Life is a mystery...

The Shuttle
I work on the periphery of downtown Oakland. So much so that my office building supplies a shuttle from the downtown train station to the building for people who aren't up for walking a mile every morning and afternoon. What we wont be talking about in this blog entry is why I was on the shuttle last night and not walking my sorry ass to the station like I should. What we will be talking about is the fact that yesterday evening when I was riding the shuttle, the radio was blaring Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and the little sixty year-old grandpa that drives the van was singing along...to every word.

Things I find mysterious about life:
Post-Its
Scuff Marks
Cell Phones
Rocky Mountain Oysters
Lederhosen
Screech from Saved By the Bell
Taxes
The French
Pomegranates
Frosty the Snowman
Japanese Cars
Republicans


Care to add?

Bowling Queen

I set my all-time best bowling record this weekend! I went bowling in honor of a friends birthday. I think I was supposed to let her win. But I'm not really one for just letting other people win. They have to earn it. Whoops!

1st Game: 115
2nd Game: 116
3rd Game: 169 (I'm proud...yes...very proud)

Deep Thoughts by an Administrative Professional

General State of Being:
I'm feeling very small today. Oh wait...I am small...in the scheme of the infinite universe, I mean. At lunch today I concluded that instead of doing real work, I'd much rather sit around and argue with myself as to whether I really am small or if my ability to effect change (good or bad) on innumerable events, lives, choices, etc., means that I am, indeed, not small.

Today's High:
Friday's are kind of like New Years Eve...only they come 52 times a year. Come 4pm on a Friday, all I can do is smile and pace around the office in anticipation and expecation of all the events, dramas, and triumphs that will start at 5:00 and unfold throughout the course of the weekend. It's a lot like New Years, I tell you! There are immeasurable resolutions to be made, adventures to be had, and trouble to be found. Granted, Friday's "fun-potential" doesn't always last through the entire weekend, but there's just something absolutely magical about the 4:00-5:00 hour on a Friday afternoon. Life has so much...potential.

Today's Low:
Cups of coffee: 1
Paper Cuts: 2
Times I said to myself "I wish I was taking a nap right now:" 17

Insignificant Fact(s):
Can you have a favorite sidewalk? I took the long way to work this morning and was reminded of my favorite stretch of cold hard cement. It's not my favorite because of what surrounds the sidewalk-I actually do like the sidewalk itself. Along 20th Street in Oakland between Longs Drug and the Kinkos, there's a patch of sidewalk that must have been made with me in mind. When the sun is shining on it, something in the hardened blacktop glitters like diamonds in Vegas. You can't help but feel famous and imporant when you walk on it. And you certainly can't help but smile.
...What was that I said about being small?

Adventures in Babysitting

Four year olds are cool. Four year old cousins are even cooler. They read books like "Room on the Broom" and "Nina, Nina, Ballerina" and think that getting to comb a "big-girl's" hair is just about the coolest thing ever imaginable. They think that having two pennies, three dimes and one quarter makes them a millionaire. They have imaginary friends with names like "U-why-ee" that eat nothing but birthday cake and spend Christmas frolicking with their other fairy-friends on exotic islands. They don't understand the concept of being "tired" and their favorite word is an empowering "NO!" When you come downstairs after telling them it's "time to go to sleep" and then you accidentally kick the rolling storage cart into their castle of blocks, they think it means that it's time to play again. When they refuse to be in their bedroom until the point you have to walk back up the stairs and take them there, and they smell on your breath that you've just finished off a Tootsie pop from the stash in the kitchen, they can tell you exactly what color you ate. When you keep getting interrupted by a little person who comes to the top of the stairs and shouts down claims that there is more time in this day to be capitalized upon, then you know you're having fun with a four year old. When you're riddled with guilt because you've just been forced to use your "mom-voice" and have instantaneously dropped from "Fun Cousin" status to "Meanest Cousin in the World" status due to your bedtime-politic, you know you've spent the evening with a four year old.

Reporting from the dark underworld of the House-After-Bedtime...over and out.

