Category: Bay Area

I Got Yer Circle Of Life Right Here

Today on my regular noontime walk, my walking partner told me a story that I decided I needed to share.

I’m going to tell you this story using the first person voice, as though my friend were telling this story directly to you. I think that point of view lends itself to the events of this story.

Ok, here we go.

“So on Friday while you were in all of those vendor meetings, I came out for a walk with Susan (not her real name).

We were about halfway around the pond when we saw this caterpillar, at least I think it was a caterpillar. It wasn’t fuzzy but it was a big fat thing, bright green and its markings made it look like it had a smiley face on its back.

We were so into this caterpillar, he was so cute. Just the sweetest little worm guy!!

We noticed he was right in the middle of the walking path, and with all the foot traffic, we were concerned for his safety. So I used a stick and a leaf and brushed him over into the grass.

Whew, I was so relieved to get him off the path. I felt so proud that I’d saved his little life.

On our next loop around, we looked for the green smiley face and sure enough, he was over in the grass, munching on a nice juicy blade. He looked so happy!!

We were like Yeah! I think if the green guy could have given us a little wormy thumbs up, he would have. It was just the coolest thing!!!

This just made my whole day. My whole week!

So on our next loop around, we got to the same spot, we looked again for our new little green friend, but we didn’t see him. We were both looking off into the grass searching for him. I started to get worried. I wonder where he’d gone off to. I really hoped he was ok.

I turned my head back forward and said to Susan, ‘I hope he didn’t get back on the walking path.’

That’s when I felt a splurt under my shoe.

I hoped it was goose poop. I prayed it was goose poop.

It wasn’t goose poop.”

—-

My friend was so very terribly distraught telling me this story. Hand wringingly upset.

She is very much an animal person. This is the same lady who shouted at the geese to come back in off the road, and they obeyed.

Four days later, after the events of Friday, and her voice still quavered as she told me this story.

Her eyes were a little misty.
.
.
.
.
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It is wrong that I laughed really loud and from deep in my belly?

Yeah, I thought so too.

Just going to have to add that to my “sins I must atone for later” tab.






Public domain image from wpclipart.com




Reporting from the Front Lines

There is a battle being waged. A mighty, vicious, chirpy battle. Take no prisoners. Victory is secured only by chasing the enemy away.

Nothing but full retreat shall be accepted.

Here is a photo of the front lines. Ground zero for the nastiest battle I’ve ever had to witness.





That’s right. It’s a fig tree. In the corner of my front yard.

The birds (mostly snotty jays) fight birds. The squirrels (generally snotty) fight the other squirrels. Then the birds join forces with other birds and the squirrels join forces with other squirrels and it’s full on species on species battle. It’s vicious! And loud.

The menagerie will squawk and chirp and flap wings and shake tails and go nuts at each other.

“Come at me, bro!!”

Yes, I’ve actually seen the birds and squirrels get into a physical tussle.

This is the prize in the all out war:





Figs. Lovely, sweet, squishy figs.

As you can see, our tree is heavy with fruit this year.





The figs on the sunny side of the tree have already ripened to brownish perfection. Tasty sugary carbs. Good energy for the wild animals.

The shady side of the tree still has a ways to go.





Which means this battle will rage on for a while.

My home studio is at this corner of the house and looks out over the fig tree. It’s rather disconcerting to be peacefully writing or painting and hear this angry battle going on right outside my window.

I look forward to the persimmon tree coming on with fruit. It’s in the back of the house and the battle will move there, away from my view and out of hearing range.

Oh, I almost forgot, the deer are in on this battle too. They eat the leaves on the low branches and like to leave their calling card for me under the tree.





(Congratulations long time readers, that’s the second time I’ve treated you to a photo of deer poop. Just keeping it classy here at Oh Fair New Mexico.)

Then the feline gets in the window and chatters at them all. Good gato mighty, it’s a cacophony over here.

Heaven help the human who simply tries to pick a few fresh figs for her morning cereal. The squawking, the strafing, the nasty chirps. Geez!

I’ll tell you, these were hard won. But oh so very tasty.






What Makes San Francisco Fun

Had to smile when I read this bit today in the SFGate, the San Francisco Chronicle’s online home:

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From Leah Garchik’s column:

“On Upper Grant one recent Saturday, Mal Sharpe and his Big Money in Jazz Band were playing at the Savoy Tivoli, which has windows open to the street. When Sharpe sang out to a group of passing German tourists, reports Lucy Johns, no one responded. But their tour guide, Tara, said she was not only a guide, she was a singer. This spurred the crowd to demand a song. She sang ‘All of Me,’ and ‘we all swooned,’ said Johns. ‘Then she tromped off down the street with her bullhorn, leading the Germans to City Lights,’ said Sharpe.”

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I love the visuals on this bit of North Beach storytelling. I adore Mal Sharpe, he’s a SF Bay Area legend, and one of The Good Man’s favorite jazz musicians. When you see a Mal show, you are completely engaged by his charm. So this story, inviting a passerby to come up and sing (and she knocks it out of the park), comes as no surprise to me.

It’s one of the many reasons why I love North Beach.

These kind of things just happen every day in San Francisco. It’s just how we do things…especially in North Beach.

Here’s another example. One night I was sitting at my favorite family-owned Italian restaurant called Sodini’s (it’s a North Beach icon). The restaurant was crammed and I was alone, so I manged to squeeze into a nice seat at the bar next to an older gentleman.

He and I got to talking when he offered to buy me another glass of Chianti. The man turned out to be Leo Riegler, current owner of Vesuvios, the world-known bar next door to the City Lights Bookshop where the Beat Generation used to drink and write and fight.

