch. But as adults, one does not call a political group "nazis" when the press is around, or verbalize the give and take back-scratching of networking, or even tell married people that they are attractive. One develops social skills that make more sense in context.

So no one said anything, but everyone saw everything. It's like a buzz in the air. We feel it, maybe even call it telepathy or a sixth sense or whatever, but we're trained to see it and trained to refrain. And it's a nicer way to be, really. We give the illusion of privacy, but the illusion isn't so bad after all.

Weekending with Wine

2005-08-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Now that we are home from the Palo Alto Art & Wine Festival, I am having a glass of wine. Not that they didn't have some very nice wines at the festival, but it was hot and the combination of sun + alcohol makes me sleepy. Besides, I haven't finished the bottle of Rex Goliath Pinot Grigio (2004, giant 47 pound free range rooster. Says the label), and it's a nice little wine. Well able to handle sitting in a shady spot on the counter for several days, and has even been getting better. I'd actually say it's now one of my favorite inexpensive white wines, and I'd be happy to try some other wines on the label.

I guess it goes well with seafood, in case someone out there is googling Rex Goliath Pinot and somehow found this website. Probably a lightly-seasoned shrimp dish. And I'm just guessing on that -- I havent actually paired it with food, but have had a glass while preparing dinner the last few nights. I would also guess it goes well with chicken thighs sauteed in butter and finished with basil and garlic, and maybe a little paprika and cayanne pepper, which is not something we had for dinner this week. Again, just guessing. Just trying to be helpful.

I also had a glass of Jerry Garcia Cabernet last night at the Juntos concert. Well, okay, it wasn't a glass; it was a little plastic cup, which doesn't allow for swishing (which I can't do anyway) or smelling or any of that Sideways stuff, but it was still pretty tasty.

There are some other art & wine festivals coming up. Mountain View is going to have one, so we'll probably hit that one on whichever Sunday it happens (it's that or the dog park). I have tickets for the alumni thing at SCU, which is happening at the exact same time as the second dance performance by two of my nieces, which is why we're going to be at SCU the night before as well for the first concert. Two trips to Santa Clara in one weekend. Oh, well. (and how come I only care about commuting on the weekends?)

Overall, it's been a pleasant, mellow weekend. We have got to do these kinds of things more often.

Today's pep talk

2005-08-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

“Go to the people at the top—that is my advice to anyone who wants to change the system, any system. Don’t moan and groan with like-minded souls. Don’t write letters or place a few phone calls and then sit back and wait. Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind—even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants.”

-Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Grey Panthers.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

Tough Titties

2005-08-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

Tough titties. That is the phrase of the day.

"What does that mean, exactly?" my husband asked.

"I'm not sure," I said.

But still. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Was it the 80's when everyone was saying, "Life is hard, then you die..."? Or something similar.

The cat didn't want to go on a walk this evening. He meowed meowed meowed for his dinner, then went silent after the harness went around him. A black cat, matte, all eyes and no shadows. The dog skipped hither and yon, while the cat walked forward at a deep crouch -- when he walked at all. He hid behind the dog, low to the ground, then stre-e-e-e-tched his neck up to see what he could see. No, he didn't want to walk. Tough titties. We went for a walk.

The plant in the kitchen has been trying to die since before the beginning of Byron Sher's last term. Since moving in, it has tried to die less quickly. A little water, and it starts trying to die all over again.

There are things you can do and things you can't. One of my undergrad professors liked to tell us, "You are the CEO of your life." There are situations you can control. There are decisions you can make. There are people you can influence. There are things you can let develop. There are things you can watch. There are things you can avoid. Even if your choice is to do nothing, that's something, so long as it's a conscious choice and you're paying attention.

And sometimes, tough titties, you just have to make do.

Swimming with Sharks

2005-08-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

The name of the book was The Art of Survival.

Every religion needs its bible, and I had found mine, not a moment too soon. I read it in eighteen hours, and then started over again. I learned how to stay alive for long weeks on the open sea when my white ocean liner went down. When shipwrecked, you catch fish, press their juices to drink. You sponge up morning dew off your life raft's rubberized deck. Adrift on a sailboat, you catch rainwater on the canvas. But if the sails were dirty, the book pointed out, the decks crusted with salt, what water you caught would be worthless. You had to keep the decks clean, the sails rinsed, you had to be ready... you make fishhooks from any kind of bent metal, form line from the thread in your clothes, bait the hook with bits of fish or dead fellow passengers, even a strip of your own flesh if you have to...

Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities...

... Would I want her around if I'd crashed my plane in Papua New Guinea or Para, Brazil? We'd slog through a hundred-mile labryinth of mangrove forest, covered with leeches like in The African Queen, maybe even pierced with a long native spear. [She] wouldn't panic, rip out the spear, and die of blood loss. I knew she could do the right thing, let the maggots feed in the wound, clearing out the hole, and then in five days or a week, pull out the spear. She would even write a poem about it.

But I could also see her making a terrible mistake, a failure in judgment. I imagined us adrift in a life raft ten days outside shipping lanes, pressing fish juice, sponging each drop of water from the clean morning deck, when suddenly she determined seawater wasn't undrinkable after all. I saw her going swimming among sharks.

White Oleander, by Janet Fitch

Wide Open Spaces. Or something.