Animal Farm

Last night I had something of a nightmare. It might even be more of a nightmare for those who read my blog than it was for me. The very brief part of the dream that I can recall involved butchering farm animals at my parents house in Idaho. Yes, to the common city-dweller, I’m sure this is already sounding like a nightmare. But trust me, that’s not the nightmare...that really IS what people do with farm animals and that really IS where your meat comes from.

So, anyway...the dream...

The day had come, it was time. I followed my dad as he put on his jacket, his irrigating boots, grabbed a shotgun (which was something he never had in real life), and went out to slay our miniscule herd of goats and sheep.

Out in the pasture, there were two sheep, two goats, and one cow. THIS is the part where the dream started to get weird...

The sheep were speaking! By some strange, Orwellian intervention, as my father took aim for the goats, the sheep decided that it was in their best interest to help round up the goats and encourage their murder as opposed to their own. So the sheep were talking and working with my father to herd the goats into the line of fire. Just when I was starting to like the sheep, not only because they could speak English, but because they were proving themselves smarter than typical sheep, with one shot of the gun, all the animals were dead (except the cow who was rather uninvolved in the entire event and also not phased in the slightest that the sheep were speaking English or that a shotgun had just gone off). I felt absolutely shocked and devastated. And then I woke up...

Yeah...that’s weird...

Care to offer an interpretation?
Do I have a subconscious thing for sheep?
Is my true life calling to be a butcher? Or perhaps a serial murder?
Do I have unresolved issues with my mother?
Penis envy, maybe?

[Insert Witty Title Here]

General State of Being:
End-of-the-Weekend-Laze

Today’s High:
Walking – I think the novelty of walking comes from spending the first 18 years of my life living on what some city-folk might refer to as a “farm,” six miles from even the most basic opportunities to cash in on my rights to consumerism and materialism. To this day, it never fails to amaze me how cool it is to live in a place where I am able to use my own two feet to get me to so many of my favorite places...Sconehenge, Berkeley Bowl, Indian Rock, the University Lutheran Chapel, Café Roma, Walgreens, Fat Slice Pizza, Raleigh’s, Moe’s Bookstore, the fire trails, Elmwood Theater, Willard Park, the Ashby Flea Market, Brewed Awakenings, the Elephant Pharmacy, Coldstone Creamery, etc, etc, etc.

Today’s Low:
Grocery Eve – God forbid that there ever be an earthquake the day before my roommate and I are slated to do our grocery shopping. Our cupboards are bare, the ants having cleaned us out a few days earlier than expected. It’s that day where you eat random bits and pieces that should never be paired, like tomato soup and eggs-over-easy, or tuna and peanut butter, only because your pseudo-hunger has brought you into a state of delirium.

Song of the Day:
"Domino" – Van Morrison

Put down your umbrellas!

General State of Being:
TGIF

Today's High:
Today I completed grad school application number 3 of 4. Just one more to go! There's nothing like having to put yourself in one box just to break out of another. I've just about had enough of it.

SeaPea's Daily Word of Wisdom:
When the rain falls and the wind blows, it's best to surrender posthaste. Put up your white flag and give in to being merely a wet fool, as opposed to a wet fool with an inverted umbrella.

The Nice Person Award

General State of Being:
Happy (generic, I know, but sometimes it just feels good to be...happy)

Song of the Day:
"I Think We're Alone Now" - Tiffany (Don't ask, I have no idea why but that's what was on broken-record-repeat in my brain this morning when I was putting on my shoes.)

Nice Person #1:
* Eddie the Doorman - Today, Eddie, the best doorman ever, who has memorized the name and schedule of virtually every employee in my entire 15 story office building, bestowed upon me a wonderful gift. He not only noticed that I had come in much earlier than normal, but when I told him that it was because I had driven my car instead of taking the train, he asked me to point out on the security camera which car in the parking lot was mine and then proceeded to tell me not to pay the parking meter.

