a kiss with a fist is better than none

Today was, quite frankly, without exaggeration, one of the worst days I've had in months.

Most of this isn't my own personal tragedy, so I want to preface all of this by saying that.

But first and worst, my best friend lost her father today. He was a wonderful man...one of the best. There are no words to say beyond that.

So I bought a ticket to go back to Iowa, leaving Thursday, coming back Tuesday. This wasn't in my plan for the weekend, but I'm so lucky that I have the flexibility to do this (this would be a perfect place to say #blessed, but I'm a cynical bitch and that's not really my style). So you're all about to get a bonus round of #smalltownlife, but it's going to be a rather somber version (#sorrynotsorry).

The rest of my day pales in comparison to that, but it's easier to be angry about less consequential things, so I'm going to focus my rage on other annoyances and ignore my grief for now. Even if that hadn't happened, today would have been awful enough on its own. I woke up early, but was stressed about what I had to do today, and so I got nothing done this morning despite staring at the screen and pretending to write.

I won't go into detail about what I had to do today, since a lot of it isn't my story to tell, but suffice it to say that it involved supervising movers who were packing up the things of a friend who is in the middle of getting divorced, which also involved dealing with her ex. The tattoo artist from my epic adventure in July was there to provide masculine backup (although he mostly just drank whisky); another acquaintance was there to assist (but we left to grab coffee and then she went home after); and because the movers were way behind schedule and we were way ahead of schedule in arriving, this ended up taking seven fucking hours. Seven...fucking...hours. My own move didn't take that long, and it didn't involve listening to the ex while also texting the friend, while also taking a break to find out that one of the best men from your childhood had just passed away.

Sooooooo. This was all way too dramatic and way too sad and way too annoying and way too awful. When the movers were finally done, I made it all of half a block before stopping in at the first fancy place where I could eat a fancy cheeseburger and drink two glasses of wine - I usually try not to self-medicate, but I gave myself a pass tonight. Then I walked home, and now I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with a cold. So I'm going to take my frustrated, self-pitying, slightly-drunk self to bed and hope that I can sleep for nine hours and stave off this cold before waking up tomorrow and writing/cleaning/packing/not-crying in preparation for my flight.

Tanks for listening, internet friends...you're the best. Goodnight!

when all you've got is hurt

Another day, another series of triumphs and extreme annoyances. Mostly annoyances, to be honest. I worked from home today (triumph), which meant I was able to sleep nine hours (double triumph). But I ate a ridiculous assortment of things because I had no groceries, and it rained most of the day, and I was generally cranky and surly and petulant. I'm pulling myself out of my surly spiral, but it's challenging because the surly spiral is so warm from all of my rage energy. This is all a somewhat oblique way of saying that some day job stuff this week got on my last nerve, but I'm recovering and am determined to go in tomorrow with a different attitude (or at least brighter lipstick).

So I slogged until 6:30, put on a dress (and brighter lipstick) and had dinner with Lauren (aka Subz) and Terry at Presidio Social Club. The waiter was a bit off; when he cleared my plate, he first asked, 'are you done with your steak?', which should have been obvious since there was no steak left. Then he said, 'oh, did they forget your mashed potatoes?' and I had to say 'no, I ate them all,' which he asked me to repeat since he apparently didn't understand what I said. Tanks for making me feel like a heifer, waiter. This would never happen to a VIP at Des Amis, is all I'm saying.

