Suzy Says

John & I had dinner last night with our friend Paul. Paul is practically one of the family, and a great guy. He recently became a grandfather for the first time (his son-in-law is a drum technician for the Red Hot Chili Peppers). He is a Vietnam vet (his fellow soldiers used to refer to him as “Grandpa” because he was the oldest in his unit at the ripe old age of 21), a professional cook and sailor. In the summers, he caters for the rich and/or (in)famous in the Hamptons, and in the winter, he could be anywhere. Last winter, he sailed the Caribbean. This winter, he’s planning to cook on a boat that takes people diving in the Turks & Caicos. So it was great to catch up with him and hear his latest schemes, including one for spending a month in Kabul to buy rugs to sell to the rich folks in the Hamptons.

We had dinner at Le Petit Robert, the charming restaurant affiliated with the French bakery which is the jewel of the neighborhood. I was the bad one and had a Kir Royale to start (it was perfect, right down to the slender lemon peel in the glass), and also had a wicked glass of Sancerre with dinner. John and Paul stuck to Pellegrino to showcase my vice. John had roast chicken and frites, those perfect, tender-crisp fries rarely, if ever, found outside their native France. Paul and I both had PEI mussels in a gorgeous wine broth as an entr&eacutee, but he had foie gras to start (I didn’t say anything, even though it’s right next door to veal in cruelty food), and I had a roasted beet salad with ch&egravevre and spiced, candied walnuts to start.

Just in case you aren’t already shocked by these culinary excesses, I also had dessert, and so did Paul. He had chocolate fondant with espresso ice cream and a tiny cup of lethal espresso, and I had, at last, cannell&eacutes de Bordeaux with tart cherries, cr&egraveme anglaise, and I might as well admit it, a glass of Sauternes, which was liquid sunshine. Aren’t you positively stuffed just reading this?

So Paul’s on his way back to the Hamptons, and his latest schemes. We should see him again in the fall to hear about his latest adventures. In the meantime, I think I’ll go and try to walk off some of that dinner.

Loose ends:

1. I did pay the $57. *ducking* But I sent it registered mail, kept a copy of the check, and ordered a copy from the bank showing that it was cashed, so hopefully that’s the end of it. It just goes to show that time is more important to me than money. Or that I am really, really lazy. Or all of the above.

2. We are going to Amsterdam. Me, my sis Megan, and our one and only niece, the one and only Cat. Cat’s mother, aka my older sister Beth, says that they can get much cheaper airfares if they book it there, so I’m leaving it up to her. We’ll be there September 20-23, and staying here, about two minutes’ walk from where Alice lives. When John and I stayed there two years ago (two years ago!), we had the Rembrandt Room.

3. I bought the iBook! It should arrive next week, which will give me time to figure out how to use it here or there, as Dr. Seuss would say. Also the DVD player will be a welcome distraction on the plane. And I can update you all on my adventures.

Here’s your love/hate of the week!

Love/Hate for Friday, May 10, 2002
Morning

I am a morning person, a creature loathed by many. Not that I’m annoyingly perky or chatty in the a.m., especially pre-caffeine, but I do naturally wake up early, even on the weekends. I’m a lark, and John’s an owl. He’d rather stay up late and get up late, whereas I, though a city girl to the core, prefer keeping farmer’s hours, going to bed early and getting up early. It’s completely amazing if I stay up past 10.

If I’m starting a project at work, or at home, for that matter, I’d rather start it in the morning when I feel fresh and what little brain power I have is as good as it’s going to get. By the afternoon, my physical and mental energy are beginning to wane and I’d rather do things that require less cognitive thought. If you look at the time on my blog entries, they are almost all written before noon.

I love being awake when the day is new. During the week, I leave the house early enough that the streets of the city are lightly populated. I can often walk ten blocks without seeing another person, other than those in cars. I can hear the birds singing, and the sun is just about rising, so the sky is pink, lavender, and pale blue, with clouds that would have inspired Constable. The first cable cars of the day pass me on my way to work, the brakemen waving and saying hello. It’s a magical time of day, before the streets get crowded, the air full of exhaust from cars, and suburbanites start hemorrhaging out of the BART stations.

