Ding Dong

A lot of entertaining things happen at Supper Club, which is why it is the inspriation for so many of my blog posts. Last week's Supper Club was at Tomasso's, which is a great little pizza place in North Beach. The proscuitto, basil and tomato pizza was simply delightful. Orgasmic even. Another thing that is (hopefully) orgasmic? Dongs. I know, I know, this post is starting off slightly inappropriate, but such is the game of life (haha). Anyway, I'm not even sure how we got on the subject, but we started the banter with lots of dong length theories (3 times the length of the thumb, the length from the thumb to the outstretched pointer finger if making an "L" shape, proportionate to the size of the hands, feet, etc.). We of course had no answers to our questions, but it was interesting none-the-less. The next day our pregnant Supper Club friend forwards us an email that she received from her weekly pregnancy update of what I think is a very comprehensive list of what humans have to be thankful for, the first two items on the list pertaining to our discussion from the previous evening:

Count your blessings
• The dong of a rhinoceros is 2 feet long.
• The dong of a mosquito is a hundredth of an inch long.
• The praying mantis bites her mate's head off while he impregnates her.
• Elephants are pregnant for two years.
• Many animals give birth to a dozen or more babies at a time.
• Your baby won't be born with hooves.

That last one was quite the eye opener. I had never thought of it like that. So Emily, when you are in the delivery room remember to think positive and thank God that on top of the worst pain you've ever experienced that there aren't also hooves scraping your uterus.

Hello, hello, hello....is there anybody out there?

Welcome back my loyal readers (if there are any of you left after a 9-month hiatus)! Wow, until I just did the math I didn't realize it had been quite that long. I have no excuses, no interesting life events that prompted a blog hiatus - I guess you could say good old fashioned laziness kicked in. In this world of high-tech, high-speed, information overload, social network overload, work overload etc. etc. it's kind of nice to blame something that people from every walk of life can relate to. I could tell my grandparents that I stopped writing my blog because I got too wrapped up in facebook, twittering, finding contacts on linkedin, downloading apps on my iphone, going to social networking events and generally traveling down the information highway with the top down blasting Pink. They would stare at me, mouths slightly ajar, pat me on the back and ask if I want another Diet Dr. Pepper. Or I could say I stopped writing in my diary because I got lazy. Which is what happened.

Yawn, that was tiring. I wish I could write more but I need to ease back into it. Don't worry, I already know the topic for my next riveting discussion.

Flying dog turd

This might be the best piece of news I've read in a long time. The real question is, how do you become famous enough where displaying a giant inflatable dog turd becomes art? I probably could have come up with that when I was 5, but no one would have cared. Oh well, maybe someday I can put all my excel spreadsheets on display or one of my smelly work shoes or something (which are disgusting by the way, does anyone else's work shoes start smelling like an undiscovered species of crab after a year or so?).

GENEVA (AFP) - A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

How to (not) cure hiccups

In the spirit of a wiki-how, I would like to inform you of how to cure hiccups (or not to, depending on how you interpret this story). On Saturday my friend was suffering from a long stint of hiccups that were on and off for many hours. They didn't go on for days like that girl on the news a few years ago and they weren't reminiscent of a teradactyl screech like yours truly's hiccups, but they were annoying none-the-less. Now, said friend was a bit intoxicated at the time and was going on about it and finally Sean decided to tell her that the sure fire way to cure hiccups is to "massage your uvula." For those of you who think I typed "vulva" and are grossed out and also a little intrigued, no need to get too excited because he was talking about the dangling piece of tissue in the back of the throat (or the "thingy" as my Mom would call it).

