Archive for September 2008
(Fingerspelling “SF” atop the hills of the Golden Gate Bridge)
Have you ever felt so homesick that you wanted to cry? I have. I’m incredibly homesick. More so than when I first moved here exactly two years ago. I miss my apartment, my intimate group of friends, my mom, my sister, my brother, the hills, the bay, the numerous coffee shops, the awesome wine bars, the Pacific Ocean, friendly people, good efficient drivers, California Highway Patrol, the bridges, In-N-Out, delicious cultural restaurants, higher speed limit, steep streets, and did I say my friends? The list could go on and on, but I don’t want you to zonk!
Not a day has passed without remembering the San Francisco Bay Area the last two years, but all of a sudden, the last few days, I’ve been incredibly, severely homesick. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s because I’m finally settled in a home. No more playing musical chairs with a place to live. Maybe it’s because I got a good job that I know I’ll settle in. Maybe because I have so many changes going on. Or maybe it’s just because my heart is stubbornly buried in the Bay Area. I’d love to hop on a plane right this second to be able to set foot in Walnut Creek, East of San Francisco.
Some of you would say, “But, Sazzy, you grew up here in Maryland as a kid!” Yeah, so? Surely, I admit for the first few months living in Walnut Creek, I missed Maryland tremendously, because it was all I knew. Quickly, however, I grew to love the SF bay area. Whenever I paid a visit to Maryland, it didn’t feel like home anymore. Walnut Creek was my new home.
Are you wondering by now why I am in Maryland again? After all, I was having the time of my life in California! But, something deep down kept knocking at me saying that maybe I should move back to Maryland for a while. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m here. Something brought me here, and it’s definitely for the best as I have an awesome job. I’ve also reconnected with family/friends, which I’m grateful for. Doesn’t mean I can’t be homesick, though.
Anyway, to help my sad sulking, prevent me from flipping my middle finger off to every rude driver, and twisting my head like a wheel frantically looking for the beautiful hills and bay, I’ve decided to just shut the hell up and make a list of the things I DO like here in the Washington DC area.
- The Metro isn’t as comfortable as BART or piled with handsome, young businessmen heading into San Francisco who are experts at “eye-flirting.” I had a name for certain dudes who I saw often – Mr. German, Mr. Married, Mr. Ego, and so on. (CBGES, remember this?! Ha!) However, there are much more frequent trains here. You can actually party your ass off all night long and still stumble to catch the train at 3am.
- The sun isn’t out with a guarantee everyday in the summer like California, but we get fascinating thunderstorms here! The lightning is cool – it jumps around from one place to another. Following lightning, thunder can be so loud sometimes that I can feel the vibrations throughout my body. Talk about a scare and a jolt to the adrenaline system! The power sometimes goes out and that prompts romantic candles. (Please don’t get me started on how no one obeys the 4-way stop rules when the stoplights are out of service at intersections.)
- Way up on Mt. Diablo, I could see snow shining in the high elevations during rare days in January, but it was too far to reach. It was always such a beautiful, breathtaking sight – the snow was near the sky! Here, I can physically touch the snow, make a snow ball, and throw it at someone to start a snowball fight. Or even slide on ice, fall, and laugh hard. (Wouldn’t be funny if I broke a bone, though. Oh right, supposed to keep this positive!)
- In the Bay Area, there are barely any trees. Out here, trees are everywhere, scrunched together having intimate parties, and oozing oxygen. It’s quite refreshing! Never mind the fact that in spring when trees are sprouting leaves, my nose runs like the New York marathon.
- Thanks to the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco doesn’t really have many historical buildings or statues. Then again, it isn’t a big political or military city. Washington DC has tons of awesome sculptures, statues, monuments, and memorials. They’re fun to look at and admire!
The truth: I must move on. The San Francisco Bay Area is my past – a memorable one – and Maryland is *ahem* my present, again! Instead of being wistful, I should look back with laughter and pride. I look forward to many, many good memories here in Maryland.
To my California family & friends, Walnut Creek, San Francisco, and the state itself, I miss you. Tremendously. A whole lot. Never ever will I forget (unless I get Alzheimer’s!)
I used to be on Gchat and surf the Interweb all the time out of boredom, but now with this new job, not anymore. I don’t even access my personal email on the computer. And get this – my iPhone doesn’t work in my new office. Basically, I’m cut off from personal tech-crap.
How do I feel? Well, PRODUCTIVE, that’s for sure! I love it! And, I feel loved at the end of the day seeing so many emails waiting to be read, rather than always reading it once received. I guess I should say “felt” loved, because just a few days ago, I discovered a spot on my desk that receives signal. That just ONE spot brings my iPhone alive! It’s a good thing I am too busy at work anyway to keep my eyes on that faithful spot all day. All in all, this new job has put me back into the professional squad, and I feel great about it.
