sir psycho sexy - red hot cilli peppers - an explicit peek into anthony's fantasy life
new hope - blink 182 - an ode to princess leia
i mostly only use the thing during the occasional public transporation commute. it seems like one of these two songs comes up during more trips than not. yesterday it was sir psycho sexy.
<br>
so, cruising down market street commuting home this evening i heard the first trumpet solo of 'oh come all ye faithful' of the season. halloween's not even here yet! and it's not even dark out when i leave work most days.
when did the 4 seasons become winter, spring, summer, and holidays?
<br> - bah!
so i had a sort of eventful, suprising ride yesterday. and not so much for the riding itself.
first, i had driven to tennesee valley to start, and ran into kiki there. heard some good news that is beyond the scope of this blog. but good news is good news.
second, i was just about to the top of the grinder climb on rt. 1 heading north out of muir beach. it's rather steep, slow going, no shoulder to speak of, but traffic is generally enjoying the view and well behaved. a silver mercedes at the front of a small group of cars passes in an entirely reasonable manner. a preteen sticks his head out the window and yells something. it takes a couple seconds for it to register in my oxygen deprived brain what he yelled. 'fudgepacker'. yes, he called me a fudgepacker. sometimes i forget how other people perceive all the spandex of the red team gear. but still, fudgepacker? i saluted him in return, he still had his bratty head out the window looking back at me, so i know he saw it. the brake lights of the silver mercedes came on briefly, so hopefully he was getting an earful from the driver. i half hoped they would stop at the cherry stand right there, and i'd get a chance to ask him if he wanted to call me that to my face, and perhaps inquire of the driver what kind of kid s/he was raising, but alas, they were gone. the apple doesn't fall far from the tree i imagine.
thankfully everyone i ran into on the trails was nothing but friendly and gracious. the equestrians, even! the rest of the ride was just splendid, thank-you-very-much.
but then, on the way home i stop for gas at the arco on the corner of divis. and fell. it's the cheapest around, and it's always crowded. there's not space for many cars, people get impatient, tempers flair, sometimes it's not worth the savings. regardless, i pull in off divis. the correct way (according to the traffic control arrows), and queued up. i pull in as a car pulls out, and get out to go about my business, when a dude gets out of his huge-ass-suv, and physically puts himself between me and the pump. apparently he had been waiting in his huge-ass-suv to come in from the wrong direction to take the pump, and i had inadvertantly snaked it. just playing by the rules. not really wanting to perpetuate the ridiculousness, i gave him a bit of a hard time, and got back in the car. thankfully, by this time the car at the next pump had finished up, and i only had to wait another 20 seconds or so for it pull away, and backup into that spot, all while mr. huge-ass-suv honked his huge-ass-suv horn at me. then of course, given the tightness of the lot, mr. huge-ass-suv had to do like a 7 point turn just to get into the spot he had been waiting for. and then we pumped our gas at adjacent pumps. awkward! he wasn't there very long. there's no way he filled the tank of his huge-ass-suv in that time because he started pumping after me, and finished before. i wished him a nice day on his way out.
a couple things to take away from this afternoon:
+ sometimes it's hard not to profile people based on the cars they're in when you keep getting reinforcements of existing stereotypes. cases in point: silver-mercedes-brat, and mr. huge-ass-suv. given this, i wonder what the stereotype of grubby-white-dude-in-subaru-with-bike-on-roof is like.
+ don't drive, stick to the trails when possible.
+ try to dwell on the good news when it comes.
