Nature's perfect food

If you live anywhere near San Francisco, you know what I mean.

hint, hint

And today I found out about the best Bay Area burrito resource the world (at least the one I live in) has ever seen.

Local friends and frequent visitors, don't even pretend you're not excited to see how your favorite place ranks. My current number one choice and long-time faithful standby both did pretty well. Granted, they're basing their rankings on carne asada, for the most part. But they still know what's up.

Raise your mustaches in the air for the country's finest burritos! If you don't have a mustache, a tip of the hat will do just fine.

Stereotypes, shmereotypes

Yes, Virginia, good Jews really do go to the movies and eat Chinese food on Christmas. Especially when it happens to be the first night of Chanukah as well.

And somewhere in the Talmud—I think it comes after the section on ordering chow mein—we're also instructed to hightail it into the mountains to sit in some hot springs on Boxing Day.

Who am I to argue with thousands of years of tradition?

So, listen, about that weather report for Calistoga . . .

Paris pulse revisited

I spent about three hours making soup this morning. Kidney beans, butternut squash, basil, lots of garlic. There's enough to last for weeks.

Then I went to the bakery for walnut bread, brought it back, shared it and the soup and a wintery salad with my aunt. Then I went for a run.

Came home again and sorted through my Italy photos, a project that's been on the living room floor for months. Now I think I'll go to bed early and get up in time for yoga.

Tonight, someone asked me what day of the week it was, and I had no idea.

Vacation is especially satisfying when it takes so little time to sink in.

55 beats per minute

Warm fuzzies

Tomorrow morning, my department is going to the Alameda Food Bank's warehouse to help pack up food for distribution. I may work for a big semi-evil corporation, but it still fills me with softly lit holiday goodwill when they sponsor stuff like this.

Afterward, we're all going to lunch at the Fat Lady, a long-standing but kinda sketchy Oakland institution. Make of that what you will.

Then . . . no more offices until 2006! Well. Technically, there are two days next week we can either work or take off, and I think I may go in for one of them, since I'm trying to horde vacation time. But except for that, we're done until January 2. Done done done done done.

In honor of the one time each year when some American companies get civilised like their European counterparts and give us real time off, I plan to finally see the gay cowboy movie. I mean, the grand sweeping Western tale of Heath and Jake and their ridiculously handsome love.

Tried to go twice before, but it's been sold out each time—not a big shocker in San Francisco, but a little annoying all the same. So I bit the bullet and bought advance tickets online. But ticket fees have nothing to do with seasonal cheer, so let's not talk about them.

Things we can talk about instead: No work! Hot cowboys! Yes!

Happy holidays to you. I hope your vacation starts soon and ends a long time from now.

Mix it up

Mingus and I got into a rush hour scrape the other day. I came out unscathed, as did all the other humans involved, but the wagon didn't fare too well. So it's off to the car doctor he goes, my expensive silver date, and I arranged to tool around town in yet another rental.

I wasn't excited about it at first, but now I am. After years of passing by Rent-A-Relic, the West Coast sister of New England's venerable Rent-A-Wreck, I finally remembered the place existed when I actually need a car. In addition to being walkable from my house—very handy—turns out it's cheap, friendly, and old-school in the best possible way.

Meaning this: They gave me a brown 2002 Ford Escort with squeaky brakes and a tape player. Did you hear that? Do you need me to turn it up? A TAPE PLAYER. You may remember that I threw almost all of my tapes away when I moved into this lemon tree cabin, but you'll be none too shocked to learn that I did keep all the best tapes. The originals. The teen angst. The sorrow, the joy, the coming of age. The labors of love.

Yes, that's right. The mix tapes.

It sucks that I'm going to have the highest insurance rates in the universe soon, but it almost doesn't matter when you consider that I got to listen to But Anyway, Roadhouse Blues, and Walk of Life on the drive to work this morning. Then, on the way home, my favorite car song ever—the car song to rule all car songs—the crown jewel.

