eeeeeeeeeeee

Friday Night Lights back for 2! more seasons.

safety dance

this morning i was headed across town to join the morning baby kaffeeklatsch at our trivia night coffee shop. i like babies. i also am trying to sleep in so much (see aforementioned unstructured life). so it is fun to see friends, even if they are talking about breast feeding a lot.

anyway, i stop at a red light and i slowly realize that the old chinese lady is not crossing the street in front of me, but approaching my window. i don't really know why these kinds of things are happening to me right now. anyway, she asks if i am going by the north berkeley bart station. i am, and a split second later i am moving my backpack to the back seat so she can get in. you know, why the hell not? and i could totally have taken her if she tried anything funny.

turns out she is trying to get to the oakland senior center for her morning ballroom dance class. so cute. she explains that she is retired and i say, "hey i am too. well, i'm unemployed. but saying i'm retired sounds better doesn't it?" apparently she likes the oakland senior center for their selection of activities because the one near her house only offers trips to reno and the like. i'm assuming this is for the gambling and probably also trips to the outlets. in which case i would agree with her.

then i get the story that her license is suspended. this involved a lot of arm waving and exclaiming that the cop was mistaken in giving her a ticket and making her retake her driver's test at the dmv two weeks ago. after the hassle of going to different dmv offices, (which i am convinced is a level of hell on earth) she passed the vision and the written exam, but not the driver's exam. i felt bad for her loss of independence, while also wondering about the possible safety issues there. i asked her why she asked me for a ride, and she told me she only asks women. hahaha...

i learned a lot in the 5-7 minutes it took to get to the bart station. it was quite amusing.

navel gazing

need a new hobby. better yet, a job!

i grow tired of my unstructured life. i try to enjoy it for this season, and i think i have made the most of it thus far. i worry that i have become too used to this speed of life and wonder if i will be able to shift up a few gears when it becomes necessary. i just feel self-absorbed and a bit anchor-less.

what i would really like to be doing is living generously. with my money, time, talents, etc. and i think i have been, as far as i am able to right now. one can always do more, i suppose. but the value of being generous has been on my mind for quite a while. while. i think that this season i have been made to accept other's generosity, be it sharing their home, buying me a cup of coffee or lunch, throwing an odd job my way or going for walk & conversation. for these things, i am able to say that i feel blessed.

sunny sunday

got home late last night after volunteering at an old college friend's fundraiser. it was cool to see her in action, and to see the kids who benefit from the program, as well as just to be out and about for an evening. free wine and dinner was more than enough compensation for me. made a weak attempt at networking but mostly just enjoyed helping out. during dinner i sat next to a man talking about how his company is working on a fully electric car, when his friend on the other side of me asked me what i did, i simply grinned and responded, "well, that's a good question!" which made him laugh, at least. i'm not big on schmoozing anyway. it is interesting to see a different but necessary aspect of nonprofit work.

spent a pleasant evening tonight with friends and had a disagreement with a 3 year old over whether or not 7 is more than 5. just for the record, i was arguing that 7 is indeed more than 5. even when he turned to his mom, the ultimate authority, he still didn't believe her. even when we held the numbers up on our fingers. and counted the eggs in the picture that started this whole debate. he remained unswayed. what are ya gonna to do?

... i had other things on my mind to write but i can't seem to recall them right now. that's pretty weak on my part, i know. sorry 'bout that.

???

went to a high school lacrosse game today. it did me good to sit outside in the sunshine.
when i met a kid before we sat down in the bleachers, she introduced me to the guy she was talking to.
him: "nice to meet you... so you go to berkeley high?"
me (can't tell if he is joking or serious): "er... yeah."

whereupon my friend bursts out laughing - i had intended to carry the farce on as long as i could - and corrects him, saying that i am 30. alas. i couldn't tell if i should be happy or sad that he asked. i chose happy. it was a pretty funny moment.

brain is fuzzy. eyes are glassy. feeling blah.
in spite of my best mental efforts to not feel ill, i feel kinda ill.
blech.

red light, green light

today at a red light, i gave some change to a guy that was panhandling. surprisingly, he stood outside my window to make a little conversation while i was stopped.

guy: "hey thanks for the change. i'm actually going back to work in a few weeks."
me: "oh that's good. what do you do?"
guy: "oh, i'm a welder. i been a welder since 1975 (ed. note: incidentally this is longer than i have been alive so i was duly impressed) yeah that was when i got certified. then one year a disk went POP in my back... but i'm going back to work soon. and what do you do?
me (a little surprised he asked me this): oh, well i'm unemployed. looking for a job. i wish i knew how to weld stuff.
guy (suddenly more animated): oh no no! you don't want to do that? it's hard work. man's work. why i only knew two or three women welders.

