Today's Laugh or Cry Moment

I was just emailed the minutes of a meeting. The newly appointed secretary took meticulous notes, which means I got to read:

Item 2: Diversity
We discussed about the diversity that does not exist in the club and how we should go about recruiting. Overall, this topic was left undecided as it is a large social issue in the world that we cannot solve in one sitting.

Item 3...

So... Laugh or cry?

With the next breath will be peace

Saturday, 9:29 a.m.

Outside: Quickly sprouting silent crowd of cart-wielding shoppers.
Inside: Two women, one holding a small ticker-counter, the other holding a walkie-talkie.
Between: Huge panels of separating, sound-proof glass.

The shoppers tilt slightly forward as one Inside woman approaches the glass panels to raise them. Behind her, the other woman crosses herself.

Costco opens.

Rules... and Their Exceptions

Well, it has been a less-than-ideal summer in terms of relying on the consistency of certain truths that hegemonically rule my universe:

* The Slow Cooker became a No Cooker
* I not even for a minute boarded any airplane
* The August skies were so relentlessly drip-cloudy I had to seek out lawns to crash on in Millbrae,
* I almost watched The Bachelorette, and
* I nearly didn't sprain my eyes from excessive rolling while actually watching "Eat, Pray, Love"

So this morning, the last before the school year truly tidal waves me, I made one last effort to re-balance my little Mercury-in-Retrograde-or-something Summer universe. Following my rule that Sunday morning pre-8 a.m. is the most peaceful and therefore best time to walk (excepting all of Thanksgiving week), I (puffy vested and flip flopped despite the fog) walked out my gate to enjoy an early light amble, deciding: shall I go Right (Right Head swivel) or Left (Left Head swivel)? Only to find immediately to my left, about eight inches left, a rapidly approaching gun followed by a power-chasséing? police officer (what is the human equivalent of the equestrian 'trotting'?!) up the street, hollering "Drop the bag! Drop the bag!" at some person presumably already mostly up the block (I presume because it didn't seem like a good idea to turn my back just then). Did I mention the gun shaking and extended (with me suddenly in the way)?

The po-po and I both probably looked the same amount of startled and I retreated, remembering the rule about there being exceptions to every rule.

Exception: When faced with a gun, a badge and a nervous, adrenalined aura, it's probably the safest and most peaceful to head back inside if you have the choice.

Run Naked?

Until today, I have never been asked my permission for someone else to run naked. Odd, isn't it?

Two peas, one pod.

One of the peas is the rapidly shrinking Original Shorty (OS), formerly known as Flappy Pappy. The other pea is his absolute favorite person, Baby "Gluteus to the Maximus" (BG), formerly known as the Butt Pugg, currently pseudonymed as OS's one and only grandson.

Here are a sampling of today's conversations:

1. OS separates his daily pills into boxes. BG sends out a searching hand. OS:

Ah, this one is called [let's say Enulose]. It's a laxative. You don't want one of these. Not yet, anyways.

BG withdraws hand and appears pensive.

2. OS: Grandpa loves Max sooooooooooooooo much.
BG: Too much.

Winnemucca, Location of the 44 Hour Softball Tournament

Which far from explains why I am here.

It started with my brother moving to Utah.
It continued through his realization that Utah is not so big on easy alcohol access and that he therefore must be chipmunk-like and store up for winter.
It moved on to him exacting a promise from me to drive a station-wagon FULL of alcohol to Salt Lake City.
It wound its way to Shorty #1 (now medicated, but formerly known as Flappy Pappy) deciding he simply could not stand to be left behind while I drove to Utah on my own.
It involved him telling me every other day for the past month,

Winnemucca is known for its Basque Community and the Basque food. Can you believe it?

Which, through the power of sheer repetitive advertising, I believe I now can.

It went on to concern the typical family 'Bait and Add' sudden appearance of Shorty #2 (a.k.a. crazy mama con beehive) in the pocket of backseat remaining in the car as we sought to leave San Francisco.

