carpooling

since i started my new job, i've been able to start taking doing the casual carpool thing. save me money that i'd be spending on BART, and it's way faster getting to work. the driver saves money on the bridge tolle and time taking the carpool lane. the environment is conserved. everyone wins.

i usually hop in the car and space out on my ipod. that said, it's still an adventure each morning seeing who i'll end up riding with.on more than one morning, i've thought to myself "i'm going to die on the bay bridge with a bunch of strangers." some of the cars are pretty nice with leather interior. then there was the morning i got into the front seat of a beaten up modern volkswagen beetle. i settled in, looked up and saw that the glove compartment was partially held closed with a bit of wire, from the handle to the vent of on the dashboard. that was one of the mornings i thought i was going to die in a tiny car. sometimes the other passengers i wait in line with are a little odd. this one guy i've seen a few times always wears a photographer's vest, the kind with the millions pockets, and carries an over stuffed messenger bag that he can barely close. he looks like the unabomber. the other day he got in line, pulled a belt out of his bag and proceeded to put it on. i didn't understand why he couldn't have done that before he left the house. i understand if you are in a hurry, but if you can make it down the street without the pants falling down, you don't really need the belt anyway, right?

most drivers play NPR or something sort of talk radio in the car. last week, i got in a car, and i realized that the man was playing a "how to play the guitar" cd. kind of odd. especially when the cd refers extensively to the workbook you should be looking at for the chord progressions while you are PLAYING THE GUITAR, not DRIVING A CAR. he played it the whole 25 minutes it took to get over the bridge. in between chord progressions, the cd played the same 2 minute track of music that you were supposed to learn. what? i don't get it.

this morning i rode in the back of a convertible mini cooper. top down. which was kind of awesome, only i didn't wear a jacket this morning because it was such a nice day. i almost froze to death going over the bridge if it weren't for the extra sweater the driver happened to have in the backseat.

that's about it. i'll see you on the blog again in a few months. ha!

load 16 tons and what do you get?

well, i'm two weeks in at a new job. surprise!
yeah, i left my job at a smallish non-profit and now work at a large name brand corporation. if you want to know which one you can email me and ask. the funding picture had become precarious, and i'd been kind of feeling the itch to leave for some time and not sure what to do/where to go. a friend who worked at the corporation encouraged me to apply for a contract position, as that was how he'd gotten hired on full-time. so i did, and now i find myself in the umpteenth different job/career path. again. next i will join the circus. i feel pretty good about it though.
to say that it is a change is an understatement. my old job had 9 people in the whole organization. now, gosh, i have no idea how many people work at this company. way more than nine. i have a photo badge that i have to swipe at the gate on the ground floor to get past the front desk. i'm learning a whole new vocabulary and process for my job and it makes my brain hurt sometimes, but i've realized that i like figuring things out and it's fast paced, so it's been good to give my head a workout. i'm looking forward to getting to know my new coworkers, that's what keeps me entertained/engaged at work.

jellyfish addendum

talking to my quasi-nephew, ping (he's 6), the other day:

me: hey ping, what color are jellyfish?
ping: clear!

there ya go.

last week, i went to one of those after-hours museum events, where they keep it open late play loud music and serve booze, so you can drink with your friends and learn stuff at the same time.

i was in the aquarium section of the Academy of Sciences, and staring at this really cool tank of jellyfish. such intricate-looking creatures. these two dudes walk up next to me, and one says to his buddy something like, "oh cool they're like chameleons!" my eyes got really big at hearing this, because these particular jellyfish were translucent - there were lights in the tank that periodically changed colors to red and blue and green and such (like how some cheesy hot tubs have these lights that change colors).

i stood there a little longer to see if he realized what he just said. then i hear, "how do they know to change to the same color at the same time?" waited 5 more seconds to see if his buddy would say anything, which he did not. then i had to leave quickly to get around the corner to start laughing really hard and find my friends to tell them about it. oh man.

the parentals

i stopped by my parents' house the other day to say hi. still seems weird to say that, even though i moved out several months ago. anyway, they were in rare form.

my dad was in the backyard gardening. in a sombrero. the sombrero that chevy's fresh mex gives you when it's your birthday. said sombrero was given to my youngest brother david at least 12 years ago, because it appeared to be a child-size sombrero from the way it was perched atop my dad's head. it had ben gathering dust in one of my brothers' old rooms for a while. granted, it was cinco de mayo, so maybe he was feeling festive.

then when i got up off the couch to leave, my mom walked past me holding a perfume sample that she had pulled out of a magazine. while she was saying goodbye to me, she proceeded to rub the sample all over our poor family cat, bosco. i was floored - that can't be good for the cat. she said some thing like, "now when i pet her, she smells good." as far as i could tell, bosco had no smell. at least, no smell that needed to be covered by some random perfume sample.