On the weekends, I’m usually awake by 6, often woken up by birds singing in the tree outside our bedroom window, or less romantically, by our Siamese cat Jack, either informing me that it’s breakfast time in her opinion, or more subtly by playing with the blinds until their clacking against the window frame wakes me up. After feeding the ravening hordes, I take my coffee and breakfast up on the roof and sit on the sunny deck overlooking the Bay. To the west, I can see the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Palace of Fine Arts. I can see boats on the Bay, and the neighborhood secret gardens that can’t be seen from the street. To the east, the pastel buildings climb Russian Hill. It’s surprisingly peaceful up there in the morning, with hummingbirds buzzing by or the wild parrots flying overhead. I wouldn’t miss that just to sleep!

Is it me? Is it San Francisco? Or has the art of customer service vanished along with the art of conversation, the art of letter-writing, and the notion of politeness? It certainly seems to be as extinct as a dinosaur in my life.

In order to complain, I will yet again have to make a somewhat embarrassing confession, but I won’t let that stop me. I have been seeing a therapist to help me through the grieving process and also to help me address an issue that has become magnified since my father’s death: my fear of flying. I haven’t flown since I came home from my father’s funeral in London just days before 9/11. Then there was 9/11. I bailed on a conference in Dallas in January because I just couldn’t face flying. That’s when I realized that I needed some help with these problems.

So I have been going once a week, and it has helped. My therapist suggested that I get a prescription for anti-anxiety medication to take with me when I fly. If all the other tools I have fail me, I know I have the medication and can take it if I need to. I suspect just knowing I have it will be enough. But my therapist is a PhD, not an M.D., so I had to get a prescription from a doctor.

I haven’t been to the doctor in years (I know, I know, shut up and let me complain). I called to make an appointment. They asked what for.

Me: A check-up.

Them: What kind?

Me: How many kinds are there?

Them (unhelpfully): Lots.

Me: Well, this is more complicated than I thought.

Them (suspiciously): You’ll have to tell me what you need.

So I did. They said the first appointment was in 6 weeks. SIX WEEKS. I was immediately convinced that if I had said something else, I would have gotten in sooner, but it was too late by then. The day finally arrived yesterday, and I went to the office, waited in line to check in, and was told that my doctor no longer worked at this office, she worked out of one on the other side of town. The receptionist said, “She (meaning the person I made the appointment with) should have told you that.” I said, “Yeah, she should have. I waited SIX WEEKS to get in here and now you’re telling me that I can’t see the doctor.” The receptionist said that all the other doctors in the practice were fully booked for that day, and indeed, the reception area was packed with people with the hangdog expression of those about to be measured and weighed and told they were 5 feet tall and 200 pounds, right before exchanging their clothes for a paper smock open in the back.

I just stormed out and called a cab.

In the meantime, John had finally had it with the idiots who have been supposedly repairing our iMac for the past two weeks. They admitted at last that only one guy could do it, and he is coming back from vacation today and we should have it by Monday. If they had told us this TWO WEEKS AGO when we first asked them to fix it, we would have gotten a refund and shipped it to Brian and would have had it back by now, better than new. John just lost it with them. Two weeks of their screwing us over, not calling us back, not doing a damn thing, despite the fact that we had paid almost $400 to have it repaired two months ago. I’m sorry, but we’re not in the wrong here. And I cannot understand why they aren’t totally embarrassed about what a crappy job they have done and why they aren’t falling all over themselves apologizing.

The doctor’s receptionist didn’t apologize, either. Maybe that’s a lost art, too.