All of which resulted in - after eight hours, fifteen stops punctuating the 'Don't go over 55mph' screeching soliloquies, and one very threatened GPS system - several new creases on my brow and more new trauma hotspots in my neural pathways. But, since I am an albeit reluctant lifelong learner, all was not lost.

1. The description "downtown" has a vast array of meanings. On the corner of Winnemucca Boulevard and the aptly named Malarkey Street, an actual tumbleweed whizzed by me. The alacrity of the tumbleweed should indicate several things, only one of which is the rate Shorty #1 walks. And

2. Basque restauranteurs have a well-developed sense of humor. Not only do Winnamucca Basque restaurants provide airbrushed glamor shots of your meal in its previous baby state (which I believe allows patrons to more easily cave-person grunt-point their ordering wishes),

they also provide the perfect meal for a country-crossing vegetarian - all you can drink red table wine. It certainly is a relief not to have to masticate one's nutrients. And, besides, with so many choices - from bacon-infused french fries to veal-soaked lamb chops to beef-simmered ham to the very vegetarian iceberg lettuce salad - how could one otherwise decide?!

Brain, Meet Summer. Now Turn Off.

My brain becomes very productive the second I go on summer break. I mean real break. No unpaid meetings about next year. No summer school teaching. Meaning I have been on for exactly four hours... and it is July. Not a good sign. I have to get all my seemingly-lucid-awake-REM-sleeping-brain-stateness in within the window of one month this year. We should all be experiencing a sense of dread.

All this summer brain cramming hurts. Today, I woke up wondering why it is that in supermarkets eggs are never housed anywhere near the chickens. How is it that eggs became a dairy?

Unable to solve the logic of this (though, of course, the Michael Pollanian corporate A->B of this seems clear), I moved on to the Phenomenon of the Fixie Identity. Specifically focusing on what SF walkers would need to create a group identity. Which led me to offer (in the classy spirit of Juicy Coutoure) the emblazing of all velour clad strolling bottoms: "Get off your gas and walk." Feel free to weigh in on possible fonts.

The Slow Cooker has unfortunately been dragged into my condition, and together we have arrived at the following for our future ukulele band:

Name: Paranoid Jews
First Album: The Guilty Catholics
Sophomoric Album, SC's Pick: Pious Muslim
Sophomoric Album, My Pick: Buddhists That Kill

Feel free to send me back to work asap, someone.

L.A. Really Has Nothing On Us

In 2003, San Francisco had the foresight to enact a law changing the term "pet owner" to "pet guardian." And today there were hella guardians watching their companions pee all over San Francisco's urban equivalent of Venice Beach: Dolores Park. With the temperature getting to nearly 60 degrees, everyone (complete with fixie, skinny jeans, and wee pooping companion) was basking in the Vitamin D and watching our equivalent of water (Dolores Street traffic). Packed in whether sitting or moving, I could not help but ear-hustle what I took to be a quintessential San Francisco conversation:

A: Well, her mother, you know, was Army... while her father was from the Air Force.

B: Aaaaah.

A: So I am sure you can imagine what an impact that had on her personality.

B: Yes.

A: I mean, she is really an unusual chihuahua.

Me: Blink.

Is It Me?

Last night I saw the excellent and disturbing documentary: Prodigal Sons. Consequently, AA, A and I spilled out of the film in strange head spaces only to find ourselves at the equally strange intersection of California and Polk streets. Desperate to process the film, we turned up Polk. We got approximately one foot before I stopped moving and instead started staring and pointing, all jaw droppy. AA and A just kept chatting and I was encouraged (kindly, because they are kind) to get my slow-ass butt in gear and start moving.

Me: Did you see that?

AA and A: Huh?

Me: That... that was John Waters!

AA: Oh, really? Huh! I figured you were just being slow and distracted.