<br>
ok, i have a pet peeve i'm feeling the need to rant about. (not really a common occurance for me...)
smokers who throw their still smoldering butts on the ground, especially out of car windows in the path of unsuspecting pedestrians and cyclists.
i mean come on, find an ashtray already. it seems to be a somewhat socially acceptable form of littering that is just arrogant and rude. seemingly reasonable looking people (well, except for the smoking bit) who you wouldn't expect to see littering just throwing their junk on the ground. granted it's a small piece of trash, but crikies it's burning. and the shit adds up. it's like once they get their fix they're faced with the realities of their filthy habit and can't distance themselves from it fast enough. therefore, actually extinguishing and disposing of their trash like a reasonable member of society takes far too long.
now i'm too much of a civil libertarian to be against smoking outright. at least not outside. people should be able to do what they want with their health and their future, even if that means throwing them away. i'm willing to tolerate second hand smoke (up to a point) for the greater good of the civil liberties. but i'm seriously tempted to start calling people on this. or maybe i'll just conspicuously stomp on and dispose of their butts properly in front of them without saying a word. or flick those burning butts right back into their open car windows.
<br>
a certain flavor of spam has been sneaking through the filters at work for a while now. they are all of the 'hot investment tip in new, breaking pharma/techy/money laundering front business' flavor.
they caught my attention because:
+ not much spam has weasled it's way through the filters here, historically
+ they have auto-generated 2-word subjects with vaguely interesting words and combinations thereof
+ they have similarly auto-generated sender names with unlikly combinations of nationalities
for what it's worth, i decided to take a tally of the subjects and senders. wanna hear it? here it go:
sparkle humiliating (Sammy Chapman)
ceremonial rubella (Ninon Sawyer)
purveyor jilt (Oscar Castillo)
soft fragility (Adalbert Gaines)
ensemble stealthy (Ralph Kirlpatrick)
goulash cadence (Silas Allen)
stigmatize pompous (Guy Vincent)
eradication dozen (Kit Mayes)
brutally palpably (Gordon Jones)
isolated precarious (Maximillian Campos)
ungainly self-sacrifice (Meggy Bass)
quixotic insane (Cecily Roman)
indeterminate lottery (Clement Dominguez)
mounted overpass (Lewis Pagan)
arcade reparation (Harriet Meadows)
uteri cower (David Downey)
proprieter sign (ranald castaneda)
procession participle (Sandy Albert)
linear goddamned (Elijah Hooper)
event immune system (Fidelia Herbert)
accordion barren (Noah Villareal)
perforate frontier (Amy Garner)
gym ache (Lucy Whitney)
mad vagina (Elsie Harding)
phosphate nugget (Tibbie Eldridge)
contest asteroid (Sanders Newman)
argument haunted (Rosaline Huffman)
derby enlistment (Dorian Koch)
revolver admissible (Connie Yoder)
reluctant fascinate (Pip Nance)
trilogy cramped (Arthur Adkins)
aphorism Friday (Bel Le) !
bleary repair (Edith Acosta)
materialistic rebate (Matthias Lindsey)
discipline frivolously (Maximillian Hertley)
languish daunt (Rosaline Sterling)
tobacconist consistency (John Leblanc)
collapse stranded (Net Cervantes)
squint genocide (Cora Phillips)
warmth local anesthetic (Becky Paige)
periscope unclear (Dorothy Bergeron)
covers plutocracy (Harry Lozano)
kayak flush (Neddie Lee)
alderwoman student body (Dickie Mckee)
relent you'll (Deins Dooley)
toast butcher (Liz Vinson)
authoritatively play-by-play (Christina Carver)
business erratic (Millie Lawson)
external nobody (Leopold Hewitt)
opossum tangent (Martin Dickinson)
merry-go-round echo (Floy Carver)
there's a sort of poetry in the aggregate i think. or something...
so the spammer's ploy worked in that their auto-generated bits snuck through the filters and got me to read their drivel. thankfully, i've stopped getting them. maybe the filters got better. i'll never know for sure.
<br>
born 3/13/06 3:57am est
8lbs 4oz
21in
congrats to the happy family!
<br> - uncle
pillow fight club rules:
1. tell everyone about pillow fight club.
2. tell everyone about pillow fight club.
3. turn up at the arranged pillow fight club venue with pillow hidden in a bag.
4. at the exact given time pull out pillow and fight.
