happy 30th jonny

gee whiz, i sure am glad i got to see jonny moseley and several other skiers/snowboarders ski jump in san francisco. i got to see snow! hot snowboarders! skip out on work! stop for frozen yogurt! i topped off the un-characteristically warm day with a trip to american apparel to buy a t-shirt because i was sweating through my sweater, watching people in full out snow-gear hurdle down the street.

ok. so it was kind of great. and weird.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12776417.htm

Mutts

On Tuesday I was walking to the subway with the conductor of one of the kids' orchestras that I work for. We got to talking about dogs. That morning she had met an adorable three-month-old puppy who had been rescued from Hurricane Katrina, and she was considering adopting it. Not only was it well-tempered, cute, and a host of other desirable dog qualities, but she has a soft spot in her heart for mutts, especially since she considers herself one. "I have every type of blood running through my veins," she said, "and I'm convinced it's the reason why I am in better health than anyone I know." I'm pretty sure that for dogs, mutts are known to be healthier than pure-breds, but didn't know that applied to people too, although I guess it kind of makes sense in a way. (Or maybe not--because people of different races are all of the same species?? Scientists? Julia? Help me out here.)

I am not a mutt. I am white, white, white and of European descent through and through. But I am the product of an interfaith marriage. Wouldn't it be nice if being a religious mutt came with similar perks that mixed-species dogs enjoy? A stronger spiritual immune system, if you will: less susceptible to crises of faith, better equipped to communicate with God (or whatever/whoever), less likely to kill yourself and/or other people in the name of that whatever/whoever, more likely to live a longer and healthier life. Unfortunately for me and a lot of other people, I don't think that's the case--the reason I personally don't suffer from crises of faith is more likely just because I don't have a lot of it in the first place.

Being a religious mutt is not really that big a deal, at least not in New York and not at my college, one of Princeton Review's Top Godless Universities. At worst, it's confusing; at best, you learn more about different traditions and get a lot of presents in December.

NPR

So I am listening to John Edwards talk on NPR about some initiative he's starting for poor kids in North Carolina... and I am wondering- did he always sound so southern? During the election, I remember, well, not thinking he could be confused with Mayor Quimby... but he sounds REALLY southern right now? Is this to gain authenticity with his NC contingent or was he faking through the election? Did he go to newscaster speech therapy?
That all being said, he is saying some really great stuff and right now I feel a lot more excited about him now than I did a year ago (except for sexual excitement, of course)... among which is that the average net worth of a black family is $6000, a latino family $8000, and a white family $80,000.

Niceness surely does not cut it.

i have long maintained that "niceness" is not, in and of itself, a redeeming quality. if that's all someone is, they're probably boring and therefore, the niceness doesn't count because it's worse to be boring than it is good to be nice. Here is a partial list of redeeming qualities:

1) funny.
2) smart.
3) sassy.
4) quick with a light.
5) good memory
6) fun.
7) mean to boring people.
8) cynical.
9) drinker.
10) informed.
11) thinks big.
12) makes fun of hipsters and hippies.
13) makes inappropriate jokes.
14) appreciates inappropriate jokes.

If you are all these things AND are nice, then ok. But it depends on who you're nice to (see #7).

new job. nothing like new shoes.

i know what to do with new shoes. you put them on and parade around town. but i don't really know what to do with this new job. this is the first *real* office job i have ever had. when i taught kindergarten, there was always something to do or some vomit to clean up. as a legal aid-er, i was alone in a cornfield and no one knew when i spent hours on end googling and smoking. but now i'm in a real office with a real cubicle and i'm not sure what the rules are.

if i don't have a project i'm working on, do i need to tell the lawyer that or is that bugging him? it's only my third day so i'm still trying to feel out the pace of this place. but i feel like it's wrong to blog for 20 bucks an hour when i would do it for free and that, at this rate, i ought to do something more productive or helpful like help some people adopt a guatemalan kid. do you think a blog could adopt a child? or a puppy? or a chia pet? i've gone too far. please advise on what to do when there's nothing to do in a cubicle.

In my ongoing efforts to fulfill my New Year’s Resolutions, I met my Primary Care Physician on Friday afternoon. I got what I needed from him: a few referrals from someone with Board Certifications. But by the time I actually shook hands with the good doctor, I was so thoroughly unimpressed by the first 90 minutes of my visit to his office that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d turned out to be not a doctor at all but a bartender, a plumber, an accountant, or the star of a new reality TV show. My lack of confidence came from the two medical assistants who spent almost an hour with me before I met their boss. At every step—measuring my height and weight, administering a pulmonary function test and EKG, asking me all the standard history questions—I felt that everything would go more smoothly and accurately if I were the one running the show. I glanced at their notes at one point and couldn’t help judging their misspelling of certain key words in my medical history (a relatively interesting story, if I do say so myself, that didn’t seem to impress them). I thought they were kidding when they told me to collect a urine sample and leave it on the tub in the bathroom, next to someone else’s pee. Both specimens were still there when I left an hour later.