And on that note, which says more about my turtle-like reputation than really anything else, we turned into the corner diner, where we munched on french fries, held our breath against the cook smoking in the kitchen, got stared down by a marble-eyed chihuahua by itself at the next booth, and visited the shortest toilet in San Francisco. So things ended as mundanely as possible. For me, anyways.

Sometimes I Think I Could

Be a middle school teacher. This affliction generally shows up after I have spent a couple hours with a flock of middle schoolers. They are ridiculously smart, quick, perky, open-faced, funny, quirky, and muffin-esque.

And the affliction has two cures -

(1) Spending an additional seven hours with a group of middle schoolers.

or

(2) Hearing that by the end of our several-hundred-large middle school conference this year:

One chaperon had left half way with a 102 fever, another chaperon's illness prevented them from arriving in the first place, and third chaperon got stuck in the parking garage with an over-sized van and had to deflate her tires to get out, leaving only one chaperon standing.

For whatever reason, that reminded me - no middle school for me, thanks.

"Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists. "

-- Dan Quayle, VP and Founder of the 'foot in mouth in a majorly public way' club

I remember when leg warmers were in, Dan Quayle was VP to a certain George Bush, and we wore our sunglasses at night out of sheer embarrassment. This was also the time of a Vermont organization whose sole life purpose centered on following Quayle around, capturing the myriad of crap that would emerge from his vocal cords, and broadcasting it through a monthly newsletter. Meaning that he spoke in a cringe-worthy manner enough to fill a monthly newsletter. Which he did... and then some. Amazingly, the whole time he was in office, their monthly newsletter remained thick enough to moonlight as insulation. You perhaps remember:

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."

"I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican."

"I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix."

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."

"Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."

"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people. "

"Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us."

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

Ah yes, Danny Boy, truer words were never more confusing, how wonderful that the pipes, the political pipes, are calling...

Anyways, just a few highlights for you there on Memory Lane. But let us pull ourselves into this century, the century in which we all live, minus perhaps the DQ. The way things are going these days, a person need not a monthly newsletter; one could instead modernize to a daily "WTF" blog of bigoted, ignorant, hateful things that public people say.

I for the sake of not totally wasting my mind, like to limit my public bloggy WTF rantings to the sporatic. Like a suddenly bitter wedge of tangerine. But today is definitely one of those days, because Education Secretary Duncan? I wish he had been lawsuit-provokingly misquoted by last week's The Washington Post article:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Hurricane Katrina "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans" because it forced the community to take steps to improve low-performing public schools, according to excerpts from a television interview made public Friday.

So let us just be clear. And in honor of the start of Standardized Testing Season and my colleague Alita, let's do this in SAT terms (Lord knows that shit is clear):

Hurricane Katrina :(IS TO) New Orleans Schools AS
War : Urban Renewal
The Plague : Medical Research

Or, in the words of the DQ, "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."

WTF.

Dadisms

My dad, whose hearing, mediocre in its best times, has absolutely gone to pot.

1. My dad calls me on his cell phone. He has the speaker phone on in an effort to hear what I am saying. I have a fever of 100 degrees. My dad asks me a question. I start sneezing into the phone.

Dad: What?

Me: (continued uncontrolled sneezing)

Dad: I cannot hear you.

Me: (sigh)


2. My dad and I are going to a party. He points out he has put in his hearing aid for the occasion. I ask him a question, which he doesn't hear.

Dad: What?

Me: Is your hearing aid on?

Dad: I cannot hear you.

Me: It doesn't seem like your hearing aid is on.

Dad: My hearing aid is on.

Me: It doesn't seem to be working. Did you change the batteries in it?

Dad: What?

Me: Batteries. Batteries. Ba-tte-ries.

Dad: Yes, I just changed the batteries.

Me: Well, it doesn't seem to be working.

Dad: What?