The best part is that I don't remember what's on most of these tapes I once slaved over, trying to fill those last 45 empty seconds with the perfect hidden track, so I just pop them in and get a full 1.5 hours of delicious surprises.

Ladies and gentlemen, the art of the mix tape lives on in my rental relic. Which is named Ferris, by the way. I just thought you should know.

Anyone? Anyone?

How time do fly

Just realized I flew back from France a year ago today. That's wild. It feels like I was there last week.

But it was really a full 365 days ago that you could find me holed up in a dear, chilly apartment the size of a parking space, walking and eating and listening my way around the City of Light—so here's a little trip down memory lane for your entertainment and my nostalgia.

Disclaimer: I think the winter cold was affecting my brain a little. At least that might explain the part about Polish Film Month.

Dormez bien,
Le BCB

Maybe I get a stalker next

This week, my website received its first random fan letter ever. We here at The BCB are, as they say, pretty freaking psyched about this. In fact, we think it's cool enough to post the note in full on this here blog:

Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Subject: i like your website

Hello.

I recently got back from a trip to Barcelona and I visited tons of museums including the Fundacio Joan Miro, the Museu d'Art Contemporani, and the Museu Picasso, just like you. I was particularly interested in the "Spice Cupboard" and when I googled it to get more information, your website popped up.

I just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed your website.

-[Mystery lady's name]

To celebrate these props, we will refer to ourselves in the third person for the rest of the day.

And in case anyone's wondering, here's what happens when you google barcelona spice cupboard. Lo, my rantings are there. Our rantings, I mean.

How does royalty keep that up? It's exhausting.

You like us, you really like us!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

I just found out about this magical store. Anyone who remembers this entry can imagine my excitement. Guess what everybody's getting for the holidays this year?

I'm kidding. You all get books and wine, of course. Why mess with tradition? But my oldest friend and I did work the thrift store circuit this weekend like pros, and we also found some killer glad rags at RAG's sidewalk sale. It's just that the stuff we picked up wasn't so much for, y'know, other people.

It's not that I don't want to share the love. It's just that every urban lady needs her fix sometimes, and the new San Francisco H&M doesn't have much to please the good people on my Chanukah list. But it does have so very much to offer moi.

Admit it—you're all really lit and liquor types at heart, anyway.

The other wing

A poem for fall,

Since it's never really winter in California.

At least not the way I knew it and didn't mind leaving it behind

In favor of a holiday party out on the bay. But layers will be in order.

Privacy

The animals are leaving
the safety of the trees

Light sensors respond
to the footfall of every guest

To retard the growth of algae

The fishes must be moved
from the window

Stiller than water she lay
As in a glass dress

As if all life might come to its end
within the radius of her bed

Beyond the reef of trees a beach cannot be seen
The bay itself barely breathing

In the other wing of the house
A small boat awaits elucidation

C.D. Wright

Humble pie

I usually stay away from bestsellers, since they tend to be bland enough to please everyone (Life of Pi, Cold Mountain) or "original" to the point of nonsense (Everything Is Illuminated, White Teeth), but a lady whose opinion I value recently proclaimed Ian McEwan's Atonement the best novel she's ever read. She insisted I read it also.

I was skeptical. But sometimes you know when it's not time to argue, so I picked up a copy at Powell's and enjoyed it very much. Beautifully written, with the kind of raw, tender battle descriptions that Hemingway could do—when he wanted—but often skipped in favor of bluntly sketched brutality. Even the overused conceit about the manuscript turning out to have been "written" by the protagonist was strangely moving in McEwan's hands. I haven't read much else by him save some excerpts from Saturday published in The NYer, but now I'll keep an eye out.

The moral of the tale: Kick your preconceived notions to the curb and heed the recommendations of the wise.

This review and a few more can be found on my recently updated Books list. For the uninitiated, I started keeping this list from birthday to birthday a few years ago. The current list pales painfully in comparison to 2004–2005, but hey...I was living a decadent European life then. Much more free time on my hands.