2005-08-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

I walked into my Early Bird parking garage just as one of the attendants was telling the other about how he had to put back all the people's organs at the end of the night.

"You know," I said, "when you walk into the middle of a conversation..."

He insisted it had to do with his night class at the mortuary. Of course. He also gave me excellent directions back to the freeway. Left on L, right at the first light, left on I, then all the way to the freeway exits.

It really is a nice drive. There's a lot of open space between Sacramento and the Bay Area. Then I plunged from from wide, sunny vistas to deep green-grey fog and ocean.

And driving into the Capitol in the morning is like watching the Land of Oz rise out of the dew.

I get a lot of pity for my commute. It's kind of annoying, actually. I wonder if I can make it work for me somehow. I'm not above that. Okay, maybe I am, but I'm not above thinking about it.

"You look tired," someone told me right before I left. Hell of a thing to tell a person. I didn't want to say, yeah, well you'd be tired, too, if you got up at 5:30 a.m. so you could get here before anyone else gets here and have time to explore and get some work done while it's quiet. No, I couldn't say that. That would be downright anti-social.

And before any of my regular readers (Mom) get the idea that I have a hard-ass work ethic, I would like to state for the record that I have never in my life gotten up at 5:30 a.m. to do anything school-related.

Although maybe I should have. I know the last year of law school is supposed to be laid back and boring, but I lacked the foresight, social networks, and desire to ferret out the bonehead classes. No, I had to take the classes that seemed interesting, so I had this bright idea of taking a tax class and a business class (graded on a curve!) during my last semester. Not that they weren't good classes. Just not the sort of thing you want to do when you're on your way out. And the whole friend fainting on me thing is still unsettling.

The above person also wanted to know if my new office is busier than my other office. Okay, look, even if it were less busy, you would have to be a special kind of stupid to admit something like that. Or kissing up or something. I just told this person the truth. It's feast or famine. Some days, we all operate at a run. Other days, it's laid back. (Besides -- and I didn't tell said person this -- what the hell kind of question is that?)

Okay, maybe I'm tired. Some bloodsucking insect kept me up half the night until I crushed its delicate little body against the ceiling at around 4 a.m. with a pair of my husband's sweats. "Did you get it?" he asked, sleepily opening one eye. The cat, mighty hunter that he is, didn't even bother to wake up.

And then I went to sleep and dreamt fever dreams about wandering through tunnels and dark rooms chasing another insect. Like the dream the night before when I followed someone into a photography store and it turned out to be an aquarium (would that be Bridges of Madison County or Closer?) Or the girl in White Oleander who was so desperately, blindly in love with her mother.

Yeah, I might be a little tired.

A Hot Time in the Old Town

2005-08-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

Sacramento is hot. And I don't mean hot like a hip and happening place to be; no, I mean hot like HOT hot. It really does feel like stepping into an oven. The old air conditioning ventilation system under the LOB shoots excess cold air out on the street, so when we walked across the street to Le Bou, we kind of accidentally but kind of on purpose detoured slightly to walk past the vents.

The LOB is the Legislative Office Building, where all the committee consultants work. Le Bou is the cheap-but-good sandwich place across the street where they make (in my opinion) a very tasty tuna sandwich on a bagette.

The LOB is also where I was originally supposed to work, alongside our super-friendly committee staff. They set aside a nice cubicle on the 5th floor for me with windows overlooking an alleyway and walls that go over my head in a room where you could hear a mouse fart.

Instead, I am now on the 4th floor of the Capitol building itself in a desk in the reception area hidden from the front door by a short wall. Really, it's just a desk. A corner desk, true, but there are no filing cabinets or hutches or shelves over my head. It has 5 drawers. The former occupant left me a lot of very helpful binders and books and such, which I decided by the end of the day have got to go. I need work space.

I was glad it was recess, and therefore dress-down in the Capitol, although at times I felt overdressed in jeans, a short-sleeved sweater, and puma sneakers. One guy in flip-flops and a basketball shirt walked by me as he balanced a thick pile of bill information with his cell phone, on which he was yelling at his roommate or someone about the girls they'd brought home the last weekend. And they Daisy-Duke cut-offs aren't in again yet, but they're almost in.

Sneakers are great for Sacramento. Did I call the Capitol Building the Mini-me Capitol? That was before I ran up and down the stairs a few times, as well as the stairs of the LOB. Our office is conveniently located next to the stairwell (and bathroom), and since I dislike waiting for elevators, I was in the stairwell a lot. Heels are now strictly a District Office thing. Plus, my new parking area is the 8-to-12-hour meters way out by 16th & O streets, although trying to find parking is weird. Not hard, but weird. On one corner, you have 2-hour parking, on the other you have 10-hour parking, and across the street there may be 1-hour parking. It's a longer walk than in San Jose, where I park for free under the 280 freeway. I'd see about garage parking, but it seems to run up to $20 a day whereas the meters are only 50 cents an hour.

I am looking forward to the whole Capitol thing. It's not a much longer drive than to San Jose; the scenery is prettier, and I can go 70 (or so) rather than 20 mph the whole way. A lot of the legislative concepts that had been rattling around in my head the past few years are starting to clear up and turn into practical, useful information. And I'm the nerdy type that likes reading bills. The district staff has promised to make sure I don't get all snooty after working in Sacramento, and it gives me something else to talk about during district events. I think this will all work out well.

