It's Not Kidnapping if He Comes Along Willingly

A while back, I introduced my team at work to Wahoo's, bringing a little slice of one of my fave SoCal institutions up here to the land of granola, Priuses and organic ... everything. It was an immediate hit with the girls and so we will occasionally make the trek (all 10 minutes of it) to Cupertino where the closest Wahoo's is located. (As an aside, I think Wahoo's makes the best quick-serve cheese enchiladas EVER.)

As we gathered our wallets and sunglasses, we polled the rest of the office to see if anyone else wanted to join us... but alas, no takers. Down in the parking lot, as I backed out of my spot, I spied our principal scientist coming out the front door of the office building and I rolled down the window, leaning across Jessica in the passenger seat to yell "Hey, Magnus! Get in the car!"

The girls giggled. And Magnus squinted to see who it was and then did come over and get in the car. (Brave guy!)

With our hijacked scientist in the backseat, we were off in pursuit of mexi-goods. When Magnus found out there would be fish tacos at our destination, he relaxed.

And yes, we brought him back safely, although in retrospect, I'm sure we could have commanded a pretty decent ransom.

The Opposite of Lent

Big congratulations to all my wonderful Catholic friends who made commitments to give up certain habits, vices, food and various other things for Lent. I always find it fascinating to hear what folks have decided to forego for that 40 day period preceding Easter.

I know at least a couple of people who have committed to staying off Facebook for Lent. (Is that really a sacrifice?) One of my co-workers gave up shopping... but just for clothes and shoes. (What a glorious loophole allowing you to carve out your own Lenten parameters. Clothes and shoes may be off the list, but handbags and jewelry are totally fair game!) Another friend of mine gave up meat for all of Lent (not just on Fridays) a few years ago and she hasn't actually eaten meat since. Impressive!

This year, my former altar boy, Special K, gave up sweets for the holy fasting period. And he took it really seriously, not even having regular soda nor his regular morning mochaccino nor sugar in a cup of tea. In a moment of solidarity (or insanity), I actually thought, "You know, I'll give up sweets, too. It will be healthier, it will be supportive and it will be something we can do together!"

Yeah, that lasted about 6 hours.

What Special K accomplished in his pious efforts to make a meaningful sacrifice, I MORE than made up for on the other side. I went straight for gluttony, swinging around a full 180 degrees as if a meeting between Lent and my personal willpower was like trying to push together the North ends of two magnets. Not gonna happen.

They say timing is everything and it just so happened that during those 40 days at the office, we had cupcakes (multiple times, thanks to all the March/April birthdays), donuts, an ice cream social and pounds of chocolate and other goodies delivered from Costco. Not even a fair fight.

Now that Lent is over, however, I am back to yogurt, bananas, granola bars and carrot sticks.

Final score:
Lent: 40
Shari: 0 (but with a couple of darn good red velvet cupcakes!)

That ain't so bad!

I'm Sorry, But I Just Don't Care

Am I the only one who thinks that the whole concept of "defensive indifference" in baseball is ridiculous? I just learned about this notion the other day when Special K and I were watching a game and as a runner stole a base, the announcer said that it wouldn't count in that player's stats and he noted "defensive indifference" as the reason.

Special K explained that if the defense (ie. the pitcher and the catcher) make no attempt to put the baserunner out, then that play is scored as "defensive indifference" and no stolen base is credited to the runner.


Excuse me?


Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the pitcher and the catcher aren't even paying attention, isn't that even more reason to credit a stolen base to the runner? Heck, if he can make that move without attracting the offense's attention, perhaps he should even get twice the credit. I don't know of any other sport where the defense can just sit back and say that a play or scoring doesn't count just simply because they weren't paying attention.


I wish I had known about that rule when playing sports in high school.


"Oh, that goal doesn't count because frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."


Perhaps I'll adopt this philosophy in my day-to-day life now. Imagine:


In business (to my boss): "Oh, I'm sorry that I totally missed my revenue numbers this quarter. Since I wasn't even really paying attention to the business, I'm allowed to claim 'professional indifference.'"


To my friends: "Yeah, I'm sorry I missed your birthday, but because of "personal indifference", your birthday didn't even really exist for me."


To the cashier at the movie theatre: "I'm not planning to actually pay attention to the movie, so I shouldn't have to pay for my ticket. It's called "Hollywood indifference". Thanks for understanding."

Tourist in My Own Town -- Part III

-- Sunday morning and we are up and at 'em for dim sum! We arranged to meet Chris and Sharon at a place in Millbrae where none of us had been before. With a name like "The Kitchen", we were skeptical about the dim sum part. "Sounds like Denny's", I remarked to Chrissy, but we headed out anyway, excited to see Chris and Sharon (whom we had randomly tracked down in Sevilla, Spain a couple of years earlier and whom Chrissy hadn't seen since).

