booker street: 6/1/05

6.23.2005

on the road again

back home only to hit the road again. this time to good ol' athens ga! we're leaving today for a long weekend in the hot, hot georgia heat. looking forward to a weekend of rock music and baseball games. visiting with old friends will be nice too.
back on tuesday!
buon weekend, tutti!

6.22.2005

home again, home again, jiggity jig

home again and never happier. there is nothing like vacation to make you appreciate what you've left behind. i feel like i love my husband more than ever and hate my neighborhood less than i did a week ago. unfortunately returning to work was not so pleasant. in fact, there is nothing quite like vacation to reignite the hate you feel for your job. anyway, until i have the gumption to forsake my salary and benefits i'll keep my complaining mouth shut.

all in all i had a great trip to SF. the weather was beautiful, i was able to almost everything i had planned to do - like go to alcatraz. it was AWESOME. the audio tour was great, all the plants were in bloom, the little seagull chicks were up and about in their downy plummage. i couldnt walk the agave trail due to the nesting sea birds, but that's ok. i did me a really friendly and cute (female) park ranger with whom i had a great chat about the flora and the fauna and the natural history of SF and vicinity. i also had an amazingly fun time with my friend koray, who i had not seen since we graduated from high school 11 years ago. we picked up right where we left off and had a blast. he took me to baker beach and to the neatest, sweetest and saddest spot in SF - the pet cemetery. it's at the presidio and so most of the pets were military pets - but you wouldn't know that from the sentiments on the tombstones - yes tombstones. some were even granite and elaborately carved. one even had a p.s. inscription on the back of the stone. seriously i was on the verge of tears as i walked through it. what pet does not deserve proper memorialization?

seeing spoon again at two more sold out shows was also a little disheartening - for the reasons i have previously written about. the crowd at the fillmore shows were even more varied than at the 930. there were the very young, and very old, very drunk and very burnt out.
i feel a significant loss of innocence feeling - like what was once mine is no longer. i'm happy for them and all, but i still want them all to myself. i must say that i am so proud and impressed by jim and josh who are the most friendly, kind and gracious performers i have ever seen! i was a little put off by the fact that britt has a roadie for his two guitars and is always being photoed on the stage.
primadonna much?

the other weirdness from my trip is similar. i now know that no friendship will ever last and that makes me sad. after 12 years i think my friendship with t is over. this is the one friendship i tought would weather anything. unfortunately, it was very clear that we share so little in common now that if we did not have our history to fall back on then we would not know each other let alone be friends. it's tough too that he continues to treat me like the seventeen year old he first met. i just dont think we like each other anymore. sad, but i guess it's natural. another loss of innocence sort of feeling.
weird that i would lose one friend only to reconnect with another.

in any event i am so glad to be home. i do still wish that we could move to a new city - city life is so fun. but for the moment we can't and i am content to stay right here and enjoy my life in the little ville.

6.16.2005

o-town

i am now in oakland, or oaktown, as the locals sometimes call it. i'm pretty pooped after getting up at 230am est in order to drive to dulles airport for a 630am flight. now it's 345pm pst, which is 645pm est and i'm ready for bed. but i did have a lovely time strolling around north oakland this afternoon, despite the rain. i wanted to make it to mountain view cemetery which was designed by frederic law olmsted, but was sidetracked by an eight-acre oasis of a rose garden. it was stunning. most of the bushes were in bloom and the variety was tremendous - from hybrid teas to grandifloras, floribundas to climbers and miniatures. it was wondrous. getting to and from the garden i walked though streets and streets of the most perfectly beautiful california bungalows, craftsmans and shingle style houses i have ever seen. in anycase, i didn't make it to the cemetery due to an unexpected downpour. hopefully i'll make it on a more pleasant day this vacation.
this is my first time in o-town and the housing stock here is strikingly different than that of san fran across the bay. i would do anything to live in a little bungalow here. the residential gardens were also beautiful, filled with enormous jade trees, gracefully sad eucalyptus trees, so many kinds and varieties of geraniums, citrus trees, mounds of rosemary and lavender. these gardens are really evidence of the mediterranean climate of this part of ca. again, what i wouldn't do to live here!
tonight we are going to the cat club for dancing and tomorrow we are going to the cherry bar for dancing and djing. the weekend plans are visiting with a ton of people and seeing spoon at the fillmore! hopefully also a motorcycle ride and a trip to amoeba music. i hope to get to alcatraz on monday and on tuesday see a friend i haven't seen in 11 years!
i am very excited to be on vacation!