In other news, the condo is slowly, but surely, feeling like home. At first, the oven was a toaster. I was putting tiny English muffins into a big ass oven. Now, we’ve got a toaster for a quick toast! We’d been hanging out in the living room with camping chairs, but now we’ve got a couch set. The master bedroom has been out of commission for over a week because it’s being painted, but it’s all done. I can’t decide if it’s awesome or a HGTV disaster.
The paint was by Freshaire, which is environment friendly and certified by Greenguard. There’s no VOC (chemicals that make paint smell strong and make air quality bad). The paint barely smells, just more like a hint of glue smell, that’s it. We’ve been on such an eco-kick lately: eco-dishwasher soap, recycled printer paper, and recycled file organizer.
Well once again, Monday slammed into my face and I’ve got to get going. Toodles!
My second week at the new office being “professional” rather than sitting bored and talking on gchat all day prompted for a bottle of wine. So, I bought Gnarly Head Zinfandel wine, a vintage 2006 Old Vine Zin. It looked cool and everything. Why not live life on the edge?!
However, there was one slight problem. I couldn’t open the bottle! It was as if the cork was super glued in the bottle. I grunted using all my strength to open the bottle, but only to come across another slight problem.
Can you believe it? The freaking corkscrew broke! I was shocked. This never happened to me before. So, I got pliers and tried to get the screw out. That didn’t work. So I just grabbed another corkscrew, but it was the same story, the cork wouldn’t pop open.
Because I didn’t want to break another corkscrew, I just took the bottle back to the wine store to get a different bottle.
Me: Man, this is gnarly. I can’t even open this. My cork opener broke! You see, it’s funny because this wine is called Gnarly Head (points at wine cover) and it’s gnarly to open it!
Him: (laughs hard) (walks over to another part of the store and tries to open it with his own cork opener, which is fancier and doesn’t require strength) (grunts, grunts, grunts) Wow, I can’t open this either. Let me try again.
Me: Okay no problem.
Him: Oh! It’s working!
Me: Well, you know I can’t drive home with an opened bottle of wine!!
HIm: It’ll be fine, no problem. I won’t open it all the way.
Me: Okay. At least I’m sober and the police can give me all the tests they want!
Him: Haha. Okay, here you go, your gnarly wine.
The corkscrew is still stuck in the cork. You can see all the holes in this cork, which were repeated attempts to try to open the darn wine bottle!
The struggle was all worth it, because the taste was amazing and just for $12 or so bucks! The grape clusters of this wine are balanced with American, Hungarian, and French oak. As a result, this left a lingering taste on my tongue. My tongue tingled for a few seconds after taking a taste, which was awesome. It was like spicy wine. Mmm.
Last night I watched the new 90210 show. Go ahead and laugh. I guess I was curious to see how the show would turn out, and to see the old cast. Absolutely no shame comes over me when I say I was a huge fan of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 series!
Clearly, the new show showed storylines from two generations – the new 90210 kiddies and the older crowd (wish more of the old cast was on!). I’m not too sure how that will work or if that will continue. Makes me wonder exactly what kind of crowd the show producers are looking to attract. I know that the old 90210 was basically attracting teens. But this new one?
If the show is trying to attract a high school (HS) crowd, then that’s interesting. Why? Well, first off, the show begins with a high school dude cheating on his girlfriend in his car getting a blowjob from some random chick. Then, there’s a big blowout club party for a 16 year old high school chick with 1,000 friends. One of the dude’s father is a porn producer. Finally, a HS girl flies out to San Francisco on a school night for a date. (BIG props for featuring San Francisco, though! Whoo!) I don’t recall the original 90210 ever including blowjobs or whatnot? If I am wrong, correct me.
I was impressed with a few things on the show, though. First, there seems to be a TINY improvement on diversity. There’s a black dude on the show. I know it’s not much more diverse, but at least it’s something instead of all white-clad. So that’s nice. In addition, he’s adopted. Many people are adopting these days, so it’s good they threw that into the mix. The blog-talk completely cracked me up, because it’s definitely a modern thing that would never be on the old 90210. The show portrayed how blogs can hurt people’s feelings and hurt a reputation.
Finally, I loved how the Peach Pit dude was grumbling about the espresso machine, and how things aren’t so simple anymore. I can relate!
All in all, I have no official verdict of how I like the show just yet. I’ll watch the next episode.
I forgot to post this a few months ago. This sign was up on the wall of a popular restaurant. Someone took a stand to correct “severe” to “serve.” But, that’s not the amusing part for me. What was amusing is that this sign was in the bathroom, instead of up front in the restaurant. Hmm.