About 15 minutes later I had to use the restroom and my friend decided to join me. It was a one staller so we were in there together and as I was relieving myself she decided to take Sean's advice and massage her uvula to relieve herself. Let's see...was it two or three seconds later that she ralphed all over the sink? I was personally disgusted because I can't stand puke; I literally cry every time I have the misfortune of experiencing it. After making my thoughts on the situation clear (WTF are you doing and?!?) we made our way back to the table and I must have looked traumatized because everyone in our party immediately asked what happened. I relayed the story and meanwhile Sean is in the corner laughing hysterically because he obviously was playing a prank on her. When everyone realized what happened they were cracking up (and my stomach was still turning). My friend was strangely unphased by the whole episode and seemed perfectly happy because her hiccups were in fact gone.

So if drinking water upside down, holding your breath and eating a spoonful of sugar don't work the next time those pesky hiccups are ailing you, if you have the stomach for it try massaging your vulva (wait, I mean uvula).

Muir Woods

On Saturday Sean and I went to Muir Woods for the first time. I can't believe we have lived in San Francisco for 6 years and had never gone before. For shame! It was absolutely beautiful. There were huge redwood trees all over and the park and trails were extremely well maintained. It only cost $5 to get in (plus $3 for the shuttle that we took because we were afraid there wouldn't be any parking). We didn't have much time so we went on a short 2.5 mile hike, but there are tons of trails with a lot of different terrains. The best part is that it's shady and cool so for a fog child like me who doesn't fare well in heat it's a perfect hiking environment. You can even walk all the way to Stinson Beach, the problem with that is you have to walk back. Here's a pic of me hugging the largest redwood in Muir Woods that fell down 5 or 10 years ago.

So people don't get the wrong idea and think I'm too outdoorsy, this weekend I also watched 5 hours straight of So You Think You Can Dance with a friend. That show is awesome by the way. Even Mary's cackling is entertaining.

Poddington McHybrid

Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since I wrote a blog. Sorry to my loyal readers (who probably aren't too loyal anymore). About 2 1/2 weeks ago Sean and I finally got our brand new Prius! I had to wait 6 weeks and was paranoid the whole time that someone was trying to screw me, but my patience finally paid off and I got the exact color and package that I wanted. It had 6 miles when we bought the car and now it has almost 2,000. Yes, we have gone on a few big road trips in the past two weeks :). I won't bore you with the grueling details of how we finally managed to get the car, but I will say that the waiting list we were on never panned out and we got really lucky that another dealership had the exact car that we wanted. It took about 5 hours of negotiating, walking out of the dealership and then getting called at 10:30 pm to go back because they agreed with our price but had to get the sale in by midnight. Apparently buying a car the last day of the month is the way to go because you have more negotiating power because they want to meet their projections.

I've always thought the Prius looks like a futuristic pod (much like a spaceship or some sort of alien transportation device) so we have aptly named our car Poddington McHybrid. So far we've gotten an average of 45 mpg, which is good considering we are driving it like a normal car (versus accelerating slowly etc). I might start driving it more like the famous Prius driver to see if I can get 50 mpg. Watch out world, here I (slowly) come!!

Chicken of the sea

Today I was in the kitchen at work and I noticed something very peculiar. There was canned chicken salad in the vending machine. It was wedged between cappucino cookies and rice krispie treats and really stuck out because it was the only item in there for $2.00. I'm not sure why people would buy canned chicken salad from our particular vending machine. Unless you would eat it with a cliff bar or dorritos, it doesn't go with anything. That's why I think the vending machine guy mixed us up with the office that gets saltines and celery sticks. They must have our donut holes (happy national donut day everyone!).

Different strokes for different folks

Two years ago Sean and I received a wedding gift from one of his co-workers. When Sean came home with the wrapped present I was extremely touched because I had only met this co-worker once and she wasn't invited to the wedding, so it was a gift given purely out of the kindness of her heart. We excitedly opened the present and pulled from the box some sort of twisted metal statue attached to a wooden heart shaped stand. Upon closer examination we figured out that the statue was two people twisted together in the shape of a heart. Huh...interesting. We didn't know what to do with it and felt bad for thinking it could have been a joke gift but sadly wasn't, so we decided to put it on the bottom shelf of our fish tank until further notice. A few weeks later we were at the grocery store in the section with the cards, flowers and feminie hygeine products (interesting product placement) and we noticed on the bottom shelf at the end of the aisle there was a box with a picture of our statue on it. I knelt down and picked up the box and lo and behold it was the ugly twisted metal heart statue, the very one in our house at that moment, and it was only $20 and came from Albertsons. Phew, pressure was off on having to keep that sucker.

