from aaron

one word, no explanations.

1. Yourself: Lucky
2. Your Lover: Perfect
3. Your Hair: Long
4. Your Mother: Inspiring
5. Your Father: Comforting
6. Your Favorite Item: DRZ400S
7. Your Dream Last Night: Forgotten
8. Your Favorite Drink: Alcoholic
9. Your Dream Home: Potrero
10. The Room You Are In: Messy
11. Your Pet: Dead
12. Who You Are Now: learning
13. Who You Want to be in Ten Years: mentoring
14. What You're Not: suburban
15. Your Best Friends: drifted
16. One of Your Wish List Items: house!
17. Your Gender: Female
18. The Last Thing You Did: jobhunt
19. What You Are Wearing: glasses
20. Your Favorite Weather: activity-appropriate
21. Your Favorite Book: Blank
22. The Last Thing You Ate: microwaveable
23. Your Life: enviable
24. Your Mood: struggling

how bored are you?

FIRST REACTION ANSWER
35 first reactions!!
Type your FIRST REACTION!

1. I need: a better job

2. Sex: that too

3. Relationships: nice

4. Your Last Ex: imacculately manicured eyebrows

5. Homosexuality: fabulous

6. Marijuana: makes me sleepy and boring

7. Crack: reminds me of those people we saw sitting on a car hood smoking crack on our way to Nann 'n' Curry

8. Food: wish I had healthier instincts and cooking skills

9. The President: Bill Clinton. I liked that guy.

10. War : Bad idea

11. Cars: stupid

12. Gas Prices: car drivers are stupid

13. Jimi: Hot or Not? (I know, wrong spelling)

14. Politics: for their own sake= crap.

15. Religion: abused, misunderstood

16. Children: no more road trips

17. MySpace: slow

18. Worst Fear: bad stuff happening to my family or Paul

19. Marriage: "is what brings us together, today"

20. Fashion: crappy industry

21. Brunettes: hairballs

22. Redheads: crazy

23: Work: timesuck

24: Pass the time: interweb

25. One night stands: who cares

26: Pet Peeve: car drivers

27: Pixie Stix: oooh! That sounds great

28: Vanilla Ice: the surreal life

29: Porta Potties: A friend jumping off a pirate ship to claim a bank of porta-potties for our pirate ship... hmmm

30: High school: waste of time

31: Band: aid

32. Pajamas: only if it's cold

33. Woods: nice air

34. Surfing: not interested

35. Pictures: draw. Didn't I used to draw?

oh, feh

We cannot do the Cal24 Rally this year, as we will be flying in from Isle of Man that weekend.

Damnation!

I want to have my cupcake and eat it too.

Things that go "slurp, smack, slurp" in the night

Last night Paul woke me up from sleeping while he was reading National Geographic because there was a possum snacking loudly on his porch. You could hear it through the wall/door/whatever. We crept over to the door, threw the porch light on and opened the door, and there he was! So cute and ugly and weird, and very curious. I leaned in to see because I am blind, and he appeared ready to just come on in, so we backed off and closed the door a bit more, then watched him turn around and waddle slowly down the stairs.

So cute!

big, too, must have been 15 lbs or something!

Bent

So this is a bad picture of the dent in my front rim from Thursday night's Geneva onramp adventure:






Basically, it's not huge, not enough to bother fixing I guess. There's a similar-sized dent on the rear from this too.
But the front was kind of interesting because when it bent, it made a clean spot (very visible in the picture, as I never clean bikes) and made this spray pattern on the tire. Paul tells me the spray is the talcum from the tube inside. The rear dent didn't leave such interesting marks, so no photo. You can't see the bend from the angle of the picture anyway.

I have no doubt that I hit HARD, and that a streetbike would not have taken this crap. Thankfully, I had parked the SV because its rear tire is shot. Else I'd be typing from the hospital or something.

Granite countertops, nothing!