But it was good to see Lauren and Terry, of course, and good to take a break. Then I came home and worked for the last two hours, which was good in the sense that I got some stuff set up promo-wise for the next book (triumph), but super annoying because my formatter sent me an email claiming he'd finished my files, but then he didn't attach them (major annoyance). So now I have to wait for him to actually send me the files before uploading, which will delay the onsale time by at least nine hours. Since I had hoped to upload tonight and go live tomorrow, this is super annoying. But I have been more angry for less reason before, so I'm sure I'll overcome this as well. And on that note, goodnight!

i'm gonna make this place your home

Nick and Ellie are still being assholes - I had successfully avoided distractions, cleared my mind, started writing, and was going great guns plotting out the next two or three scenes today when suddenly, out of NOWHERE, I realized that maybe the person who is trying to kill Nick is actually someone other than the person who I thought was the murderer for the past year. WTF?! That threw me for a complete loop - I mean, how can the villain be someone other than who I had planned, given that I plotted the damn thing and am in complete control of their destinies? Writing is a strange thing, I tell you.

So I spent the whole afternoon stewing over this development, writing out bits and pieces of possible plot to support the new killer, and continuing to debate whether the new killer was the right killer or whether s/he was just a shiny new toy killer who must, regretfully, be returned when I realize the older model is stronger/better/more logical. I'm stymied. So I finally left the house and went for a walk, which helped to clear my head a bit, but unfortunately when my head was clear it refused to be uncleared by going back to writing. So I spent the evening making pasta (yum), then watching some Olympics. I'm not done with tonight's coverage, but I need to sleep; apparently the water in the complex is getting shut off at nine tomorrow, which means I actually need to get up at eight if I want to shower/eat breakfast/etc. Boo. I hope that I dream about whoever the real killer is so I can move forward...it may be time to try the Aaron Sorkin method and score some coke. Or maybe I can continue to get buy on my unholy mix of Philz coffee and diet mountain dew. Goodnight!

you smash it, we'll build around it

I was quite productive today, which may have been detrimental for family relations. Since the rest of the Wampler clan is descending tomorrow, I needed to be productive in advance. While I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't write any entire book today, I wrote/edited the equivalent of 20+ pages and typed up all those edits (no quick task), so that's good progress. Unfortunately I still have half the book left to finish, but the majority of those scenes are edits of previous scenes, not new scenes, and those tend to go faster. Hopefully I'll keep up the momentum that I've had the last few days; since my deadline is rapidly approaching, I don't have much choice.

However, I did take a couple of breaks; I ate lunch (leftover chili) while chatting with my parents for a bit, and I ate dinner with the family (leftover turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, etc.) before watching three episodes of [censored] with [censored]. I'd refused to watch quite bluntly last night, since the book isn't writing itself, but I couldn't evade it again tonight; I said I'd watch two episodes, but the second one turned out to be a cliffhanger, so we had to watch the third. It involved these super creepy angel statues that behave similarly to the Boo Diddley ghosts in Super Mario 3 - if you're facing them, they can't move, but if you turn away, they attack. It doesn't sound creepy, but it is, particularly for someone who prefers to read romance and avoid all types of horror (that would be me, if you're obtuse; and that would be 'dense' if you don't know what 'obtuse' means).

sssanyway, I bailed on further episodes since I wanted to watch the last half of the Stanford/Notre Dame game, and so [censored] retreated to his room while I switched to ABC. Unfortunately, we're far enough away from the ABC tower to render reception dicey, and I watched the entire second half with the picture cutting in and out every 2-3 seconds. I have a massive headache now, likely because I was on the verge of a seizure, but I'm glad I saw the seniors' final game at home. We should go to a decent bowl, although I'm betting the BCS will find some way to screw us -- we shall see.

After the game, I wrote for the past three hours, fueled by Mountain Dew and a deep, abiding fear of the dark. I can't stay awake any longer, though, particularly since my family is showing up tomorrow and I can't sleep until noon. So I shall go to sleep and hopefully dream of Scottish earls rather than weeping angels. Goodnight!

i'm wide awake and i can see the perfect sky is torn

After a week and a half of sleeping as late as I wanted, I almost slept through my dentist appointment this morning; when the alarm went off at 7:20 (so early, I know), I automatically turned it off, and just happened to remember in the split second before I went back to sleep that I needed to wake up. Sigh. But, I made it to the dentist, where I got a proper cleaning and had no cavities for about the fifteenth year in a row (yay - if it had turned out that I needed major dental work, my unemployed checking account would have been v. unhappy).