My Palm Pilot and Me

2005-08-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

My husband has been telling me for some time that I need to get a palm pilot. And I had been resisting for some time buying the palm pilot. We'd go to the store and he'd say look, there's a palm pilot. You could put all your meetings on it. You could put all those phone numbers in it. So I'd look at them, and the monochromatic ones would look boring, and the bells-and-whistles ones would look intimidating, and I'd go off to look at digital cameras or something.

So I bought a palm pilot. It's a little Zire 31 with a color screen and a blue face and a white plastic back and a little rubbery flap that covers the face. It's cute. I had a moment of buyers remorse when I found out the slightly more expensive palm had a higher resolution screen and was specifically great for reading ebooks on the train, but then I found out that ebooks are about $10 each, which is not so much of a deal for something you have to read on a tiny electronic screen, so now I'm back to thinking my palm pilot is cute.

There's this cool function on it that I call the "Etch-a-Sketch" function. Basically, you can scribble notes on it like it's a regular notepad, and it preserves your lines exactly as you write them. There's also a "graffiti" function where you can write letters and numbers and it actually translates them, but with my handwriting, the etch-a-sketch function is faster.

And I can hotsynch pictures over to it, so now the menu page has a picture of my husband in front of the Capitol (the DC capitol, not the mini-me capitol here), and the calendar has a picture of me walking into the ocean.

It does some other stuff too, like handle finances or whatever, but that's another thing that I don't want to do on a tiny electronic screen. And I haven't used the contacts much part yet because my request to get access to my work computer is still pending. It's not much of a priority for our tech people as far as that kind of thing goes. I could pitch a fit (or, more likely, ask the tech person nicely to pretend that I pitched a fit if that's what it takes to speed things up), but it's not like I'm going to die if my contacts aren't on the palm anytime soon.

Oh, and it has an alarm on it, which would have been useful last week, and will be useful on Thursday when I go to the Capitol (the mini-me capitol, not the DC capitol), but since I'm now the 5:30 person in the office, so I get to sleep in for a while.

So, yeah, it's cute. Awfully cute.

What?

2005-08-06T14:04:00.000-07:00

It is 2:00pm, and my kitchen is clean. I'm pretty sure this last load of laundry is the last one for today. I'll start vaccuming next, and shuffling things upstairs so my husband and I can decide tomorrow what gets shuffled out to the storage area. The cat is sleeping peacefully under the couch, and the dog is snuggled in his bed upstairs.

I'm still not sure about this whole mopping thing. Isn't it supposed to be more than the equivalent of wiping down the counter with a long stick? How come there's no attachment thingy for the corners like with the vacuum cleaner? Oh well, at least the disinfectant stuff smells pretty, and the floor is very shiny.

I thought I'd be recharged after getting this whole law experience off my back. Instead, I find myself feeling unambitious lately. Not that I'm not getting things done, but I'm really resistant to doing any more than getting things done.

There was a party meeting last week, and there was the usual push before the election to sign up voters. I know it's important. I know it needs to get done. I just don't want to be one of the ones to do it.

Part of it lies in my nesting urge. I want to stay home. It's a nice change to see it without a textbook in front of me.

It's also a social thing. I actually don't have a lot of friends in politics. My peer group is composed mostly of former co-workers and classmates (sure, we don't go to these places to make friends, but we don't go to make enemies either). For a lot of people, party activities are a chance to hang out with their peer group -- and, consequently, when their peer group moves on, they move on. There are a few who seem to have been with it for the long haul, but a lot of them seem to be part of the same peer groups. I've only participated from a professional perspective, and I've already seen a couple of groups come and go.

Maybe I'm just being cynical. It was my first time at this particular event, and I was directed to the "cool table." It was just like the cool table in high school, although more outcome-oriented. The whispering and giggling centered more around actual work than snarky gossip. It was actually pretty entertaining, and made what would have otherwise been a dry meeting more interesting. However, not being one of the "cool people" but rather associated with someone cool, I just sat around the edge with other Associates of Coolness, doing a little whispering of our own but mostly looking apologetic when the other party faithful directed shushing looks in our direction.

So I guess part of it is that I'm in hiding. No one expected much of me before. I could one-up all the busy people with work, school, and (drum roll) a wedding to plan. I am so totally out of excuses now. All I can do is duck and run for cover.

Crazy

2005-08-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

"I don't know what it means to be crazy," whispered Veronika. "But I'm not. I'm just a failed suicide."

"Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics, psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from others."

"Like you?"

"On the other hand," Zedka continued, pretending not to have heard the remark, "you have Einstein, saying there was no time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent... Those people -- and thousands of others -- all lived in their own world."

This madwoman talks a lot of sense, thought Veronika...

...

"...Do you remember the first question I asked you?"

"Yes," [Veronika said,] "you asked me if I knew what being crazy meant."

"Exactly... insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there."

"We've all felt that."

"And all of us, one way or another, are insane."

- Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho

Love on the slow train

2005-08-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

The new train schedule blows.

[Just so you know, this is a bitch session. I have nothing nice to say. At least, not much.]

I'm okay with the morning Bullet. I'm not fond of the whole "dining car" look, but it's fine.

