Leave 'Em if Ya Got 'Em

I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading. I'm averaging a whopping 6 page views a day, and I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from lots of people--thanks largely to my shameless Facebook self promotion. Some day I'll get better at general shameless self promotion and make a more concerted effort to publicize my blog, land a book deal and take over the world.

In the meantime, and my whole point, please leave comments. Either don't tell me in person or don't just tell me in person what you think. Remember, you can be anonymous online.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

So, as I previously mentioned, last weekend I went to San Francisco. I was only there for three days, so we really had to jam it all in. I asked a lot of people for advice on where to go and everyone I asked said Golden Gate Park. But of course the only place I didn't go was Golden Gate Park. We ran out of time.

But I did go to lots of other places. On Thursday, Wes and I stumbled onto a great restaurant and had a big, indulgent dinner. (Tomatoes and watermelon are my new favorite thing. I had a great dish at Jaleo, made one myself and now the one at Conduit. Try it. Trust me.) Then on Friday we walked all over the damn place and ended up back in Mission (via Bart) to see Patton Oswalt
and to eat another delicious dinner.

We did all that walking because it's damn near impossible to get on a street car though my cheap ass didn't really want to pay $5 anyway (no exact change for the bus either). I'll never get over my broke college ways when it comes to transportation. There were some hills. Yes, we walked up that.

Saturday, we decided to kick it Bohinkas style. We rented some crappy bikes (crappy because of overuse and neglect, not because they were crappy to begin with). They were Marins, which was cool because we rode into Marin County.

Anyway, us, bikes, we rode across the Golden Gate Bridge, just like Full House (that's the second mention of that show on my blog--a worrisome statistic) and down into Sausalito a beautiful but super crowded little tourist trap. Next time I'll want to continue onto the Redwoods, but for Saturday we had to turn around and go back. But if you ever go, don't waste your time in Sausalito. There's nothing you'd want there, unless you like expensive but tacky "art" and overpriced restaurants with gorgeous views.
Luckily by the time we turned back, the fog had dissipated, so our ride back up the giant hill out of Sausalito was totally worth it. After that we rode through Crissy field and back to the wharf to return the bikes. I flew home at 12:30 that night.

Curse You, Olympics!

I usually never watch the Olympics. But this year, I caught Olympics fever back in April when I went to Boston to see the women's marathon trials. But since I wrote a (terrible) blog for AAUW about it, I thought I should watch some. But now I can't stop.

Seriously, every night I get sucked in to the stupid thing and the running hasn't even started yet! I'm watching women's gymnastics now, but I SHOULD be sleeping. Or writing another Olympics blog for AAUW (but 10 hours is enough work for today). Or, frankly, showering. I had a track workout tonight. Olympics!

Live Blog: I Know Josh Kraushaar

My close personal friend and Politico reporter extraordinaire, Josh Kraushaar, is about to appear on the Greta Van Sustern show to talk about, in his words, "L'affair Edwards". Because our friend Brendan will get a kick out of it and because I'm obsessed with liveblogging, I'm going to live blog his appearance.

10:40 Waiting...

10:41 Mangled his name
Wes: he looks good!

10:42 Yeah, that is a lot of money. He's probably lying. Edwards, not Josh. What's a depotee?

10:43 Honestly, it would make a lot more sense to me if someone cheated on me while I had cancer. I do think there's some defensibility, and I said that before Edwards got caught.

10:44 How does Josh know this stuff? He looks so grown up! Good job, buddy.

10:45 That was fast. Now they are on site at the hotel. So trashy. The background music is hilarious. I'm so disappointed that they followed up Josh's intelligent commentary with this crap. You're right, Greta, you're a quality journalist.

10:46 Liveblogging is hard. Sorry this was devoid of substance. I'll have to rethink my approach for future live blogs. I'll put a youtube link up if there is one.

"His baby"?? Oh no you didn't ;) There's a reason my aunts have always loved the National Enquirer...

10:48 Creepy NE guy on Edwards when they busted him at the hotel: "He looked like his life had ended." That's what you call a money shot.

Brushes with Fame

So, apologies for sending everyone here then disappearing. I was in San Francisco for a few days. Tomorrow I'll write a real blog, but in the meantime: I saw Patton Oswalt! Who's Patton Oswalt? has been everyone's reaction, but he's definitely the biggest celebrity I've ever seen on the street, not counting any I may have chased four blocks after one of their concerts...

Anyway, I go back and forth between being cool and not cool around celebrities. While meeting Ben Folds was like the highlight of my life, it certainly wasn't the highlight of my witty repartee. I mostly shook and thanked him for a great show before breaking down into tears after he walked away. But I was totally cool when I met the guys from Guster. I told Ryan that the picture on his shirt was a heart attached to the female reproductive system. He'd had no idea. So I like to think I hold a special place in his heart. Of course I was only standing out there trying to meet Ben again, but whatevs.