Nice Person #2:
* The Cobbler - In my claustrophobic state of being earlier this week, I thought I'd better be ready for that hike I'd been longing for should a beautiful sunny day in which I didn't have to work come along. So I rounded up the hiking boot that sadly broke at the end of last year's season and took it to the cobbler. Today when I went back to pick it up, all shiny and new looking, the nice cobbler said, "No charge." I insisted that he let me pay him something and he brushed my wallet away, smiled and said, "Just come back again."

Stranger Wisdom

General State of Being:
I had a rather lousy day today. I think it all started because the ants are still haunting me...alas, not in my pancake mix or my garbage can this time, but in my subconscious. I woke up this morning with the feeling that I'd spent all night with them. All I recall is having this dream that I brought home a brand new suitcase and when I threw it open on my bed, ants came swarming out everywhere and went into my pillowcases and under my covers. Yeah...I'm still thanking my brain for that one.

So, this day of mine...you've gotta love the first-funk-of-the-year. The same feelings of claustrophobia I was feeling yesterday, spiraled into a bonifide funk today. I purposefully rearranged my To-Do pile so that I could spend most of my day doing mindless database work and devote most of my brain energy to diagnosing the funk. And what did I come up with? I think it's the age-old (question: can something be 'age old' when you're 24?), "Why are you here, at this very moment, working in this stuffy high-rise? What are you really doing and how will it translate into what you'll do with the rest of your life?" (Yeah! All that before I'd finished my first cup of coffee...sheesh!) I was thinking about how after all of my work to choose a graduate school and to use big, intelligent-sounding words in describing exactly where I want my career to go and what I want to do when I get there, that I really don't know just where I want this life to take me. That there are some days when life would just be so much simpler if I was a white water raft instructor on the good ol' Snake River or a Sierra Club hikers guide in Yosemite. But deep down, I know I'm destined to love this life full of struggle and trouble admist my small attempts to be good and to do justice, whether it be on a grand scale from a grand high-rise, or one person at a time...

And though this is all starting to sound sickeningly euphoric, I still wasn't buying my attempts to convince myself that I'm doing nothing but exactly what I am destined for. And so the funk continued until late into the evening, when, on my way back from the bookstore, I came across a white-bearded homeless man who was trying to pack up all his belongings, many bags and boxes of various shapes and sizes, onto one tiny little granny cart on wheels. I said hello to him and he smiled and said, "The more precise I try to get, the worse it looks." I repeated it over and over to myself for the last of the walk to my house. Can you believe it?! I couldn't make up advice better than that! Divine wisdom at the exact moment I needed it most! It took me about half a block to let it really sink in...and I've felt better ever since.


Song of the Day:
"Rainbow" - Jack Johnson & GLove, Thicker Than Water soundtrack
well i woke up this morning
a rainbow filled the sky
yes i woke up this morning
a rainbow filled the sky
well that was god telling me
everything's gonna be alright

well so long good friends
when will we meet again?
i said so long good friends
when will we meet again?
well i don't know, don't know
but i guess i'll see you then

well i'm gonna pack my old guitar
move on down the road
i'm gonna pack my old guitar
move on down the road
where i go i don't know
but i guess i gots to go

well i woke up this morning
a rainbow filled the sky
well i woke up this morning
a rainbow filled the sky
that was god telling me
everything's gonna be alright

Extraneous Office Wandering

General State of Being:
Being enamored with the possibilities of a whole new year has sort of worn off. AND I'm really tired of being inside. The urge to go hiking or just exist outdoors for many hours on end is overwhelming, yet sadly unattainable with trails muddied from all the rain and lack of automobile to take me to higher ground.

Today's High:
I admit it. I am an Extranous Office Wanderer. My bottom, lovely and wee though it is, cannot handle being planted in its cubicle-land assignment for much longer than 45 minutes to an hour without taking a stretch break. Now, I'm not one of those annoying Extraneous Office Wanderers who stops at every desk and chats up every employee between their office space and the break room. I always have a task at hand: taking my plate to the dishwasher, filling up my water glass, checking my mailbox, hitting the bathroom, etc. But nonetheless, I manage to have 6 or 7 Extraneous Excuses to Wander the Office each day. Why is this under the "High Point" category for the day, you ask? Gloriously, this afternoon I was in the kitchen on one of these very Extraneous Office Wanderings when, I did, IN FACT, catch my boss doing the exact same thing! And her's was even more extraneous!!! She just walked into the kitchen, commented on the apple I was slicing, and walked out! BUSTED!!! Wander on, my friends! Wander on!