Me: It is nooooooot wooooooooorking. You caaannnnnnnooooooooot heeeeeeear meeeeeee!

Dad: No, it is working. But I cannot understand you.

Me: Isn't that the definition of "not working"?

Dad: What?

Me: (rinse and repeat)

Dad: I can hear you are speaking. I just cannot make sense of the words. The hearing aid is working. The problem is that my brain is no longer working.

Me: (sad, so very sad)

Freecycle: Sometimes It Feels a Lot Like Christmas

So I have been a little shy to RECEIVE on Freecycle since the creepiness of last Spring, plus I am in super purging mode.

But then I went and banged my blender jar in the edge of my sink. And my beautiful blender jar, which has faithfully served me in so many capacities since EB gave it to me one Chanukah in the '90s... cracked and broke. Bummer.

And so I looked on-line. Total replacement blender? $60 plus the irritation of being unnecessary. Replacement jar? $30, half as irritating, but still filing under Bummer. Turned to Freecycle figuring, eh, what the heck. I posted my WANT. No bites.

Sighed. Waited a week.

I especially hate buying things in December, lest someone believe I am a willing participant in the consumeristic holiday shopping bullshit. So I figured on no blender until the new year. Bummer bummer bummer Fine fine fine. But in the meantime why not repost my hopes back on Freecycle just one more time.

And a woman replies,
Hey, I have a jar just sitting here because the blender shorted out a couple weeks back. Maybe it will somehow work?

And over the course of a few emails we come to find... we have the exact same blender. I go there. She comes to the door with the jar. Actually, her partner, their kid, their cousin, their grandma ALL come to the door to witness how totally random this exchange working out really is. And everyone is so very happy and the end result for me and mine? Hellllllla soup.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Seriously. But even as global climate change is making us cock our dim San Francisco heads like confused dogs, there are always a couple born-n-raised True San Francisans things you can count on.

Whatever the weather,
1. True San Franciscans will still call it 'going to the beach' when we take our asses to Ocean Beach and sit in our cars, cracking a window (maybe), but definitely reading the newspaper and sipping on hot beverages from the thermos, never once getting out of the car and
2. If Mitchell's (Ice Cream shop, not to be confused with the Mitchell Bros' O'Farrell Theater folks) is open, there is gonna be a line waitin' on ordering a scoop or several.

Yea, I'm sure the cropping up of the fashionista organic creamery set has stolen some thunder from Mitchell's, but you cannot keep a serious San Francisco institution down. More venerable than Bi-Rite's Creamery (I'm not hatin, I'm just sayin), Mitchell's has been doling out ice cream from behind what appears to be two feet of double paned bullet proof glass to every ice cream fanatic regardless of age, ethnicity, size, dress label, income, taste bud practically daily since 1953. I have witnessed the most roly-poly, church-clothes-donning, maniacal-grin-wearing 4 year old muffin-heads practically invite an early heart attack in their 10 a.m. sprint to get from minivan seat to the Mitchell's line. I'm just saying, one thing you can count on is that there is always a line at Mitchell's, and it is usually thick.

So I was headed home the other day, and, as I mentioned, this whole past week has been cooooooooold. I don't mean my own wimpy 'It's less than 68 degrees!' cold. I mean, I get that I got cold in Mali during the summer, I got cold in Vietnam when the temperature dipped to under 92% F. I regularly get cold in NYC summers - and not from the air conditioning. I get that I am a visionary in terms of what a person can get cold in... But here I mean 'Baby, I really can and in fact I'm gonna stay cuz it's cold outside' cold. I'm talkin' 'Whadarewe,eastcoasters?' cold. 46 degrees cold. 'Wearing a wool hat and fleece everything and puffy jacket and I'm still cold' cold. So cold that, heading home, I was smugly prepared to shake my fleece-engulfed head at the brave/fool-hardy Mitchell's devotees. And it was so cold that my jaw was too tightly scarf-swaddled to drop at the sight of no one at the open-doored Mitchell's.

