Taster Spoon

Four and Four Are Eight

I was parking over at the community center yesterday before run club, and look who was looking in my window!

Hey there, little guy!

Aren't you a little pretty?

He was totally checking ME out, too, cheeky monkey.

When I finished my run, he had rubbed out on my car door, "Warsh Me." 

Stupid fuzzy caterpillar can't even spell.

Holier than They

I went with Ace to the Mountain View farmer's market for the first time two weekends ago.  We bought bread (plastic bag), kiwis (plastic bag), flowers (newspapers and plastic wrapping), honey (no bag, but sticky), and a yummy smoked-salmon dip (small, white paper bag).  As we were juggling our purchases, Ace said,

"Do you feel out of place because we didn't bring our own bag?"

I looked up and looked around, and every single person there had a reusable canvas tote, from Trader Joe's, or Whole Foods, or NPR...  I felt their eyes burning into my soul, searching for that black part of it that made it not even occur to me to bring my own bag.

The next weekend, we were parking when I suddenly freaked out. 

"No bag!"

"What?"

"We don't have a bag!  We have to bring a bag!"

I dove into the trunk of my car, rummaged around and grabbed a gym bag where I usually store my bike shoes for spinning class and dumped everything out. 

We sauntered into the market with our cute little Stanford red nylon bag.  I saw some schlub with a plastic bag, and gave him the evil eye. 

"He must not know how it works around here.  Maybe he's a tourist."

I Need a Mega Man Vitamin like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

Every a.m. I try to remember to take:

1 fish oil pill (Triathlete magazine nutritionist recommended for heart or joints or something; now Boots recommends for seasonal allergies!)

1 calcium pill (some study suggested calcium supplements might help prevent stress fractures in girls who run a lot)

1 Mega Man Mega Vitamin from GNC (that may or may not be its name, but it's close.  These pills are the remainder of this huge jar that one of Ace's previous roommates abandoned - I think they expired in 2004, but they must still be effective because hey!  The green dye still works!  Ask me how I know.)

I try to repeat the first two at lunch if I think of it.  Each is a huge horse pill, but I still try to swallow them all in one gulp, because each requires a big, uncomfortable swallow regardless so once is better than thrice.   

This morning I was gagging down my three when Ace challenged me. 

"Are you taking those MAN vitamins again?  Why can't you take something that's pH balanced for a woman?"

I was about to say I'd offset it with a Luna Bar, until I realized, he's the one who gave me my current stash of Luna Bars.  Maybe the boy has questions.

Or maybe it's time to wax my moustache.

Animal (House) Planet

Watch the new Discovery Channel series, "Planet Earth," and every time Sigourney Weaver says something self-promotional about the show, e.g.,

"This is the first time X has been seen by millions,"

"Y has never been caught on film before,"

"It took five years of filming to capture these images of Z, which are being broadcast for the first time in history,"

take a drink.

Two and Two Are Four

Saturday was super windy, and as I sat on my bike on the side of the road, finishing off my Peppermint Stick Luna Bar, I saw the furriest caterpillar I've ever seen, inching along the road.  He was about two inches long, and his rust-colored hairs were probably half an inch long.  Amazing!  Like a little red-haired moustache.

But he was so furry, and it was so windy, as he wiggled his way along, the wind kept picking him up, rolling and dropping him two inches further, two inches further.  And he kept struggling and wriggling.  Then a  car came along and squashed him.

I was so sad.  I remained disturbed  until I went running yesterday at Rancho San Antonio, and up on the PG&E trail saw dozens of fuzzy caterpillars.  Not the same kind; these were small and black with orange spots, but still, it took away some of my sense of injustice and replaced it with acceptance.

I'm going to go read Charlotte's Web and have a good cry.

Hang up and wipe!

Why do people talk on their cell phones while on the can? 

Which is not to say I haven't done it, in the privacy of my own home, with thoughtful use of the 'mute' button, when an unmissable call comes in at an impossible time.  (Hey guys?  Remember that time I sent that e-mail saying I needed your numbers again because I'd dropped my phone in the tub?  Uh, nothing.  Just wondering if you remembered.)