(light turns green)
me: oh, well, i guess you are right.

as i start to pull away, a thought hits me. i lean my head out the window and yell back to him: "hey wait, what about rosie the riveter? come on!" (laughs)

he thinks this over, smiles and shrugs - i'm not sure if this mean he was conceding my point, or he didn't know who she was. rosie the riveter and all the women workers from WW2 have a monument at the shipyards near here, so i'm betting he knew of her.

and i continued on my way, glad for the brief connection with him.

costumed anarchy

as some of you know, i went to THE george washington university. don't ask me why they always made a big point of the "THE" - they just did; i think it had something to do with our inferiority complex with georgetown and probably also how we were always just outsidethe top 25 or 50 universities in the country. obviously, being THE george washington university shows what a classy school we are. we referred to our school as gee-dubbs, dubbs and one friend recently said to me, "oh, you went to G Triple-U!" that last one is pure gold.

the reason i am thinking about this is because i am caught up in march madness. my school failed to even make it to the A10 tournament this year. why, in my day, we at least made it to the tournament. c'mon, it's the A10, people, not the ACC. i mean, we're in the same league as st. bonaventure bonnies. the bonnies? ooh, that's intimidating. if any of my old dubbs buddies reads this, was it a bird? st. joseph's was the school that had the eagle looked like an oil spill victim and continuosly flapped it's wings.

this kind of musing of course led me down memory lane. see this guy? it's george washington, our faithful mascot for the george washington colonials. yeah, colonials - that's not even a noun, man. that's just the grammar nerd side of me coming out. anyway - take another look at george. note his beady eyes and blank gaze. terrifying.

let me tell you about me and george... my senior year, i had a column in the school newspaper. if you googled me, you'd be able to find the articles. this is how i got the column: my roommate's boyfriend was the op/ed editor, and he said, "hey audrey do you want a column in the paper?" and that was that. so i basically what i write on this blog got printed in the newspaper every other week.

during our basketball preseason, i came up with a list of rules for george, so that we could fully enjoy the game. and yes, this ran in the paper:

1.) Don’t touch me.

2.) I’m trying to watch the game. Please don’t stand in front of me waving your arms, sit next to me, behind me, or anywhere in my bleacher section.

3.) Don’t touch me. I mean it.

4.) I have a grasp on the game of basketball, as do most of the other fans, I’m sure. It’s a little demeaning when you’re screaming into a microphone telling us when to cheer. We know when the team is doing well or doing badly. We will react accordingly.*

5.) Feel free to crowd surf. I’m not guaranteeing that I’ll hold you up, though. See rules 1 and 3.

6.) More giveaways! We Dubbs students love free stuff.

7.) Did I say don’t touch me? I’ll hurt you.

If you follow these rules, then we can all enjoy the game a little bit more. Plus, I won’t have to see if I can put my fist through George’s plastic head. Okay, so I’m a little sensitive.

* ed. note:#4 was in reference to a new addition to games: "superfan" a student in a wig and shades that was supposed to get the crowd fired up. which consisted of him mainly yelling into a mic to stand up. i hated him. throughout the column, i called him superdork. supergeek, etc. shortly after this column came out he was fired. which was not my intention at all. i'm not even really sure how much my article had to do with his demise, but i certainly didn't help him. i felt kind of bad, but not for very long.