-- (As an aside, it cracks me up that two pairs of friends named Shari and Chrissy... and Sharon and Chris are hanging out together. Confusing much?)

-- As it turned out, we needn't have worried about whether The Kitchen served dim sum or not. We walked into a huge open restaurant with zillions of tables and every single one of those tables filled with laughing, eating, chatting groups of people.

-- I smiled at the hostess and before I could even open my mouth to say "Hi, we're meeting some friends here", she quickly jerked her head to the left and said "Over there. Around corner."

-- Sure enough, there's Sharon and Chris, tucked away at a small table for four, hidden behind a wall and jammed into a corner. We look around and see that we are literally the only table of non-Asian diners. We laugh as it becomes crystal clear how the hostess immediately knew which table we belonged to.

-- The food was excellent and we ate way too much... When the bill came, Chris picked it up and said, it's $45. I handed her three twenties and she looked at me and laughed, "No, $45 for ALL of us!" Sweet! Given how much we ate, I couldn't believe this, but I wasn't going to argue.

-- The girls gave us some suggestions of what to do in the city that afternoon, so we jumped back in the car after dim sum and headed back to SF. Parking at the Civic Center Garage, we wandered through Hayes Valley and enjoyed all the small shops and the fun architecture.

-- We stopped at Blue Bottle Coffee since it had been highly recommended by our brunch mates and I had a hot cocoa while Chrissy had the real deal. Both were delicious. On to Miette (gorgeous sweets shop) where we were good and just window-shopped... no purchases!

-- Outside one store, we stopped to talk to a guy who was pulling a wagon with two Daschunds. As Chrissy photographed the two docile subjects, our buddy told us the story of how he rescued Vinnie and Guido (no joke) and explained how they get a sponge bath every morning and they either ride in the wagon, in the basket on his bicycle or in his old school Cadillac. Vinnie, Guido and their Dad were all execptionally sweet.

-- We then walked down to the Haight where I wanted to stop in at the cafe "Love 'n Haight", but I honestly couldn't come up with another excuse to eat yet again.

-- We headed home around 6:00, made pasta for dinner and then .... yep, you guessed it, went out for ice cream! (You thought we'd broken the Golden Rule, didn't ya?)

The next morning, I dropped Chrissy at the airport and we agreed to do another girls' weekend before too long... I wonder where our next destination will be....

Tourist in My Own Town -- Part II

Today is the day for some exercise! (As if hiking up and down SF hills on Friday for 10 hours wasn't a decent calorie-burner.) We decide to head to Half Moon Bay for a lovely walk along the coast:

-- First things first... off to Target to buy a new knapsack (where in the world is my old knapsack?? I think it's been lost in the shuffle from SoCal to NYC and back to NoCal) and provisions (ie. snacks) for the trip.

-- We head up the 101 and exit at the Half Moon Bay exit, admiring the beautiful scenery as we wind our way towards the beach and find a parking spot. We're lucky that it's another absolutely gorgeous day and the marine layer has almost lifted already.

-- We set out on the path and complete a full 5 mile loop, chatting about everything and nothing and taking photos of anything interesting that appears. We pass many other walkers, runners, bikers and a TON of people on horseback. I love how freindly everyone is when out walking on a sunny, Saturday morning.

-- As we approach the turnaround point, we catch a whiff of something absolutely putrid just as a girl comes running up from the beach, doubled over and wretching as she goes. After a few more steps, we deduce that there must be a dead animal on the beach and we don't bother going any further (or else we'd BOTH be wretching, too!)

-- On the drive in, we had spotted a promising looking Mexican restaurant on Highway 1, so after trekking back to the car, we took our now famished selves to "Tres Amigos" and pigged out on enchiladas, tortilla chips and salsa. Yum!! It was still packed at 2:00 in the afternoon, so it must be a local fave.

-- We drive back down south and hit "Sugar, Butter, Flour" in Sunnyvale for a long overdue cupckake! (See, I told you that every day on our travels had to be punctuated with something sweet at some point!)

-- As we completed our treats, we looked at each other, thinking the same thing... time for a nap! So, off we went back home where we grabbed a few z's and then roused ourselves for giant salads at The Prolific Oven for dinner. (Our trade-off for the cupcakes earlier in the afternoon!)

Tourist in My Own Town -- Part I

This weekend, my good friend Chrissy came up to the Bay Area for a visit and for some long overdue girl time. I was excited to spend some time with her, not only because we're great friends and it's been too long, but also because Chrissy and I have traveled together in Europe (a couple of times now) and it's always just so easy and so much fun. We are born travel buddies for sure.