Whaaaaaaaat? Don't get me wrong. It is cold enough to stand in front of Mitchell's and throw some milk, sugar, cream, salt, and perhaps a vanilla bean into the air and have it land your mouth as ice cream. That is not what I am saying.

I am saying that apparently people are off doing just that on some other sidewalks in San Francisco this particularly frigid week, because there was no line at Mitchell's. I feel vaguely uncomfortable. And it almost makes me want ice cream.

I Am Being Misread!

By my on-line marketing logarithms, no less. How sad is that?! Or maybe it just wanted to watch me squirm?

Today the banner it put above my Gmail offered me:

$29 I'm Sorry Flowers - Express Your Apology with Flowers
Order Now for Extra 15% Off

How does it not realize that I abhor with equal amounts cut flowers and smarmy apolo-gifts? On the other hand, at least it is sufficiently savvy to realize I do like a discount. And what could be better than saving money on a heartfelt APOLOGY?! The gauche-loving part of me? Totally responding.

My Inner Child? Definitely No Honor’s Student at the Yoga Institute

There are two or three things I don’t understand in the world. There might be more. But they definitely include:

1. The continued consumer interest across decades in the Speedo (or, as Pamikins would say, the SpeedNo.) Despite my general admiration for all items cut from gold lamé, just talking about this sets off my goose bumps, and not the good kind.

2. Why yoga, in addition to apparently transforming the mind-body-spirit, also changes speech patterns, a trend especially evident in its instructors (see Date Two below).

3. How my lack of short term memory can result in my ability to revisit to things I have already established I don’t like and find out afresh whether they can count as a New Thing to Try.

Each month I like to do something new. But, like any unfortunate network series, I appeared last month to be in re-runs, thus making October "Let’s See if I Like Yoga (again)" Month.

This time I avoided all hot yoga, proving that I am at least slightly Pavlovian. Instead, I opted for a studio in Bernal. Let me just say for the record, they were great. Besides the very first woman I met at the front desk, who apparently did not take her Yoga Peaceful Pill, everyone was really so very nice, kind, unpretentious (despite their linguistic limitatings). There were no mirrors, no sound of sweat dripping like rain off an awning into 120 degreed heated carpeted rooms. The bolsters and straps and other unnecessary yoga industry crap? Smelled only slightly foul. The instructors smiled genuinely and soberly from their fleshy, squishy, bony, whatever bodies as they greeted you and introduced their inner children with names decidedly not borne of the Nevada Playa. Did I mention they were great? So the thing to remember is... it's not you, Bernal Yoga, it's me.

People talk to me about yoga the way homophobes talk to lesbians:

Sweetie, you just haven’t met the right class.

And so I signed up to go on first dates with different kinds of yoga classes, just to be sure that they were, indeed, the yogacentrics I suspected them to be. And here is what I found:

Date One: Restorative Yoga. I now understand this to be a fancy term for Napping. I see why people like it – it’s like kindergarten, but more appropriately timed, because 33 years Post-K, I am finally at the stage in my life when I am less interested in peering up the teacher’s skirt and more interested in sleeping... because I am just dog-tired. And in my desperation, I will totally pay to sleep with anything, even a pre-me slightly dampened, body-odor-scented blanket, it turns out. But ultimately, that says less about the yoga form than my weakness for a quicky wherever I can find it.

Date Two: Hatha Yoga. At least linguistically, this is perhaps the most evolved? rudimentary? form of yoga, a.k.a. Day No Wasted Words, a time of molding body and language to its essential parts. No Prepositions, Conjunctions, Pronouns, Articles/Determiners, Possessive Adjectives or Commas need apply for yoga instructor positions, resulting in echoes of the following "sentence":

... place left hand in-breath right knee out-breath slight pivot palms out palms rotate face in in-breath hmm-hmmm...
Response? Uh-uuuuuuuuuuuh (if you, like me, are a Wordy Words A Lot - the Playa name awaits patiently my arrival I am sure).