lord only knows what else is happening at home. amazing.

fireside chats

i don't have a tv at my new place. i have one back in danville, but i haven't been particularly motivated to bring it over.

since the baseball season started, i've been listening to the baseball game most nights. switching between the a's and giants. it's been fun.  i putter around and make dinner with the game in the background. good times. feels very 1940's.

it's saturday night, i'm listening to the livestream of Coachella on Youtube (Bon Iver! Radiohead!), and i'm finishing up my notes for teaching at high school youth group tomorrow. this is an optimistic estimation. i will probably be up for a while still mulling things over.

writing an essay or story makes me commit words to a page and i stick by them; rather, it is that i can just put the paper down, walk off and not have to be there when someone reads it. my notes for public speaking are like an early draft of a story; and i always think of other things to say or add while i'm actually teaching and people are looking at me, i can't just stick to what i have done on the page, and that's when i start sweating profusely, if i haven't already been doing so. good times.

so it's about doubt, and wondering why God is silent with us sometimes, basically. it is infuriating when that happens, yes? among other feelings/adjectives. i have to say though, even though sometimes i wish otherwise, that i love following a God that is mysterious, one that i can't figure out or outgrow, than one that has just laid out everything for me in a checklist, so to speak. man, sometimes i'd really love a checklist, rather than feeling like i'm stumbling around in the dark. but where is the faith in that? i've got most of my notes, and who knows what i'll add in when it comes to me (hopefully not much) but this quote from anne lamott (who i think i love, among many reasons, because she writes about how bad she is at being a christian and i'm like, amen, sister)will make it in there somewhere:

"I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”

i saw and heard anne lamott read from her newest book tonight, Some Assembly Required, a memoir of her grandson's first year. she remains the only writer who has made me laugh out loud when i read her words.

as wonderful and inspiring as it is to hear her, which i have done so a few times now - it's great to be in the same area as her - i also leave feeling pretty chickenshit about my lack of writing practice. which sucks - i have only myself to blame for that.

life just seems to get in the way. not even good stuff like traveling, or like a really good date, or hell, i don't know, wrestling an alligator. it's getting home after work and being tired even though you sat in a chair all day. or paying the bills and fretting over debt. or freakin' facebook sucking you in and then suddenly it's super late and you need to get up way too soon to go sit in a chair again all day. it's numbing and hard to pay attention to what is going on around you - the ordinary and extraordinary that provide the material to write.

lately

not much to report. i got a cat. keep your cat lady jokes to yourself. seriously. not appreciated. also not true.

i named her rhubarb because i like both the word and the vegetable itself. especially in pies. anyway, she is super cute and it's nice to have some interaction when i get home to my place. i was sick with a bad cold early in march, and there's only so much netflix you can watch when you are laid up. seriously. also having this little creature keeps me from being too slobby. not just because i clean up after her, but i also can't leave a pile of clothes on the floor of my closet because she'd probably burrow right in and make herself at home. rhubarb is 2 years old and she came from a hoarder situation apparently, that's what they told me at the spca. and she was at the shelter for 2 months and then another month at the spca while they treated her being malnourished and an ear infection. she's had a hard go of it so far. it's been cool to see her relax more into the space here. the first night, she wouldn't leave the box and now she sleeps at the foot of my bed.

what you expected me to talk about work and other life details? i have to tell you, it's not that exciting. and who wants to hear me complain. rhubarb is way more fun.

i also got this sweet bike with this cool green paint job. my friend suggested that i name it chard, in keeping with leafy vegetables. chard... sounds like it would be a boys name. like one of sarah palin's children. ha! rhubarb and chard. together they are also known as 'tax refund'.

wondering when i will not feel like i am in a constant state of "in between-ness"

haven't been in the best mood of late. lots going on. saw this on dooce.com and i really liked it. makes me want to have my own dance party and start throwing stuff around too.

Mikhael Paskalev - I spy from André Chocron on Vimeo.

after mooching off my parents for most of the last 5 years and scoring sweet house-sitting gigs here and there along the way, i have finally secured a little studio in oakland to call my own. for a year, anyway. i look forward to using my car less, getting a bike, and not feeling like a loser mooching off my parents. and so on. thankful for having a roof over my head for the last few years, and wondering what this next season will look like.

i have been super obsessed with Over the Rhine lately (i'm late to the game, but hey better late than never). saw them live about a month ago and they blew me away. the long surrender, their latest album, is pretty amazing. for this christmas season, i recommend snow angels their second christmas album. and i love that they put this song on there. this is a great prayer.  