For some reason, my boots decided to behave like those belonging to a kid in an E. Nesbit story*, and came untied no fewer than three times on my way to work this morning. This works out to one or the other (or both) coming untied about every half mile. I should have made a charming picture, hiking my black velvet skirt above my knees to tie my boots, but due to the sturdy functionality of my legs, I didn’t. They have always been a horrible disappointment to me, so very very un-Chanel. I wish it was the bad old 1960’s again, when doctors merrily prescribed speed as a diet aid and you could go to clinics in Switzerland where they pounded and massaged your legs to Chanel-ness, &agrave la Edie Sedgwick, whose natural legs were as sturdy as mine until they got Swiss.

But to the question of the day: when I’m in London, should I go to Amsterdam to see my old friend Alice, or have Alice, who lives there, come and see me in London? My sister Megan and I will hit the road pretty much as soon as we get there, with 3 days in Devon followed by 3 days in Suffolk. These are driving trips and my stepmother will be driving. But that’s it as far as running around goes. My older sister and her family will come to London, so we won’t have to go to Melton Mowbray, where they live and which my niece claims is really boring. I just can’t decide if it’s too much running around if I go to Amsterdam. But Alice is having her kitchen remodelled later this month and I want to see it. Also, my sister Megan is travelling with me and she has never been to Amsterdam, and it is a world of fun. So vote, please, and help the indecisive decide.

Candi’s back!! So go on over and tell Mrs. Candi how much you missed her. Oh, and you can read about her tropical wedding and honeymoon adventures, too.

I think Candi and Brian should move to San Francisco. Not just because it would make my life so much more fun, even though it would, but because they could make a total killing repairing Macs. Probably even enough to actually live here. There appear to be no Brians here, despite the fact that Apple was invented here and has its headquarters here. So you would think there would be several Brians to choose from, but no.

You can probably tell that our iMac is still in the shop. The guys who are supposed to be fixing it are as phone-challenged as ever, so John has called them several times over the past few days with increasing acrimony. Finally, he told them that if they can’t get it to us by the end of the day today, they have to give us a refund (for the $370 they charged to “fix” it in February) and we’ll take it to someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. In actual fact, we’ll probably Fed Ex it to Brian. Accept no substitutes.

Since we have been Mac-less twice in the last two months, I have come up with a typically Suzy solution: buy an iBook, so that if/when our iMac has another hissy fit, we won’t be helpless. Oooh, maybe I could bring it with me to England in September and keep you posted on my adventures over there. Isn’t it amazing how I can always find a way to justify spending money, especially on things that are both cute and fun?

Happy Cinco de Mayo, todos! This holiday is celebrated in Mexico and Mexican communities in the spirit in which we celebrate the 4th of July, although it’s not Mexican Independence Day. This holiday is more along the lines of Bastille Day in France, celebrating the Mexican victory over the French at Puebla, Mexico in 1862. The French had invaded Mexico, and on this day, a Mexican army of 4,000 defeated a French army of more than 8,000. They were joined soon afterwards by an American army which helped the Mexicans to expel the French forever, so it was a joint victory. And like our 4th of July, it’s a day of national pride.

And in family pride, my brother Jonathan was voted a full member of the Albion Little River Fire Department on Friday!! I’m so proud! And while I’m bragging, I’ll tell you that he also got the highest score in 15 years when he took the test for driving the big firetruck. He wasted no time after getting voted in on Friday, since he answered a call on Saturday about 5 miles south on Highway 128, driving the big red truck. And what do you know? When you honk the horn on a firetruck, people pull over in a hurry, the way they should anyway. Way to go, bro!

This morning’s soundtrack: Elvis Costello’s Get Happy. The fact that all the music I have on minidisc is at least 15 years old makes me feel old myself. Maybe the music of one’s youth always sounds best. And with my short attention span and hair-trigger boredom reflex, songs that are 3 minutes or less are perfect. No long guitar solos for me.

With one thing and another, John didn’t have time to do a love/hate this week. Instead, I will reveal the schizophrenic contents of our refrigerator.