The doctor, while a little rough around the edges, appeared to know what he was talking about, which is all that matters. But I got to thinking about the entry-level jobs that we’ve all had. Those foot-in-the-door-I-didn’t-need-to-go-to-college-for-this positions where you are below the lowest rung on the ladder and have so little power that it’s not even worth discussing: maybe they are actually more important than we think. Maybe how we perform isn’t just important in terms of doing the dirty boring work that no one else wants to do, but matters in shaping how people regard the organization. The receptionist was pissed at me from the minute I walked in the door because I was late (even though I called ahead), the assistants were dumb…so it doesn’t matter how great the doctor was—I probably won’t go back.

And so, receptionists, paralegals, session assistants, cashiers, take heart! We do matter. At least to each other.

What would Buffett do?

Erica and I saw Jimmy Buffet live last night. I mean, we didn't go for him, we went to the "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy" benefit concert at Madison Square Garden and he was there. The concert in total was part bizarre, part fun, part exhausting and part something else. The something else may have to do with the fact that the crowd was virtually entirely white, far as the eye could see. The whitest mass I believe I have ever seena assembled in New York City. I think we can blame this on Buffett.
The concert began with a lot of performers and groups singing one or two songs, then later being brought out for a little more of a complete set, sometimes to sing with each other and provide golden and unique memories. As well as a lot of cell-phone pictures.
Jimmy Buffett came out, the crowd went wild. Like, seriously apeshit. He starts playing. And keeps playing and playing and playing. All in all, he probably did 8-10 songs which was about double what anyone else played. It seemed like everyone in the crowd knew all of the words, it was echoing off the walls in that special concert-way it does when people are singing along. I had never heard any of these songs before. And what's more, I didn't like them. They were all about sailing and drinking and sitting around on islands. This kind of surprised me, since those are things I like, so why wouldn't I like songs about them? Because they are cheesey and boring, at least thats what I came up with. But the crowd didn't think so.... no the crowd was going crazy. The crowd put their two hands on top of their heads to make a "fin" and sang along "fin to the left, fin to the right" like it was a fucking Raffi record. We were stunned and there was something more than a little creepy about it. Not only have I been ignorant of this Jimmy Buffett sub-culture, but somehow Jimmy can control the crowd, dictate their actions and it didn't seem too far off that if you piss Jimmy off, he's sic a bunch of Long Islanders making hand-fins on you.
Basically, I had no idea Jimmy Buffett was so popular. Did you?

And Bill Clinton was there. That was cool.

blast from the past

last friday night, i had a vivid dream about an old boyfriend. very old. as in, the last time we had a real conversation was 7 years ago. Both the relationship and this recent dream were very intense and i knew i needed to talk to him.

so, the next day, instead of spending the day reading about criminal procedure, i spent the day googling this old boyfriend. now, this was no easy task. the bloke is (was) a hippie and didn't believe in organized ANYTHING so he wasn't very easy to find. my search led me to ohio, illinois and finally washington state where i located his mother.

long story short, it turns out that my dream was not in vain. it had a reason. the old boyfriend is very sick. he almost died last week. so now what? i don't KNOW him anymore. but i did. i certainly don't LOVE him anymore. but i did. it's so strange to me how people come in and out of our lives. and i am feeling now that maybe people don't ever really leave our lives. if i can dream that i have to talk to a person i haven't even thought of in so long in the same week that this person almost died, doesn't that indicate some sort of subconscious connection? something in me knew that the energy was out of whack and had to be *fixed*.

don't get me wrong. i am not new age. i am not very spiritual. i am not psychic (at least not like patricia arquette on the hit show "medium.") but all this has got me thinking about how to deal with people that i used to know, but don't know anymore. as we get older, we'll have to think about these things more often. the more people we meet, the more people we have the potential to lose touch with and no longer know. so then, what happens when something happens to them?

all of a sudden, when life and death are on the line, regrets about what was said and what was left unsaid rise to the surface. is near-death a warning to reconnect with people we used to know? a second chance to at least make things right and acknowledge the place the person had in our lives? what about fame? if you woke up one morning and saw an old friend or lover on the today show, wouldn't you want to call them up and reconnect? i know i would.

and not be morbid, but as we get old(er), what about when you hear that an old friend or lover has died? flowers? attend the funeral? reach out to the family? wear a rubber bracelet in memory? ignore the situation all-together as you might if you read the obituary of a stranger?