Our next plan of action was to give it to our friend as a joke housewarming gift. We brought a few of our other friends in on it and surprised her with it during Christmas. She opened the gift and...that's right, LOVED it. We were all trying not to crack up and at one point I had to excuse myself so as to not blow our cover.

Fast forward two years later. Sean and I are in her apartment about a week ago and we notice the statue prominently displayed in her living room. We both start laughing and she asks what we are laughing at, but we pretend not to hear her. Sometimes it's the little things in life that are worth living for. This was one of them.

(unnamed friend, if you are reading this I'm sorry you are the butt of this joke, and that's why this post is annonymous).

Ode to Rock Band

Oh Rock Band, how I yearn to play you
Oasis, Metallica, even The Who
My fingers stroking your plastic keys
Fans singing along to my vocal tease

I get so much pleasure from rocking out
You give me something I've only dreamt about
A chance to be a star on the big stage
Playing my awesome songs that are all the rage

Let's go together on a World Tour
Let's play for charity and find a cure
Let's steal some roadies and drive a van
Let's play in Paris, Rome and Amsterdam

I know you are only a video game
And I'm 27 so playing you is kinda lame
But you are a temptaion that I cannot fight
So I'll pencil you in for Friday night

Civilized war?

I was reading an article this morning on Cnn.com about a treaty that 100 countries have signed to ban the use of cluster bombs because they are unrealiable, inaccurate and have too many adverse affects on civilians. Here is a quote from the article: "They are concerned that cluster munition remnants kill or maim civilians, including women and children, obstruct economic and social development, including through the loss of livelihood, impede post-conflict rehabilitation and reconstruction, delay or prevent the return of refugees and internally displaced persons, can negatively impact on national and international peace-building and humanitarian assistance efforts, and have other severe consequences that can persist for many years after use." Is it just me or is this slightly ironic? Not that I want cluster bombs out there threatening "international peace" but I feel like all war threatens international peace (yes sometimes you are fighting to keep the peace, but fighting for any cause still isn't peaceful). I am all for the laws of war or whatever, but when I really sit back and think about the fact that people try to make something as barbaric as war civilized it reminds me that the world we live in is strange.

What we really need is for the weapon producers to build themselves iron flight suits and go around the world destroying their weapons and making right their past endeavors that put civilians in harms way in the first place. And Robert Downey Jr. and I will be sitting on the beach drinking mai tais and tickling each other's feet, congratulating ourselves on our fine idea that will truly promote international peace.

How many accountants does it take to split a bill? Answer: more than three

Last night Lauren, Emily, Sarah and I had our second Supper Club outing. During our most recent spa day at Nob Hill Spa (see Grapes and Salami post on March 27, 2008) we decided to start a Supper Club. The inspiration was this season of Top Chef Chicago, which has four chefs from San Francisco. It was decided that we don't see each other often enough because life gets in the way, so if we have a monthly dinner it will force us to get together and we can check out the Top Chef restaurants. So far we haven't been to any of those restaurants, but we have plenty of time for that.

We went to a tapas place called Laiola in the Marina. Not to turn this into a yelp posting, but the place had a great atmosphere and they pour little carafes of wine for the wines by the glass, so it's more like 1.5 glasses for $12. Which is also the price of a pretty good bottle of BV at Safeway. This is of course beside the point because Supper Club would lose all of its elegance if it took place in the Safeway deli. The first suggestion I made from the menu was chickpeas and blood sausage. Lauren quickly informed me that blood sausage is some sort of coagulated blood, not actual sausage, at which point I almost knocked over my $12 glass of wine in horror. Needless to say I ended up ordering the grilled quail. After we finished our first five or six dishes, we decided to continue ordering. We got some advice from our waiter and he said that we should order the blood sausage dish and everyone agreed (except me). It was basically dark brown/red squishy bits of matter on top of chickpeas in a bowl. Gross. After a lot of pressure, I tasted a little bit and it didn't taste like much, but it was very salty.