Because my dentist is in San Jose, I decided to combine the dental appointment with my once-every-two-months spa experience, since the spa I go to in SF has a sister spa on Santana Row. However, when I got to Santana Row at 10:30, I realized I had made a horrible mistake; they were doing some sort of trick-or-treat activity for the yoga moms and their obnoxious little children, and so the first two levels of the parking garage were full of women trying to wrestle strollers out of their huge SUVs, and the sidewalks were jammed with children (of both the pleasant and screaming varieties) and dogs (of both the small/yappy and large/prone to scare children varieties). It was a complete scene, and unfortunately not the kind of scene I usually seek out. So I ducked into the Container Store and then Crate and Barrel, since they were off to the side of the madness; I escaped both places after buying a small whiteboard for my desk, so I got off pretty easy given how much I love both places. Then, I grabbed lunch at Pizza Antica, where the pizza was delicious and I had even more time to consider how these little toddler tyrants seem to control the lives of their yoga mothers.

I spent an hour or so at the cafe in Borders, where I made a v. detailed list of what I need to get done in the next twelve weeks to finish my book, enter it into the Golden Heart, and get it polished up so that my agent can start shopping it. The goal setting was good and v. helpful, if a bit daunting, since it means that after I clean some stuff up this week, I'm going to have to write 15,000 words each week for the next three weeks to get back on track. No hill for a climber, but I'm going to have to put some effort into the climb (and get out of bed before noon) if I'm going to make it happen.

Then, I adjourned to the spa; the verdict is that I'm going to go there from now on instead of San Francisco, because the treatments are slightly cheaper, parking is free instead of like $7/hr, it's more relaxing to come out of a massage on Santana Row than in a pool of someone's urine on Market Street, and the setting was smaller and therefore more intimate. I got an okay massage and one of the best facials I've ever had (including some sort of cactus peel that left my skin red but v. v. soft), so that was all good.

I was just getting home when John called and asked if I wanted to have a quick dinner, so I suggested Borrone (of course). That turned out to be a bad call, because Jimmy Carter was signing books at the bookstore next door, and so parking was v. difficult. But Borrone itself wasn't any more crowded than it usually is, and they were serving the gouda sandwich tonight, so that was great. I did get waylaid by some strange woman who seemed very nice (if slightly batty; she was old) -- she was sitting at the table behind me, and we struck up a conversation when she asked me to watch her stuff so that she could get a coffee. She ended up talking to me while John waited in line to order, and I began to get the first small inklings of problems when she claimed that Google and Microsoft had designed her website and that it was projected to be bigger than Amazon someday. Then she wouldn't stop talking even after John came back, and it quickly devolved from entertaining to annoying to slightly scary and then back to annoying before I eventually stopped paying attention to her. As John said, this stuff makes for a good story -- but the problem is that you have to actually talk to the person to get the story, and in this case I'm not sure it was worth the effort.

sssanyway, after I turned my back on the "Amazon killer", John and I had a v. nice, quick supper, and I got caught up on the ten days that I have missed at my former company. It was also nice to vent to someone about the yoga mom phenomenon to someone who understands; I don't think his sister is a yoga mom (I haven't seen her in ages, and besides, she has a job), but he had just come from his nephew's fifth birthday party, so we had many anecdotes to exchange about how children are the devil. After he left, I worked on the book for a bit -- I'm slowly getting back into the story, and I think I've finally pieced together a scene that has been blocking me. I'm going to have to actually write it tomorrow, but I'm too tired tonight -- and I need to work on the assignment for my magazine class tomorrow as well, so we'll see how much writing I get done.

