Category: fun

I Got A Date

Ever since I was a young girl in New Mexico, I always knew there was a big old world out there full of cities much bigger and much grander than my beloved Albuquerque.

Even as I was a small town girl and in many ways feared big cities, I was inexorably drawn to them as well. Always fascinated.

Once, The Good Man and I were talking about growing up. He in Brooklyn, me in the ‘Burque. I summed it all up this way, he grew up in New York knowing he was in the center of the world. I grew up in Albuquerque knowing I was pretty gosh darn far from it.

I’ve gotten around this big blue marble a little this year and I’ve seen some truly world class cities, but to me, New York (and to be precise, Manhattan) really is the center of the world.

And now, after a very long year with a lot of hard work, I have a little vacation coming due.

So The Good Man and I are getting on an aeroplane.

I have a date with that little ol’ island and I can hardly wait.

(Please forgive if the blogging is a little sparse this week. Just know I’m out there having fun!)









Image from Barewalls.com.



Well That’s Sort Of Epic

Yesterday was a pretty monumental day for me. So much important stuff happening on just one little ol’ Wednesday in October.

First off, it was Halloween. All Hallows Eve. The day of costumes and candy and belly aches and trick or treat. For many people, Halloween is their Christmas.

Being the old scrooge that I am, there was no costuming going on for me (or for The Good Man).





But that’s ok, I celebrated by watching “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and eating dried cherries instead of candy since we don’t get any trick or treaters. How grown up of me to make that choice. How unlike me to make that choice! Sugar is *awesome*.

But pumpkins and goblins were but one of the big events of the day.

Yesterday was also the big huge spectacular parade down Market Street in San Francisco to celebrate the World Series winning San Francisco Giants.

Rock oooon!

I wasn’t able to attend in person, but I was able to watch it all live on TV and on the ‘net and wow, what a fun day!!





And THEN when all of that crazy happy fun celebration was done, The Good Man and I went to visit our local County Elections Office. Such a solemn follow up to a happy confetti party! But here’s the thing, when we moved this year, I changed all of my address info with the DMV and nicely asked the DMV to update my voter records.

As we got closer to the election, I noticed that I didn’t get my sample ballot in the mail and I didn’t get my vote-by-mail ballot either.

So we dropped by the busy office and got that all sorted out. Turns out they had my new address properly entered, but for some reason I wasn’t listed as “active”. So she ticked the box, clicked save and I was good.

Then we figured, hey, while we’re here, let’s go ahead and vote.





I felt sort of weirdly proud and a bit patriotic and awfully grown up to be standing there in a polling booth with The Good Man right next door as we cast our respective ballots. There were a few of the crazy California propositions that I could have gone either way on and heading into the polls, The Good Man joked about us voting exact opposite of each other to simply net-net our votes.

Ok, ok, we didn’t do that but it certainly seemed like a good solution. Voting in California is a strange, wacky and time consuming process. Anyhow, we used the electronic voting machines and made our selections and I cast my ballot.

Now that it’s done, I think from here on out I shouldn’t have to see any more political ads, be subjected to any more smarmy politician faces on the local, state or national level and I shouldn’t have to read any more politically driven internet crap.

Am I right? I think I am.

In other words: I’m out! : brush hands together :

Or in the immortal words of Doris Day, whatever will be will be.

But hey, what a day. Celebrated America’s pastime, voted in America’s big election and then danced around by the light of the almost full moon on all hallows eve.

Wait…I chose fruit over candy and I voted? What the hell is happening to me!?!?!




_____________________

Costume photo found at Sanitaryum.com.

San Francisco Giants parade photos from the SFGiants Instagram stream.

Voting sticker photo Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth, subject to the Creative Commons license in the right column of this page, and taken with an iPhone5 and the Camera+ app.




A Matched Set

Two years ago as a long suffering San Francisco Giants fan, I reaped my reward in 2010 when the Giants (finally!) won the world series and Bug Selig handed over this:





Tonight, the Giants won it all again.

And Mr. Selig, who is no fan of the Giants, had to hand over another trophy. Heh.

Now we got a matched set! Like salt and pepper shakers.

Reunited and it feels so good!




Well Knock Me Over

I’ve been a San Francisco Giants baseball fan for a long time.

And in my many years, I’ve learned this: Nothing is ever easy with this team.

Nothing.

My gut was in a clinch all day as my Giants faced a Game 5, do or die, win or go home game against the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Division Series.