It appears that one’s upbringing, however resisted at the time, can still have lasting effects. Indeed, one often reverts to the very things that were rebelled against. My parents limited how much TV we watched, so we basically didn’t watch any, except when we were at friends’ houses. We lived in the country and played outside a lot, and when we were inside, we read or our parents read to us. Our cottage in Maine, where we spent the summers, didn’t have a TV or a phone, just a radio. I never got used to violence on TV or in the movies, so I still find it shocking and upsetting and often can’t look, though my tolerance level has risen since I married John.

Whereas John stayed up late watching horror movies with his father, with the condition that he had to be able to get up and go to school the next day. If he couldn’t, even once, no more late-night movie festivals. This turned out to be good practice for getting up very early for work as a grown-up. And he can watch (and read) scary and disgusting and horrifying things that would give me nightmares. It’s the early conditioning, I’m convinced of it.

The same goes for food. Just think of Proust and his madeleine. At my house, Dad made a great dinner every night, and we always ate together and talked about our day. I also learned which forks to use and so on. My parents gave us whole grain bread, no soda, no junk food. So at my friends’ houses, I loved eating Wonder bread, potato chips, cake made from cake mix, and other delicacies that could not be found at our house. But as an adult, I wouldn’t dream of eating that crap. For a few months, I worked across the street from the Wonder bread factory, and the smell was quite vomitable, as Peter Lorre would say.

But John was raised on and still loves that crap. So our refrigerator has a split personality:

Suzy
Alvarado Street bakery multi-grain bread (with the cute kitty on the label).

Sugarless jam (usually marmalade).

Odwalla tangerine juice when in season.

Fruit (strawberries, grapes, etc.).

Variations of mustard: Mendocino mustard, Maille dijon with tarragon, seedy Grey Poupon, Dijon with cassis (blackcurrant).

Cornichons (tiny French pickles).

Liter bottles of Calistoga sparkling mineral water, various flavors (lemon is my least favorite). I really do think I drink enough water every day. And I buy organic wherever possible. Hey, my father got DDT banned. I was brought up to be environmentally conscious and can’t help myself.

John

White bread (not actually Wonder bread, but Wonderbread-esque).

Creamy peanut butter.

Aerosol cheese (but to be fair, he also has excEt 5 year old Canadian cheddar).

Stashes of Canadian delicacies (Crunchie bars, Maltesers, Coffee Crisp, Aero bars — further proof of early conditioning). I never got a taste for cheap, waxy milk chocolate as used by Cadbury and Hershey. Give me Baci or Valrhona or forget it. Milk does not belong in chocolate.

French’s squeeze bottle bright yellow mustard; Heinz ketchup (secretly lusts after green squeeze bottle ketchup).

Vlasic pre-sliced dill pickles.

Soda (ginger ale, Coke, Lemon Pepsi, Dr. Pepper), never diet. Ever.

You may be wondering why we refrigerate bread. I have one word for you: Jack. If we leave it out, anywhere within jumping distance, she’ll tear open the wrapper and eat it. Yes, just bread. And yes, she is a cat.

Although our trip to England is still a few months away, I have already started my shopping list. For some reason, there are wonderful things that can only be obtained there, or in Commonwealth (or formerly Commonwealth) countries. So on my annual visits to London, one of my first stops is always Boot’s, where I can (and do) get:

My favorite French mascara (in brun &eacutecorce, or en anglais, bark brown — everything sounds much, much better in French)

My favorite French eye cream (it really works — “promises kept” is their slogan, and they aren’t kidding).

Blackcurrant flavored glucose tablets for my diabetic brother-in-law (why is blackcurrant not a popular flavor in the US when it is so utterly delicious?).

Not to mention:

The magic pain reliever Aspro Clear, tablets which you put in water, where they become a fizzy, lemony drink which zaps headaches.

Paracetamol (UK version of Tylenol) with codeine, available over the counter. Codeine content about half of what is in France, though.

The magical Waspeze, which quells the itchiest itch and the bitiest bites.

Fortunately, all of these items are small, so they fit into my carry-on bag. And if you’d like some of these luxuries, or others not listed, e-mail me and I’ll mail them to you from London!