so people laugh and we move on... a few weeks later, we're in the dining hall watching gw play on espn in maui invitational. my friends and i are at a table by the window sort of studying for finals. the invitational was kind of a big deal, so the pep band was there, and cheerleaders and probably free food. my friends and i are goofing around and then out of the corner of my eye, i see something looming. GEORGE IS THERE. hands on hips, staring me down. look at that picture again. TERRIFYING. my friends are just about peeing themselves, they are laughing so hard, but i have curled up into the fetal position. he reaches over and just barely touches my arm with his index finger. and then he left. no words were exchanged beyond my initial, "what the hell?..." and trailing off into whimpers. see, george doesn't talk, and it's top secret as to who is George. i think that years from now, i will get a letter for a friend of mine in which he confesses that he was the one who tormented me. you see, this was not an isolated incident. GEORGE came up to me at some point during EVERY GAME that season. he would just stand there and stare at me. sometimes coming really close to touching my arm, sometimes not. every time i would be rendered speechless and my friends ate it up.

sometimes i still wake up in the night screaming. that's not true. i already had a irrational mistrust of mascots (see: any of the characters from chuck e. cheese establishments,especially the purple monster, mr. munch. seriously.). now, i am openly hostile. actually that is not true either, because once stomper the elephant, the a's mascot plopped down on my lap during a game and i was reduced to gasping wordlessly. is there a support group out there?


*** in more current news, it looks like the anthology i submitted an essay to a long long time ago, is going to be published. end of the summer perhaps. so that's pretty cool. i found out when i was sulking a few weeks ago so i kind of played it off. i'm still learning to not to do that so much. i'm excited to see what the finished product looks like. a nice surprise in this uncertain time.

living life without limits, woo!

i have a sore throat. i am very annoyed. i JUST got over being sick. and i hate jamba juice. and i hate sitting around - well, most of the time. my immune system is letting me down - i usually don't get sick very often.

i woke up this morning not feeling very well. but i knew staying home would just mean me lying in bed feeling sorry for myself so i pulled it together to go volunteer. i'm glad i did - i saw one of my favorite ex-kitchen guys, J, in the break room. he's moved on to some other part of the rehab program so i don't see him much anymore. we exchange deadpan banter and generally goof around:
me: hey j, how are you?
j: oh ... waiting to die.
me: hey, me too. nice!
and so on...

i also got to be a part of an absurd pantomime with a tiny elderly chinese woman who didn't speak english. i didn't understand the request she was making and we somehow figured out that she just wanted rice without the beef stew. when i handed her the tray of rice, she let out this really great cackle/laugh.

applying to another job at the same place and i managed to introduce myself to the department director. it is handy when they come into the break room for lunch and wear nametags. so hopefully i stick out in a good way and this goes somewhere. in any case, i count the encounter towards my practice of extroversion this year.

and then i went home and felt terrible. but it was worth it. hopefully this doesn't turn into a full blown cold or illness.

questionable at best

a while back i was walking by a toy store and saw this in the window. i had to stop and stare at it for a while to make sure what i was seeing. oh, playmobil. you german people are so weird.
that's right, you are looking at a playmobil set of a gladiator coliseum. complete with lions. and chariots. and emperor with his thumb down. this bothers me more than cowboy and indian toys, or toy tanks and guns. probably because this was just a form of entertainment for the romans. not that war makes any more sense, or that toys should be made for this senseless act.

still, playmobil? poor decision. come on.

none... none more black

just got home from a temp job of sorts. a family that i am friends with hosted a dinner party tonight. i was paid to help plate and serve a five course meal, complete with palate cleansers and wines paired with each course. some people take their food seriously. like iron chef seriously - there were diagrams for presentation. i think the mom, who i have coffee with fairly often, feels bad that i don't have a job, so gave me this opportunity along with her teenaged son and daughter. my pride has sometimes flared up here and there in this unemployment time, but this sounded fun so i happily agreed. i looked forward to the time with the kids and helping out some friends. that fact that money was involved was a bonus. i mean, i also got to sample each of the courses, play video games with the boy, and watch "best in show" afterward with the fam. there are worse ways to pass a saturday night.

i should also add that i finally saw "this is spinal tap" last night. and then "best in show tonight." it's a christopher guest mockumentary weekend. freaking hilarious stuff.

mental fortitude

i did two brackets for the ncaa tournament. one i dashed off quickly without really thinking about it. the other one, i actually read a few capsules about the teams. which one is doing better? yeah - the first one. i picked siena my reasons: 1) some team has to be upset so it might as well be ohio state, and 2) my favorite housemate in vancouver is named sienna - close enough. i mean, who can argue with that logic? this is why i love college basketball.