New Redemption Song
(Words and Music: Detweiler)

Lord we need a new redemption song
Lord we’ve tried
It just seems to come out wrong
Won’t you help us please
Help us just to sing along
A new redemption song

Lord we need
A new redemption day
All our worries
Keep getting in the way

Won’t you help us please
Help us find the words to pray
To bring redemption day

oh hey, it's december tomorrow.  what the heck? i'm always surprised at how time passes in the blink of an eye.
and it's advent. i just got published again, this time in my grad school's advent reader. was lucky enough to be invited to write one of the entries. not too shabby.
so for the first sunday of advent, it seems that it's de rigueur to preach about waiting and anticipating and preparing. since that's what the period of advent is really for, yes? and lent, too.
and thinking lately about what i want and hope for my life, i kind of rolled my eyes at this. because i'm not good at any of those things really. i am impatient, and pessimitic and short sighted. how is it that sometimes what i think god is saying to me simultaneously the thing i need to hear the most and the last thing i want to hear? scratching my head about this.

apple-licious

i know my last entry was a bit of a downer. if you are a friend that might have been worried about me, sorry 'bout that. things aint that bad. i'd say that they are pretty okay. it's more than i could say for other recent times, so that's something.

went apple picking over the past weekend with the youth group. i've taken a step back from being a volunteer this year. couldn't quit cold turkey, but i'm around mostly just on sundays. it feels right to be less involved, i've needed a bit of a break. i mean, this is the fifth year of being with the youthies. i haven't managed to be employed at one place for that long. ever.

it's been an interesting shift too. it's easy to define yourself by what you do/who you spend time with, and so on. so i find myself in a new space. not sure what kind of shape it is taking. it's disorienting and exciting at the same time. i'm not really sure what else to say about that.

back to my original story - we went apple picking, to get apples to make pies for family and neighbors to learn the practice of hospitality. i ended up with some freshmen boys in my car. as you might guess hilarity then ensued. how can it not with 14 year old boys? i know, other people might not feel this way. don't get me wrong, sometimes i want to punch them in the back of the head, but most of the time they are endearing in a overgrown puppy kind of way. they were balanced out with a junior guy and another advisor.

once we actually got to the orchard, we split up in pairs to fill boxes. me and the junior set off. after about 20 minutes, we had filled about half the box when the 2 freshmen romped into view. they were all, "heck yeah, we're almost done!" and the junior looked into their box they had set on the ground. i did too. while i tried really hard not to laugh, he said, "those aren't apples. those are really unripe persimmons." yep. they had a box full of bright green persimmons. "what? no. they taste like apples!" they insisted. yeeeeah... i have no idea where they found the persimmon trees. and persimmons only remotely resemble apples when you are comparing them to, say, pineapples. and i imagine that the taste is same comparably. i can only sigh and shake my head at this. and laugh, of course. chuckleheads.

wondering when birthdays became less awesome to celebrate and more markers of failed expectations. sorry. not to be a downer. but this past birthday was probably the first one that i was excited about, mostly because i had a freakin' awesome hamburger cake and 2 pinatas. and i really did want all my friends to be there to enjoy that with me.
i'm just thinking this way because a friend has her birthday coming up and she simply said, "i thought i'd be pregnant by now." she and her husband have been trying for a while. i said, "i thought i'd not be living with my parents and maybe in a relationship by now." darn society/culture for imposing schedules on life when hardly anything really ever happens the way we had planned.

passing the peace

so last sunday i went to st. andrew presbyterian church in marin city. for those not in the know, that's where anne lamott goes to church. yeah. it was kinda stalker-y. whatever.

the church i usually attend is on the medium to large side, so it was good to be in a smaller community. it's pretty much as she described in her writing. only the regular pastor was on study leave; i'd like to hear her preach sometime. my friend lauren and i went last summer in hopes of seeing both anne and pastor veronica. so cross anne off the list. it's getting to be an annual trip to for me and lauren.

we kept our groupie status under our hats, tried not to stare and paid attention to the service. lauren and i even went so far as to introduce ourselves when they invited the new people to do so, which was out of character for both of us. we got a hearty, "hello lauren, hello audrey. " then came the greeting and passing of the peace part of the service. you know: shaking hands and saying, "the peace of christ be with you." and responding "and also with you". since we were trying not to act like adoring fans, we did not approach anne. but she popped up behind me in the center aisle and gave me a strong handshake and "welcome." awesome.

sidebar: the church i attend doesn't do the passing of the peace of christ during the contemporary services (it's been a while since i've been to the more traditional one, but i don't think they do it there either). instead it's called community time. like go say hi to someone new or someone you don't know time. as a fervent introvert, i HATE community time, and usually force whatever friend i sat with to talk to me until the 3-5 minutes are over. seriously. i think i have even resorted to going to the restroom during that time, maybe just once or twice. okay. back to story.