But why do people in office buildings chat - nay, initiate calls - from that echoey, noisy, tiled, shared room, with the tinkle-tinkles, the bloop-bloops, the deafening flushes - doesn't the person on the other end say something?  When you could step into a conference room!  Step outside into the sunshine?

Besides which, I never want to shake their hand now. 

I Am a Three Hour Girl

At run club last night a friend and I were discussing how we never saw this third friend any more, and debated whether he had maintained any social life at all after he acquired his girlfriend, etc. etc.  And I confessed, "Well, it's not like I ever go up to S.F."  It's true - ever since this guy moved to the city a few years ago, our frequency of interaction has gone way, way down.

Ace is on this lightning hot competitive triathlon team, which encourages its members to do their track workout as a group up in San Francisco on Wednesdays.  This has caused Ace to miss Wednesday evening run club for several weeks and somebody was asking me last night how his new team was working out. 

I hate commuting much more than Ace does, so I started editorializing as to whether the perks of being on the team were really worth the hour and a half of driving once a week it required.

These two exchanges reminded me of a conversation I had years ago with my friend Jeff, because it made me  wonder whether the commute question typifies a number of Bay Area calculations.

Jeff was a great dater.  He dated widely and often - and he was a great date, too (we went out for a while before we downgraded to friends, then upgraded to roommates).  I remember talking to him after a date he'd gone on with a girl up in the city.  He had told me it was a great date, she was attractive, they got along really well and had a good time.  It sounded very promising.

A few days later, I followed up.  "What about that girl up in the city?"

"Oh," he said, "I decided she wasn't a forty minute girl."

"A what?"

He explained that, in the Bay Area, eligible single people are sprinkled so widely and pursue their activities so broadly that you can easily find yourself living in South San Jose, and meeting then dating a person who lives up in Marin.  Which, assuming no traffic, is a good hour-fifteen drive, one way, not to mention a $5 toll.

Consequently, he said, you always have to weigh the potential of a particular target against their geographical proximity, or lack thereof.  Thus, he said, he thought this girl was great, but not great enough that he was excited to drive forty minutes to see her.  And she lived forty minutes away.

"Would you drive twenty minutes to see her?"

"Oh yes.  She's definitely a twenty minute girl."

I think in most parts of the country, single people generally cluster in urban areas, so that "commuting" to date one another is a non-issue - though it obviously takes time to catch a cab/ride the subway/drive around the Beltway, one potential date takes approximately as long to meet up with as any other.  And that is similarly true in San Francisco proper. 

But Silicon Valley is an odd place in that on the one hand it is very suburban, but on the other, there are a lot of young single people down here anyway - spread all around in the various towns where housing approaches affordable.  And social activities are similarly decentralized - sports seem to be about joining one of many many clubs that rarely overlap except for infrequent competitions - there don't appear to be too many simple 'pickup' (game, not date) opportunities.  And nightlife is scattered.  So it's as easy to meet somebody in your neighborhood as somebody who came from really far away.  And Jeff's calculation, while unromantic, was eminently practical.

So I was curious to know whether people have a perspective on how the near/far question plays into your social - or recreational, or other - lives.   

Organic Broccoli Sucks.

It is full of bugs.

Heeby Jeebies and Honey Beebies

Today I plunge a spoon into one of my weirder purchases.

"A kiwi?" you say.  "You need to get out more.  Kiwis are no longer exotic." 

Oh, but look at this kiwi. 

Doesn't it just give you the shivers? 

It's a mutant double kiwi. 

There was a kiwi stand at the farmer's market this weekend, and ALL the kiwis they were selling were these creepy Siamese double, triple and quadruple fruits. 

Ace was suspicious of their organicness, but I was under the impression the sellers billed themselves as merely "local." 

Although I don't know what NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS are in the area.

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I have also been following Chad's honey plan for beating springtime allergies. 