5. you cannot fight anyone without a pillow (unless they want it).
justin herman plaza, 6:00, valentine's day...
<br>
tom yum.
from best of thai noodlehouse on haight street.
<br>
after getting summoned for the third time, i served on my first californ-i-a jury last week. i had to defer in november because of travel plans that overlapped with the case in question, so i got called back this month. they sat me right down in the jury box for the jury selection with 19 others while the rest of the prospectives sat in the back waiting to get dismissed. i have a feeling it was because i had deferred. fantastic, that dramatically increased my chances of landing on the jury. word to the wise, don't defer if you can avoid it. it could increase your chances of getting stuck on a jury when you return.
it was civil court, so no one's life or freedom was at stake. only $$$$. juror questioning quickly turned to the topics of escalators, high heels, and broken bones. i mentioned that one time when i was a little kid and got my shoelace stuck at the bottom of an escalator and a stranger behind me grabbed my leg and pulled until the lace broke. a little scary, but no blood no foul. i also mentioned my skepticism of an overly litigious society. several of the other prospective jurors riffed on it too and got dismissed, but for some reason it wasn't enough for me and i got picked.
thankfully it was a short, 1-week trial, so not an awful one to get stuck on. some lady fell down a bart escalator. she was walking down the moving escalator in high heels with her hands full when it suddenly came to a stop and she fell and broke her ankle. a plate and two screws later, she got her day in court. you may not realize that escalators are designed to stop and stop quickly to avoid damage and injury in certain situations. like when coins, shoelaces, and small mammals get stuck in them. so most of the testimony was from boring escalator people about what causes them to stop, and if this particular escalator stopped for a good reason. loose screws stuck in comb plate impact switches. riveting.
it's worth noting that it was the busiest escalator at the busiest bart station (embarcadero) and it happened just after rush hour. although it had a record of stopping more frequently than average during the timeframe in question, it also serves about a million patrons a year, so one might expect it to have more problems than average.
in the end, bart didn't have it's act together enough to provide convincing evidence that the escalator stopped for a good reason. they didn't produce the nefarious jammed screw or a single bart employee that was on the scene, and their paper trail was lacking. so we ruled in favor (although not unanimously) of the plaintiff, and gave her most of her stated expenses (medical, lost wages, etc.), but very little on top of that for pain and suffering. she said on the stand that she can pretty much do everything she used to do, so we weren't crying for her. it amounted to about $15,000. she had an expert witness who cost about half that. after her lawyer fees, i doubt she walked away with much, if anything. she really should have settled. during closing arguments, her lawyer overshot and asked for $100,000, so i think he upsold her on going to trial thinking he could get more out of us.
so if nothing else, we kept the system alive. it was sort of an interesting process to see. i enjoyed the long lunches exploring civic center. it's too bad i didn't get a total bye from my day job and had to head in to the office and work into the evening. made for some long days. i wish i had some sort of jury credit that would keep me from getting called again for awhile.
<br> - juror #6
these are just some small things that make me happy in not necessarily the healthiest or most enlightened sorts of ways. in no particular order:
+ system of a down - goofy armenian guitar wrok[!] goodness
+ double rainbow pumpkin ice cream - seasonal creamy orange goodness
+ csi - gory crime drama goodness
+ pink nipples [stop it!] - boozy licorice goodness
- 1.5 oz. sambuca
- 1.5 oz. vodka
- .5 oz. grenadine
pour over ice, sip, tastes even better as ice meltsi sort of made this one up. we bought a bottle of sambuca on a whim and were looking for mixed drinks to make in an old bartender's reference guide i have. it listed sambuca and vodka as a silver nipple, but i thought it needed something, so i threw in the grenadine. better. i went about my business. when i picked it up again later after the ice had partially melted, it tasted even better. cut down on the syrupyness some.
+ ong bak - martial arts cinema goodness with a thai spice and all the trappings.