When Buster Posey hit a grand slam in the 5th inning against the very tough Mat Latos I jumped up and down in my office and clapped and shouted and whooped and hollered.

Then I remembered that I sit next door to the Vice President and he was on a con call being all VP-ish and important at that same moment.

I later apologized to him and he grinned. “You must have been listening to the radio because I was watching online and I heard you celebrating about five seconds ahead of seeing it online. You only get away with that for the Giants!”

Rock on.

In the nail tearing bottom of the 9th my boss was in my office drawing something Very Important on my marker board and I was trying desperately to pay attention and answer his questions while checking my phone every two seconds and…good lord how long was that at bat with Romo pitching and Bruce at the plate…? And all the while The Good Man is sending me texts and my boss is blah blah blahing because he’s a damn European and what does he care?

I reminded The Boss that I had to endure the Euro 2012 football championships while I was in the UK in June and he could bloody well deal with this today. Seeing his boss (the VP next door) running into my office shouting “THEY WON THEY WON!” certainly helped pipe him down.

This was a tough day at work because of work stuff. This was a stressful day at work because of those damn Giants and their special brand of delicious torture.

And then I saw an image online from today’s game that just perfectly summed up how it all makes me feel.

A little blown back by it all, really.




Just a leeeeetle inside for Pablo Sandoval. Photo by Michael Macor for The Chronicle



Image by Michael Macor for The Chronicle and published in SFGate.



Misty Tequila Colored Memories

There I am, a random sunny weekend day in suburban Northern California, with a bag of groceries in my arms and holding hands with my husband.

We’re headed to the car in the parking lot when a low, slow Honda Civic rolls by. The car has been lowered, the wheels are miniscule and from inside the car comes some techno music. Not the multilayered computer-mixed techno of this modern era, but a thin synth-pushed techno that was quite reminiscent of the dance club music of the late 1980’s.

And suddenly I am no longer on a grassy knoll outside of Whole Foods in suburban California, but I’m wandering over the Paseo del Norte bridge and stumbling down Avenida de Juarez.

And I am inside Alive, a bar just over the border in Juarez, Mexico. If I listen hard enough, I can hear the sound of tequila slammers hitting the bar, syncopating with the terrible music blaring from the terrible sound system.

Alive, a venue located underground (the irony was not lost on me) with a tan blown-foam covering on the walls and a trip-worthy ramp leading to the bowels of the nightclub. I’d remind myself as often as possible not to touch anything and mind my own business.

But a bucket of Coronitas and a few slammers later and hey, let’s dance!

And me with my walnut sized bladder begging myself to hold it because the bathrooms at Alive were awful. Just…frightening.

But who cares! I was young! I was invincible! I was the only responsible person in a group of very irresponsible college kids. We were having fun. In another country. With no parents in sight! Freeeedom!

Yes, I was young and in my prime and not something like 43 and worried about jobs and money and is that cereal I just bought gluten free because wheat gives me tummy rumbles and oh yeah, did I get hemp milk because by god I’m lactose intolerant too. And can you read the label on this box because the print is too tiny and I sure as hell can’t read it.

It was a fleeting memory and I told it all to The Good Man. He replied “You and I had very different lives.”

And I suppose that’s true, we did.

But I can’t shake the memory. It’s not that partying in Juarez was a particularly good time. I was always the “good kid” and worried to death about all my friends and how to get them all back home safe and intact. I worried that one of the guys would get in a fight and we wouldn’t have enough money to pay the Federales to let him go. I worried my pockets would be picked clean by the kids (I had fended off more than a few). I worried that if the time came to run that I would be the one not running fast enough.

None of that really sounds like fun.

Those times are long past, something of stories and fairy tales as I wouldn’t go near Juarez for all the tequila in the world now.

I guess that memory on that sunny California day was something like fond reminiscence? I think it is more my youth that I miss than the crappy bars like Alive and Spanky’s and The Tequila Derby.

While searching for photos of Alive, I found this story on CNN. The author perfectly describes what it was like then and what it’s like now and does a much better job than I did.


Juarez was fun – before it was dangerous.





This 1950’s (or maybe 1960’s) era postcard, oddly, comes closest to my memories of Avenida de Juarez. In the late 1980’s that big bottle over the liquor store on the corner (left side of the photo) was still there.




Image from an eBay posting selling the original postcard.