p.s. look for another posting later today. i know, i know - sometimes i just want to go to sleep instead of tool around on my computer any more than i already do.

madness

ncaa basketball tournament. probably one of my favorite sporting events of the year. i guess one of the times that it's good i don't have a job so i can watch the games. whoo, silver lining!

bookworming

was up waaaaaaayyy too late last night reading "a thousand splendid suns" by khaled hosseini. found a copy at my parents house and immediately stowed it in my backpack. hosseini is a pretty amazing writer, i fall into his stories like few others. no one else i've read has made me want to learn more about a country's actual history. afghanistan is a sad and beautiful country. my fiction fix is far from satisfied, though, and i must confess that i broke down and bought two books from a used book store. desperate times. also, my latest nonfiction book smells funny. it's kind of distracting and demotivating.

run and gun

bro has the hookup with warriors tickets, so it was my turn to accompany him tonight. the way the warriors have been playing, it's debatable if this is a good/fun thing to do. he informed me that in spite of this, the warriors are one of the few nba teams turning a profit this season. what i don't understand is how these fans don't transfer to being oakland a's fans. the reality that the a's will move away from oakland saddens me - this is the team i grew up on. maybe i will just move to where they end up. besides san jose, hopefully.

the warriors got the win, in an ugly fashion. but a win is a win. and i am now a fan of anthony randolph. hopefully him and ellis will stick around long enough to be real ballers on this team.

lent is roughly half over now. i think the habit to write is something i am getting used to. it was just important each day that i wrote something, anything. hopefully on this back half of lent i can conjure up some more intentional writing. i'm not making any guarantees though. but i'll try.

ew

you'd think that as you age, at least you'd outgrow having pimples. especially the kind of zit you can feel coming on a few days before it really shows up and it feels like all your nerve endings in your face now end in that zit and you know you shouldn't touch it but you can't help it because it is slowly driving you insane. so that was my monday - how was yours?

actually monday is one of my more favorite days of the week these days because it's when i go volunteer. it offers a little more structure than other days. i was the traffic director again - it's all right i suppose, in the playing a video game kind of way. i don't get to interact with people as much. it is funny to observe how volunteers interact with each other. we seem more willing to offer the guests respect than each other. i don't really get why that is the case but it fascinates me. a different job listing has been posted; i know i want to jump on that, but a part of me also is hesitant to get denied again. foolish, yes. human, yes. i guess life is choosing to overcome those hesitations.

backsliding

well. doggedly sticking to my lenten vow.

friday i was out late, celebrating a 3 year old's birthday at benihana. want to renew your wonder and amusement for the world? hang out with a 3 year old, especially at benihana. the sight of a sliced mushroom sizzling on the grill was never so hilarious.

i planned to blog yesterday after hanging out with the brothers. but during the course of the afternoon developed a splitting mind-crushing headache. so i crawled into bed at about 8 or so, in my regular clothes, immediately and blessedly fell asleep until about 10:30 and i got up to change and brush my teeth. then i got back in bed and did not get up again until 10:30 am. i am fully recovered - thankfully these headaches happen rarely. but when they do, look out!

i'm afraid i have little else to report. i'm in a bit of a downswing at the moment. trying to rally... this too shall pass.

worst headache of my life.

discouraged.

my bad

i know i know i missed posting yesterday. i was actually really sleepy at 11, and seeing as how i have not kept "normal" sleeping hours in a while, i thought i'd roll with it. 2 posts today, or an extra long one.

trying to regroup and continue my job search. my zeal for the task was transferred into my hopes that i would get that job. hard to switch gears. and you know, it's hard to keep the same level of enthusiasm/momentum or keep coming up with new plans of attack, etc. etc. remember that panda scene from anchorman? that's sort of how i feel about my job search right now:

Brian Fantana: Panda Watch. The mood is tense; I have been on some serious, serious reports but nothing quite like this. I uh... Ching... King is inside right now. I tried to get an interview with him, but they said no, you can't do that he's a live bear, he will literally rip your face off. [to the Panda] Hey, you're making me look stupid. Get out here, Panda Jerk.

not sure if that made any sense to you, but it made me laugh at least. and as long as i can do that, i figure i'll be okay.