The honey lady - who, Chad tells us, occasionally masquerades as a cheese lady - at the farmer's market seemed to be familiar with his allergy plan. 

Her instructions were to take a teaspoon a day of the local honey at first, and build up your tolerance (to the honey?) - and eventually the local pollen (that went into the honey) won't bother you either. 

I can't imagine building up from a teaspoon of honey - a teaspoon already represents a huge jump from my prior honey consumption, which amounted to approx. 1 tablespoon per year, in the form of baklava.  How much honey can a person eat? 

I laughingly suggested to Ace I swap out honey for all the phony Gus and Hammer Gels we suck down at races.  He said our friend Lorraine actually does that.  And on reflection it does sound a little more wholesome than what I call the Space Food we usually consume.  Tell you what, I'll try that on my next long run and let you know how it works out.

Right there, at the honey stall,  I had honey on a toothpick - and immediately started sneezing.  Psychosomatic? 

Monday I had honey on saltine crackers and didn't notice any reaction either way.  Yesterday I brought the honeybear to work and had honey on a leftover bagel.  Mmm!  I was itchy in the evening after dinner.  Related? 

Today, I'm combining the honey plan with my mellow-out plan to drink more tea.  I can't really tell.  Oh wait, my nose...itchy?  Not that itchy.

The jury is still out. 

Maybe I'll have to make some baklava.

95.7

Once upon a time, there was a single country radio station in the Bay Area.  95.3 KRTY - San Jose's HOT country.  It played all country, had vaguely but generically "Southern" accented deejays, and was receivable up to about San Mateo. 

And then one day, I hit one of my car radio buttons  - or maybe I just "seek"ed my way up a notch -  expecting to find [I forget now what it used to play - 80s? Easy listening? Pop?] - and instead I heard a growl.  95.7 had turned, overnight, into The Bear.  As a matter of fact, I seem to recall this shift was discussed at some length and with much condescending amusement on Alice radio, to a background loop of "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." 

But I was pleased, because it started out with little to no live commentary (presumably hadn't hired the DJs yet), and reception was superb.  Their big thing was blurbs of people calling in excitedly to  talk about how they could hear The Bear way up in Santa Rosa or way East in Livermore or whatever.  I liked it, because this was the year 2004 and I lived up on a mountain, where I had to give up my country habit for some months until I started catching The Bear.  KRTY had to make do with little pitches about how they were "from" San Jose and had been around for years - they did the community pitch, and their ads became more locally-targeted.  The Bear was clearly a pre-programmed playlist corporate monolith with few community reference points and nobody in the booth. 

Then, sometime...last year?  I pushed my Bear button, and out piped Dire Straits.  Huh?  Overnight, 95.7 The Bear had become 95.7 Max FM.  It felt just as corporate - started out, again, with no deejays at all (again, either not hired or simply deemed irrelevant) - but the format was totally new.  Now it was "We play whatever we feel like."  Whatever they felt like was mainly classic rock, a little disco, a good dose of 80's favorites, and a smattering of more current and 90's hits.  They had that J. Peterman/Dancing with the Stars guy doing the station identification spots - he was Mr. Maxwell, and played whatever he felt like.  I guess those spots were a pathetic attempt to make the station seem local yet simultaneously tout the station's range - Mr. Maxwell made various insulting cracks about towns in the greater Bay Area - Marin and Berkeley and Gilroy all got stinkbombed.  They started adding recordings of delighted callers letting the station know how happy they were with the musical selection. 

Slowly I think they got some morning deejays, I dunno, and very recently they actually claimed to take requests on Saturday nights - the only sign of life at the station that I ever detected. 

And then?  Maybe last week?  I hit my Max FM button (you see, I ride out all the formats - I feel about the same about 80's music as I do about country), and who should greet me but Tim McGraw.  Once again, country.  Only now it's The Wolf.  Awooooo!  Again, no DJs.  Again, the occasional recording of a giddy caller to report how delighted she is that country is back in the Bay.

But still no sign of life.