what do we do with people that are strangers but used to not be strangers? this is the first time i have been confronted with such a situation. for now, i've written a letter and blogged. what about next time? can i count on bizarre dreams to alert me to things happening to people i used to know? should i make sure i don't *lose touch* with people i might want to follow up with later?

i think i'd like a device that functioned so that i could keep track of people who have mattered to me at all times but without having to actually maintain contact with the person. i envision something like a blackberry where i could type in a name and find out their contact info, occupation, love status, and general health status. i realize this would be creepy. but so was my dream. maybe i should join the CIA.

bosses know when you're talking shit

Today, my boyfriend left earlier than me to go to work which meant that instead of watching ESPN sports news in the morning, the channel was changed to ... MTV -- apparently my favorite network. (During commercials I watched a little Saved by the Bell, though). Anyway, they had some little bit involving a delusional cartoon boss saying "of course I work as hard as my employees. Even though I leave earlier and take more vacation."

This is the story of my work experience. My boss is mean and awkward and not very well educated. She always goes home at 3 or 4 to walk her dog. She likes to say things like "alls I know is" with a long sssss. How she got about 20 nursing degrees and a MPH is a mystery to alls of us here. She also has had weird incidents involving her dog, like getting pawed at by her puppy and going to the ER with a scratched cornea. The latest involves her riding her bike (with her huge accident-prone dog on a leash beside her) without a helmet on. The result of this great idea was discovered by a few MRI and CT scans to be internal bleeding on both sides of her head and an extended leave because of dizziness and head trauma. We all would be a little more sympathetic if she were at all a kind person. Anyway, you would think I would be happy that she is out for about a month except she was right in the middle of supposedly getting me a fairly important raise that now will probably not happen before I quit.

And of course, the one time she comes in ever (today at 2:30), she catches me writing a very long rant about "my manager" on gmail. How do they know when to come behind you and read things about themselves?
shit. it's the mysterious power of bosses.

Confession Time...

Bracelets are courtesy of a recent Bat Mitzvah named Naomi. They indicate opposition to Ovarian cancer.

Livestrong or Die: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Oppose Bad Stuff

I'd like to draw your attention to the phenomenon of the rubber bracelet. I know this may strike close to home as some of you [Bay Area, I'm looking at you] have been known to wear the bracelets and/or sleep with those who wear the bracelets. I've assembled a little timeline of my relationship with the bracelet, hopefully by indentifying some patterns, I won't feel so haunted by them:
2004: Lance Armstrong introduces the LiveStrong bracelet. It is rubber, bright yellow, costs $1 and supports cancer research. Sales are unexpectedly strong, they sell out and soon people are paying upwards of $50 for a resold bracelet on ebay. This has become a fashion trend and because of the premium on resold bracelets, many bracelets are now detached from any kind of cancer research funding. Would those ebayers donate $50 to the LiveStrong Foundation? No, but they will pay $50 to look like they donated $1.
August 2004: I get into an argument with a bartender who is wearing a yellow Livestrong bracelet. I am a little drunk and tell him I don't think we should be idolizing a man who runs out on his wife after she stood by him through testicular cancer to tour europe with Sheryl Crow. The bartender does not agree, is angered and overcharges me. I have since been told that my chronology is a little off... I have also since been been told by multiple media outlets that Lance has been doping, I wonder what the bartender would have said about that.
November 2004: At Thanksgiving dinner, I notice my boyfriend's 17 year old sister is wearing a handful of rubber bracelets, as is his 12 yr old brother. I ask them about them and apparently they indicate opposition to cancer (Lance's but also specifically breast) and AIDS. Also support of Hollister, an offshoot of Abercrombie and Fitch, where she worked.
* * * *
Early August 2005: On a trip to Boston, Erica notices a bunch of rubber bracelets sold at Urban Outfitters. She asks the cashier about the ten pack of bracelets inscribed with phrases like, "Shit Faced." She is told that these are not in fact bracelets modeled after the Livestrong bracelets, but instead bands to be put around a beer bottle in order to tell whose is whose. We call bullshit on that.
Mid-August 2005: We all discover that orange rubber bracelets means you want to stay in Gaza.
Late August: I am riding the subway and all of the sudden notice how it seems most everyone in the car is wearing some kind of bracelet. Most of them say "Grenada," "Trinidad" or "Puerto Rico," one women next to me has a white one that says "one." I get to work and google it, learning that apparently on that very subway that morning I was sitting next to a woman who opposed world poverty. I think Bono is involved with this effort, although we already know he opposes poverty.
September 1, 2005: In a little internet research for this blog, I discover all of the options for what you can buy a bracelet to say. I also discover sites like: http://www.customsiliconebracelets.com/ where you can make them say whatever you want (or buy, premade ones) which then you can resell. And so... I am open to suggestions. Let's print some up and tell the world we also don't like bad things.