Now, though, i'm not going to keep myself up any longer as punishment for my unproductive day -- I'm going to go to bed and hit it hard tomorrow. Goodnight!

you weren't there, you never were, you want it all but that's not fair

I just realized that I am destined to get less than eight hours of sleep tonight, which makes me v. sad; I stupidly volunteered for meetings from 8am to 11am that I previously didn't have, which means I have to get up and go into work tomorrow. Ugh. This week should have been really quiet because the big boss is out of town, but as it turned out, it's been kind of miserable from a work perspective -- it's no wonder my head hurts.

However, from a friend and life perspective, today was great. I took an hour to have lunch with John (who works at my company now, as you know) and Emily (in town for the week -- my college friend who has lived in New York for the past eight years, so I typically only see her once a year). Lunch was good, with much merriment, and I ate a beef and lamb shish kebab that I could have just kept eating all day (the food at work is usually good, but it's rare that I have an entree that wows me by being a step above the other entrees I eat all the time, and this one was it). I also ruined John's day/life by accidentally telling him about an article I had purposefully not forwarded to him earlier in the week (involving the pollination of figs by wasps; don't look it up if you like to eat figs, as it may put you off them for awhile).

After lunch, I slogged excessively until 3:30, when I had a massage. I have several free birthday massages that I've stockpiled over the course of the past three or four years, and so I decided to start using them. However, I never relax well when I get a massage at work; even though the rooms are decorated like spa rooms, you're still fundamentally getting naked in your office building with hundreds of other employees in the vicinity, even if no one else is going to see you. And, in the middle of working, it's hard for me to relax.

But I will say that in this case, the masseuse made it worse. I was wearing my Golden Heart pendant (which I've been wearing all the time, as a reminder that I have something other than the day job to be passionate about) and asked her to set it aside for me because I forgot to take it off, and so when she asked what it was, I told her that I write romance novels. That's all well and good -- until after about ten minutes of silence, while she's massaging me, she suddenly asks "do you have any romance in your life?"

wtf, man? Was I so tense that it was clear that I'm not dating anyone because she could just tell that there was something wrong? Did my ass (which she massaged more than necessary) clearly lonely? I told Heather (aka dear respected madam) later that it was the most awkward massage I've ever had in my entire life, and that probably includes the time in India when I got two unexpected breast massages in the same hour. Between that and the fact that she later said that I needed to give in and that women were usually easier for her to work with than this, and that the only thing I should have in my head is thinking of synonyms for 'ravishment' (I think she was making a romance joke, but it just sounded creepy), I left feeling muscularly relaxed by mentally shellshocked.

Anyway, I worked for another hour, then vacated and went to Starbucks, where I was very good and edited for exactly an hour. Then, I picked up Jav in Palo Alto and went to Menlo Park for pizza. Adit was in town for the night, and so set up dinner with me, Jav, John, Anton and Amanda. It was great to see all of them, particularly Adit, who is just as charming and wonderful as ever. After dinner, I ended up taking Adit to the airport, and as it turns out I've now gotten home just in time to go directly to bed. Goodnight!

Daily word count: 282 (14.1% of goal)
Productive time: 1hrs
RescueTime productivity rating: 1.19 (global average: 0.87)

make it work

I have oh-so-briefly fallen back into my old wicked ways -- I was at the office by 8:00, stayed until six, grabbed a sandwich on the way home, and then proceeded to work for the last seven hours (well, with a one hour break at 11pm to let my laptop recharge while I watched the fourth episode in a row of "Project Runway", thus getting caught up on the new season, even though I'm so far disappointed that none of the designers seem to rival Emilio or Seth Aaron from last season). I'm in my own private powerpoint hell, iterating through what is currently a 42-slide deck (ignoring the 60 or 70 slides that will be in the appendix that I have to have done by Thursday) with the big boss, and we have to be done by Tuesday night at 7:30pm, when she has to present it via conference call to the Asia teams. Then, I'm sure she'll want changes before presenting it again to the Europe and Americas teams on Thursday morning, so I don't expect the next couple of days to be any better.