It's the evening Bullet that pisses me off. Okay, it's better than when there were people camped out in the aisles and stairwells and even in the bathroom, but it's still chock full of commuters. Such things bring out my anti-social tendencies, which my husband had managed to keep at bay as he dragged me to weekend movie debuts and festivals. I had no one to talk to. Commutes are just me and my novel against the elements.

And I didn't even have a novel today -- just a thick report and instructions to come up with 5 new proposals, which was fine when I was fresh in the morning, but a drag at the end of the day.

Okay, I have something nice to say. Work was fun. After weeks that moved as slow as molasses, it was refreshing to be back in a highly collaborative environment where ideas flow and just going to the bathroom was a juggling act.

I used to purposely skip the 5:45 Bullet in favor of the slightly earlier train which took an hour, but now that means a transfer in Redwood City. Yesterday, that didn't look appealing. Today, it looks golden.

I got a hot date with the bookstore tomorrow. We're taking the slow train home.

The SJ Grand Prix (or, What I Did During My Summer Vacation)

2005-07-31T20:53:00.000-07:00

My summer vacation this year was not in Hawaii. That was our Winter/end of Feb. vacation, which was slapped together at the last minute because my husband and I both felt we had to go somewhere, and right now. The beginning of the year was a little stressful.

So anyway, this summer we went to the Grand Prix in San Jose. And it was kind of like Hawaii, in that it was hot and there were palm trees everywhere, and when we wanted to sit somewhere quiet and cool and have a nice drink, we could stop at a local hotel, but it was not like Hawaii in that it was not Hawaii. Not at all.

I like champ cars now. I like them a lot. I like how they look, and how they sound, and how the pavements smells after they zoom by. Most of all, I like how the air vibrates when they race. We're already making plans for next year's race. I don't want to watch them on TV. I want to see them and feel them and smell them. Plus, walking around was fun.

Okay, not all of it was fun. Crowd control is definitely something they need to work on, and they said they'd put in more pedestrian bridges next year. Trying to get from Point A to Point B was a pain in the ass, but once you were in a section, it was fine.

The best section was the middle one. That's where the Marriot was, which ended up being our favorite place to just chill out. They had moderately-priced well drinks and a really excellent $11 burger that they barbequed in a big pit outside the side entrance. I am now not just into champ cars, but also expensive hamburgers.

The convention center was also in the middle. That was where we went when we just wanted to wander around a large, air-conditioned space. There were lots of cars booths inside, and outside were more booths, a live band, and a Smoothie King kiosk.

And DRIFTING! I am now a Drifting fan as well. I liked the beat-up old Datsun hatchback best.

Oh, yeah, the race. The race was fine. We were in the second row of the grandstand, which had an excellent view of the pit and a crappy view of the race itself; it was too low to see more than the tips of the cars over the concrete safety barriers. There were two large-screen TVs, but for us they were both blocked by a palm tree. Walking around and watching trials and practices and things was much more fun. But the race was only about an hour, and it was a fast hour.

To make it an easier trip, we took the train both yesterday and today The city did a good job with the shuttle links, so it was easy to get to and from the race. Taking the train was a treat for my husband, who used to take the train between San Jose to San Francisco all the time. Turns out we have the same favorite seat: last seat on the upper level. He had no favorite car, so he went along with my habit of getting in the second car from the front. I picked up the new schedule, which nearly gave me a heart attack until realized that, with the link in Redwood City, my schedule hasn't really changed at all. I read on the train, and since my husband likes to look out the window, I finished Nicholas Sparks' The Wedding (which, even though it was predictable, made me cry twice -- and books rarely make me cry) and started Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which I haven't read in years but picked up yesterday at Barnes & Noble because it was in the clearance section.

Overall, it was a nice vacation. We spent a lot of time together, and ate lots of fun food, and did fun stuff. That's all I need for a vacation.

Just three more bar things...

2005-07-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

1. PRESENTATION. The term was PRESENTATION.

2. The passing score for the multistate is a scaled 79. FUCK.

3. What equitable servitudes question? ..... what's stronger than fuck?

Okay. I'm done.

A Swiftly Tilting Bar

2005-07-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

I am tired. Not exausted, fortunately, but tired. I have finished all the portions of the test that I can study for. One more performance exam, and it's over. I'm glad it's over. I'm really, really ready for it to be over. I'm tired.

It could also be that I'm hung over. To celebrate the multistate being over, I made a new drink last night. Coconut rum, pineapple juice, and club soda. I'm sure it's a real drink with a real name, but who cares? It was quite good. I had two.

This morning I woke with a headache, for which I took the prescription headache medicine that I've taken off and on since first year, when my doctor took pity on me and told me my stories about law school reminded him of med school. It works alright. I could take two, but my pharmacist said I was getting the "good stuff," so since I'm a light weight, I've always avoided it.

The first question threw me. It was a pretty straight-forward evidence question, but I couldn't remember my essay outline: "Form, Relevance, _???_, Hearsay, Privileges." What the hell was the middle one? I sat there for a second staring at my notes on my scratch paper. I had my first real Bar Anxiety moment. Then, I thought, screw it, I'm going on to the next one.

The next question was horse-race contractual/equitable remedies question for a land sale. I've had this thing for anticipatory repudiation all through bar review, so I figured I'd use that as the backbone for the breach. I wrote 10 pages on that question.