Congratulations to Candi and Brian, who are getting married today! Wishing you both a beautiful, joyful wedding day and a lifetime of love and happiness!

I didn’t get picked for jury duty! Yay! But the system is as mysterious to me as ever. On Friday, there we all were in the waiting pen, and there was an announcement that there was one case scheduled for that day. So they’d let us know as soon as the judge and lawyers were ready for us. Then they warned us that if jury selection could not be completed today, we’d have to come back on Monday to finish it. Two hours later, there was another announcement saying that they wouldn’t be ready to see us that day, so thank you and you’re done for a year.

My question is: what were they doing for those two hours and why weren’t they ready for us? It seems to me that whatever they had to talk about or arrange should have done before coralling us in the pen. Maybe Becky can enlighten us?

At least I’m done for a year or more.

But our iMac is still swooning, so instead of being incommunicado (incommunicada?) during the working day, I’m incommunicado/a after work, when real life begins, which is even more annoying.

And to cap off the annoyance, we haven’t been able to get the repair guys to pick it up and start repairing it. John dropped by their store on Friday with the receipts showing that they had repaired it two months ago to the day, and telling them that it now had the very same problem (black screen, but everything else working fine). They said they’d call about having someone pick it up on Saturday.

John called them three times on Saturday, and nothing. Then we got a call on Sunday afternoon, the purpose of which seemed to be to confirm that there was something wrong with the computer, but not to set up a time to pick it up or anything. So John’s going to call again today.

You would think they’d be kissing our asses and apologizing for doing such a lame job in the first place, but nothing. Unbelievable.

It’s not even 7 am yet, and the day is already a total pain in the ass, even if it is Friday.

I have jury duty at 1:30 this afternoon, so I will almost certainly be there until 5:00. Following that, I’m having dinner with my aunt, the undisputed queen of the insult lightly veiled as a compliment, though it can be entertaining to observe this art form if I’m in the right state of mind, but I’m not.

I am convinced that I’ll be chosen for a jury at the 11th hour and it will be a Beowulf of a trial: long, boring, and a requirement. I am further convinced that I will have to keep up the manic pace of this week, getting to work at 6 am and working as long as I can before heading off to Skankville for jury duty. However, my bosses appear to think that I am going to sit on a beach and am slacking. Hmmm.

This morning, we discovered our iMac was in a coma, despite having had an extended and expensive hospital stay exactly two months ago. So no e-mails and no blogging for me until it revives, if it does.

Then, just before we left the house, we couldn’t find Hannah. Our routine is to give the cats treats before we leave for work, so they are busy eating and don’t give us the “How could you?” faces. I can never make them understand that we have to go to work to keep them in food and litter.

Anyway, we couldn’t find Hannah and spent about 15 minutes looking for her. Then she magically appeared from her mystery hiding place as if she’d been there all the time. So then we were late, and the whole day is going to be a rush of annoyances leading to the ultimate annoyances of jury duty and passive-aggressive dinner. Bleah.

But here’s the love/hate for the week. See y’all Monday (I hope)!

The ways of government bureaucracy are truly mysterious. After a hard day of sitting on my ass in defense of the justice system (I still haven’t gotten out of what my brother calls “the waiting pen” at the courthouse, and am beginning to take it personally, especially since I am really better accessorized than most of what are supposed to be my peers), I found my new driver’s license in the mail.

Though pleased to get it, since it expires, as I hope I do not, on my birthday about 5 weeks hence, and to note that I am now lighter than advertised, I am also surprised that they sent it at all. I’m still battling with them over that ticket I paid over 2 years ago and which they claim I haven’t paid at all, yet they continue to renew my license and my registration. You’d think that they would refuse to do either of those things until I paid up, but as I have learned in the few short years I have been dealing with the DMV, logic does not apply.

At this point, I’m seriously considering just paying the $57. Although the powers that be feel that a juror’s time is worth about $10 a day, I think I’m worth more than $57 a day. So rather than take a day off, go to the DMV, wait in line interminably and try to explain it to someone who barely speaks English and doesn’t give a crap (a lethal combo in a government employee), I’d really rather pay the $57.

