Category: Home and Domesticity

Love/Hate

Don’t really give a shit about football? Yeah, neither do I. But I DO love Super Bowl Sunday. It’s such a calm, quiet day. No one’s out roaming about. In a severely overcrowded place (by American standards) like San Francisco, a day like today is a special treat.

The best part: when I woke up early this morning, it was pouring down rain. A dark, rainy Sunday with no pressing commitments is a truly wonderful thing. At least until the sun comes out.

Or until you go the grocery store.

I hate Albertson’s. Again. Still. In my last four visits, I’ve been overcharged three times on sale items. Specifically, they charge me for both of their much-promoted “buy one get one free” specials. The first two times, I didn’t catch it until I got home. The third time, I didn’t buy anything on sale anyway. But by today, I checked my receipt at the register and realized I’d been screwed again.

I could see this happening once, but on three out of four visits, scattered over a month? It never happens to me at Safeway or at Raley’s (or Harris-Teeter or Kroger). Frankly, it ain’t a very good way for a company to make a good name for itself in a new market. I want Lucky back.

More things I hate today:

  • Yet another increase in the price of cigarettes.
  • The laundromat.
  • The sun finally came out.
  • Bad news via e-mail about my uncle who’s in the hospital.

On the plus side, things that I love:

  • My growing family of houseplants (now at 9).
  • The “Pop-up Video” version of “Leif Garrett: Behind the Music”
  • A good night’s sleep.

All in all, though, life is good. I actually rested this weekend. I needed it. And I feel better than I have in a month. I’ve made a few decisions about the evil part-time job as well, but you’ll just have to wait.

Now, if I could just quit smoking…

Randomly Thursday

Tuesday’s urgent plea about ATM Deluxe produced not one, but two replies from Planet SOMA readers at Adobe. Oh, the power of the Internet. Now, if I could just develop a fan base among people who work at RAM factories…

I like Verdana today. Maybe you could tell by its proliferation on the front page. I think I’ll be changing all those “arial,helvetica,geneva” tags to “verdana, arial,geneva” soon. I also started liking today’s journal entry on the evils of historic preservation so much that I made it into its own page.

And now I have nothing much else to say. Actually, I have plenty to say. I’m just too damned tired to say any of it. Seems I’m tired a lot lately. Probably because I’m working a lot and (more recently) because I’m infatuated with the new computer. The complete lack of exercise might play a part as well.

Damn. There’s the garbage men. Back in a second.

OK. Trash dutifully discarded.

Strange. I’ve been living in the same apartment and sleeping in the same bedroom since 1992 and I just now noticed that my bedroom window is about an inch out of plumb from top to bottom. It’s not a problem (nor a big surprise given a wood frame building in earthquake country). It’s just odd that I never noticed before.

Twenty-two minutes ’til the Simpsons. I’m out of creative ideas. I’m tired. But I keep typing. Most likely, this is because I just hate it when the left column is significantly longer than the right one. I’m very anal about balance. My mom says it’s because she passed her Libra blood on to me. I don’t buy it, though.

Anyway, link du jour should fill out the page:

G’night…

Christmas Day

You would have all been quite amused, if also a little frightened. Yer humble host spent an entire 24-hour period in a stunningly good mood. It was so uncharacteristic for me. Thanks are due to several good friends (and to a lesser extent to a pretty danged decent meal, along with Rudolph and the Grinch). I don’t think I grumbled once the entire day, although I did cuss when I burned myself on the macaroni and cheese casserole.

 

Note to self: throw more parties where you’re the only one in the room who knows everyone else. It’s fun.

 

The final menu was pork roast, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, pinto beans with onion and tomatoes (and a generous dollop of cayenne pepper), salad, bread, pound cake with strawberries, and assorted cookies and candy. And sweet tea, of course. There was wine and bread and pepermint hot chocolate, and more thanks to Dan and Sarah and Brad and Paula. Steve brought sugar. Mike brought wine glases and Chuck sent a card table in absentia.