The last question was also fairly straightforward. Don't charge your clients too much. Don't sleep with them. Tell them everything. Ethics.

Then I went to the bathroom. What was that middle part? I stayed for a bit to chew on some beef jerkey I'd hidden in my pocket. I thought of more colorful curse words, which I had become more familiar with after starting work for my new director and hadn't strung together much since middle school. This is crap, I thought. Well, who cares what the middle part was? I was going to go back in there and write an introduction on what evidence was and why it was important, and why courts admit some and don't admit others, and maybe I'll remember it somewhere down the line. So I did, and I didn't, so I made a new outline based on who said what.

So that's over. I wish I could say that I'm glad I'll never have to study for the bar again, but I can't. I just don't know for sure what they're looking for, so I can't say for sure that I gave it to them. I think I did a good job based on what I learned and remembered, but I'm not sure what that means in the whole context of the thing.

There are three stages of bar test review. The first time, the tests are divvied out to individual readers who only focus on one question. There is a clean pass for one group, a clear fail for another, and then the passing of a third borderline group to a second review. That results in another pass group, fail group, and borderline group. For the third review, each test is given to someone to read as a whole. That person then decides if the test as a whole is up to professional standards, then assigns a pass or fail. I have always imagined myself to be in that group. It's not just that I'm not sure if I got everything. The whole individual review idea also appeals to me in some poetic way that is probably not grounded in any kind of reality.

Not that I'll ever know if I passed that way. If you pass, they just pass you. Your name goes on the bar website in November, you celebrate with your friends and loved ones, and you move on with your life. If your test was exceptionally good, they might ask you to be a reader for the next exam (but then later they ask everyone to be a reader, or you can volunteer). If you fail, you get a very detailed report on why you failed. That's it. No raw scores. No comparisons. You just move on.

Barbreak, Part II

2005-07-27T12:40:00.000-07:00

Lunchtime again. I am ethically and legally bound not to reveal in whole or in part any of the copywrited material from the multistate exam. I am allowed, however, to comment on the facilities and whatnot.

At lunchtime, the masses start trickling out as the early finishers turn in their tests, and then the whole bloated body of test takers who hunker down to the end are released at the same time. They converge on the food kiosk, which is quickly emptied.

Some people stash food in their cars. I wouldn't say there's tailgating at the bar exam, but there's an awful lot of food out in the parking lot. And some people turn on their engines to catch an air-conditioned nap.

Today was smoother. We're finding the restrooms in the other buildings -- the lines for the women's restrooms are always ridiculous -- and smuggling in better snacks in our pockets. Most people bring their stuff in plastic bags: big ziplocks if they just want to tuck their stuff under their seats, or supermarket bags if they want to leave their stuff in the pile in the corner. Everyone seems to have picked up on the same icebreaker, "So, what school did you go to?"

Friendliness is an option. The women next to me both remarked on my leaving early for tests. One is kind of prissy. I think it bugs her. The other is the one that wishes everyone good luck. She probably thinks I know more than I do. This morning, we exchanged our hellos, but then just kind of sat there. I didn't want to talk to the prissy one (who isn't very good at the small talk thing anyway), and the good luck girl seemed to have stuff on her mind.

I don't know. I try to avoid talking about the past tests to other test-takers because, really, what am I going to do about them? They're over. On the other hand, this morning someone mentioned a couple of issues that I missed on one of the questions, which momentarily derailed me and had me remembering random unpleasant past events during the beginning of the exam -- that's a signal that I am mentally skipping down the wrong path. Then I figured I could be upset at myself for the whole exam, or I could focus and trust myself. I decided I'd rather be more on the happy side than the sad side, seeing as taking multiple choice tests kind of bum me out anyway, so while I didn't exactly think happy thoughts, I cut out the whole self-hate thing.

I almost didn't come home because I was worried about getting into a car accident on the way home or back. Then I figured that was silly -- I've been driving for more than 15 years, and had two accidents (both under 15 miles per hour, and both times hit by someone else). There was that one line, "We should not waste away our good lives to fear." Very dramatic for a decision whether or not to go home for lunch, I know, but it worked. I'm home, I can see my pets, and there's dessert here. That's a good lunch.

Lunchtime in Barland

2005-07-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

So, I'm taking the bar. Today. Now, I guess. Okay, not really now. I'm at lunch. We technically get an hour and 45 minutes for lunch. I came home because I really have nothing else to do. I could study, but for what? The Performance Exam is next. They give us everything we need for that one.

I ran into one of my BarBri classmates on my way in. We're both glad it's Bar Day, because it means we can get it over with and get back to our lives. I told him I'm going to the Grand Prix this weekend, but didn't get a chance to ask him what he's doing.

The test center is at the San Mateo Expo Center. Oak and Cypress halls are filled with long, long rows of narrow fold-up tables. To their credit, they got us the good fold-up chairs; they're very cushy on bottom, with a nice cushion on the back as well. They're better than some of the chairs I had in class. And there's a reasonably-priced food kiosk outside.

The proctors are mostly retirees, although there's some young kid who looks like Josh Grobin watching my row. The proctors sit, then roam, then sit, then roam. They are on the lookout for cheaters, criers, and other people of note. Otherwise, they leave us alone.

The girl next to me turned to the people on either side of her and wished us both good luck before the test started. That was nice. Then I noticed she blanked on the second question. There's a difference between a person reading a question and a person who just stares at it. She was just staring.