Though that does mean giving in to the system, and probably doing exactly what they want. Not to mention giving in to one of my myriad character flaws, which is that I’d rather give money than time in most cases. In fact, I’d probably pay not to go have jury duty. There’s a whole new money-making scheme for the powers that be.

I’ll have plenty of time to contemplate the pros and cons of the moral cave while sitting in the pen. And it will be good practice if I ever do get on a jury.

The courthouse was further from my office than I thought. It took me half an hour to walk there, and I walk pretty fast. Good thing, because it is in a skanky, skanky neighborhood where a girl feels a little nervous walking by herself. I was positively relieved to get in the building, with a passing thought of gratitude that I was not, as others were, ascending the steps in handcuffs, or taking the elevator whose sole purpose is to ferry people in and out of the county jail, which I guess is in the same building.

Maybe boredom isn’t so bad after all (especially when I consider the kind of things that go on in Oz).

So it was essentially a wasted day. Hung around in the big room with nothing to do other than read and ponder the human condition. Spent the lunch break on the steps returning phone calls. Back in the room for another hour, sent home. Called after 6:00 last night to learn that I’m due back there at 11 this morning which at least gives me a couple of hours to get some work done. Stay tuned.

I have jury duty all week. I wonder if it would be less horrifying if they could come up with something less obligation-sounding than “duty”. “Service” is just as bad, and possibly worse. Maybe even French fails to make this one sound like a good idea.

If the last time I served is any indication of what to expect this time, I won’t be able to post much, since I’ll be in a big room with no internet access all day and by the time I get home I’ll be on my last nerve.

I wouldn’t mind it so much if they had a case on hand and we got called into the courtroom to be potential jurors. Let’s say you have 10 cases going before the court today. Call 300 or 400 people, examine them and pick your juries. But the way it seems to work is you wait and wait endlessly in a big room with nothing to do but read, despair, and be appalled by your fellow human beings for up to 8 hours. It’s like waiting for a flight that never leaves, only without the bars and duty free shopping.

Since boredom is my biggest fear after Death, I’m dreading this week.

Just back from spending the day with our friend Carrie and her daughter Miranda. Miranda was an unwitting guest at our Thanksgiving dinner (she was still having the finishing touches applied before being born on January 3), but I hadn’t seen her in real life before today.

Miranda is the kind of baby who makes people have more than one kid, or have one in the first place. She has big, angelic blue eyes and seems to be completely happy with the entire world. The only noises she made the whole time I was there were giggling and cooing. She smiles a lot.

So Carrie and I were able to have hours of sitting peacefully in her backyard chatting. Carrie lives in Oakland, and in her backyard there are lemon trees, grapefruit trees, and palm trees. There were hummingbirds, butterflies, and dragonflies. Jasmine was blooming. Maybe all this was keeping Miranda entertained.

Carrie shares a beautiful house with three or four roommates, though the house has been sold and they all have to move in about six weeks. It’s a Craftsman house, built around 1910 or a little earlier. It is huge (7 bedrooms), with lots of fireplaces, porches, original copper light fixtures and original tilework, etc. It’s gorgeous, and charming. I have to admit that I felt much more envy for the house than the baby. Which is probably why I have a mortgage and four cats, instead of four roommates and a baby, however beguiling.

It’s the first anniversary (birthday?) of my blog today. You can blame the inimitable Candi, of the late, lamented Spitfire!, who thought it would be a good idea to unleash my trivialities upon an unsuspecting world, and even hosted me for the first few months. Thanks, girl! You are the bestest.

Those of you who have been following my adventures on and off my blog know that 2001 was the worst year of my life. Almost exactly a year ago, my 70 year old mother, in poor health after battling breast cancer, was abandoned by her second husband. He is half her age and a Marine. So when he abandoned her, he also abandoned the US government. Unlike the US government, however, my mother is now penniless and subsisting on welfare.