 

I’m not sure what caused this Christmas stiffie I seemed to develop this year. maybe it’s my newfound domesticity. More likely it has to do with this being the first Christmas I’ve spent in San Francisco since 1995. It’s also possible that I was thinking this might well be my last Christmas here.

 

Whatever the reason, I was happy as a clam all day. I was boucing around the house singing along with Nat King Cole in the morning while I cooked. Dinner was great and the cramped quarters weren’t too horrible. We watched the Grinch and Rudolph and Charlie Brown and Dragnet.

 

Afterward, I even popped down to the Eagle and manage to have good time even in a public place. Miracles never cease. Of course, Eugene forced me to drink and listen to Blue Oyster Cult and Patti Smith and Al Green until last call, so I felt like death at 8:30 the next morning when my coma came to an abrupt halt, but that’s not a happy story, so I’ll skip it, being that this is an uncharacteristically positive journal entry. I’ll just admit to the world that my recent tea-totalling has caused me to lose my tolerance for booze (and hangovers).

Anyhow, my downstairs neighbor intimated that it was the best Christmas he’d had since moving to the city. That rather made it with the effort, I think.

Chritsmas Eve

Yeah, it’s last year’s Christmas picture. No, I don’t look much different…

Christmas Eve greetings. Should you prefer another holiday, or none at all, please feel free to indulge yourself at your own pace.

Christmas plans are progressing successfully. I have a pork roast. I have both macaroni and cheese. I’m picking up the collards tonight, and I baked the cookies last week. Should be a regular Southern-fried feast.

I love my building. Unsolicited, I already have an offer of an extra table from my landlord (who rules the landlord universe) and extra oven space from my downstairs neighbor. It feels like kind of a cross between 28 Barbary Lane (minus the sex change) and a Lower East Side tenement about 1910 (minus the Yiddish).

Contrary to popular belief, we city folks actually do know our neighbors. We often even like them. This statement should not be construed as a dinner invitation to the new residents of the yuppie barn across the street. I sense they wouldn’t appreciate good collards anyhow.

I’ll move past Christmas now, in case I don’t have time to update in the next few days:

I’ve decided that I don’t really care that the new millenium doesn’t really start until 2001. It’s all semantics andway. The dates change in ten days and my checks with the “19__” on them become quaint souvenirs. On the other hand, I’m still annoyed by the semantics of those who continue to say “the year 2000” instead of just “2000”, unless they’re also in the habit of regularly calling this year “the year 1999”.

That said, I’ll note that I still have no plans for the big event. As previously stated, I hate crowds. I’m also not wild about New Year’s Eve in general. But I do have two bottles of sparkling cider and one bottle of cheap champagne. They were on sale at Safeway, so how could I resist? I’m still thinking of renting a room at the Motel 6 in Fresno and polishing them off by myself. The only down side would be that none of the thrift stores will be open on New Year’s Day.

Last but not least, look for an article (link forthcoming) featuring an interview with quotes from yer humble host coming soon to a Latino-Hispanic news site. Subject: gentrification. It’s always a strange thing being interviewed, and I’ve actually had the pleasure several times since Planet SOMA went live. I guess the strangest part is that I’m not sure I’ve ever done much of anything to make me particularly worthy of being interviewed. What a strange thing this Internet is.

Off to cook them collards now…

A Big, Butch Housewife

There are those Planet SOMA readers who have somehow gotten the impression that yer humble host is some big, butch leatherman or, God forbid, a “bear”. I cannot begin to say on how many levels that assumption would be incorrect.

For now, I’ll skip the obvious facts that the only leather clothing I own consists of two belts and a few pairs of shoes. I shan’t mention that I find pain (given or received) to be anything but erotic. I’ll refrain, once again, from discussing how I’ll answer to “big, hairy guy with a gut” all day, but never to “bear”. No, today let’s concentrate once again on the “butch” part. I’ve written about it before, but not on quite such a personal level.

How did I spend my Saturday afternoon? Why, I popped in the Nat King Cole Christmas album and baked a big batch of cookies, thank you. They were passable cookies: those peanut butter sugar cookies with a Hershey’s kiss on top. A recipe my mom gave me several years ago which I’d never yet tried.