I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. Cousteau

Remember when I mentioned those diesel-sized sea lions that lurk under the Santa Cruz pier? Well, here they are. As you can see, these complex creatures displayed a thousand different states of mind in the space of the half hour or so I spent watching them.

Behold the majestic beasts lounging . . .

Napping . . .

Stretching . . .

Resting . . .

And getting all up in my face.

Wait, you're not a sea lion!

The end.

So where's my sidekick?

"Your life mostly resembles Pretty in Pink. You have some financial difficulties, but because of them you are more creative. You are prone to having a sidekick who follows you everywhere because you are so cool."

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Boo-boos

Last night, I tripped over a patch of uneven Mission pavement and skinned both my knees. Not badly, but enough to remind me how they always used to be like that. Except back then they were scabby little-girl knees instead of neatly bandaged grown-up knees. The more scabs, the better.

It made me want to go roller skating in the parking lot of Cooley Dickinson Hospital. But instead I came home from work early and took a nap.

Some days are like that.

Hazy shades of tofurkey

The Pacific Northwest is wet, grey, and just about freezing this time of year, but that doesn't matter when you're on a road trip with the Lipman kids. Or if you happen to be the Lipman kids on a road trip together. Weather be damned!

Turkey day in Portland: Unceasingly friendly and generous people; a long, delicious meal; a stroll in the downpour; Mad Hot Ballroom; a dachsund named Bill in a soiled argyle sweater.

The day after: Quality hours at Powell's, mecca of me and mine; a quick taste of the rambling, musky Edgefield cellar; a rainy drive to the next state over; David Sedaris on the stereo; Shopgirl on the screen.

Then the sun came out, and someone you know got shutter-happy. My bro and I woke up unrushed on Saturday morning, went for a pleasantly muddy stroll in the park, and made our way to Experience Music Project.

EMP is a Gehry-designed middle finger of a building on the edge of downtown Seattle—part monstrosity, part elegance, it somehow manages to work. Mostly.

Surrounded by a giant baby blue glob and an awkward red glob are swirls of the rich, beautiful, bronze and silver metal that characterizes the entire Bilbao Guggenheim exterior (visit here for more thoughts on that sister museum). The result is like finding a handcrafted ring stuck between two wads of gum. Gross, yes, but worth it.

We spent a while wandering around the streetside exterior, then headed for the main entrance. I'm lucky to have the brother I have for countless reasons, and here's another one: Turns out we're both fascinated by photographing ourselves in reflective surfaces. Here's what that gene made us do for a while:

We also scored on the exhibits they happened to be showing while we were in town. The first decade of hip-hop, a Dylan retrospective, and a tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Let me just check my files, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't get much cooler than that.

And here's one of Avi with the man himself. Ain't they a pair of handsome devils?

Anyone with even a passing interest in music could spend a while at EMP, but we both lost museum steam after a couple of hours. So my good-natured chauffeur and his trusty pickup steed zipped us over to the heart of downtown, sparkly with lights just before dusk, to see the new Rem Koolhaas library.

It's wild. Truly. Here are a few glimpses that don't come close to doing the building justice:


It's just as much of a trip inside as from the street. I only stayed long enough to catch the view from a few floors—and take some pictures of the neon green and rusty red interior that wouldn't do much for you in black and white—but I'm planning to spend some time in there next time I head north.

After our adventures in culture, we had a nice meal at a vegetarian spot in Avi's neighborhood, then took a catnap before meeting up with some displaced New Yorkers for a drink.

Finale: Brunch with my brilliant and beautiful childhood friend Claire and her man on Sunday morning. Then the quick flight home, weighed down by books and wine and a full roll of film.

That's all for tonight's fireside travel tales. Sleep well, and dream of freakish modern architecture all along the watchtower.

Holiday fun for the whole family

I'm leaving for the airport soon to join my wandering big bro in Portland, where the streets are paved with cleanliness, but I wanted to leave you with some fun things to do when you need a break from eating today.

These are also excellent tactics for avoiding awkward and/or annoying conversations with relatives and random holiday guests you don't really know, but have to be nice to because they're friends of your Aunt Mavis or whatever.