The first question was on community property. Wife has stock options, husband has dividends, a personal injury suit, and child support payments. What is what? Who gets what? The second question may have been a property question, but I took it as a contracts question for the most part. That one had to do with a bunch of luxury homes and who was supposed to pay the security people. The third one was corporations and ethics: director duties, lawyer duties, quorums, etc.

I think I did okay. I had a lot to write about, and filled up the time. Of course, I may have totally blown the second question and missed issues right and left, but if I did, I don't know what they are. There's a very nice kind of peace in ignorance.

My husband lit a candle for me this morning. It's one of those Madonna candles you can get at the supermarket, and it's still burning. "How long do those things burn?" I asked. "Days," he said. So I lit some incense and bowed to the deities as well. We're a very inclusive household.

New pictures: honeymoon & graduation

2005-07-25T16:28:00.000-07:00

Honeymoon in Napa
Graduation

Today is My Day

2005-07-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, that last post was a cop-out. Still, I really, really doubt I'm going to be able to keep up the daily freewriting thing -- at least, in this blog. There's all the technical stuff associated with keeping a blog and getting online and emailing in blogs and making sure they load okay and whatnot that isn't going to work. Plus, my time is pretty flexible now because of bar study, but I can see my future; the daily blog is not in it.

Anyway, today is My Day. If I don't know the information for the bar by now, I'm just not going to. I think I have a good chance of passing the test (not passing with flying colors, but passing), so I'll take it and see what happens. There's always the February bar. If I don't pass this time, I have everything I need to make sure I pass it next time.

Today began with a smell. Actually, it began before that. I was dreaming that it was the last day of testing, and we were all sitting around annoyed because there was some lady who was supposed to bring each test before we took it, and she was late -- again. I was thinking about my previous test, and how I really should have used some headings in my essay. And then I wondered if I'd put headings in any of my other essays. And then I thought, how come we're only doing essays? What happened to the performance test? What happened to the multiple choice stuff? This is one weird bar exam...

And then I woke up, but laid in bed thinking it's nice to lay in a big, warm bed with crisp white sheets that were just washed yesterday and the morning sun lighting up the room. And then I smelled it.

I know that smell. Let's just say our dog is old and finds his morning feeding to be a little too exciting sometimes. So that got me up early, and I got to see my husband off to work.

Originally, I was going to go swimming this morning, study in the afternoon, then have a nice dinner with my husband. But this morning, the sun is out here in San Mateo and the wind hasn't kicked up too much, and it's so pretty and bright that I just want to stick around the house. Maybe I"ll clean the kitchen. It's nice having a clean kitchen. Besides, with me focused on this bar thing and my husband working overtime until he hires a new assistant (he only got a half-day off this week, a day off last week, and nothing the week before), our apartment could use some TLC. And later, I could take the dog for a walk. It'll be a slow, short walk, given that he's so old and has old-dog problems, but we'll be out and we can look at the water and watch the gulls dive for fish.

Once Upon A Time

2005-07-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

I don't think I can keep up this daily freewrite thing. Here's an old journal entry:

December 10, 2001

I used to write these strange, abstract fairy tales. Everything was very romanticized, with crystalline colors and language. There were not so much things as impressions of things. I wasn’t describing reality, but rather heightened, extreme forms. Like poetry, or describing a painting. And once that highly idealized perspective began to fade, so did my writing. I remember writing my last story, and having a sense of "this is my last story." The last of that kind, anyway. There are more stories coming, but I can’t return to that style of writing. It’s like I’m outside of Plato’s Cave, and the style won’t come anymore because the world I see now is different. I’ve tried, but it always feels fake and forced. Because it is. I’m not there anymore, and my voice has gotten uneven.

I mean, I can write reports and things like that. And I can do the stream-of-consciousness journal thing. But that’s different. That’s not the evocation of a parallel universe, which is shared with a reader and with a publisher and used to make money and such. That’s another thing in my way. I don’t really want to write fiction for the publisher and the buying public. I just like doing it. The journaling is easy: I’m writing for me. And the reports and term papers and whatnot are easy, because I know the audience. Writing my application for law school was relatively easy. The words come when I know the audience. I’d never thought of that before.

Why write short stories? Why write novels? Why live as a novelist? It’s a romantic ideal, and nice work if you can get it. But why? Because I’m good at it? Because I could possibly be great at it? Is that enough? I'm uneasy with the idea of needing external approval to maintain my existence, in using my creative writing to do that. I don’t mind the scholarly or legal audience paying my bills, but the creative writing seems much more personal. But I’m kind of not sure what I want to read anymore. There are so many clichés. It’s so easy to fall into them. Like Anne Rice, with her romantic vampires and all the darkness and deep colors and nobility and beauty and corruption and stuff. It’s all what we expect from vampires, and from imperfect humans (or inhumans, I guess). It’s a wonderful re-telling of our expectations, but… well, oh well.
…

Interlude (Bar Study, Interrupted)

2005-07-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

It has been an interesting couple of days, and I’m all worked up (but in a good way).