I took Friday off from work and here's how our day panned out:

-- After a last minute conference call in the morning, we struck out for the city and even managed to find our destination parkade without too much fanfare. We trekked up Grant Avenue through Chinatown, poking around in various little shops and making our way to North Beach and Telegraph Hill.

-- Get a Facebook notice from Chet that he will be in town "for one night only!" and are we free to grab a drink in the evening. Yay! Another long lost friend descends upon the Bay Area! We make tentative plans to meet up and agree to update each other via FB or texts as the day unfolds.

-- Grab lunch at North Beach Pizza (yes, again!), this time having the vegetarian special. Just as good as the carnivore extravaganza from a few weeks ago.

-- Set off again, up over the hill and down towards Bay Street where we can cut over to Pier 33 where we can...

-- Visit Alcatraz! Chrissy had the foresight to book us tickets in advance (see, I told you I love traveling with this girl!) and we spent a good chunk of the afternoon cruising around a formal federal penitentiary. If you go to Alcatraz, I highly recommend the audio tour. It takes about 45 minutes and it's done extremely well with the voices of old inmates and guards telling the story of The Rock. At one point, the audio guide invites you to step into one of the isolation cells ("The Hole") and close your eyes in the darkness while he explains the feeling of living in darkness and solitary confinement for days on end. Creepy-dot-org for sure.

-- After Alcatraz, we walked down The Embarcadero to the Ferry Building where we indulged in some incredible gelato. (When Chrissy and I travel, we ALWAYS get ice cream or something sweet at some point in the day -- It is our Golden Rule of International Roaming and shall never be broken.)

-- Next stop, shopping! We poked around in a bunch of stores in the Westfield Mall and elsewhere until we worked up an appetite and then ended up at Cafe de la Presse for a glass of wine and filling french dinner.

-- I text messaged Chet and let him know we were running behind and that we were still in the city. He was running behind, too, so we agreed to meet at Lavande in Palo Alto around 11:00 or so for a quick drink and for the opportunity to hear Chet's fun (but sometimes rather gross) stories about what latest "delicacy" he had to eat on a business trip to Taiwan. (Cow eyeballs, anyone? Careful with your fork, they're slippery little suckers!)

-- We said our good-byes, headed home and fell into bed, happily tired from a fun-filled and busy day.

Things are Looking Upward

After a roll of really bad movies and bad luck even with live theatre, I think Special K and I may finally be clawing our way back to some level of palatability and respectability as far as our cultural endeavours go. (At this point, anything that doesn't focus on any part of male anatomy, either real OR fake, would be an improvement.)

This past weekend, I made a quick 48-hour trip down to Orange County and on Saturday night, we hopped in the car and headed to North Hollywood in search of some culture (minus the petri dish).

After an unsuccessful attempt to talk our way into one play (Special K: "I know my assistant made the reservations last week"), we went next door and were happy to see that this particular theatre was featuring a Ray Bradbury play, entitled "Falling Upward".

I do the mental math: Well-known playwright/author with a good track record. Check. I've actually read stuff that he's written. Check. Well-known indie theatre in the entertainment capital of the world. Check. Available seats 5 minutes before curtain. Check check check. It all adds up to me.

As we buy our tickets, the agent says, "I have two tickets left in the front row.... you'll be sitting just a few seats away from Mr. Bradbury."

Do what now, y'all?

I'm still processing this last bit of info as Special K tugs my arm and leads me into the theatre. And sure enough, there is Ray Bradbury sitting at the end of our row, in a wheelchair, accompanied by a couple of folks.

Completely star struck, I am thrilled when he introduces the play himself and describes how the time he spent in Ireland (while writing the screen play for "Moby Dick") generated the humanistic observations that allowed him to write the three short plays that were ultimately fused to create "Falling Upward".

The play takes place in Heeber Finn's pub (a real place that Bradbury frequented) and you immediately get the gist of the environment when you see the sign on the pub wall, "No women, no fighting, no swearing". And indeed, this is the watering hole, gathering place and sanctuary for a diverse group of Irishmen. One of the key characters (and narrator) is played by Pat Harrington -- I did not recognize him until Special K said something about "Schneider" and then it all came rushing back to me. Harrington played the building sup on "One Day at a Time" way back in the day. What a trip to see the swarthy, macho Schneider as a soft-spoken, elderly Irishman.

While the play didn't exactly have a solid plot line, the characters were likeable and fun, the dialogue was clever and the situations were authentic and believable as part of this motley crew's day to day routine. (Think of British films like "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain" or "Waking Ned Devine" and you'll have a sense of the quirky nature of the characters and the overall situations.)

And of course, I introduced myself to Mr. Bradbury at the intermission and imposed upon him for an autograph.

And now the fire has been fanned once again and I am jonesing for a trip to Ireland. (Get ready for some Guinness, Special K!)