Date Three: Restorative Flow. Napping + Balancing = Napping for no one + Me falling frequently. Unless you count the Domino Effect (and my ability to mastermind several of them), this was decidedly not a flow in the more commonly held sense of the word; it was more like a skip... like in a record or a CD. Not that anyone knows what those are anymore. I am dating myself. No really, RF, it is me, not you.

Date Four: Pilates. Every time I try to talk about this one, I am re-informed by my many yogic-headed friends out there that YOGA studios do not have PILATES, and in my born-again virginal state I must’ve gotten confused. Thus I will henceforth refer to this as YOGATES. In this way, you all can feel more comfortable with me checking out what was so obviously "not pilates" at the yoga studio. Best date yet. I engaged many laughing muscles. Apparently a tranny form of yoga at best, or in the wrong bar at worst, Yogates and I could maybe just maybe get down, if it existed as an actual word. At least it made me laugh.

Date Five: Flow. No napping, just dominoing, and thus time to turn off this faucet and conclude to myself and my favorite yogacentrics out there that yoga? It is just not for me. It is not a lifestyle choice, it is just who I am.

So one or two things I understand. Those definitely include:
1. I am open to a less conventional set-up, if anyone can find me a Yogates Studio, I will reconsider my anti-stretching-class identity.

2. I will neither be the future manufacturer nor sporter of any bumper sticker stating: My inner child is an honor’s student at the Yoga Institute.

True to form, my yearly theme starts in October

In keeping with my omnipresent ability to chug on forward, 2009 has already moved to 2010 in my mind. Which makes me almost half-way through the year! Yeay! My enthusiasm for being done with this year is tempered only by my intense level of fatigue. Working Title 2010: Year of Imbalance (not to be confused with In Balance, of course)... j'arrive.

For a lesson plan I was doing, I remade my Medicine Wheel. And it served its purpose in deflating me completely. Because My Medicine Wheel? Only not TOTALLY out of balance because I was basically nurturing none of the four areas -- Heart, Mind, Spirit, Body. And I do mean none. Zip. Zero. Everything that I need to do to be in my best place, I was not doing. Don't get to chill with the friends I adore nearly enough (meaning: at all), don't get to read or write on this blog, don't avoid bread and dairy like I should, haven't played soccer since September, don't get to be not working on the sunny days in order to soak up my Vitamin D... The list goes on. So the only one remotely getting attention was a spoke on my Heart area. And that was only because I made the hopeful leap (read: mistake) of putting The Boiler (a.k.a. The Turtle, Salty Dog, My Piece of Mat) on it.

So I come back from my camping trip to the very lovely but cold Hendy Woods and voilá, The Turtle pokes his emotional head out enough to call it quits. Why? He finds things to be out of balance between us -- i.e. he sees me as being more into it than he is. Which I think is true, but perhaps not in the way he perceives this. But then again, he must profoundly not be into it, because, as many of you know, I have spent a tremendous amount of time on the fence about the concept of a relationship and my very mixed feelings about him and me in particular. I only moved to calling him boyfriiiiiiiiiend this fall when things seemed solid enough to say to myself,

Giiiiiiiiiiirl, you gotta either open it up and really attempt this or be done.

[My Inner Jew Editor responds: Whatdja think, your patience, tranquility, positivity, and generosity alone were gonna make something like a relationship actually work out for YOU?! Ha!"]

And more to the point, I have to now remake my stupid medicine wheel and notice how almost entirely absent the entire wheel's contents are now. And I have got to stop settling for the imbalance of putting myself out there and sticking with folks who either cannot or are not interested in giving back. As Animal says in The Muppet Movie:

Irritated!

So I am taking a vote. Preferences?