What would make my life better is if people could make their own damn powerpoint -- that 42 slide deck only has 8 or 10 slides that I should have been responsible for, but I got some of the ugliest damn slides you've ever seen from people who were responsible for other bits of it, and since I was the one the big boss gave all the feedback to, it took quite some time to get that feedback back to the responsible parties, and in many cases was easier to just do it myself. I know, that's a bad collaborator, but frankly I don't care (as evidenced by the fact that my chat status at work currently says "i would be totally willing right now to pick up powerpoint, walk for a few months, and attempt to cast it into the fires of mount doom").

But, luckily this too shall pass, and then I should have a powerpoint lull for awhile, unless I get roped into doing the deck for the big boss's trip European sales conference at the beginning of October. It's just too bad that this is all happening this week, given the insane number of books that are releasing like RIGHT NOW that I want to read all at once, and given the insane number of words I want to write for my own book to get myself on track. Suffice it to say that I didn't write today; I debated writing during that hour while my work laptop was charging, but since my brain already feels like there are thirty-three Chilean miners trapped inside it, defecating all over everything while trying to chisel their way out, I don't think that writing would have improved the situation much.

On that incredibly disgusting mental image, I'm off to bed -- and I smartly rescheduled my 8:30am meeting tomorrow so that I could get an extra half hour of sleep. I was running so late this morning that I didn't even bother with makeup (I put it on in the bathroom at work after my first meeting). And while I was in that first meeting (thankfully over videoconference so that I could zoom out and they weren't frightened by my hideous un-made-up visage), I vaguely noticed that my arm was wet...and then realized that my hair was still so wet that it was actually dripping on the table. That is one advantage of working for the big boss -- I may sometimes look completely ridiculous, but most people are so scared of talking to someone five levels above them that very few people would have the courage to go up to her and rat me out, so the fact that I consistently show up in the mornings looking like a tired teenager has never come up between us. Yay. And now, goodnight!

Daily word count: 0 (0% of goal)
Productive time: -
RescueTime productivity rating: - (global average: 0.34)

imma be, imma be, imma imma imma be

I was remarkably productive today, particularly considering that I got up late and drove down to work late to avoid the worst of the rain-soaked commute. Once I got there, though, I got a lot done; I slogged all day, with a break for lunch with Regina-madam, one of the expats from the old India crew. It was great to catch up with her, and hopefully I'll see her sooner than the amount of time between this lunch and our last lunch. Then, I slogged the rest of the afternoon, but I managed to get out of there a little before six to do some writing.

I don't know why, but I've had multiple conversations in the last week (none initiated by me, I assure you) about what was going on with my dating life and when I might get married so that I can start popping out children. Apparently I'm suddenly hitting the age where these questions are logical and somewhat urgent. Rather than confronting the dating issue, I ordered several different trial eye moisturizers from Sephora.com, in the hopes that if I reduce the dark circles under my eyes, I will suddenly look twenty-five again and these conversations will stop happening with such frightening regularity. I'll let you know how that strategy works out for me.

Anyway, after being thwarted by Cafe Borrone last night, I wanted to give it another shot, so after work I went over there and had a sandwich and a mocha while writing about four pages of zee romance novel. I finally threw in the towel around eight p.m., drove back to the evil city, and did about an hour of work for the day job (the big boss is in town this week, hence the slightly longer hours -- but I also went in late, so this was totally fine). Then I typed up the work that I had done at Borrone, and now it's time to go to bed so that I can get to work in time for big boss's staff meeting. Goodnight!

call me mister flintstone, i can make your bed rock

Because I've been driving ye olde Pontiac Sunfire, which does not allow for a connection to my iPod, and because I no longer have any CDs here (and the CD player is likely filled with gravel dust anyway - driving on gravel destroys the electronics in your vehicles pretty quickly, rendering power windows dicey and dangerous), I have been catching up on what the kids are listening to these days by listening to the radio.

