I hope you enjoy the visibly empty box you grabbed. I hope it was worth the $2200 in damage to my car.
Sunday afternoon I had about 45 minutes to kill between commitments. I also had a book that I wanted to read and it was a beautiful sunny day, so I headed up to a scenic park at the to of Potrero Hill. I rolled up my sleeves and availed myself of one of the picnic tables.
This park has lots of kids and lots of dogs running about, and many charming canines came over to say hello and get skritched while I read. I was quite happy to oblige them-- a border collie, a lab, several mutts, and even a couple of yapdogs visited my bench.
As I was leaving, there was a tiny little dog wandering around the parking lot looking lost. A father and his two young children looked up as I came by. "Is that your dog?"
"No, why?"
"He seems lost, and he's wearing the same shirt that you are, so we figured he was yours." I looked, and indeed we were both wearing pink and white striped shirts.
Oooohhhkay. Right. I'm exactly the sort of cutesy person who would dress my dog in a matching outfit. Mmm hmmm. I attempted not to be offended. The dog seemed very sweet and trusting, so I set to work trying to find his owner while the little girl asked, "Where is that dog's person? Why isn't his person here?"
One of the dog owners in the main part of the park recognized the dog, looked around, and said that his owner was gone. Lovely. Did someone abandon their dog? The other dog owner offered to keep an eye on the pink-striped doglet, since I had a photo shoot to go to.
As I was heading for my car, a white station wagon pulled into a parking lot and the inhabitants started calling out a name. Yay! The dog's people had arrived. They were quickly reunited, and I must say that I felt much better leaving with the knowledge that the critter was back where he belonged.
I will, however, make this promise to you. No matter what animals I may have in the future, I will never ever ever dress myself and my pet in matching outfits. If I do, you all have my permission to kill me by any means necessary, so long as you take care of the animal. He'll be so happy to be saved from the embarrassment that he will be loyal to you forever.
My street is closed, as is the whole neighborhood. A guy down the street is barricaded in a condo with his wife and two small children. He's a parolee, and he's armed with a gun and a meat cleaver. KTVU has good video.
I'm far enough away to be out of harms way, most likely. If I lived half a block farther down I wouldn't be able to get into my building. Even if he were to get out onto the street, I'm well-protected in my building. Lots of the neighbors are stranded out on the street.
Our buddy fired at the police earlier. Early rumors were that an officer was killed, but that appears to be false. The officer I asked shook his head no, and I'm pretty sure that if one of them had been hit they wouldn't be nearly so calm.
Good times.
I chopped the Oaks tournament three ways.
-p
Today's theme song is Stayin' Alive.
Vehicles I own: 3
Vehicles currently fully operational: 0
I have two motorcycles and a car. The car is my everyday vehicle right now, partially because my arms and shoulders are pretty fucked up and I'm not supposed to be riding. One of the bikes has been sitting in the garage for a couple of months being neglected (see also shoulders)-- its battery is dead. Another one, my old-enough-to-vote ratbike, has been on loan to my sweetie for several months. He returned it a couple of days ago.
The ratbike... well, let's just say that it's seen better days, and it's on really good terms with my mechanic. I rode it to work yesterday and stopped by the shop on my way in, just to say hi. One of them looked out at it suspiciously. "Is that here because it needs to be worked on?"
"Get real. Have you ever seen this bike come in and leave the shop under its own power?"
"Umm, no. Now that I think about it, I don't think I have."
I laughed. "There's a first time for everything, I guess." He looked like he'd just had his sentence commuted. "You should listen to it when I leave, though, and tell me what the weird noise is when I start it." He did. It's the starter clutch. "Ride it until it dies. That could be tomorrow or three years from now."
The commute wasn't too bad, but my shoulders were not happy with the whole operation.
This morning I walked out the front door to get in my car, and was greeted by the sight of my car with three fully-inflated tires. That's almost enough to drive on! I swore loudly and colorfully, then headed for the trunk to start changing the tire.
"Oh, fuck it. I'll take the bike." I went upstairs, grabbed my gear, hopped on the bike, and headed for work.
I left the office around 9 p.m. and headed for the bike. It was a little bit cranky about starting, but no problem... it does that. I can usually start it on the third try, occasionally the fourth. Tonight, no dice. I spent a good five minutes trying to start the bloody thing before the battery started to give out, so I pushed it into the alley behind my office, locked it up, and went back upstairs to dump my gear. Some homeless guy is probably doing unspeakable things to it even as I write this, but I don't really care. Maybe he'll get it started.
At this point I was in a bloody rotten mood, but I calmed for a bit, ranted at the universe, and then headed out. I was >< this close to taking a cab home from the city, but the cab driver I flagged down wouldn't do it so I just had him take me to BART. His unwillingness probably saved me $25.
Once I got home, I very carefully limped the car into the garage, emptied all the crap out of the trunk, and then set to work changing a tire. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck. I have locking lug nuts on the wheels, and I can't find a key for them anywhere. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
(Amusing. The Firefox spellchecker recognizes fuck, but not fuckity or spellchecker.)
I tossed crap back into the trunk, went upstairs, ranted a bit about the lug nuts, then thought to myself, "Hey, isn't there a socket wrench sort of thing that's been in the center console of the car since you bought it three years ago?" I put my clothes back on and went downstairs, and discovered that I did in fact have what I needed.
I changed the tire without breaking a single fingernail, and found a really small piece of metal buried in the tread of the tire. I made colorfully disparaging comments at it.
So at this point I have a motorcycle with a dead battery in the garage, a car with a temporary spare in the garage, and a bike that won't start and has a half-dead battery in the city. I am not pleased with the current state of my vehicular universe.
On the plus side, we had a department offsite this afternoon to see the movie 21. I found it bloody hilarious in places where it wasn't intended to be funny, like when they started talking about the Monty Hall problem, or when lots of the scenes too place at the Red Rock. The real reason it was funny, though, is that the real Mickey Rosa is a friend of mine, and I kept trying to imagine him doing the things that Kevin Spacey did.
Every now and then, for a brief but glorious moment, commuting forgets how to suck. Today was one of those days. I caught the ferry to San Francisco, then wandered into the ferry building to grab some breakfast. I found my favorite cheese and a nutella donut (no shit!). From there I spent some time shooting the protesters at the Embarcadero, and even spotted Frank Chu in the crowd. After I got tired of that, I hopped Muni to the ballpark, shot a few more protesters, and went to the office.
On the way home I had a nice walk along the Embarcadero to the ferry building, then enjoyed the sunset while cruising across the bay. There was not even a single ounce of suck anywhere to be found.
The Olympic torch is running through San Francisco today. My office is one short block from the route, so the neighborhood is a zoo. Rather than driving in, I took the ferry to the Embarcadero, spent a few minutes with the protesters, and then headed for the office. At lunch I'll go back out with the camera.
Someone asked me for this information today, and since I went through the trouble of digging it out I figured I'd repost it. This was originally in my LiveJournal, and since people thank me profusely every time I post it I thought I'd toss it up here as well.
You know those annoying grocery circulars that show up in the mail every week? The ones you probably just grab out of the mailbox and throw away instantly? You can opt out of them.
Most likely they were sent by a company called Advo Systems. Here's their opt-out link: http://www.advo.com/consumersupport.html
I did this last summer, and they really did stop showing up a few weeks after I made the request.
The last time anyone in my neighborhood answered the QOTD was on March 23. It's like the feature completely disappeared from the site. VoxHunt last showed up on February 28. Maybe that's what the Vox team intended, but I somehow doubt it.
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