Today's Low:
I went for a walk around Lake Merrit on my lunch break. It was very kind of the puddles left over from yesterdays rain to point out the fact that there must be a microscopic hole in the front of my right shoe. Lucky me, got to have five wet toes all afternoon.

Song of the Day: "Sugar Will" - Dave Matthews Band, DMBLiveTRAX Vol. 2

Insignificant Fact(s):
Things I have eaten thus far today (in exact order):
-Quaker Instant Oatmeal (Cinnamon & Spice)
-Banana
-3 chocolate covered almonds
-bizarre fruitcake substance left on the kitchen table at work (seeing as it was already half eaten and there weren't any dead bodies laying around the office, I figured it safe to give it a go)
-ham and provolone with honey dijon mustard on 5-seed bread, warmed for 35 seconds on high in the microwave (hey, I TOLD you it was insignificant)
-5 more chocolate covered almonds
-1 Fuji apple

What I wished I ate today (in no particular order):
-Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked
-Crab Wontons and Vegetarian Eggrolls from Slurp on Telegraph
-A Black Butte Porter from Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon...mmmmm....(yep, it's a Monday)

The Battle of Krusteaz

General State of Being:
Stir crazy - it has officially been raining ALL day, and the absense of my beloved automobile leaves me feeling quite the hermit.
Cold - but sadly, in denial about being Cold-In-California, and therefore, unwilling to acknowledge that there is a thermostat just inches from my reach.

Song of the Day:
"Thicker Than Water" - Todd Hannigan, Thicker Than Water soundtrack

Today's Low:
The Battle of Krusteaz
Remember the ants who were staging the coup? They won the battle this morning. I laid in bed for an extra hour this morning, just contemplating the meaning of life and pondering the karma-implications for those of my friends who started the year with or without a kiss at the stroke of midnight. Anyway...the ants... Finally, when my stomach was speaking louder than my brain, I anxiously tromped downstairs to make my ritual batch of Sunday morning pancakes. I opened the cupboard and, to my utter HORROR, there were thousands of ants everywhere. Over and in three boxes of ceral, dominating the brown sugar and the instant rice, and worst of all, delighting in a morning frolic through my pancake mix. Bastards!

Today's High:
Remeber the ants who were staging the coup? I won the war. I Raided the entire kitchen, scooped their dead, mangled bodies into the mass grave of my kitchen sink and then, just to spite them, went to Andronico's and bought a lovely new box of pancake mix which I proceeded to store in an airtight ziplock AFTER, of course, I had my Sunday morning pancakes.

Insignificant Fact:
My fingers are numb
I have successfully blogged for two days in a row
I watched an episode of MASH on TV this afternoon. Having not run into it for a long time, it was a great surprise. For some unexplicable reason, I absolutely love that show.

Resolutions

I have but one New Year's resolution for 2005 and it is thus:
BLOG LIKE YOU'VE NEVER BLOGGED BEFORE!!!

And so, in this forced attempt at being witty, creative, and overly pensive-mysterious-yet-brilliant-and-intelligent on a regular basis, I will be as uncreative as possible and steal the brilliance of a friend to create something of a fill-in-the-blanks blog to indulge the relentless peer pressure to become a serial blogger.

General State of Being: Obligatory New Year's Day hope, anticipation, expectation

Song of the Day: Mine's Not a High Horse - The Shins

Today's High: Four hours of naptime in the afternoon sun

Today's Low: Writing really, REALLY late Christmas cards...(sigh)

Insignificant Fact(s): I am a quarter-century old this year. The ants are staging a coup in my apartment. I highly recomment blogging on a stomach full of soy carmel latte. And I'm spent....