Ahem. Here we go.

Tactic #1: Bake pumpkin bread. It's squishy, it's yummy, it's easy to make. You know you want some. This recipe is from Claire's Corner Copia Cookbook, respectfully tweaked here and there by the BCB.

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup soybean or vegetable oil
1 cup fresh or canned pureed pumpkin
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (or nutmeg)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/4 cup raisins (optional)

Preheat the over to 375 degrees. Combine the eggs, sugar, oil, pumpkin, and buttermilk in a bowl. Beat to mix well using a hand mixer or whisk. (Whisks rule!) In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, ginger, cloves/nutmeg, and cinnamon. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry all at once and mix with a spoon just to combine. Don't beat the batter, or you will have a tough bread. Gently stir in the walnuts and raisins, if you like that sort of thing.

Grease and flour a 9x5-inch loaf pan. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake on the center rack of the oven for about 1.25 hours, or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from the over and let stand for 5 minutes. Turn the bread out of the pan to cool. Have a slice. Then another. Hell, eat the whole thing. With gusto! And maybe some cream cheese if frosting is a must for you.

Tactic #2: Waste a few hours playing with this fantastic Swedish website. I'm almost at a loss for words to explain how great it is. Type in anything you want, and a random computer somewhere in Sweden will sing the words back to you using pieces of popular songs. This is so rad. Trust me. You may never work again.

Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be back in a few days.

The weekend aquatic

I spent some quality with the animal kingdom this weekend.

First stop was the octopuspectacular Monterey Bay Aquarium, which I'd somehow managed never to visit before, even though it's world-famous and only a couple of hours away. It's also very cool, especially the jellyfish, who blew my mind with their bright orange postmodern art statement against a bright blue tank of water. Better yet: They come in wee, not-so-wee, and freakin' huge. The almost invisibly small ones shaped like umbrellas get extra points.

Mother Nature never ceases to astonish. I'd love to hear what theory the "intelligent design" weirdos can generate to explain teeny, tiny jellyfish, not to mention a bagpipe-shaped monstrosity with eight legs covered in suction cups and skin that changes color to reflect its emotional state. That's evolution, yo. Nobody can make this shit up. It just happens.

tell me, o octopus, i begs

Onward from the mini to the extremely gigantic: Stop two, a visit to the fleet of sea lions who hang out under the Santa Cruz wharf. They look like wizened Cambridge professors, with their whiskers and yawns and harumphs and expressions of mild contempt. They also like to shriek at each other. Loudly. And they're HUGE. I'll put up some pictures when I get them back.

Those were the only two stops on the animal tour, actually, but they were enough to make me feel like I spent a solid stretch underwater.

Then I went to see Walk the Line, and it wasn't bad. Joaquin Phoenix clearly practiced saying "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" in front of the mirror enough times to get it down. And for once, Reese Witherspoon's irrepressible perkiness was appropriate. There just weren't enough jellyfish in the movie.

when i was arrested, i was dressed in black

Windex kills ants

Before you go rushing out to buy Raid or Ant-B-Gone or any other specialty poison The Man tries to sell you, hear this wisdom from your trusty pacifist vegetarian friend: Windex kills ants. Like gangbusters.

Poor little innocent ants? Frolicking little happy little ants? Yes. I'm all for their right to live free in the woods and the wide open fields, where they might do some good in the natural balance of things (though I don't know what exactly), but they don't do a damn thing for the natural balance of my bathroom. Which they decide to invade last night. In hordes. And that just ain't right.

Now they're gone. Gone, gone, gone to the happy ant palace in the sky. Because Windex, ladies and gentleman, kills ants. In case you didn't learn it from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I'm here to reinforce to you that Windex is the cure for all your cleaning needs, pest-related and otherwise. That is today's lesson.

The other lesson is that I'd prefer not to shower in an ant mortuary ever again. But killing the ants turned out to be easier than cleaning them up, especially when it was late and I was tired and didn't have much light to work with.