After two hours of another successful Supper Club meal, the bill arrived. Everyone didn't have the same amount of alcohol, so we decided to divide the food by 4 and then everyone would pay for their own alcohol. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Three of us are accountants and it took us about 20 minutes to figure this out. Part of this 20 minutes was taken up by our bitching about the "cover charge" which we thought was the bread and water. We were getting pretty fired up about being charged for something that was brought to the table without us ordering it and something that is customarily free. The waiter finally came over and asked if we needed help because it was taking so long (and I think they were trying to close and we didn't realize it). He explained that the cover charge was for the health care costs of the employees that San Francisco recently voted for. It was also written in bold on the insert with the bill. Hmm, that was embarrassing. Then we all got confused about how much to tip. What percentage should we tip and should it be before or after alcohol? Emily was attempting to tip 16% (that's right, not 15% or 20%, but 16%) and couldn't figure out how to use the calculator function on her cell phone. The whole scene was ridiculous, entertaining and sad.

I - am- Iron - Man...dunananana na na na

Yesterday I saw Iron Man, and I must say it was an excellent movie. I'm not going to lie - as embarassing as it is, I like comic book movies (only the good ones of course). But even if your blood pressure isn't rising with the excitement of the lasest Marvel Comic flick because you don't know if you should wear your Superman shirt or if you should glue sand all over your body because the Sandman is your favorite character, you will probably like this movie. It has Robert Downey Jr., Gwentyh Paltrow and Jeff Bridges. How could it not be good? Robert Downey Jr. does a superb job. He is so super sexy with those big brown eyes and hot bod and surprisingly he is a really great actor. I say "surprisingly" because I had never seen him in anything and thought he was a washed up ex (?) drug addict has been. I have no problem admitting when I'm wrong, and this is one of those times. I also thought Robert Downey Jr. and Gwenyth Paltrow had great chemistry. Everything was really subtle and Gwenyth looks great as a strawberry blonde. I highly recommend this movie, you won't regret it.

The Love Connection

Remember that game show from the 80's that Chuck Woolery hosted called Love Connection? My Mom LOVED it and we used to watch it every week (along with The Wonder Years...whoah, that was a throw back). Anyway, last Thursday I had the pleasure of becoming Chuck Woolery for a night and testing my matchmaking skills. I went swing dancing at Le Colonial and after dancing with a few weirdos I finally got asked to dance by a normal guy who could lead someone who doesn't know what they are doing (me). I started talking to this guy (Mike) and he ended up being really cool. I told him I was married right away so I knew he wasn't hitting on me, but at many points during the night we would end up next to each other again and start talking. I decided that my purpose was to be his wing man and I would scout out cute girls for him to dance with. At one point I noticed a cute girl in a red dress and told him to ask her to dance. After the song, he came back and told me she was kinda weird, married and he couldn't tell if she was 25 or 45. We should have been tipped off when we scouted her out during the previous song and she was dancing in a circle with an old man and an old lady. She was either having a special family moment with her grandparents or she was interrupting a cute old couple's date night. Either way, probably a good tip off.

At this point I wasn't too confident in my wing man abilities. Then Mike asked me if I had any single friends I could set him up with. I said, yes I do, I have the perfect person for you. I got his business card, told my friend Rachel about him, he emailed her on Friday and they went on a date on Sunday. Rachel had a good time and said he was really interesting and had a lot of qualities she's looking for. Who knows what will happen, but at least Rachel got a few free drinks and a nice conversation out of it.