6.14.2005

no blogs today

none of the blogs i visited today had been updated since yesterday.
wtf, people, i need entertainment.

6.10.2005

thank you dominic (again)

so i am really very indebted to my dear friend dominic. i wonder if it is a debt i may ever repay. i am always on the look out for a lovely and sweet lady friend for him. maybe one day i will meet a girl good enough for him...
anyway this is why i am so gratefully indebted to dom:
he gave me his plus one to get into the dc spoon show after i discovered that it was SOLD OUT and couldnt get a ticket. then he uncovered an extra ticket for my husband. he was kind enough to wait in line with me as early as 8pm so that i could find myself an adequate vantage point (really, it was the best spot in the house) from which to view my most favorite band in the universe. then he and said husband closed in around me (they are pretty big guys!) to shield me from the drunken madness of some cheesedick standing next to us who thought it was cool and not at all inappropriate to talk REALLY loud while the clientele was performing.

[as an aside i musy query - WTF, people? if you dont care about the band then stay at the freaking bar. dont socialise, express your opinions, or give details of your stupid, stupid life while in a crowd of people who are enjoying a fine rock show! especially not after you usurped the spots they had previously staked out on the balcony!]

but wait! there's more to my debt to dom: he took down the set list for me of feeble mind who can not remember what songs were played when - except metal detektor, which is the best song ever written. so here, for all you adoring spoon fans (!), is the set list, compiled by dominic.

beast & dragon adored

i turn my camera on

small stakes

me & the bean

sister jack

30 gallon tank

delicate place

car radio

anything you want

paper tiger

someone something

lines in the suit

i summon you

2 sides of monsieur valentin

my mathematical mind

way we get by

metal detektor

back to the life

fitted shirt

encore:

everything hits at once

infinite pet

jonathon fisk

i could comment about each of these songs individually but i wont. but i will say that they played a very long set. by my estimation it was almost 90 mins. they were stoked to be playing to a sold out house and really into the show. they sounded so unbelieveably good and they rocked harder than i could have ever imagined. highlights were britt's dancing, a few intentional flubs of the lyrics and eno's drumming on paper tiger. and of course, metal detektor. also though, i was very pleased that they played so much from series of sneaks.

all in all it was the best night of my life. thanks dom, i am forever indebted to you.

6.02.2005

my jeans

i have these jeans and they are perfect. really, perfect is the best way to describe them. they are the perfect length (which is short, according to the manufacturer!) and the perfect fit. and the best part is that they actually look like real jeans, not some stupid reinterpretation of *the jean.* but there is one weird thing about them that confuses me many times each time i wear them. the button is on the left side of the placket. this means that the right side is over the left, which is different from all my other pants. i have always had the button on the right side - so much so that the motion of buttoning and unbuttoning these jeans feels really weird and not right. and now my belt is backwards, with the buckle on the left. but i can't change my belt - i have worn it since i was a teenager (i have had and worn this belt since i was 13, and my dad had it before me and had worn it since he worked in the service station as a teenager) so it is molded to go on only one way. and there is no way i'll get another belt!

obviously this is no serious problem and won't make me love my jeans any less, but it did get me wondering about plackets and tailoring and which is the proper placket according to gender. i can't find anything very applicable, except a website selling school uniforms that indicates that a woman's placket should be right over left and a man's left over right. this would mean my new fave jeans are constructed appropriately and my other pants are not. how strange.

6.01.2005

it was only a dream, it was only a dream

last night i had the most shockingly frightening dream ever. or at least for as long as i can remember. i dreamt that i entered into a public bathroom - i'm thinking it was in a park or campground or something like that. i went into one stall and quickly backed out due to an extremely large furry spider. was it on the comode, or the floor, or partition - i don't recall. needless to say, it was the size of a baseball. so, shaken, but not completely deterred (when a girls got to pee, she's got to pee - even in dreamland), i entered the second stall (there were only two - i remember that) and upon entering, a similarly baseball-sized spider fell from the ceiling. shrieking, i looked up (stupid stupid) to see many more baseball-sized furry spiders suspended and falling from the ceiling. holy shit, i hustled my ass out of the john and woke up in a frenzy.

grazie, lo stress. keeping me thin and in a perpetual state of panic.

booker street