but the pastor encouraged us to extend christ's blessing to each other in this time, and knowing that he works in us to be a blessing to each other. or something to that effect. now, THAT is something i can get behind. because then that time of greeting is more than just small talk. Jesus is in that interaction and it gets me out of my own little comfort zone. plus church is so small, that you really can greet everyone at church. (the same thing happened when i went to another friend's episcopal church a few weeks ago - that's something else i'll probably write about soon) it just went on for like 10-15 minutes. hard to do that when there's like 100 people in a service. or not i guess if you want to shape a service that way. i digress.

anyway, that's what i've been thinking about since church yesterday. peace of christ be with you.

the happiest place on earth for some people

i'm on a non-profit organization mailing list and i got this today.

Beau Bonneau Casting is immediately seeking fun and fit, real families of 4 or more (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic and ethnically ambiguous) that are SF Bay Area local and enjoy amusement park rides for a Non Union Disneyland Commercial.

Only traditional nuclear families consisting of a married Mom and Dad, ages 30 – 50, with at least 2 biological kids aged 5 – 14yrs can be considered. If Grandparents are local that is a plus but not required. Must be related, camera friendly and in good physical shape. No cousins, aunts/uncles or family friends, etc.

let's start with "ethnically ambiguous" - what? i'm sorry disneyland, do you not approve of interracial marriage?
and "traditional nuclear families with a married mom and dad" - does that rule out, say, the brady bunch? seeing as how they were a blended family and all. i don't know that they ever actually admitted to being divorced on the show though. what about single parent families? never mind gay or lesbian couples with children - the horror! i bet gay or lesbian money is welcomed at the disney gates. but don't make them feel any more welcome beyond that.
"camera friendly" - no ugly people.
"in good physical shape" - no fat people.
"no cousins, aunts/uncles or family friends, etc." - it ain't the 1950's anymore. we're a ways from traditional upper middle class nuclear families these days.

how webmd just scares the hell out of you

so i went to the emergency room last night.

since i am now blogging about it, you can assume that it was not all that serious. but still freaked me out pretty good.
i was just sitting on the couch and rubbing my eye absentmindedly and when i stopped, my eye felt weird. like not good weird. i looked in the mirror and it seemed there was stuff on my it. since i had had a routine eye exam that morning to update my glasses prescription, i was kind of thinking about my eyes anyway because my doctor had wanted me to go back for another appointment to get my eyes dilated to check on my retina (since i'm getting to be an old lady).

i jump on webmd of course to try to figure out what's with my eye since i wasn't in any pain besides my eye looking red and crazy and watering. it wasn't really helpful besides listing a lot of crazy things that could be wrong with my eye. i called the nurse helpline and tried to describe what was going on. she recommended some home solutions, but also if i was concerned to go to urgent care or the emergency room. since i only have 2 eyes and i kinda need both of them, even if they are crazy nearsighted, i drove to the emergency room.

on the way there, i thought to myself this figures that my mom who's a nurse would be out of town when this happened. i suppose that might have been a blessing in disguise because even if she is a nurse, she's also my mom and might have just freaked out. i also tried to calm myself down from all the worst case scenarios that go spinning through your head in these situations. i figured that since my vision hadn't changed and my eye wasn't hurting that it couldn't be that bad and even might have a bit of an entertaining time wearing an eye-patch. such is my coping strategy, people.

when i got there, it was almost 11. it didn't seem very busy, but when you tell the triage nurse that you are 0-1 on the pain scale, you are not a high priority. so i lay on the bed and watched some conan o'brien and simpsons reruns. basically what i might have done at home on the couch anyway, if i didn't have work the next day. the nurse practitioner thought maybe i had scratched my eye, or something had gotten into my eye that i had inadvertently rubbed in, even though i don't recall being bothered by anything- it just came out of nowhere. she said it looked like my eye was allergic to something, even though i don't have any allergies. her test showed that i didn't have any scratches, so then i just waited around for them to irrigate my eye. which is basically having sterile water squirted on my eyeball. it sounds terrible but actually felt really good afterward. had to go the pharmacy to get the prescription for my eyedrops and Allegra and got home at 3 am. i was partly exhausted and partly wired from the adrenaline of freaking out. and kind of hungry. i guess having a minor medical emergency works up an appetite.

needless to say, i did not make it to work today. happily my eye has now returned to a more normal appearance. i mean, for a little while there i thought i had somehow rubbed off the surface of my eye - i know that sounds physcially impossible, but it really looked like that in the mirror. yeesh.

what a wednesday/thursday.