Apparently there's this kid named Justin Bieber who's pretty popular or something? I mean, I've heard of him (I am an avid gossip blog reader, after all) -- but does no one else find it just the slightest bit disturbing to hear a kid who sounds like he's twelve singing about true love in a song called "Baby"? In which the chorus is "And I was like, baby, baby, baby, oooh"? WTF is that all about.

I also heard this song called "Tic Toc" by Ke$ha. I will admit that it's extremely catchy and stuck in my head, and I would have brushed my teeth with a bottle of Jack tonight if I hated myself a little bit more. However, she says that she kicks guys to the curb "unless they look like Mick Jagger". Mick Jagger in which decade? I mean, I would let Sean Connery hit it even though he's turning eighty in August, but seriously, Mick Jagger? Let this be a lesson to all would-be poets not to keep a line just because it sounds cool to rhyme "Jagger" and "swagger".

Anyway, I will stop critiquing the radio, and perhaps I'll even start listening to it a bit more during my interminable commutes. Today was lovely; I slept in, managed to get up in time to tour my mother's gardens (she has planted quite a bit of stuff, all of which she seems to recognize as old friends even though their shoots are barely above the ground -- and yet it's a drop in the ocean of the eighty acres surrounding the house), and then had a sandwich. My parents went to Des Moines, and so I successfully wrote four pages of zee romance novel this afternoon before getting ready to vacate the house.

I met up with my old high school friend Hannah, who used to work for the zoo in Phoenix but recently moved back here to work as a naturalist for a state park resort in the next county to our east. It took an hour to get there (exactly like my commute, only filled with homicidal deer), but it was well worth it; I hadn't seen Hannah in years, and it was wonderful to catch up. She gave me a tour of the resort (it was all built recently, and I had never been there, but after seeing the rooms and cabins, it's now a prime candidate to host the wedding that may never happen), and then we had an extended dinner in the restaurant. She seems to be doing well here; she just started her new job in early March, but it sounds like a great fit (getting guests outside, teaching them to kayak, taking them on nature walks, and designing activities for kids). The resort is on Lake Rathbun ("Iowa's Ocean"), which is this massive lake near us that I never spent much time on as a kid (except for at age seventeen when I had a rather random jetskiing adventure with the owner of the convenience store I worked at, as well as his lawyer friend, which may have been frowned upon in theory even though nothing untoward happened), but I can only imagine how nice the place will be this summer.

So it was great to see Hannah, and hopefully I'll see her the next time I'm in the area (although I haven't made any upcoming plans to return). I drove home in the friscalating dusklight, which made it difficult to watch for deer, but I survived. I also didn't get burned to a crisp by the out-of-control brush fire that had reached the edge of the grader ditch and was on the verge of jumping the road. I then met the entire fire department for the town of Mystic (one truck, a couple of cop cars, and a string of five or six private cars of volunteer firefighters with makeshift flashing lights), so hopefully they put it out.

And now, I have rambled on far too long; I need to sleep so that I can write tomorrow. Goodnight!

we'll turn this better thing to the best

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous in the bay area this week, and it has completely lifted my mood. Perhaps I should consider moving someplace that is sunny year-round (not that California is too shabby on the sunshine, but it was a relatively rainy winter). Today, it was in the high seventies in the south bay, rendering my office almost too hot as I slogged through the afternoon hours. I took a break to have lunch with Mahin, which was fun as usual; my only other meeting was with Shawn, whom I had seen in Singapore a few weeks ago, and it was good to see her again so soon. This allowed me to get quite a bit of stuff done this afternoon, even if I wanted to leave at three instead of staying until five...