I mixed everything precisely. I rean a few “test runs” down the stairs to my neighbor who was refinishing a door in the basement (he being much butcher than I). He loves it when I test my baked goods on him. When thy didn’t turn out absolutely perfect, I even instinctively knew that I’d put in about one tablespoon too little milk.

So, yes, yer humble host bakes cookies. I even bake a quite tasty scratch pound cake, thank you. I’m a pretty good cook. I make dinner every night and carefully save the leftovers. I own two large and one small casserole dishes. I have frozen pie crusts in the freezer and brown sugar in the cabinet.

What’s more, I discussed the relative merits of certain cleaning products with Dan and Jamie over lasagna at Joe’s last night. I vacuum when I know I’ll be having guests. I comparison shop at the supermarket. I even scrub the bathtub from time to time. I’m getting to the point where I’ll make someone “a good little wife”.

However, for those of you who would still like to believe that I’m a big nasty masculine aggressive butch sort of fellow, I DO have a big pile of dirty laundry on the floor in my bedroom, because I haven’t been to the laundromat in two months. And I DO know how to change a tire. Will that be sufficient? Have I managed to salvage at least a piece of your fantasy?

Anybody want a cookie?

29 November 1999

This Waffle House in Burlington NC may be the only one in captivity which deviates from the standard brown walls and yellow roof prototype so common in the south. But even in its deviance, it’s still a chain prototype. It used to be a Sunoco station. That said, you’re now ready to read about my trip home to North Carolina a couple of weeks back. Finally. Enjoy.

If you’re inordinantly interested in my past life, you can also check out the lost journal entries from 1988 and 1989-1992 that I found at home, while dodging raccoons and squirrel shit. They come pretty close to filling a big gap in the series. Or you could just skip ’em.

Unrelated to the above:

I seem to have developed a strange sort of Christmas fetish this year. I’ve been listening to the music and watching the assorted cartoons. I have an urge to bake. I’ve even been contemplating buying a tree. I’ve never bought a Christmas tree on my own, although I used to decorate the elephant plant when I lived in Charlotte. I don’t think Irma would let me decorate her.

Maybe it’s because I probably won’t be going home for Christmas this year until sometime in January. Maybe it’s my newfound domesticity. Or maybe it’s because this will probably be my last one in San Francisco. I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that I really want an illuminated plastic snowman.

25 October 1999

Dang. I threw up the wrong date AND forgot to put my Ammiano banner back up. That’s what I get for experimenting, I guess…

Don’t worry if you’re feeling disoriented. So am I. I’m just playing around with some potential new front page designs. Ultimately, I figure I’ll end up with a modified version of the old one, just because it works. All the same, though, I may play with a few others over the next couple of days. Fear not, though. Frames, animated crap, and the like will not figure into the equation.

Weekend…

Dinner with Dan, his current, and Jamie on Friday night. 24th Street. Puerco Asada. El Trebol. Cheap food served by a nice lady who gives great “mom” vibes with a Salvadorean accent. Dinner was followed by ice cream at Mitchell’s. Banana. Made on the premises. I skipped the maize y queso, as these are not my idea of proper ice cream ingredients. But what do I know anyway?

Saturday night was dinner with Mark in Berkeley. Tandoori prawns. Eggplant something. Pakoras. Nan. No surrogate mom, but a good meal all the same. I left my cap on the table. They gave it back. Then Mark and I toured scenic downtown Oakland.

Against my better judgment, I went out for a beer later. On Saturday night. First time in two months or so. It was as big a mistake this time as ever. Apparently it was Lesbian Domanatrix night at the Eagle. I love Lesbians. I can tolerate dominatrices. But neither sight was what my hormones were looking for at 1:00 in the morning. Alas. My Place and Hole in the Wall provided no real relief either. Look for my Folsom Street obituary page soon. Even so, I got two free beers, so the night wasn’t a total loss. I must’ve been broadcasting depression rays.