But they'd better not try to come back. I have a giant bottle of Windex, and my conscience is crystal clear.

Pith

It was positively balmy today.

I've been on a spinach kick lately, sauteeing it up with sesame oil and garlic and ginger every chance I get. Popeye should maybe watch his back.

Bono is an interesting cat. A rare example of the potentially grand sociopolitical impact of celebrity. Or just a weird rock star with rectangular shades and a messiah complex. You decide.

It might be kind of late for pith, actually. Unless pith = sleep, in which case I'm all over it.

i am a golden god

Maroon, and good luck

Everyone left work early on Thursday, and I had Friday off by way of thanks for recent overtime. It's amazing how the weekend feels four times as long with an extra day. I got to cross a bunch of things off my to-do list—very satisfying. Also strangely thematic. Let me explain.

First, I went to Bed Bath & Beyond with a scrap of paper I've been carrying around for months: measuring cups and spoons, duvet cover, olive oil bottle, towels, alarm clock, backscrubber, etc. BB&B is a giant store, laid out poorly enough that I had to ask where almost everything was. (Except for the backscrubber—they have a whole section. Yes, they do.) And I stayed there so long that I almost broke down and bought an egg spatula. Where do they come up with this stuff? Is there a special island?

But my favorite part was asking the friendly bespectacled lady if they had "those things you use to tie back curtains." I'd decided it was time to upgrade from the stretchy ribbons I cut off my so-hideous-it's-kitschy French bathing suit. "Oh, tiebacks," she said. "Over here." Tiebacks? Are an actual thing? They had a whole section of them. Yes, they did. I got some dark red ropey ones to go with the dark red duvet cover (40% off! Sale ends soon!). My bedroom has been navy for so long that I'd almost forgotten other colors.

Then I dropped off some clothes at Goodwill, took Mingus for an oil change and a bath, stopped at AAA for free maps of Oregon and Washington (to plan a mini Thanksgiving road trip with my brother), and went to Walgreens for a photo album. The fancy scrapbooks I'm using for my travel photos are too much work for everyday pictures. Walgreens had a nice green version of the brand I usually get, with a maroon accent, and the register rang it up at $5 off. Yay!

Next I went to the wonderland that is Trader Joe's. I don't usually buy produce there, just everything else, but they happened to have baskets of beautiful, tasty pomegranate seeds and raspberries on sale. Into the car they went.

Then, spent by productivity, I came home . . . took a nap . . . and dreamt of endless rows of useful maroon things on sale. And how I still had a whole weekend left to enjoy them.

Twisted and fed

When I was a wee lass, I used to sit and listen to my mom's LPs in the living room. She had mostly musicals (flashback to Sunday in the Park with George), Simon & Garfunkel, and the like, but a few gems from my family's sort-of-hippie days in California in the mid-1970s managed to creep in there. But I never could understand the Bob Dylan phenomenon. Being a snotty little musical theater kid who took a couple of years of opera lessons, I thought Dylan's scratchy off-key delivery was hilarious and painful. And the lyrics sailed right over my head.

Then sometime in high school, my big brother undertook my conversion to Dylan fandom—I think Another Side finally tipped the scales—and now I really do get it. I believe the hype and hyperbole. He's a weird, weird genius.

So, that's the back story on why I picked up a shiny new copy of Chronicles recently in a moment of weakness at Cody's. (It was on deep sale...may the used bookstore gods have mercy on my soul.) This first volume of Dylan's autobiography jumps around too much chronologically and topically, but it's full of casual insights and poetic observations. It's also just cool to hear his stories about kicking around the folk scene back in the day, when it was new and charged and political.

To wit, some of his killer prose about a city on all of our minds:

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen...the city is one very long poem. Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. The devil comes here and sighs.

Double bass

Check another of the greats off my list. But with all due respect to Mr. Burrell, the last jazz icon to cross my path, Ornette Coleman has still got it in a way that Kenny just don't got it anymore.