i pick up odd jobs here and there. babysitting and the like. yesterday a friend paid me to drive her son and his friend to their lacrosse game since she was going to be out of town. i agreed because i knew it would be entertaining. of course, i am someone who is amused when i am driving down grand avenue in oakland and "what is love (baby don't hurt me)" by haddaway is blasting at top volume and two teenage boys are hanging their heads out the window bopping their heads. i realize that not everyone would feel the same way. i have become used to this kind of thing - i mean, it had been a while since i had done something like that, but my brother and his friends in high school would do it all the time. so it didn't really faze me. of course, becoming a geezer means that i have a lower tolerance for listening to music at high volumes. i was glad to have a more mellow ride alone on the way back.

on the way to the game, i was posed with the question: "so how's the job search? i mean, what do you for a living right now?" i responded: "today, it's driving you to your game." i added that i had some money saved up. today, i wondered what kind of example i am to these kids i know, what they'll remember about me later on. a faithful friend? someone who doesn't have friends her own age? what?

a few years ago, i took jr. highers on a ski trip. i am inept at snow sports, so i took the snowboarding lesson with some kids. then we proceeded to fall down all over the bunny slopes the rest of the day. once i fell down really hard - like flat on my face - near the lodge and i heard people on the deck about 50 yards away go "oooh," then i realized they were from our group and they realized it was me and we all laughed really hard. other kids were following me down the hill to watch me eat it several times, and laugh at me. it was frustrating, certainly, and yet somehow i was okay with kids seeing me totally suck at something. nothing against the previous leader, but he was golden boy athletic all-star and kids are self-conscious as it is already. i didn't really expect any of the kids to come to that realization themselves, but showing this side of me and eating a lot of snow and humble pie in front of them was important to me.

i mean, there's so much pushing and pulling these kids to succeed and excel and be perfect and popular and cool and so on (inculding sometimes how we frame things at church). we forget what it is like to be simply human and that life doesn't always go in a straight line and we NEED god's grace. these are words i forget often. and it's easy to see things in black and white and that when things don't go your way that equals FAIL. i don't know what i'm really getting at, and i'm probably over-thinking things because that's what i do. but i do hope that in the midst of my own struggle to find God's way for me and to be faithful to Him, that maybe someday down the road when they are frustrated they'd think, hey audrey didn't always get it right the first time either, it's okay.

mish mosh

i didn't see my friend in the dining room this week. i hope she is still around. this week, i ended up directing traffic in the dining room today, something i had never done before. most people get 2 meal tickets and they hold them up in the air for us to bring them a tray. so i helped direct servers to different people. it's a thankless job - visualize that old video game "root beer tapper" or "space invaders." people are hungry. and sometimes the volunteer servers don't actually make it to the person i point out to them. 'twas kind of fun to do something different though, it required me to pay attention to different things and interact more. usually when i first get there, i keep my head down and serve trays until i feel a little more sociable. you know me - i'm such a morning person!

wasn't sure how i'd feel this morning after not getting the job last week. besides being grumpy about my lost hour of sleep, i was happily resentment-free and enjoyed being there as usual. and i'd still like to work there. too bad i'm not bilingual (yet).

how to make me laugh: (actual text messages)
me: hey how's the not swearing for lent going?
response: fucking awesome!
me: laughing out loud in coffee shop

(actual phone conversation)
me: sienna, if there were two cookies, would you share with me?
sienna, sassy 3 1/2 year old: yes, i would have one and you would have one
me: sienna, what if there was one cookie, would you share with me then?
sienna: no, i would eat the whole cookie.
me: what? would you let me a have a bite?
sienna: no, i don't want to.
me: what if there were 5 cookies? would you share with me then?
sienna: yes, you could have one.
me: one?
sienna: and i would have the rest.
(at this point, i am suspecting the influence of terrible parenting)
me: so really, if there was only one cookie, you wouldn't share it with me?
sienna: then we would make more cookies!
genius.

daylight savings hoo-hah

thumbs down to losing an hour of sleep.