Today I made eggs and bacon and grits, as is my usual Sunday morning habit. After I finished the paper and the “In the Heat of the Night” marathon on TNT, I drove out to the avenues to photograph a soon to be demolished Safeway and have a hot dog at the soon to be demolished Doggie Diner.

New “Simpsons”. Re-run on “Futurama”. A quick bowl of cereal and it’s time for bed, I guess…

Love/Hate

One big thing to love this week is this site. Go there. Now. First website which has made me laugh out loud in a long time. And believe me, I need it this week.

More things I love this week:

Things I hate this week:

One thing I’m neutral about (if bemused);

And no, I’m not saying where the parking spaces are…

6 August 1999

I guess it’s time to flip my office calendar over to August now. For six days, I’ve been looking at the mini-month in the corner rather than actually standing up and turning the page.

So it seems that, just as the nasty funk of the past month or so is starting to lift (maybe), I’m now coming down with a cold. Fine. I give up. I’m just going to sit in a corner with Irma and pout until the rainy season arrives. The hell with everything.

Don’t worry, though. I’ll still sneak out for Tuesday’s birthday non-event. But right now, all I want to do is go to bed, read my new White Castle book for a while, and then sleep for a very long time.

While I’m asleep, I will not think about the following:

  • My long-term financial, geographic, or mental status.
  • The fact that there will not be one single candidate worth considering in this year’s mayoral election and that we’ll therefore be stuck with Emperor Willie for four more years.
  • The diseased lung I looked at while working on (irony of ironies) an anti-smoking website last night.
  • Sex (or lack thereof).
  • The asshole next door who has this tendency to work on his ugly orange convertible right outside my office window at all hours of the day and night.
  • Ways to keep that miserable orange convertible from ever bothering me again.

Visit from Duncan

Duncan’s come and gone now. We didn’t go to Fresno. This is probably a good thing, both for us and for Fresno…

Big highlights included dinner at Tad’s (which won’t be an option on his next visit), a visit to some friends in Sunnyvale (which is more fun than it sounds like), and one of our famous long, aimless drives (this one involving San Francisco to Oakland via the San Mateo Bridge).

On Friday night, we hit “Butt Pirates of the Carribean” at Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint. I can’t recommend this highly enough (and I won’t try ‘cuz it’s late and I’m sleepy).

 

And tonight was the down home dinner for five at my house. While I’ve never claimed to be particularly “butch”, I’ve occasionally been accused of it… generally by those who have never watched me prepare dinner for several people.

Tonight marked my first experimental attempt at entertaining since I found myself living alone. Maybe that explains the hyperactive Martha Stewart mode I went into this weekend. I vacuumed. I cleaned the toilet. I mopped the kitchen floor. I baked a cake. From scratch. And that was all on the day BEFORE my dinner guests were to arrive.

The background is thus: my friend Duncan was visiting from Charlotte. I thought a little dinner would be a nice way for him to meet some of my friends here, as well a get a chance to hang out with some people we both know. Of course, I went hardcore into my Mom imitation. It wasn’t a hard mode to get into. I’ve found myself getting frighteningly domestic lately anyway.

 

So I baked a cake. And cooked a pork roast. And made a pot of collards. Since Duncan doesn’t like collards, I made squash too. And biscuits (OK…I used the canned kind…). And iced tea. Sarah brought macaroni and cheese. Dan brought salad. And with everything spread out in the kitchen, it was frighteningly reminiscent of the big extended family dinners my mom throws for me when I come home. The only things missing were the congealed salad and the devilled eggs. And a dining room table…

I broke out the sputnik cake plates and the cool toothpick dispenser given to me by Bob in Indianapolis. I cut lemons and made extra ice. And after dinner (this is the clencher) we watched HOME MOVIES. I fussed and cooked and cleaned and I coudn’t possibly have enjoyed it more.

 

And then, when it was over, I washed every single damned dish before I could go to bed. At 1AM, my kitchen was spotless. What’s happening to me?

Now it’s back to Charlotte for Duncan and back to the boring day to day for me (and presumably for the rest of the aforementioned cast members).

And no, I still haven’t gotten around to the email…