It might have something to do with the space, like a stadium on one of the lesser planets, but it's also the powerful function of wisdom + creativity + insanity that Ornette carries in spades. He took the stage with one of the strangest quartet combos I've seen: drums, two uprights, and the man himself. The drummer is Ornette's son, trained from age 10 to be the frantic, tight rhythm for his father's mental explosions. He more than held his own, surrounded by an odd glass screen that made him seem like Mona Lisa with hands you could almost see.

First upright did his duty, tied the discordance together like a plucky hero. Second bass made his near superfluousness felt with perpetual underlying siren-like drags across the strings, lending the whole scene a tense quality that I could have done without.

But the sum was ethereal, off but on, making time pass unremarked. After my brain switched over to the necessary realm, I didn't notice anything else until they stood up and signaled the end.

Ornette didn't say a word the entire show. He may have mumbled an offering after the first ovation, but we left to catch the tail end of our dinner reservation, so I couldn't quote him for you.

The masters are sacred, but so is a fine meal, and I was glad to have the better part of both.

Stealth mode

Been working in a editorial coal mine lately, long hours and not much daylight to show for it. It looks like we'll need to put in time this weekend also—big project due first thing Monday, and the usual backup from the people who write the stuff and review the stuff means we don't get to edit the stuff or make it look pretty until the witching hour.

But it'll come out right in the end, because my boss told me that when the madness is over, I get to change my title to...ready for this?

Right-Hand Editorial Assassin. Why, yes, that does kick ass.

He also said he's getting us pirate eye patches and skull caps for Christmas, so maybe he's just kidding, but I don't care. I'm hanging onto it.

Editorial Assassin. It needs the coolest business card ever—and you can imagine the outfits. The movie deals!

You could design an entire lifestyle around a title like that. And I just might.

common editor

editorial assassin

The sun's not yella, it's chicken

I'm happy that it's light outside when I get up now, but the darkness at 5:30 p.m. plan just makes me sleepy. Maybe it's way too have-my-cake-and-eat-it, but why can't the sun cooperate more with my schedule? Say by giving us an extra hour of daylight in the morning and the evening, instead of this tit for tat business. I don't think most folks would mind a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daytime.

Mind you, this isn't a bout of Alaska envy. Perpetual sunshine for part of the year sounds like a nightmare also. I'm just putting in a friendly request for billions of years of natural evolution to bend slightly to the left, so I can feel like I'm not at work until the middle of the night.

People have asked for more, right? Check out the King James Version sometime. Now those guys were greedy.

Lila is here!

This morning in North Carolina, one of my favorite people in the world, Ms. Kate Holbein Rademacher, gave birth in championship time (less than 10 hours) to one of my new favorite people in the world, the wee Lila Holbein Rademacher.

Weighing in at 7 lbs. 9 oz., Lila is a beautiful genius. An auntie always knows.

I'm going to buy piles of cute little hats and shoes now. It's starting to get cold in Chapel Hill, Lila clearly needs them. I think she also needs a fuzzy bunny to drool on. Who doesn't, really?

Three cheers for Kate and David and Soren and Lila!

The Seven League Boots

Given how much time I spend fiddling with words and assessing their worth, you'd think I'd be concerned with book reviews, back cover copy, etc. Not so much. I don't look at book reviews of anything I haven't read yet—they don't interest me and often leave me jaded. If I'm in the mood for a new author, I almost always choose based on title. Or cool cover art. Usually in a Vintage edition. It's a simple science that has little to do with what's inside the book (caveat: I do read the first paragraph now and then to make sure it's not total crap. But Vintage rarely puts its brand on crap.)

Sometimes I get burned, but for the most part, this system works just fine. And it served me well recently with The Seven League Boots by Albert Murray. I discovered after finishing the book that Mr. Murray is "our great literary practitioner of the blues idiom," but I'd never heard of the guy. His narrative style tends toward excess—the protagonist, Scooter (band nickname: Schoolboy), is a prodigal bassist with a dizzying intellect, an improbable ability to quote verbatim all the authors and historians in the Western canon, and unfailing success with women—but it's hard not to like a story that's almost entirely about playing the 1920s jazz circuit.