But I successfully left at five to have dinner with Heather (aka dear respected madam) and Salim at Vive Sol, which is Chris Boyd's favorite Mexican restaurant. I hadn't been there since Chris Boyd was here last spring, but I don't know why I don't go there more often; my margarita was deliciously strong, the enchiladas were good, and they have great salsa (and a better decor than Fiesta del Mar, much as I love that place). Then again, Fiesta del Mar is about five minutes from my office, so that explains it (even though I rarely go there now that Terry and Subz have both moved away). The three of us had a lovely time catching up (or rather, Heather and I talked about work while Salim gazed about the place and completely ignored us), and then I went back to their apartment to check it out and drop the 'bombshell' on them that Jesse James apparently cheated on Sandra Bullock with some incredibly skanky woman named Michelle "Bombshell" McGee. I mean, seriously?!

After we looked at pictures of that train wreck, I drove back to the city of sin and rendezvoused with Vidya (after taking a twenty minute nap while waiting for her to come over). She wanted me to finally see "In the Loop", so we walked over to Safeway, but they didn't have it. This was v. sad; we should have signed up for a Blockbuster card and rented it there, but at the time it seemed like too much effort. In retrospect, it would have saved us time, because the movie we ended up watching on on-demand turned out to be a surprisingly long two and a half hours. If I had realized it was that long, I would have just had us watch "Inglorious Basterds", even though I saw it on the plane -- but what's done is done.

We ended up watching "Funny People"; the title was half accurate (hint: there were people in the movie). It starred Adam Sandler as a famous comedian who is dying, and Seth Rogan as a wannabe comedian who somehow becomes Sandler's assistant. At 2.5 hours, it felt like two separate movies; there was a point halfway into the movie where I thought we were going into the closing ten minutes, and then it suddenly took a left turn and felt like it started over. The part that bothered me the most was that at some point, one character is choosing between Adam Sandler and Eric Bana. Given that she had just said that the Eric Bana character's behavior was exactly like the Adam Sandler character's behavior...why in the hell would you even debate this issue?! Hot, muscular Eric Bana, or scrawny, depressed Adam Sandler? Eric Bana even has a delicious Aussie accent. This is clearly no contest, but she wasted an hour of my life trying to decide, and the choice ultimately came down to a song from the musical "Cats", which was inexplicable to me because clearly the choice should have come down to Eric Bana's pectorals.

Anyway, despite that, it was good to see Vidya, and nice to have a lowkey but funfilled Friday night. And now, I desperately need to get to sleep; writing all weekend starts tomorrow morning, so please expect me to go into deep hermit mode. Goodnight!

smash and grab

My day started out quite nicely; I slept for 10+ hours, and then spent a couple of hours hanging out with Ritu, Roopa and some other dude who stayed over at our place. I decided to go out and enjoy the afternoon, and so I took the muni to Union Square and had a late lunch at Samovar. Amusingly, the waiter asked me if Tammy and Shedletsky, who went with me a few weeks ago, were my parents -- I really don't know how he could have mistaken them for my parents, but it made me laugh. Then, I went to Container Store and picked up a couple of tings, came home, and talked to my parents.

However, it went downhill after that -- I decided to take some stuff to storage, but when I went downstairs to my car, I discovered that someone had, in broad daylight, smashed my passenger side front window and stolen my ipod and phone charger. My iPod was out of sight in the center console, so I'm not sure why they picked my car -- maybe the person was a disaffected, unemployed Cal student who hated my Stanford license plate holder. Anyway, a neighbor loaned me a broom so that I could sweep out some of the glass, and then I filed the police report, called my insurance, and called my bank to cancel my bank account (since they also stole my spare checkbook). When Adit came home, he insisted on going with me to Vidya's so that I could leave my car there (luckily the doorman was my favorite one and let me park there with no questions asked), and so at least my car is safe underground until tomorrow.

That pretty much ruined my evening, although I'm not as upset as one might think -- there's really nothing I can do about it, so whatever. Now we're watching a recording of this morning's "Meet the Press", where they just asked a question referencing the eighth anniversary of 9/11 -- which reminds me that I'm going to be 28 in just a few weeks. Sigh. I think it's time for bed; let's hope that tomorrow brings better news!