Anyway anyway, I'm not sure how you're supposed to deal with meeting celebrities. Obviously, unless they run marathons or care about feminist theory, we don't have that much in common. It's hard enough for me to make small talk with my friends, let alone acquaintances, let alone strangers, let alone world famous (or B-list) strangers. (On the other hand, Josh Ritter, I'm coming for you.)

So when Patton and his crew walked into this little gallery in the Mission neighborhood, where Wes (formerly SP--who am I kidding. There's nothing anonymous about this) and I were the only customers, I looked right at him, then tried to get Wes's attention. In a desperate attempt to play it cool, I was trying to slyly ask Wes if that was Patton Oswalt, but all he heard was me asking him something about patents in my best ventriloquist impression. (The doy dought the dasketdall.)

Once outside, I told Wes what I'd been trying to say. He was just as excited as I was so we paced the storefront a bit debating whether or not to go ask him for a picture. I said I didn't think that you were supposed to bother celebrities, but Wes pointed out, probably correctly, that Oswalt likely doesn't get bothered that often.

But we left. There's no evidence. You'll just have to believe me. (Unless he's into googling himself and sees this blog and wants to leave a comment that yes, he was in San Francisco last weekend and yes, there was a lovely young couple who left him alone in that one store.)

Oh, and Patton Oswalt is a comedian and was the voice of Remy in Ratatouille and he was the bad guy in the Reno 911 movie. And he wrote this, which is pretty funny.

Southwestern Motifs Kinda Make Me Barf

The second in a series of things that make me throw up a little bit in my mouth: "artistic" interpretations of Southwestern U.S. culture! (Though I guess we could also add boring, tired female stereotypes to this list. My bad.)

Now this is a little bit of a confession for me, as SP is totally into the Western thing. One time we were out shopping, and he asked what I thought of a shirt, and I said it was fine, except for those weird western shoulder things (apparently western yokes?) . And he was like, "All my shirts have those." Oops. He's right too, I must have just overlooked it when I was looking deep into his soul and finding my future or something like that.

Anyway, Southwestern stuff is fugly. But my latest issue of Crochet Today arrived today, and there appears to be some sort of Southwestern theme going on with this issue. I guess that's a little bit of a confession as well. Not only do I love to crochet, I subscribe to a magazine about it. It's super relaxing and satisfying, and it helped me recover from a rugby hand injury when I picked it back up a few years ago. But I actually hate yarn and can't afford silk, so I spend most of my time crocheting stuff for other people--mostly hats for SP who apparently has a thing for kind of ugly/yet artistic things that I don't appreciate.

Once, when volunteering at a homeless shelter I got into a big argument with one of the residents about whether or not I was a feminist. She hates feminists, because they hate men, but thinks men and women should be equal, just that men should be in charge. When she caught me crocheting she gave me a little wink and said, "You're not a feminist." And that was the end of that.

So what's my point? I guess I don't have one. Except that I won't be making a prairie poncho anytime soon. But that I did make these sweet hats:

And I promise to update with a picture of the prairie poncho as soon as CT updates its site.

I like the Southwest itself too. It's just that style... this post'll be better once the patterns are up. Also, Luskey's western wear? I totally interviewed for a political job with the heir to that empire.

Update: Here it is. I told you it would make you barf.

Two Words: Fewer Buttons

Amelie Gillette wrote for the A.V. Club's Hater an article I wish I had. It's about new video games that are designed to appeal to women. Like Gillette, I'm not one for video games, with the notable exceptions of tetris and sex tetris. (I admit it; I don't get them. SP's 8-year-old nephew came to visit last week, and when I asked him to turn off his DS, he saw no irony in the fact that he couldn't because he was "having a conversation" on the Sims.)

But, as a 26-year-old woman with disposable income, I can assure you that, if someone is going to lure me into the (lonely, girlfriend-less) world of game, it won't be with a Clueless video game. (That's a game based on the movie Clueless, not a description of the misguided attempt to appeal to women's taste that such a video game represents.)

And I really liked the movie (back when it came out in what, 1991?) I probably still like it, but I wouldn't like spending my time--what the hell--fixing up video game characters?? I assumed the game would have us picking out Cher's outfits, but I just actually read the press release. You fix the characters up based on clothing styles and interests--you know those basic building blocks of any stable, satisfying relationship. I'm curious as to whether you can fix up same-sex couples...

Anyway, the idea of fixing real people up in real life is nauseating--why in the world would I spend my time sitting in front of my tv matching up (I'll go out on a limb here) stereotypical caricatures of nonexistent high school friends? Does this sound like fun to anyone? And wasn't the moral of Clueless to butt out?

Maybe it's just me (and Gillette at least). Carrie Underwood probably loves it. That's a little better, America Ferrera.