Egad!

Today I was on the phone with Sean and in all seriousness he busted out "oh egad! I forgot about that." I don't even remember what we were talking about, I was so thrown back by the use of a word I thought people stopped using, oh I don't know, 200 years ago. But then again this did come from the guy that also says "holy smokes" and calls people "dingleberries" when they disobey traffic laws, so I guess it shouldn't have been all that surprising.

Sean, I love your old soul :)

The Earth's Song

Last night I went to my very first yoga class. I have a lot of friends who love yoga and they always say how great it makes them feel so it's been on my list of things to try for awhile. I am extremely inflexible so I knew it was going to be very difficult for me, and honestly that's why I put off trying it for so long. Who likes to do things that they aren't good at? Not many people.

I went into the yoga studio with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. We started out by sitting on wool blankets with our legs crossed. The lights were dim and the heater was on so it was pretty relaxing and I was thinking to myself "hey, this does feel good." Then our teacher started talking about really hippie things like how the Earth has a song and so do our bodies and in yoga we are trying to find our song so that we are more connected to the Earth. All I was thinking was thank goodness everyone's eyes are closed and Allyson isn't here because I literally had to bite the inside of my lip to keep from busting up in fits of laughter. I'm not saying it wasn't relaxing and peaceful, because it definitely was, and I can totally understand and appreciate the merit of everyone's personal spiritual journey. But, seriously, it was hilarious.

After the introduction we started doing the typical yoga poses and I was no longer laughing or thinking "hey, this does feel good." At this point I was feeling retarded because I couldn't do any of the poses and I was shaking just trying to keep them up (maybe I was feeling weak because I had already been at the gym for an hour and a half before yoga started trying to get my workout in thinking that yoga wouldn't be hard). At any rate it was very difficult and I didn't enjoy it very much. I'm going to keep doing it as a challenge to myself and I would like to get more flexible and balanced so I think it will help me in the long run. Hopefully over time it will become less miserable as well.

The class ended with laying on our mats in the dark with our hippie teacher saying "ooohms" and ringing a bell. And even after an hour of appreciating how hard yoga is I still had to stifle a laugh.

Granola is yummy

This Sunday is Earth Day and the Green Apple Festival (which is free) is happening in Golden Gate Park at Noon. There's some live music and speeches. If this weekend is as nice as last weekend it should be a good time. It's pretty cool because the festival is supposed to be as green as possible. According to the website, they implement a zero waste goal, have mandated a paperless event, use organic cotton t-shirts for staff, use bio-diesel generators for power where possible, serve organic food and encourage patrons to take public transportation, bike or get to the event on foot. They also have aggressive recycling and reusing efforts. I think I will stop by because I like live music, free things, and supporting the environment.

On another note, Trader Joe's has new compostable bags to replace all plastic bags, which I think is really cool.

Here's the website for the Green Apple Festival:
http://www.greenapplemusicfestival.com

GAI

The other day, I was watching the Ben Franklin episode of The Office and it included one of my favorite all time Michael Scott quotes. He was in the conference room talking to Angela and the rest of the party planning committee about the bridal shower that they were giving Phyllis.

Angela: You know this is a luncheon shower. Girls only.

Michael Scott: No problem. The guys are having a little shindig of their own in the warehouse. From 2:30 to 3:15. That is the only time that Bob was available. Sort of a guys' night out. A 'G-N-O' if you will. A 'gno.' Actually it's more of a guys' afternoon in. A G-A-I. A gay. Not-- not... it's uh, not gay. It's, uh, just uh, it's a bridal shower for guys. A guy shower. An hour long shower with guys.

If you've never seen this episode I highly recommend it. Steve Carrell's delivery of this quote is perfect!