Yesterday, I decided that This Day I must finish my Moral Character application. The Moral Character application is this background check thing that the State Bar does to make sure we are not current felons or something. It takes at least six months for them to complete their investigation – if not more. I sent it in today (hence, That Day rather than This Day; more on that in a moment), which means that if I pass the Bar, I won’t be able to get sworn in until at least early next year. I’m okay with that. I’m thinking I’ll be able to find someone Honorable who can swear me in…

So I had it all planned out: I would finish the moral character thing in the morning, then finish up reviewing Corporations in the afternoon, and maybe Community Property if I got lucky.

Then I got an email from a friend that touched off a completely unforeseen project that took all afternoon. And then I couldn’t find a fifth person to be one of my references for the moral character thing, so I floated out about four phone calls, one of which resulted in finding out that a friend I who is also studying for the bar is thinking she might bail on this round and just take it next time. And I, of course, blamed myself by thinking it was because I told her about a mutual friend who fainted during one of my finals and how that touched off this whole existential phase for me that lasted at least a month (note: it’s not good to get all existential right at the beginning of a final), and my friend is very emotional and, I feared, under so much general stress now that maybe I did her in by starting her off on the wrong foot. Or not. We need more girl talk.

And today I had to get my fingerprints scanned at SJSU’s police department (they do scans now! No more ink!), so I stopped off at work to find out more information about my project (which I did), and do some work (which I’d feared), and get some more information about what I was going to do when I got back (which I got), and then maybe catch up with co-workers (which I enjoyed). And then ran off to do the scan, which I scheduled to happen after I visited the office so I would have to leave, and then went rooting around the Anthro department to see if I could find any old professors (I found two -- score!).

And now I’m back at SCU. It’s 2pm, and I haven’t done any studying at all for a day and a half. But the moral character thing is in. I had to go to the campus post office to make copies and find out that students can’t use the copier during the summer, then go to the bookstore to buy the right-sized envelope, then go to the law library to make copies until my card ran out of credit, then go downstairs to put on more credit, then back upstairs to finish the copies, and then back to the post office to mail it, but it’s in.

If there’s no one sitting in the library lobby, I’ll eat and study. I've been carrying a Crispy Chicken Sandwich from Jack in the Box in my bag for at least an hour, and if I don't eat it soon, I'll faint.

It’s been fun doing all this no-bar stuff. I feel like I just had a vacation.

Update on the guy in the Marina

2005-07-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

My husband brought the Daily Journal home, and there was a little story on the guy in the Marina. Actually, it's called the Marina Lagoon, it's about 300 yards across, and is technically in Foster City (I'm new to San Mateo, so I'm still learning this stuff). His name was Troy William Guido, 33, of Redwood City, and he had been pulled over for a routine traffic stop. The article says he looked back at the police, then bolted. Someone saw him yell for help (that would be our tenant with the cell phone) about 25 yards from shore. They found his shirt and shoes around 6:22 p.m. (about when we were walking the dog), and someone poked what might have been a body after 8. They called in the dive team, which eventually found the body somewhere else around midnight.

I remember waking up around then because of the noise from all the rescue workers. Our apartment doesn't directly overlook the Lagoon, but it does overlook the end of the court where the emergency vehicles were parked. They were all gathered in a circle by one of the trucks, and they sounded pretty upbeat. I figured it was because they were all going home, but now it seems like they were glad it was over. Then they all started leaving; they revved up their engines, and some of the cars had emergency sirens that gave a little half-whoop as they turned on their cars. I went back to bed and listenened to them go. And I tossed and turned and woke up from little nightmares for the rest of the night.

The Bar

2005-07-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

So, I'm studying for the California State Bar. What is it like to study for the Bar? It's a grind. It's long. It's tedious. It's intensive. Sometimes, it's deathly dull. Frankly, it's hard. We cram 14 subjects into our heads that we may or may not remember from one, two, three, (and for us part-timers) even four years ago. It seems like we have to integrate precision into our general understanding of legal principles, and then organize and use that knowledge during a three-day endurance test.

That said, my stress level has been way down since I went on leave. It's terribly uncool to say this, but studying for the Bar is not as tough as trying to juggle work and school. It's a challenge, but it's a different kind of challenge. I know, I know, I'm supposed to bitch and whine and moan about the torture that I'm going through, and I'm not saying that studying for the Bar is fun or that I'm 100% sure I'll pass on the first try, but it's manageable. Boredom is not so bad.

Not that it's been completely drama-free. There was that one time when I had to review the Remedies lecture in a hospital room, but it wasn't my hospital room, and, as it turns out, hospitals are good places to study. They're quiet. And at one point that night I was wandering the halls of the hospital looking for something to eat, and I passed the pictures of the Board of Directors and Other Various Important People, and I stopped to look at them because I remembered, Hey, I cover Mountain View now. But then I made a conscious decision to look away. I'm on leave. I wasn't there for work. I had other things to worry about, and I'd chosen to make those things my priorities for now. I studied, I visited, and I took sleeping pills each night for a week. It's not that tough to sit through a video lecture when you're zoned. It all worked out.

So anyway, studying for the Bar, all things being relative, has been alright. I don't like it, but I get enough sleep. I went swimming yesterday in the big, beautiful outdoor pool on campus. I think I'll go swimming tomorrow even, and Friday, and the bonus is that the pool's on campus so I can study even more! Uh... anyway, yeah, you gotta think about it that way. It's all about passing the test. I have a Plan B, too, in case I don't pass (which is totally possible, regardless of how supportive people have been). I can't take a full leave again, but I'll have four months to study, and I have all the stuff I need from BarBri. Maybe I'll get a private tutor. Not that I'm planning to fail. It's just that having a Plan B relaxes me.