Schoolboy got on my nerves at first ("And I had said, In other words it may also be as Lord Raglan the Fourth Earl of Fitzgerald suggests in his book about the origins of civilization when he points out that the most natural state of human existence may be a state of low savagery. But even so, if there is always entropy. there is also always the ineluctable modality of the perceivable.") Yeah, that's just how all the twentysomething musician guys I know talk.

But Murray's mad descriptive skills got me over my failed suspension of disbelief in his dialogue, and then he moved the story to France and let Schoolboy ride around on buses through the Provençal countryside and go to cafés and jazz clubs in Paris. And there was much rejoicing.

I had to look up the title a minute ago, since I had no idea what it meant while I was reading, but I'm not sure it matters. It got the book off the shelf at Pegasus and into my hands, so that's good enough.

Posting photos is very, very exciting

Especially because I couldn't figure out how to do it on my old blog. Side note: I can't control all the weird font stuff that happened on there either. It still plagues me in a cursory way.

But that's the past, and this here's the mighty present, so let's look at some pictures:

bling family brunch
(c) Janis Levy

Yes, my brother and cousins and I are always having a marvelous time. Rain? Never. War and famine? Not here! Doo doo doo doo. And we all close our eyes when we smile.

flowers. coffee. love.

I was lucky enough to be in New England twice this fall to celebrate two of my favorite newly married ladies. It's a long ride, but some days are worth it.

a pride of princesses

From the party of the century. They were so cute it almost hurt.

This is from the band's East Coast tour stop in Manhattan. Apparently on Escher Street.

"You may do that."

In honor of Ms. Rosa Parks.

Mad dash

On a usual weekday morning, my alarm blasts me awake like a call to arms. Except when it doesn't go off, like it didn't on Sunday at 5 a.m. to wake us for the marathon we've been anticipating for months. But lucky for me, I have a pretty killer backup—my internal clock. It decided that I needed to get up at 6:30 a.m. for work.

Amy, who was out cold on my futon downstairs, said it sounded like I fell out of bed and screamed, "Oh, shit!" OK, I did yell some and it wasn't polite, but there was no falling. More like leaping. Then a frenzy of finding my warmest pajama pants, hurling some layers onto myself and more into a backpack, and bursting out the front door into the car. We had 25 minutes to get to the city, park as close to the starting line as the event allowed (not close), and track down Miss Mobtown.

I won't tell you how fast I drove, but it's a good thing there aren't any cops on the Bay Bridge at 6:45 a.m. on weekends. We got to SoMa by 6:50 or so, parked at 5th and Mission, and sprinted toward Union Square. My backpack zipper broke and we took a wrong turn once, but Amy's former SF-dweller instincts kicked in and set us straight. We booked up the final block toward the cheering crowd at exactly 7 a.m. as they counted down, "5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1!" We found our pace group, connected with our third musketeer via the magic of cell phones, and even ran into a couple of Amy's old coworkers as we slogged through hordes of revved-up ladies to the starting line.

After that exciting beginning, walking 13.1 miles in the foggy, gray dampness felt almost mellow. We kept a decent pace, 12–15 minutes per mile, and the only time we slowed to a crawl was in the irritatingly long lines for the porta-potties. 15,000 women and about two stalls every three miles. We decided The Man must have planned the event.

But The Woman played her hand also, because there were oxygen stops, Luna Bar stops, a banana stop, and a chocolate stop along the route. Plus adorable high-school cheerleaders and volunteers cheering for us and handing out water, plus a different DJ spinning semi-inspiring music (salsa: yes; hip-hop: yes; Enya: no) every few miles. And, of course, the wildly gay dance troupe that mamboed us along at mile 9. We even passed by Casa Robin Williams in the fancy part of town. I love San Francisco.

Our intrepid crew made it to the end as the race clock hit 4.5 hours. If you subtract the 15 minutes it took to reach the official beginning after they started the clock, minus 25 minutes or so for bathroom breaks, we finished in a little under the four hours I predicted. And I think I'm only slightly worse for wear, thanks to some quality stretching and the massage we scheduled for afterward.

