zap away that mud

"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
-- Dan Quayle, 1989


This weather's been horrendous. I normally like some rain, something to make everything a little greener and moist. Now that I walk to work, though, and through the panhandle, I have to slosh through mud or take a detour while holding up my pants and praying for the best. and i don't pray. ever. i finally broke down and joined the wellies club. other people at work were coming in in cute rubber boots with clean pants and not a speck of brown goo in sight. unless it was on their boots. and after having to explain to my dry cleaner several times that the mud kept attacking me, making me fight them to the death in a battle of becca v. mud man, and her giving me this look as if i'm some semi-homeless working professional, i gave in. so i'm now the proud owner of my first pair of rain boots (muchas gracias, zappos).

i'm baaaaaack

to answer those burning questions out in cyberland:

• yes, i'm alive.
• no, i have not gone into witness protection.
• no, i did not win the lotto and jet off around the world to play angelina jolie to orphans.
• no, i'm not yet well-rested.
• but yes, the auction went well, minus a few glitches and bumps that can be mainly attributed to a rampant virus and bed-ridden volunteers.
• and yes, tartine for breakfast yesterday (especially that amazing fruit bread pudding thing) has put me on the road to recovery!
  

cowbell woman, here i come

i've been sucked into the whirly burly world of baseball. last year was initiation year -- i went to games, fed the players (and yes, i'm somewhat the cause of ricardo rincon's transformation from short and stocky to butterfingers), cheered loud and small, and even went on autograph hunts. during the offseason, i stared longingly at my 2005 roster picture (and trust me, if my eyes had laser beams like superman's, this poster would be long gone) and dreamed of opening day 2006 (of which nobody can go to b/c it's sold out and tix are being sold at ridiculous prices of $150 a ticket!). yes, i'm itching to go to oakland -- who would have thunk?-- and i've even drafted a fantasy team (with some very needed help) and declined two (atrocious) trades. obviously, i'm in over my head. but if you think i'm crazy, think of the people playing fantasy auto racing. now those people need a life.

chew on this

as i've mentioned before, netflix has changed my life. i watch good movies, as opposed to whatever's on, and i don't have to worry about walking the extra block from work to the video store. the downside? i think alphie hates it. perhaps he's passive-aggressive, but using my esp and pet psychic skills (thanks, animal planet), i'm getting the strangest feeling that he hates not only dvd's, but netflix. and i have proof. exhibits a and b:

what not to say

what not to say to your loved one:

your eyes are so green, like the phlegm i just spit up.

ODC, (Not) As Easy as 1-2-3

ODC,(Not) As Easy as 1-2-3

ODC: Program 1
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
March 4, 2006

It’s March, which could only mean one thing. No, not preseason baseball. Or the Oscars. Or my grandmother’s birthday. No, it’s the return of ODC to Yerba Buena Theater with it’s annual Dancing Downtown series. This year marks the company’s 35^th, and to help celebrate, Joanna Berman, former principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet, will be performing in Brenda Way’s “Part of a Longer Story,” scheduled on Program 1 of this three-program series.

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snow what?

snow? in san francisco? i'm so there.

(03-09) 13:33 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco could be in for a dusting of snow.

Forecasters with the National Weather Service said today that as much as an inch of snow could fall on Twin Peaks as a cold storm moves in tonight and Friday morning. The landmark hills are a mere 920 feet above sea level.

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(photo by Hervé de Brabandère)

20 grand

i'm normally a pretty timely person (not including all of that procrastination up until a deadline). in fact, when i have appointments or meetings, i'm more likely early than on time. as of last week, i hadn't gotten a bill for my timely gallbladder removal process, so i decided to call and see what the hold up was. it'd been a month, and while true that february was indeed a shorter month than all other months, i felt that if i needed to refinance my lack of finances, i should do so sooner rather than later. now before the surgery, my hmo had told me i would only have to pay a $300 co-pay, which was relief to my ears. but what do you know. the happy go-lucky finance woman called me back on friday (as i had to call a main number, get transferred to the special finance number, then pick from numbers 1-4 based on the first initial of my last name, then i had to do the hokey pokey and turn myself around....aagh.), she happily told me she was sending me an itemized bill. for $19,500! was my gallbladder really worth that? because really, it wasn't functioning and had no use anymore, so i'd assign it a big whopping $0. but no. all those friendly, cuddly nurses, smiling docs, funny head bonnet, and sleepy medicine all added up to almost $20K. if i had that money, i doubt i'd spend it on a failing organ. instead, i could:

• get 2/3 of a mini cooper.
• go back to school (even waste it on that masters in some-kind-of-history degree i've always wanted).
• have a's season tickets for life. in the bullpen. right next to huston.
  
• quit my job and work for an animal rescue organization (for a year or so) while living in a tiny box equipped with a security system somewhere near 6th and market.
• travel around the world. clockwise. and counterclockwise.
• laser off all that unwanted hair.
  
• buy numbing cream to accompany the lasering.
  
• reapply the hair when the earth starts to freeze over and all hell breaks loose.

i need a sign

two great signs i've seen in the past two weeks, one in tiburon and one on the way back.

first, rent-a-parent personnel services. it's a nanny placement agency, but you'd never know by the name.


second, menopause, the musical. seems like they're dancing about hot flashes and unprotected sex. i think my mom starred in this a couple of years ago (re: hot flashes part)...

ahhhh cc!

email protocol is always evolving; just about year ago, i got in a little spat with my (now former) bosses for personal email. yep, email sent from my personal acct to someone else's. it never touched my work acct. yet because they had mysteriously "found" allusions to this personal email in other people's personal internet dealings, and my email was related to other said persons within the workplace, they felt alarmed and decided to verbally reprimand me. i thought this was a simple matter, yet they seemed determined to wrap their little brains around it until they forced several of us to drink lots of martinis and fried foods and well deep in our sorrows. but enough about that. the point is, written writing rules have been around for eons, but how do we apply these to the digital/technological/al gore-invented-the-internet age?

for instance, lately, i've been trying to figure out what the protocol is for when to cc someone on an email. now, none of my love notes to todd include cc's, unless they're referring to college (cc=connecticut college) obviously. but for work or group emails, when is it appropriate to cc someone? do you do it when they're just semi-involved in a project? or when your to: line is too full? or when that cc-able person isn't the main decision maker? or when someone should be aware of what's going on without having to deal too much with the issue?

and all this is true, but to a point. really. if you have to cc someone (and potentially the same someone) on every email that sputters from your mailbox to someone else's, then is this really cc-ing? then does this cc-ing, orginally meant as a carbon copy, become something else entirely? like some cc in bold and exclamations all around it and feathers dancing around it? perhaps cc stands for coalition of canadians. now that would explain something.