Leo has owned quite a few businesses in North Beach through the years. That night he told me about the coffeehouse he once owned (on the site that is now the Lost and Found saloon). I asked him about the bands that used to play there, as that coffeehouse was well known to host Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and more. He told me a long and involved story, the punchline of which was…

He used to pay Janis Joplin $20 a night to play his stage.

I mean. Wow.

All this over a simple plate of ravioli and a glass a wine. Leo is a walking musical history lesson.

That’s just how it goes in North Beach. That scruffy guy in the corner of Caffe Trieste who looks like he just dragged in off the street? Probably a world famous poet laureate. That run down guy who looks like he’s about to pass out on the bar at The Saloon? Likely a multi-millionaire musician.

And then sometimes you just meet a random German tourist who can’t believe that his tour guide stepped in off the street, did a set with a local band, wowed the crowd, then kept going.

How beautifully inspiring. The Muse always does a little dance inside of me when we walk together up Grant street. It’s her fault I moved here, after all…..


Stockton Street, looking toward the tunnel, 2:51 a.m.





Photo by my North Beach friend, Scott Palmer.



Shortest Distance Between Two Points is a Little Black Jeep

This week I was back at my employer’s office location in the greater Sacramento area. I have such a mental block about making the drive up there because the first time I ever went to Sacramento almost ten years ago, I left on a Friday afternoon and it was an awful, hellacious drive.

And ever since, the drive just seems equally hellacious.

When people ask me how far away is Sacramento, I usually say “oh, about two hours.” But that’s not really true.

In the office this week, I was chatting with a coworker who lives there. He’d asked how the drive went, and I told him it was pretty bad. There were three different accidents in varied locations that had backed up traffic in all kinds of directions. So the trip took me three and a half hours.

My coworker replied, “Yeah, I always figure it’s going to be a three hour ride, no matter what.”

Three hours. Just. Ugh.

I can get from Albuquerque to Las Cruces in three hours, I thought to my little self.

Wait a minute.

What’s the distance from ABQ to LC? About 200 miles, right? According to the maps of Google, the distance from my old apartment in ABQ to my best friend’s home is 224 miles.

Then I looked up the distance from the mid-Peninsula to the Sacramento suburb where I was visiting.

125 miles.

Something’s not right here.

So I embarked on some math. It hurt my head and made me wobbly on my pins, but math was necessary.

So if I go 125 miles in three hours, which is 180 minutes, that means I go one mile every 1.44 minutes.

That means:

My average speed is 41.6 freaking miles per hour!

So if that’s an average, that means sometimes I’m going 65 mph, which is the posted speed limit…

And sometimes I’m going squappity mph because I’m at a standstill at Emeryville, moving real, real slow on the approach to the Bay Bridge, or stuck on that freaking causeway staring at the back of a semi-truck that’s belching black smoke and wondering WHY GOD WHY do I have to drive to Sacramento!?

*sigh*

41.6 freaking miles an hour. No wonder this drive is so tortured. To paraphrase that bard of modern times, Sammy Hagar, I can’t drive forty-one.

I like to drive and go. I don’t like stop and go. Go and go, that’s my motto.

I guess it’s a where-you-were-raised issue. In New Mexico, if I go 224 miles in three hours, that is one mile every 80 seconds which means my average speed is 75 miles per hour. Which is the posted speed limit.

Which means sometimes I’m slowing down to make way for other cars and sometimes the New Mexico State Highway Patrol doesn’t really need to know what I’m up to.

Ahem. Anyhow…..


If you listen close, you can hear the sound of all of those drivers pounding their heads on the steering wheel.



Image from The Sacramento Bee.


When In Rome…

I’ve spent the past several days at another location of my company. It’s a smaller location, but the offices are very nice and the people are incredible.

It’s weird being in my own company yet still being the outsider. People have to show the way to both the restrooms and the break rooms so that I can make it through these crazy busy days.

Since this is a different location, all their stuff is different. I mean, it’s deceptive. That looks like the same coffee machine, but really, it’s not. It makes different coffee in a different way (pods vs filters here) and though the desk phones are the same make and model, how you dial out is different.

Ok, fine. I’m adaptable. I’m learning.

But there is one area where I’m a little concerned. It seems such a small thing…and yet.

Let me explain.

As any hardworking gal should, I try to drink a lot of water during my day. Keeps the old brain sponge hydrated and running clean.

I carry my own metal water bottle so I can have water on hand at all times. When empty, I simply fill up this bottle from the company’s water dispenser and keep sipping away.

They use a different kind of water dispenser here at this facility. It connects to the water supply out of the wall instead of using an upside down bottle. It looks a little something like this:



Ok, fine. Your common everyday water filter and dispenser. Great.

Only.

This one has three taps you must choose from to get your H2O.

Here’s what I mean:



Now, I realize I’m not the sharpest knife in the company drawer, but I think I can mostly work this out.

The one on the left with the red droplets; that must mean hot water, right? For tea and instant coffee.

The one on the right featuring the blue droplets must be cold water. Fine. Good.

But what about that one in the middle?

With the, uh, grey water droplets?

Isn’t gray water a sort of bad thing? As in, don’t drink it?

Are they really piping water from the bathroom sinks and laundry room through this dispenser?

And if so….ew.

Ok, I know, I know. The middle nozzle is intended to be warmish water or room temperature. At least I think so, anyway.

But I have to say, I avoid that middle nozzle

You never can tell. Maybe these people are all so chipper because they’re all just really sedated by all the contaminants in their water.

I go back to the Bay Area tonight and my simple two nozzle water system. These new fangled things are just too complicated for a simple minded gal like me.