In August, my beloved father, who was also one of my closest friends, my true companion and confidant, died suddenly in his native London. This was a staggering blow to our entire family, and we are all still struggling with the magnitude of our loss.

And to round off the year, on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, John was laid off after almost 10 years in the same firm.

But good things have come from these tragedies. We have survived them all. I have been comforted, supported, and loved through all this not only by my family, but my friends (you know who you are) and my father’s friends. I have grown closer to my older sister and my mother. John is happier doing a contract job than he was at his old job. The cats are healthy and happy. John and I still have each other. And I am so very lucky to have so many people who care about me.

Borrowing an idea from the fabulous Becky, who earlier this week celebrated two years of entertaining and enlightening the public, here are some of my favorite entries from my past year. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Sunday Morning

Paris Paradox

En Route

Nearly New Monet

Linguistic Annoyances

Memorial Day

Cleo vs. the Pigeons

Marilyn’s Birthday

Father’s Day

Seen & Heard

Peaches

Beaujolais Nouveau

Love/Hate for Friday, April 19, 2002

Travelling Light

I think that women carrying around tons of stuff in their handbags is a myth. So is the notion of men waiting around for women to get ready — at least at our house. I travel light. I have often gone to Europe for three weeks with one carry-on bag, which in turn means not having to wait up to an hour at baggage claim, surely the longest part of any trip. So while those poor souls are gazing anxiously at the baggage carrousel, I’m already halfway to where I’m going, vacation started.

All you have to do is bring three or four mix and match outfits you really like and wash things while you’re on the road. I usually wear my nicest (or heaviest to carry) outfit on the plane because airline staff tend to be nicer to you if you look like you belong in Business or First, even if travelling coach. One of the advantages of being a girl is that we are allowed a handbag as well as the carry-on bag. So bring a really big one and have your make-up, jewelry, etc. in there, along with tickets and entertainment (books, magazines, minidisc player). I never bring extra pairs of shoes, just the ones I’m wearing, and roll all the clothes as tight as I can to get them in a case that’s carry-on size. Then have them pressed at your hotel once you get where you’re going. If you buy too much stuff while you’re away, mail it home. You won’t have to carry it and when it arrives it will be almost as good as a present.

I also get ready fast in the mornings, whether at home or abroad. I am always waiting for John before we can leave for work in the morning, and put in contact lenses and do my face and hair before he’s dressed, which is one of life’s enduring mysteries to me. What takes him so long?

And what the hell is he carrying around with him? Here is the entire contents of my handbag today:

1. Wallet
2. Address book
3. Sunglasses
4. Keys
5. Minidisc player
6. Today’s shade of lipstick in case touch-ups are needed.

That’s it. Basically, I only bring things that I’m going to use that day. Compare it with the mammoth list compiled by John. I hate carrying around tons of junk I’m not going to use. What’s the point? Travel light, move fast!

96 years ago, the buildings I live and work in hadn’t been built yet. On this day in 1906, the city was awakened at 5:12 a.m. by an earthquake that measured 8.25 on the modern Richter scale (compared to 6.70 for the 1989 quake). Three thousand people were killed, 225,000 were injured, and most of the city burned. Though the quake itself lasted only a minute, it is still considered one of the worst natural disasters of our time.

Here’s how the Financial District, where I work, looked after the quake.
I would have been a little luckier in where I live: the great mansions on my street, particularly the Haas-Lilienthal House, three blocks away, survived. Legend has it that the H-L house’s inhabitants stood on their balcony and watched the city burn. The house preserves a crack in the wall from that disastrous Spring day almost a century ago.

People who don’t live here often ask how we can, when there have been the two “Big Ones” in the past 100 years, countless little ones, and more to come. I wonder the same thing about people who live in places that are routinely flooded, or destroyed by hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards. I guess the answer is that you live with the natural disaster you can handle.

I don’t worry every day about the big quake that is supposed to send California back into the ocean from whence it came, though I know there’s the possibility. We keep a good supply of bottled water, candles, canned food on hand at home, and have a plan for what to do if it strikes while we’re at work.