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks

Last Friday Sean and I went to the Giants v. Cardinals game with some of our friends. I was very excited because it was the first night game of the regular season and the weather was supposed to be beautiful (and it was...no wind and probably high 60's or maybe even 70). I love baseball. True, I would rather watch the TV Guide Channel than a game on television and to be honest I don't pay much attention even when I watch live games. But despite that, I love the feel of baseball. It means the beginning of springtime, which means it is no longer winter, which means it's no longer my least favorite season. Philspunkter (or whatever that groundhog is named) has nothing on opening week of baseball. I love sitting in the sun and drinking beer and feeling like I'm part of a great American tradition.

And of course, baseball also means indulging in "food" that ends up having its way with your digestive system, if you know what I mean. I had some beer, cracker jacks, a hot dog, chips and garlic fries. It is Monday at 4:00 and I still don't feel quite right. I'm pretty sure it was the garlic fries that really did me in. We left the game early because we had another event to go to and we ended up walking for about 20 minutes before we found an available cab. At this point the "food" was starting to process and I wasn't feeling my best. About 2 minutes into the cab ride I realized that luck was not on my side that night. This cab driver was insane. He was trying to drive like 60 mph up Pine but he constantly had to slam on the brakes because, surprise surprise, there were other cars on the road not going 35 mph over the speed limit. The cab was a minivan and there were either no shocks or the cab driver had his own special driving technique because not only was the cab lurching forward when he slammed on the brakes, it was also swaying from side to side as we were barreling up Pine Street. Then to top it all off there was some sort of jazz music playing while the dispatcher radio was turned up to what must have been the loudest setting. Not a very relaxing cab ride to say the least. In fact, I'm sure there are still marks where I was digging my fingers into the seat. But to his credit, he got us all the way home for only $13.

Technology hurts my head

For those of you that don't know, I'm a bit slow when it comes to updating technology. I think it's a mixture of being cheap, lazy and rebellious. And yes I do know it sounds ironic because I have two flat screen TV's at home about 20 feet away from each other. However, if my living room wall would just rotate like in the movies it would be a moo point. I also realize that I have an iphone, but that was a gift and I did contemplate returning it. Anyway, for years I have been rebelling against paying extra for digital cable, but when we moved in July I finally caved and ordered the Comcast bundle meaning that I have digital cable, digital phone and cable internet for one low price. I have no idea what digital phone means or why anyone would ever pay more for it, but it was included in the bundle so it ended up being cheaper than regular phone service.

So the point is (well actually, for those of you who are hoping there's a point to this post, there isn't so you can stop reading at any time) our digital phone has been out of commission for about 3 months now. Sean has tried restarting the modem and doing some other things and nothing has worked. The only type of phone that I understand is the one that plugs into the wall, so I'm no help. At the beginning I kept asking Sean if he checked the wire that plugs into the phone jack and he kept having to explain that it's not that kind of phone. Sean is too busy/lazy/forgetful to call the cable company and I haven't done it because I wouldn't even know where to start fixing the damn thing. Sometimes I think technology is too complicated. I feel like I can't even call the cable company to fix our phone because I don't know what the millions of wires in our house are for or where they even are. All I know is that all I have to do is press one button on our crazy universal remote and everything magically turns on. It's amazing that I even know how to blog.

Going (or not) to a Hukilau

This week two major airlines that fly to Hawaii, Aloha and ATA, announced that they are filing for bankruptcy and are discontinuing all of their operations. On a purely selfish level this announcement left me feeling sad and concerned. I love Hawaii. I've been at least 20 times, maybe more. My family has been going since I was a child, my husband was born and raised on Oahu and his entire family still lives there. To think that the reduced competition coupled with high fuel costs will make a trip to the place with beautiful sandy beaches, lush tropical foliage, great shopping and delicious Vietnamese sandwiches less accessible, makes me sad. Hopefully Hawaiian Airlines keep their prices reasonable and/or Southwest or someone else starts flying to Hawaii. I hope my two options don't come down to shelling out $1,000 to fly United or visiting Allyson in Houston, not that I have anything against Houston (except for the obvious).