A. 2010: Year of Imbalance
B. 2010: Absence of Zen
C: 2010: Like a Pebble in My Shoe
D. 2010: _______________________

Sometimes OK Cupid is Not So OK...

I think OK Cupid is a little drunk on his own misguided power.

So I checked my datin' profile after many a month just to sweep out the cobwebs and found four messages that ALL started with references to Burning Man. I always read profiles before reading notes and found each profile alluded to wanting to find life partners with whom they could grow old at Burning Man. (I can imagine Burning Man rapidly aging me within a week, actually. But I digress.) Seems strange to receive so many Burner messages but I just figure that post B-M, the Burners are out to replenish themselves and fulfill their intentions and manifestations and all that. So I come to the last messenger's note. I notice that on his profile he has gone out of his way to write that he wonders why everyone OkCupid thinks he'd be a match with Burners since he has never been. Curious.

Then I read his message title: Burning Man

And the message:

I said I'm confused about why OkC thinks I'd be a match for everyone who goes to Burning Man.

So, what does the new "Icebreaker" thing do? It matches me to you because you "like Burning Man". Hilarious.

Under his message is this little double-decker marshmallow-esque ice cube-ish icon with a little heart on its chest. Next to it is the italicized sentence:

I think you both like burning man.

And I wonder: Were OK Cupid and I in the same room?! Because in my profile, when prompted to disclose "the most private thing I am willing to admit here" I wrote:

I have a tic: when I hear the term Burning Man, my eyes roll... all by themselves. Strange.

Suitor #4 is right. That is hilarious.

Valencia Street: The Oh My of the I-ron-y

It was mayhem on Valencia Street this afternoon well into the evening, with San Francisco showing its true colors of equal parts concern and self-absorbic irony.

Valencia Street off 19th was filming Trauma, apparently some new show that is based in San Francisco. I have no idea if it is a "reality" show, but if it is, I am gonna assume the episode's trauma involves a car running over a bicyclist, a boy getting stabbed on a MUNI without working surveillance cameras (no wait, that is seemingly weirdly prohibited north of Mission Street), or some BiRite Creamery eater cracked out on the toxic levels of sugar in their Salted Caramel ice cream starting a restaurant riot because some menu lacks sufficient vegan options...

Meanwhile, Valencia between 16th and 17th was also shut down for an actual trauma, in the form of a jumper the po-po were trying to talk down - apparently, they were still trying to around 9:20pm. True to form, at both locations were gawkers saying stupid inappropriate shit and taking cell phone pictures. And in both locations were people totally irritated that they couldn't get to their preferred happy hour drinking establishment/cafe in a timely manner. One-dress-stop-shopping Valencia Quarter, how nauseating.

Student Quote of the Week

Another reason to miss teaching elementary school:

In one corner, ladies and gentlemen, we have Kevin. Kevin has the disposition of an old man who might hang out in A Streetcar Named Desire but is trapped in a second grader who looks like a generalizable second grader would, whatever that means.

In the other corner we have Carlos. Carlos is Captain of Future Pro Wrestlers of America trapped in the body and mind of a second grader trapped in a size and shape more typical of a kindergartner, whatever that means. In keeping with his profession, Carlos interacts with other second graders by flying into them from out of nowhere and attempting to pin them to the ground. He is very kinesthetic. Some would call him spirited. Others might say he is very Lucha Libre. Carlos consistently talks in a WWF voice a la Hulk Hogan and does that creepy pulsing flex-curl-arm-pose in front of him like some retro Arnie Schwarzenegger to pop his ghost pecs while gnashing his teeth and shaking his head rapidly side to side. Raise your hand if you can visualize this. Hoganito only refers to himself in the third person. More specifically, as Thor. I refer to Thor as WWF.

Ding! Round One.

Kevin is brought to teacher, howling with the eye tears of only a second grader:

Miss, he (puffy second-grader accusatory finger point) punched me in my gut!

WWF growls back, gritted teeth:

He punched Thor in his emotions first!