So while we know it could happen, it’s at the back of our minds, not the front. For us, it’s worth the small risk to live in such a beautiful, temperate, tolerant place, where 96 years later, it looks like this at the dawn of a new Spring day.

I love to visit my brother and sister, who live in the country, though I can’t imagine living there all the time. Being somewhere you can’t hail a cab tends to make me nervous. They live more than five miles from their village, and when you get there, this is all it is:

Post office
Hardware store
General store (which rocks), where you can also buy necessities like gas for your car and propane.

That’s it. So if you run out of milk and the store is closed, you better hope your neighbors have some. But there are definitely nice things about living in such an isolated place:

1. You can blast your stereo as loud as you want and no-one complains, because there’s no-one close enough to hear it.

2. You can’t hear other people (or their stereos) at all, just the wind in the trees, the birds, and the crickets and frogs (I live with people above and below me, so this is big for me).

3. You can let your cats out in perfect safety, which also means no litter boxes.

4. You can sit in your garden in the sun, or lie in your hammock reading, with hummingbirds buzzing around.

On the other hand, you have to drive 45 minutes to get to the closest Safeway, DMV, etc. And things happen that would never happen in an urban setting:

1. Waking up to discover corpses neatly placed beside your bed (mice, moles, bats, birds), prizes from your cats’ nocturnal hunting. Interesting fact: the cats never eat the moles, because their fur grosses cats out. Something about how it grows the wrong way. But they still kill them anyway. My sis and her husband have a corpse rule: whoever finds it first deals with it. I would immediately develop even worse eyesight than I have now.

2. Waking up to discover that there was frost last night, and you’re out of firewood, which is how you heat your house, so you have to go and chop wood and then build the fire and then jump back into bed until it’s warm enough to venture out from under the covers.

3. Waking up to discover that deer have eaten everything in your garden. Country dwellers do not find deer the gentle, charming Bambis that city folks do. Rather, they see them as relentless, evil landscape destroyers. Apparently deer don’t nibble a few leaves here and there, they ravage everything unless your garden is draped in deer netting.

4. Waking up to discover that it has rained in the night, and you left your car window rolled down, so your (red Italian leather) wallet is soaked. My sister leaves her keys in the car, and often leaves her wallet on the front seat of the car so she won’t forget it, so that’s how that happened. Not only does she never lock her car doors, she never locks her house doors. The house doors don’t even have locks. Can you imagine?

So when you wake up in the country, you never know what you’ll find.

I hate the DMV. I equally hate the Department of Parking and Traffic. Here’s why.

In January, 2000, out of the goodness of my heart, I lent my adorable car Josephine to my friend Paul. He parked it across the street from his uncle’s place, and failed to realize that it was street cleaning day. $33 ticket. He also forgot to mention it to me (not on purpose, he’s just like that), and I got a notice in the mail in March informing me of the ticket’s existence. So I paid it. The DMV cashed it two days later. End of story, right?

Wrong.

When my registration was due in 2001, the DMV informed me that I hadn’t paid the ticket, and it was now $57. I got copies of the check, and sent them with letters to the DMV and the DPT. Foolishly, I thought that would be the end of it.

Wrong.

They each mailed the letters back to me with handwritten notes on them, each instructing me to call the other department. So I did. Guess what? The flunkeys who answered the phone each instructed me to call the other department.

Ditto this year. The exact same thing. Finally, the DMV person told me to come down there and bring all the paperwork with me.

Me: “So what you’re saying is I have to take time off from work and come down there to fix your mistake.”

DMV: “We’re sorry, ma’am, but you will have to come down here.”

Etc.

My brother tried to clear it up at the DMV where he lives, but they said the City & County of San Francisco was its own incorporated thing and they unfortunately couldn’t do anything about that. Ugh. Not surprisingly, I still haven’t called them and I still can’t stand the thought of it. I’m going to have to go and buy a really big can of patience somewhere before I go. But considering that I have jury duty next week, I think I’ll store up what little patience I have for that.