The weather smiled on us for the weekend. Gorgeous days! Too bad Saturday was mostly indoors.

We went to hang out with my parents and my sister and Jesse and Amy and the little creature they made. Who is really quite cute. I don't know a damn thing about gardening, except it is really not for me. I like the gardens where they put concrete over everything and then have a glass of wine. That's my style. And it was represented.

We flaked on a wedding (I know, classy, huh?) Saturday night, and stumbled around my neighborhood peeking into the various residences. There is a building I've been lusting after for a while; Saturday I noticed a light on upstairs and climbed up onto a little brick thing to look in. Granite walls! Beautiful building, I want it. We learned a little bit about its owner on the interweb. Ain't cyber-stalking grand?

Sunday was finally SV day.

It was also drinking beer on a parkbench day, incidentally.

I suspect that dirtbiking this weekend will be cancelled on account of raininess?

I totally just almost died! (again)

This week has been very, very busy. All I want is to sit in my house for a few hours and stare at the wall or alphabetize my CD's or something...

Sunday we were supposed to work on the SV, but got a better offer when Jesse and Daniel showed up. We went into SF and had a grand time at Toranado and Lingba Lounge.

Monday night I had my midterm for Mandarin. It went OK, I think. I can now argue about prices in Mandarin. Sortof.

Tuesday night I went to Berkeley to help Paul with some stuff, and Wednesday night we went shopping in Union Square. Which was totally exhausting.

Last night I went and saw my folks at the Garden Show, and then I nearly died on the way to dinner afterwards when I was trying to merge onto 280 South at Geneva.

It was raining, and there was a car a ways back in the lane I was merging into, but tons of space, no problem. Then THUNK! *Loud,* over the rain and freeway noise, and I hit the bars. I thought I was going to go over them. I have never hit anything so hard as I FELL into that pothole. Fucking great. My rim is dented now. I was sure I was going down, but the bike took the impact. The SV would not have; I am very lucky. That hole could easily get someone killed, so uhhh, watch out at the Geneva onramp.

Tonight I am going to do -nothing-, and then tomorrow is ridiculously busy again.

Oh, by the way, my boyfriend is totally The Hotness. The future became a different place when I met him, a much closer and more important place. I get excited about things in near and distant futures... the Isle of Man trip is turning into a near future, and that's pretty cool. What's next? ... We've talked about Bhutan... Who knows? Whatever it is, it will be grand.

Threads

I went to school for fashion, and so, like, I thought that showing off your threads was supposed to be a GOOD thing.

So I was confused by the looks of consternation Paul was giving me for showing them off on the SV. Hmph.
(bonus points if you know why my license plate is crooked with a busted frame)

Chinese the lazy way

... is totally not working.
I am sitting around procrastinating on my Mandarin homework. Again.
I am not learning anything much this semester. I have hit a wall, or something.

I would really like to find a conversation partner. Anyone a native, or very fluent Mandarin speaker, please please please spend some time with me to practice? I can bake brownies, or help with your Engrish, or something....

help! This is not working!

as a sidenote, what is this "wo ai ni (like a mouse loves rice)" song doing stuck in my head?

Slapping sharks

I am constantly anxious.
It's part of my equilibrium. If I don't have a project, a goal, a change I'm working on, I will come up with a new one. Something more complex, more difficult, less attainable.

If things get quiet, I'll want to plan some ridiculous venture (endurance rally?) It's not that I'm never satisfied. I am very happy. But there's always got to be something in the works. Several somethings, usually.

If it gets too quiet, I'll start making waves. There needs to be constant motion, at least on the horizon.

And then there are all the little things; the things that are never done. The dishes, the papers that need to be filed or sent, the constant chatter of daily life that is constantly overdue. The guilt is enough to crush me. How can I find the time to file things when I'm a week behind in Chinese, agreed to go to San Jose for support time, working on the weekend, planning a trip to a tiny island no one has any information about, trying to keep in touch with my friends and family, trying to arrange a gigantic financial goal, and playing Katamari Damacy? Not that I'd have it any other way. I feel sorry for people who just plod along, waiting for life to happen. I prefer to bite off more than I can chew, and just swallow it whole if need be.

