life

Kitt and I have been discussing trading cars for weeks so that Kitt can be the fourth best roomie ever and get me new rockin' tires on my car. So far as a roomie she's slightly behind Kris who catapulted me into backflips in the pool on Tuesday (but to be fair Kitt has never tried that - who knows maybe she could catapult me higher!)

So far, one or both of us has forgotten the plan and I keep ending up at work with my own car. It's starting to be a little unnerving as the gods keep sending me signals in the form of ripped rubber on the freeway (once even in my lane!). So this morning I took the bull by the horns and stole Kitt's car.

Ridiculously early I stepped out of the house with the excitement of being able to be a convertable owner for a day - too bad my perfect sexy red dress has yet to be found.

I awkwardly slipped into the driver's seat in my heels and carefully backed out of the driveway experiencing for the first time what it was like to drive before the wonderful invention of the rearview mirror.

Completely yuppied-up after a quick stop at Starbucks, I pulled into the gas station to uphold my end of the bargain for the car switch - filling up Kitt's tank. Finding the gas tank opener button was a new puzzle and not the fun kind like sudoku or LSAT logic games. Very difficult. Hmmm....good thing I had a sports car today because by this point I was running late.

So boo - Honda decided the best place to hide a gas tank button is on the doorframe, which of course is only visible if the door's open! But...yay - Honda decided it was a good idea to put a label on the inside of the gas tank with instructions on which kind of gas needs to go in the car. So I was off to work and getting very good at the km/hr to mi/hr mental conversion.

Now I've decided that the reason white collar men in their midlife crises don't get convertables to compensate, they get convertables because the only thing that keeps a person who works in an office for at least eight hours a day in a cubicle without windows somewhat sane is to put the top down and fly during a lunch break. But so much for my sanity anyway, since I'm headed to law school in a month!

The only thing that saved my rotten full-time, rut of a day was the thought of being able to put the top down and speed down the freeway, which is exactly what I did. I was falling asleep at my desk after an awesome four-day weekend but as soon as I hit 120 km/hr I was wide awake!

And then the ice cream on the cake was Kitt waiting at the end of my temporary forget-about-everything-but-the-wind fix to help me with a more permanent fix. Okay maybe Kitt could be second best roomie ever. Obviously my day in Kitt's car was infinitely better than her day in my car. Thanks roomie!!!!

I recognize that things are going to change in life. The only constant in life is change blah blah blah. But that doesn't mean I don't find it annoying a lot.

And I mean, A LOT.

Today is Julia's birthday, and wanted to get her a nice bowl and fill it with chocolate covered peanuts. The peanuts were easy to get, so I dashed over to the local Pier One for a nifty bowl. I have several bowls that I like, a couple from there, so I figured it was an easy run.

The gaggle of teenaged girls going into the store at 8:50 at night should have clued me in that I should turn around and run. The "Everything 50% off!" should have screamed at me to freakin' run! There are few things I dislike more than the frenzy of cheap or free. People who would never buy some of the crap at the store, buy the crap. I don't get it. I don't like it. I can't stand it. Blech.

I didn't figure it out, though, and went into the store. Another "Blech."

Most of the shelves were bare. What remained was basically crap. No, no, real crap, not just the crap crap. Annoying.

It reminded me of the time Kris and I drove to San Jose to the Home Chef store for a rolling pin for Cal. We walked in, noticing the store had significantly more people in it than it normally did, only to realize most of the shelves were bare because they were closing the store down. That was the second Home Chef store closed (the other in downtown Palo Alto that burned down a few years back, to be rebuilt and reopen as the Apple store). The only reason I went to the San Jose store was because of the Palo Alto one burning down. But they're both closed now, and I'm left with the Williams-Sonoma or Draegers for my nifty kitchen gadgets and cookware (also known as expensive and even-more-expensive kitchen stores in my world).

I know that stores that don't have the clientele are going to close. But it's annoying that the stores I actually like and shop at are the ones doing the closing.

Had dinner with James Pine tonight. Somehow, I managed to convince him to cook for the two of us, and he barbequed pork non-ribs with some tasty, tasty sauce. Okay, the "convincing" was really just accepting his offer to cook, since he needed the motivation to clean up his apartment before Priyanka came home next week. The food was delish! Mmmmmmmm!

Only downside was that Pine kept the leftovers. :\

Also saw Tron for the first time in my life. And Cronus, which Pine said was in Spanish with English subtitles, but really was in half English and half Spanish with all the characters talking in their native tongues and the other characters magically understanding what was said. It was strange.

Pine, as always, had some choice quotes during the evening (recalling, he named my blog), the only I remember (because I SMS'd it to myself before drinking just under half a bottle of wine) happened after Pine commented that he can be patient when he needs to be. I expressed surprise, and he continued that, if it's in his best interest, he can be patient, but if there's a better, faster way to accomplish something, he won't be.

"It's not so much impatience, as the inefficiencies of time."

Mike and I went up to the school today. We intended to work from 7 until 10, but when Kate's out of town, life happens for Mike, and we ended up taking the dogs up to the school to eat cat poop, roll in dog poop, splash through mud and frolic with the other dogs.

Oh, and let Liza run around.

I managed to forget each and every Annie toy, but three golden retrievers made up for my lack of dog-saavy by chasing her around and around and around. Surprising, Bella didn't do her usual walk along the perimeter, howl at squirrel tracks about three days old and poop in the tall ivy. Instead, she ran around the middle of the field, ate sewage and splashed in the mud.

I had given her a bath only the day before last. Dog.

As we were leaving, the owner of one of the retrievers said hello. She introduced herself as a neighbor with the McDonald's munchkins in her front yard. I asked if she were the person who walks the dog while reading a book (note the correct use of the subjective in that sentence fragment). She said no, then started telling us about our neighbors, their pets, the new construction on the block, who lived where and what they did.

Her description of the neighborhood was quite entertaining when she pointed to Mike and said, "You recently had a baby. I see your wife with your kids every once in a while. I haven't seen her recently. You own a red station wagon." It then turned uncomfortable when she turned to me and continued, "You drive a sports car, and just planted your Christmas tree in your front yard."

D'oh.

Mike's Christmas tree, but close enough.

She knew everything. Well, almost everything. What she didn't know, I could fill in the gaps, like the two kids across the street from us (they're building a second story), or our neighbors to the north or south. She knew about the construction going on along the block (same construction company), as well as the Corridor-of-Death™.

Part of me was uncomfortable with all that she knew, but the other part of me realized that, well, she didn't know more than I knew just by observing the neighborhood. If I went on the walks with Kris, I'd be up on all the block happenings, too.

As we were leaving, she suggested a block party this summer. I remember block parties from when I was a kid, and am so excited by the thought. I'm happy to have met Debbie, and will need to go knock on her door sometime soon to get that block party happening.