And just to sound even more uncool, I'm not all that upset about reviewing everything. By the end, I felt like law school was just this big black hole where most of the stuff I'd crammed into my head for Finals had disappeared into the ether. It wasn't like undergrad, where I had to do the work/school thing but really enjoyed what I was doing. Law school is a lot tougher than undergrad. There were classes I liked more than others, and I still remember one professor always chanting, "numerosity, typicality, commonality..." (class action requirements), but a lot of it was just work, a lot of the stuff from the first two years was pretty much gone. I'd decided to do it, and I decided to stay, and it's not like someone put a gun to my head and said I had to go to law school. It was my choice. Maybe I was just tired. By year Four, I was really just tired...

Plus, the BarBri course kind of annoyed me. As someone who, prior to law school, had never once asked a professor what was going to be on the test (and only did so infrequently and grudgingly in law school because, realistically, there was just no way I was going to be able to review the volume of information in the typical law school class), the whole "memorize this, then forget it" attitude of the instructors/coaches rubbed me the wrong way. The information and summaries BarBri provided were good, and I'm much better off for having taken it, but I wish they could have appealed to my inner nerd.

Anyway, it's over and I'm glad it's over. And now I'm hitting the tail end of six weeks that were All About the Bar, and when that's over, I'll be glad it's over, too. I'm interested to see what happens next.

So I got a blog...

2005-07-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

My dad has a blog. My brother has a blog. My mom keeps bugging me to start a blog. My husband doesn't see what all the fuss is about with all these blogs, but he thinks it's fine, probably.

So now I have a blog. Which means I have to write in the blog once in a while, which if nothing else will get me writing again. The title of this blog is from a novel which I started back in my first year of law school to blow off stress, and now is almost complete, but I don't want to try publishing it because it's mine and I just don't want to. And the second-to-last chapter isn't done yet. And, ironically, now I should be studying for the bar, but what the hell, I'll study later.

I also wrote a short story recently, but I don't like it. It's clumsy. I had to write it because I'd had a nightmare and it was the only way to get it out. It haunted me for a day and a night until I wrote it down. Maybe I'll re-do it, and get rid of all the archness and stiffness and smooth out the edges, and then maybe post it. Or maybe not. It's depressing. Still, it's the first short story I've written in years. It's something.

There are cops outside, and firemen, and at least two ambulances, and a sheriff's rescue vehicle. And some other cars which I assume are undercover investigator cars, and are much nicer than the cars the investigators in San Jose use. We live on the marina between Foster City and San Mateo, and earlier today someone saw somebody flailing around in the water. He called 911, and since then, we've been emergency central. They even asked the kayakers to poke around the bottom with their oars. It's only 3 or 4 feet deep, but it's all sticky mud, so maybe the guy got stuck in it. No one's allowed to swim in the marina, but I always thought it was because it was polluted. Then one of the residents said her kids used to swim in the marina years ago, but then someone somewhere decided it was too dangerous, and now there are signs posted that say there's no swimming allowed.

Word is that someone broke into an apartment across the way in Foster City, and he tried to escape by crossing the marina into San Mateo. Either he's long gone... or he's not.

My husband got home after 6, and we decided to take the dog for a walk and maybe find out what the fuss was about. We stood for awhile with another tenant whose apartment looks right over the water and speculated on what was going on. And we talked about work, and dogs, and the weather, and other stuff people talk about just to talk about. The tenant had just barbequed some chicken, and he wanted to feed some to the dog, but the dog is old and has a delicate stomach these days. My husband -- the property manager -- noticed the dock across the street looks nice, and thought maybe he could find out about putting in a simple wooden dock for the tenants.

Channel 11 was just here. Another tenant stopped by to tell my husband that they wanted to interview her, but she refused -- "I don't want to be seen like this!" she said, smiling, pointing to her tee-shirt and sweats. She told them to go interview the cops. The cop said they intend to be here for a long time. The tenant is a little freaked out because, if they don't find the body, it might surface in a couple of days, and she doesn't want to see anything like that. "What if you're not here?" she asked, although my husband is always here. He works here. He lives here. Still, she's worried. What if her kids see it?

Another cop just showed up with a little Starbucks canister for him and all the emergency people and scuba divers. One of my professors once brought one of those in for our last day of class. For some reason, it seems like we were always eating in that class. It was also a pretty crappy semester for me (not the class, which was actually a pretty good class -- just life in general), and when I'm depressed, I don't eat, so I had to be strategic about when I ate and didn't eat so I hopefully didn't offend anyone. I think he also brought in bagels. I had a bagel, but threw it away when I figured no one was looking. I remember him saying that one of his co-workers had seen one of the canisters in his office once, and asked him if it was the new size.

Maybe we'll get the full story on the news tonight. It's a sad story. Like one of the tenants said, maybe he needed to learn a lesson, but no one needs that kind of lesson. And who knows what people are thinking when they panic and just don't want to go to jail. You just do what you think you gotta do. Sad. But anyway, she said, she was going to go finish her walk. It was such a nice evening. And, she added, we make a cute couple.