+ chicken tikka masala - savory creamy orange goodness
+ post-race kfc - junk-food goodness
after central coast races, i'm in the habit of stopping for gas at the same exit off 101. it's the first gilroy exit headed back north. there just so happens to be a kfc/a&w combo where i can get popcorn chicken, cole slaw, and a root beer float. it hits the spot. this is, of course, after more orthodox post-race recovery nutrition - endurox. (orthodox endurox is decidedly not a guilty pleasure.) it's the only time i go to kfc, i swear... this week i got a burrito with friends instead, which was good and all, but i kind of missed kfc...
+ thai iced tea - sweet creamy orange goodness
sorry, i've been delinquent on the blogging. last weekend's race was a wash because i rolled a tire off the rim halfway through and limped in 3rd to last. i was suprised there were still 2 guys behind me. i wonder what was up with them. took this past weekend off from racing to rest up in preparation for the remainder of the season. racing one or both days every weekend until christmas, inlcuding a trip east to see the fam. and go to natz.
got out to alpine dam/ridgecrest saturday, which was nice. don't get out on rides that long very often during the racing season, which is a shame. rode 'cross bikes on tam in the rain with aron sunday. only stayed out for 2 hours because it was really starting to come down. got very wet and dirty. tough on equipment. think i need to write off my rear wheel and brake now. wheel because it's busted, brake because it wasn't working very well in the wet. saw ariel out on a trail run, which was kind of random and surreal. in part because i was already thoroughly soaked and diry, and she was clean as a whistle. i was generally amazed how many people were out recreating on the mountain in the rain.
so now my 'cross bike is in pieces spread around the living room. getting recabled with some fresh bits for the rest of the season. still need to track down a rear wheel for training and spare. might have to poach it off my road bike or commuter.
otherwise, been crazy busy at work. finishing up a new grokka' which we're all very excited about. it will be done eventually.
<br> - slacker
"Are you stuck drifting through life in a state of existential confusion wandering aimlessly through the multitudes of energy products not knowing which one is the right one for you? Then look no further for the true meaning of life then Master Sensei Seagal's Lightning Bolt Energy Drink!"
Features:
* 100% Pure Steven Seagal Juice [ick!]
* Designed for intense mortal combat or any extreme situation requiring ultimate energy [guess i've found my secret to better race results!]
* Can has Steven Seagal's face on it (who could ask for more!?!) [looks like captain james t. kirk to me]
i played my first ever round of 'real' golf yesterday. it was a company function at the golden gate park course. golf is not my game. the times i managed to connect it was anyone's guess where it was going to go. chipping went slightly better. it's a good thing we were playing best ball, or it would have been a long night. at one point, a guy who worked there (and had about a 2 second attention span at the cash register) came rolling up in a golf cart to help move us along because we were taking too long. claimed he would help us learn to 'play bad golf quickly', which included telling us everything we were doing wrong or non-traditionally. thanks guy, way to sell the newbies on the sport. i missed a putt just to take longer and piss him off. or at least that made for a good excuse...
of course at the end he wanted to present us with a plan to practice drills back at the office and schedule monthly office tournaments at his course. yeah, i see that happening. that guy needs to learn how to read an audience.
the course was super low-rent. $10 for city residents. the brodie mountain of golf courses.
golf is similar to bowling in that it is not just figuring out the technique, but also being able to predictably repeat the technique with controlled adjustments. i succeeded at neither. with bowling i have enough muscle memory from my childhood bowling league days to fake it. not so with golf. also with bowling there is more opportunity for repetition to learn it. not so out on the links. i guess that's why they invented driving ranges and putt putt. also like bowling, it is fine activity for drinking and socializing. luckily, many of use were similarly skilled and inclined to focus on the drinking and socializing.
couldn't ask for better weather. the park was gorgeous with the evening sun filtering through the eucalyptus. good to get a different perspective than my usual one from the saddle, alone in the early morning, sober.
<br> - linksman
this is a photo of the inside of my eye taken by my optometrist and then emailed to me. the interweb at work!
she told me it's healthy.
<br> - seer