seriously hurting for good fiction. i broke my ban on getting new books, but hard to resist the library bookstore: 50 cents/paperback. i wanted some story i could burn through pretty quickly to get some momentum back in my reading. dug up some change from my car for angels & demons by dan brown. spending the change in a gumball machine may have been more worthwhile. do people actually like this guy? because i see most people being like me, curious to check out a story and then kind of regretting that they picked his book. fluff, fluff and fluff. it's a page turner in that it's like an action movie, or like a car accident - you just can't turn away. and the ending is like the ending of a fireworks show, bigger and bigger explosions and then nothing.

a little while back, i read the shack by william young. i guess it's caused a bit of a stir, though i don't really see why. while the book offered a little more imagination to the dynamic relation of the trinity, i couldn't really get past the clumsy writing. it was clunky.

i'm sleepy. more tomorrow.

not to be taken literally

well, today my mood is lower than it was yesterday. to counteract, i am sitting in the sun and also preparing myself for the madness that is march college basketball. i have a small talent for picking pretty good brackets, and have won myself a little bit of cash in the past. ah, i have it ! pro sports gambler, that's the life for me. famous last words. in any case, who wants to do a bracket? i can set up a pool on espn - let me know. maximize opportunities for trash talk, people. (i can't properly asses how this course of action is helping my mood, looking forward to actual people interaction later).

on the bright side, i think my cold is on it's way out. i am less achy and weak feeling. hopefully i can hold back on going full throttle until i am totally healed. no more jamba juice - i think my teeth are decaying. however, i am practically immune to scurvy for the next 5 years, i think.

on another note entirely, if you spend any length of time in the bay area, sooner or later you will see a car that has been turned into some form of moving art. i don't really get it, but apparently painting stuff on or gluing weird crap to your car is necessary to a) attend burning man or b) cement your rep as a hippie. when i saw this, i had to pull over and take a picture for my favorite ex-housemate, sienna. apparently, she is nursing a serious obsession for my little pony. for those not in the know, sienna is 2 1/2, and not a grown up. i would be less likely to indulge her fascination for colored ponies were she an adult.
anyway, she really liked, the "pony car" apparently. and expressed a desire for one for her very own. when i called later in the week, i made an idle suggestion to her that maybe her dad could glue her ponies to the top of their car. dead silence in response to the idea. this did NOT go over very well. oops. as i continued to chat with her mom, lara had to stop talking to me a few times and reassure sienna that jeff was not going to glue her ponies to anything, much less the car. is it bad that i laughed? my bad. note: sarcasm or teasing is not appreciated by young ones.

meh, continued

well, i got the phone call. and it wasn't the response i was hoping for. i'm kind of muddled feeling right now - disappointed, frustrated, but still hopeful. not ideal, but that's life, ya know?

thus far, it was the most humane and helpful rejection of the job search thus far. i still really respect this organization and would still like to work for them, and i will still keep volunteering. i'm quite happy volunteering - it's too bad the nature of volunteering is not being paid for it. and there is always the possibility that other jobs could come up.

perhaps tomorrow i will be more annoyed. and that will probably be the case. meh, i say.

while i remain open to whatever could come up, a large part of me still feels drawn to the tenderloin, to people that haven't really caught any breaks. i can't explain it, and some days i do feel a little crazy. and sometimes i wish i could be happy doing data entry. or that maybe majoring in business in college had sounded interesting to me. or that i was good at making spreadsheets? or hell, even wearing pantyhose. i don't even know. i mean, everything is getting shaken up now. in the post-capitalist era, i will be a shepherd. or... a beer brewer. i know friends that would teach me their craft.

those wyotech ads for becoming an electrician are looking pretty good. in spite of my dark humor, i also still have this feeling that things will turn out okay. and that also makes me think i am crazy.

meh

apologies for missing my daily post yesterday. the cold medicine i took made me pass out immediately. i'm pretty over this being sick thing. ugh. tired of aching, being fuzzy brained and feeling tired and achy.

waiting by the phone today to see if i get a follow up interview.

on using yer noggin

i never watched that "are you smarter than a 5th grader?" game show, but i imagine that some of it is pretty right on. i imagine that there is much i have learned in school that i have then immediately forgotten. say, the quadratic equation or the difference between sovereignty & legitimacy. i look at high schoolers homework and it reminds me of some of the classes i took in college. i don't think i'd hack it too well in high school now.

of course, now i find it - learning, that is - more interesting. some recent evenings i have totally nerded out and paged through some religion or government textbooks. really,who does that? for fun? i can barely even read the paper.