My Tiffany necklace is lovely, by the way, but not so lovely as the tuxedoed gent who handed it to me on a silver platter just past the finish line. I guess I take it back—The Woman must have been Chief Planner after all.

Run like a girl

Eight hours and counting until we leave for the Nike Women's Marathon. At 7 a.m. tomorrow in the dark, foggy San Francisco streets, Amy and Miss Mobtown and I will start our half marathon trek all over the city. Along with about 15,000 other ladies, they say. A fine way to spend a Sunday.

We went to Union Square this afternoon to pick up our race packets, mini Luna Bars, official shirts, pace bracelets, and everything else a gal might need to run herself ragged. Or, you know, walk herself. Can you imagine running for five hours straight? My legs would revolt and annex themselves from the rest of my body. But they should be able to handle 13 miles or so at a rapid stroll, if that final .1 doesn't put them over the edge.

Why all-female events rule: We get a finisher's necklace by Tiffany (presumably their budget athletic gem line), and there are at least two chocolate stands along the race route. Plus Jamba Juice.

Jamba Juice is worth the pain.

Cuppa

Here's the thing: White tea is the new green tea. At least, I think so. And remember, I'm half English, so I know.

Although I actually refused to drink tea until college. Black tea never did much for me tastewise—still doesn't—and I was a rabid coffee drinker from my überstressful prep school days through a few years ago. By rabid I mean a cup or so a day. But I never branched out into tea, especially herbals, except when visiting my wee Yorkshire grandma and other family members who constantly offer me "a hot drink." You want another hot drink? And then we can peel you off the ceiling at like 3 a.m.?

But during winter exams my sophomore year of college, a woman in my dorm who briefly dated my next-door neighbor stopped by to say hi. I growled at her from my dank, dark lair of essay composition. She brought me a big plastic travel mug of Tension Tamer tea with honey. It was glorious.

Now I drink it all the time. It's my panacea for any sign of illness, tension, sadness, and midafternoon. And I recently discovered that white tea is the bomb, because it has about the same amount of caffeine as green tea—so I can have a cup each morning and maybe even another half of one in the afternoon, and still get to sleep at night. But unlike green tea, which can be bitter and tends to complement food, white tea has a gentle, refreshing, nonblacktea flavor that's best enjoyed unadorned and unaccompanied.

You put on the kettle, luv. We'll have a nice hot drink.

Cherchez la femme

Is it just me, or are we all mystified about why the government—thanks to everybody's favorite evasion tactic, "executive privilege"—is allowed to withhold information on a supreme court nominee's background? And why the nominee herself seems to be almost proud (see paragraph three of the article) of the fact that nobody knows her opinions on anything?

Call me a bleeding-heart anti-family-values leftist tree-hugging commie, but that seems to run exactly counter to common sense. She's up for a lifetime post on the highest court in the nation. Her opinions on various issues are quite likely, then, to become laws. Laws. You know, the permanent kind that govern every element of our daily lives, including whether or not we have babies. So...it strikes me as reasonable to want to know what she's all about.

Tsk, tsk. Commoners shouldn't ask too many questions, I know. But I'm a little riled up about this one.

No trains coming

I was too traumatized by my epic trip home from the city last weekend to make it to many Litquake events this year, despite the stellar lineup. But I did BART on over Friday night for the Underbelly of the City reading at the venerable Ha-Ra Club. Some overheard snippets for your noirish pleasure:

"I know the human heart is rotten."

"His first 48 hours out of the penitentiary had been a hassle."

"Her eyes were like tunnels—no trains coming."

"He couldn't remember the last time they embraced without a bruise."

"You may be a war hero, but there are people in North Beach who hate me."

"The strangers in me are unreliable. They are often drunk, and they don't look out for each other."

"She was a pretty, short, strong, ample woman."

Noirrrrrrrrrrr.

Canteen party

All photos in this post © 2007 Susan Walther