Paul signaled to me the other day that he knows this. (I assume he's known this for a long time.) Still, it's nice to hear that your insanity has already been accepted as part of the package. Good luck to him in managing me.

Resolved:

Today I resolve to write more letters.
At least once a week, be it a store-bought card or a lipstick-written note on a cocktail napkin, or a 3-page handwritten diatribe, I need to let people know what they mean to me, personally.

A friend used to send me long letters when we parted ways from high school. Every square inch of paper used... what wasn't body text was margins filled in with drawings, collage, and a lot of unintelligible but wonderful gibberish. Now that we've lost touch, I've begun trying to track down the author of these treasures. Maybe someday I'll find her and pass these letters to her grandkids.

My dad has the really sweet habit of sending cards. I used to get them more frequently when I was in college. For four years, I basically lived and breathed AAC and didn't have any social life at all. New to the City, I didn't really even have any friends here. It's not that my dad has ever been overly effusive emotionally (though he can step up to the plate quite nicely when appropriate). Just... a card... just a few words written on it... in the mailbox for me when I got home sometimes. They probably don't look like much to other people; he usually only writes a couple words in them. It's a sweet habit I'll always cherish. I still get them today.

Mass email and blogging is a sad substitute.
Send me your address.

And how I really feel

When did making a little effort for your friends turn into "herding cats?"

I went to Santa Cruz Thursday because my sister needed me.
I go to see her also when she doesn't need me.
I routinely call people to just have dinner or coffee. I've at many times made routine of riding an hour (regardless of weather) each way to do so.

A true friend isn't the person who is there when you need them. A true friend is there when you don't need them too. If it's all boiled down to emergency lines of friendship-credit, let's re-examine our need for these accounts.

If I have an emergency, I'll call a tow truck or something. I just want a friend.

Let's resurrect the small quiet times of making effort to be friends; BBQing, sharing chocolate and grappa, double-dates, and planning goat-theft.

If that's a pain, just drop the fucking thing. If you're unwilling to invest the time, take the risk of troubling yourself, or bother with the details, then maybe the payoffs aren't for you.

Sicky

We've been spending a lot of weekends around the house lately. I guess it's a winter thing. I mean, I hope it is.
Last weekend was fairly productive, in terms of long-term goal setting and getting things on track. I sorted out my financial picture and gathered info. And played a LOT of Katamari Damacy.
Thursday I called in sick to take care of family stuff, which was good, and Friday I went to work despite being Actually Sick. I felt like ASS.
So it was really charming when I tried to call Paul (since the plan was to go to his house that night) to see if he was home so I could leave work early. He didn't answer until after usual quitting time, but when he did, he was cute and fuzzy drunk. I was worried I wouldn't be able to make it over the bridge because I was dizzy, but I did, let myself into the house, ignored the apparent fact that Paul was completely shitfaced and probably puking, and proceeded directly to bed. At about 6:30. Slept for a good 13 hours, and we were both up quite early Saturday morning, feeling, oh, about 85%.

I assume we were each hoping that the other would take care of our sick selves Friday night, but were both S.O.L.

Saturday Paul jumped out of bed and got the FZ1 project finished, then we proceeded to napping. At least we can now check that off the list.

Meant to go home Sunday but the light rain turned into real rain turned into pouring rain. And gusty winds. When did I become such a pussy? Well, we could have gone to SF, but it was warm in the house in Berkeley, and I did my studying there. I feel like I've fallen behind in my Mandarin. But the new book I picked up is pretty good, and hopefully I can get back on track.
Tonight: Class
Tomorrow Night: San Jose
Wednesday Night: laundry!