yet i still remember avogadro's number: 6x10 to the 23rd power. but i could not tell you what that number is for (i was just informed that it the number of molecules in a mole.. which i still don't really know why that matters. screw you avogadro.). not that would come up in average usage. i think the main thing i learned in my chem class was that i am not a morning person, because it was my first class of the day. and i took several classes on south american culture for my general ed requirements and i can't remember anything from those classes besides a)the spanish really screw the native people over and b) tupac shakur the rapper got his name from tupac amaru the leader of the indigenous people in peru. how you like them apples? i'm banking on that last fact to come up at some point during trivia night.

speaking of which, in my continuing experiment of extroversion, i volunteered to help host on some night. so we'll see how that pans out. if any of you out there in internet land want to suggest a question, feel free to do so.

faster, higher, stronger

being semi-ill, i've been trying to go to be earlier than i normally do. but the last two nights, i've remembered "oh shoot, i need to write something!" so here i am, risking my health for my lenten promise. no, i do not want a medal.

from my previous ramblings, you know i've been looking for employment. for a while actually, 7 months. i think when i moved back from vancouver i'd been looking for a job for 8 months. so i'm a deliberate person. as i consider the economy, well, that's pretty much a downer. and i realize that i am actually in a wide open place and i could go anywhere and do a lot of different things. my hesitation is in having to build community again. my life was so enriched at regent by the people i shared life with. it had it's challenges but overall, it was an incredible time and wouldn't trade it for anything. and leaving that was hard. really hard. and starting over sucked, even in a familiar environment. let me repeat - it really sucked. it took a long time, and it was hard earned, and i'm not totally ready to give that up quite yet. it's the opposite of what i was thinking a year ago, which was "get me outta here. anywhere. i don't care." it's easier for some people to be nomadic - and certainly my life so far could qualify as nomadic. as danny glover said in lethal weapon: "i'm getting too old for this shit."

pushing the envelope

well, i'm not good at taking it easy until i'm fully recovered. a bad night of sleep and a day on my feet volunteering have sapped my energy. oops. darn it. but i missed working in the dining room, and when my alarm went off this morning, i got up. (actually now living with a friend and also across from a high school, i am reminded, "oh yeah... people do... stuff." and it gets me a little antsy)

so i chugged an odwalla smoothie (dude- way too much sugar in some of those) and hopped on bart. it's the second of the month - right after welfare checks came out but we still served 2500 meals. usually at this time, we do a lot less, like 1800 or 2000 - that's servings of food btw, people are able to come back for more than one tray of food, so it's not 2500 different people. i don't know if it's because of the rough times, or the fact that we were serving up baked chicken and black-eyed peas today. probably both.

i find myself getting angry a lot in the dining room - not at people eating there. i get particularly mad when i see people in wheelchairs, and the elderly in there. it makes me mad that they are forced to fend for themselves, that there aren't people to take care of them, that they squirrel away one of their trays of food in plastic bags to take home, probably for dinner later. i get mad that sometimes me saying hi to them when i put the tray down in front of them might be the only time someone greets them the whole day. i get mad when i see people dozing off into their food because they are so tired/groggy/drugged/whatever and the dining room is the only place they get to sit long enough or feel safe enough to fall asleep.

today i said hi to a woman i'd chatted with a few times there. she usually asked me the same questions - had i ever smoked, cigarettes or weed or crack or whatever and in an oddly cheerful way that always caught me off guard, as if she was asking me if i had tried the new pepsi one or something. she's been trying to quit using and had been polling other people for ways they had quit. instead today she told me that her husband died 11 days ago. i bent down next to the table and talked to her for a bit. i vaguely remembered the man who always sat with her; she usually did most of the talking and kept my attention. "i'm kind of depressed," she said. "i could use a hug." and that's what i did. then i got her an extra tray of food and told her she had to make sure to eat even if she didn't feel like it, because that's what happens when you are depressed. she said i was a good one. i hope i see her next week. i wonder what else i could have done. i looked up her name online later because it is hebrew and she told me what it meant the first time i met her, but i couldn't remember what it was. it means "daughter of god."

hmmmm

does it still count if i blog that i can't think of anything to write?