Ding! Back to their corners. Let's all commend WWF on his superb use of the term emotions. Referee, wanna take it from here?

Grrrrrrr.....

My school district is reportedly quite concerned with the GPA of our students and their subsequent graduation (or not) from our high schools (and more specifically, how these numbers reflect on our our district... but please don't get me started). They would probably be more concerned about this issue for middle and elementary schools, too, if not for the beauteous reality here known as social promotion. So what if someone has a 0.0 GPA in three years of 6th grade. Pass summer school following "8th grade" and we'll send them to high school. Nice. Anyways, one of the cornerstones of our district keeping on top of how folks are doing is the frequency of our grading cycle.

Which means that every six weeks I cry and mutter and drag myself through giving grades.

This past year, our district elected to force all of us to put our grading on-line. Which would be fantastic even for the paranoid and ludditic among us, I am sure, if they would just choose a program that had been tested, tried, and basically as bug-free as our current, more individual ways of doing it. Fundamentally speaking, a program that worked. Is that so much to ask? I am sure they made such a brilliant move into the not-quite-competent future to increase everyone's ability to see a student's progress-- the student, their parent/guardian, teachers, etc. Only a cynic would suggest this was done primarily to allow administrators to put their noses in my grade book whenever they want without ever actually setting foot in my classroom. (I get a nice little alert every time they peek. Sweet.)

So this grading term, I had to say good-bye to my tried and true grading program/system, refined over the last ten years, and say hello to a small form of purgatory known as the almost-working district system. Fortunately, I am a wary enough sort that before entering grades into the program, I recorded every single one of them on paper. Like... old system + new system = two systems full of time.

Having passed through our first grading period in this Brave New World, I, like Prince's advisors, have renamed this ritual. Formerly known as Grades, they shall now be known as Grrrrrrrrrr.

Why?

Because our grades were to be submitted through the program by 3pm on Friday.

On Thursday, at 8pm, I sat in bed, lap top as an electric blanket, inputting the last of the marks into the system that would hopefully add them up correctly and spit out a grade for the period in question.

I saved every three minutes or so because the program makes a habit of "de-recording" scores during certain times (though when those times will be is decidedly less certain). Around 11pm, I start getting pop-up messages alerting me to save my work, since the program is fixing to shut down momentarily for a "fifteen minute" upgrade. Highly convenient, that. This pop-up message came onto my screen approximately every ten seconds, resulting in a complete inability to save anything. Slightly even less convenient.

So I logged off. Took 20 minutes and one shower off. Tried to log on.

Error message.

Took another 30 minutes off. Tried to log on to the following message:

Dear Program Member:

The Program is currently performing scheduled maintenance on your school's web site. Account logins and certain other activities are
unavailable during this period. Today's maintenance (9 Aug 2009) is
scheduled through 4:00pm PDT, but may complete sooner. Please check
back.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this upgrade.

Thanks.

The Program Team

So let me just recap here. 1. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrs are due at 3pm on Friday. 2. The system will be down until 4pm on Friday.

That is just awesome.
And so I did what all responsible teachers would do. I wrote one nasty venting note to my Assistant Principal and went to sleep. 1:30am.

Later (5am) Friday morning I got up, tried to log on to nothing, sent snarky text messages to some dear ones, and figured I should go to work to 1. get chewed out for not getting grrrrrrrs in on time and 2. do the grrrrrrrrs the way I had previously done them, which of course would take me at least seven hours, since I had to re-add up and then bubble everything. Oh and 3. teach classes.

All of this reasoning left me standing at 6am in front of this MUNI bus stop sign:


And I admit it. It was not my finest hour. I was inspired to raise a finger in toast and yell the following at this particular campaign:

Fuck you. Our bell doesn't currently fucking ring until 3:35pm. So fuck you, nimrods.

Ahem. Adjust tie. Smooth down hair. Board bus. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.