Straight Men of CL, Get It Together

After geeking out on Parallels earlier this evening, I figured I'd squander spend some time delighting in the latest M4W posts on Craigslist, which are always useful as amusement if not actually as a tool for finding potential mates.

I'm actually a pretty big fan of CL personals, and have had decent luck with posting my own ad and meeting even remotely suitable suitors as a result. But reading the Men Seeking Women ads often makes me shake my head and wonder what the guys posting might be thinking. In version 1 of an ad I placed earlier this year, I gave a run-down of ads I was unlikely to respond to, accompanied by reasons why. That was swiftly flagged, either because it was somehow truly offensive (though I can't quite fathom that), or because I had directly quoted the titles of actual ads.

But anyway, the point of that whole exercise was to attempt (if in vain) to explain to the straight men posting on CL why so many of them--by their very own admissions--received few or no replies to their ads. Of course, there's no way I can speak for an entire chunk of the population, and it's entirely possible that there are women in the Bay Area who would adore these fellows if only the two sides could manage to connect.

So let the record show that I am not claiming to be the voice of the straight, single portion of my gender. I simply want to help clue some of you guys in about why your Inboxes may not be bursting with replies.

To wit:

• If you're going to post an image, why make it an image of flowers, or the moon, or Maccu Piccu, or a jukebox, or a platter of shrimp, or Lake Tahoe? I know women do it too, but to a far lesser degree (and still, that doesn't make it right). And perhaps I'm far more shallow than most, but I care what the people I date look like. Peruvian ruins and seafood, notsomuch. At least not in this context.
• Also on the picture front, cutting your body off at your head, even if the rest of said body is bare (and especially if the rest of said body is wearing a full suit, as was one fellow in an ad I saw tonight), suggests either that you're exceedingly shy or that there's something less appealing about what was excised from the shot. Jaded people like myself assume the latter.
  
• Perhaps consider it wise not to broadly insult the women who respond to your ad, or the ones who might be reading your ad, by claiming that they're hopeless/too picky/too unattractive/too picky/did I mention too picky? One post currently up begins by asking, "Why are all women in Search of Brad Pitt [sic on the lack of question mark and the interesting capitalization]," then goes on to wonder, " What about all the non tall white kind, is there any hope, maybe not..." before noting a few lines down that "Theres a price for everything. yet what I'm seeking is missing, and the ones that respond are even more hopeless, than 1 would imagine." I can only say, dude, that the last time I checked, Brad Pitt was also white, and that most women in their right minds wouldn't reply to this post and risk being added to the list of "more hopeless, than 1 would imagine."
• Please, please, please stop using "I'm bored" (or, more commonly, "Im bored" or "IM BOOOOOORRREEED!") as an opening gambit. Please.
• This tactic may not do you any favors: "It may sound suspect,but not sure of my status with my previous girlfriend." Yup, "suspect" might cover it, as might "like a horrific idea for me to be posting this ad."
• Finally (the list could go on, but I'm tired), posting the same ad multiple times in the span of a day or two (albeit possibly with different titles) suggests a desperation you might not intend. Or perhaps you do intend it, in which case I'm here to gently suggest that desperation is unlikely to send the ladies flocking. Sometimes on CL, you get what you pay for, no matter how often you post.
  

Tax-Related Sorrows, Drowning of

At long, long last, I've finished my taxes. Not having quite twigged to the wisdom of handing that horrifically odious task off to someone who actually knows what he or she is doing, I spent a truly phenomenal amount of time over the past week dealing with QuickBooks, TurboTax, and hundreds of pieces of paper (albeit very organized pieces of paper). And though I'm happy to be done now, I'm not happy to have discovered just how much the US Treasury will suck out of me within the next ten days. Where that significant sum will come from is something of a puzzle.

It's good, then, that I have people like Erfert around to make me laugh hard enough to snort, and thus to make me forget for at least a while that I owe the government approximately the cost of a secondary human organ. (What does a spleen go for these days, anyway?)

We went out last evening for cocktails, catching up, and a gigantic mound of fried (or baked--but really, same diff) cheese. As always, we copiously toasted Our Good Friend Booze, and at some point decided that it was time to rewrite "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" as a paean to the soothing effects of a good cocktail. (Yes, yes: I realize that tomorrow is Easter, and that this verges on--if is not blatantly--blasphemy, but hey, lighten up.)

As we parted ways, Erfert promised she would put her wordsmithing powers to the task of creating a hymn. And damn if she didn't do precisely that, with aplomb, elan, and other en-vowelled adjectives. I can't keep this to myself, and so, with no further ado, please enjoy the fruits of her labor:

(Note: In case you've forgotten the tune, you can refresh your memory -- and sing along -- at the following site: http://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh526.sht -- and don't ask me what a ".sht" file is -- I only work here. Another note: I am pleased to report that this site lets you play the tune using a piano, organ, or bells. Check it out!)

1. What a friend we have in Boozes:
ale and wine and gin and beer!
What a priv-i-lege to drink them
And know unmitigated cheer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
the proverbial dog's hair.

2. Have we tri-als and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
For we can always have a beer.
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Boozes know our every weakness;
And like true friends they're always there.

3. Are we weak and heavy laden,
cumbered with a load of care?
(If we're saying things like “cumbered”
you know we're really on a tear!)
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Do they mock your Christmas shoes?
O, take heart poor lonely tippler;
You'll always find a friend in Booze!

*************************************

(About the Christmas shoes: don't ask.)

I blame Windows

Or QuickBooks. Or the fact that my mind had gone numb from the lack of intellectual rigor involved in entering expense info into the aforementioned financial program. Or my innate clumsiness.

Whatever the cause, all I know is that as I slogged through the process of reconciling my 2006 expenses last night (yes, I still have not done my taxes, and yes, I'm supposed to be organized and shit), I managed to tip the glass of water next to me on the desk directly onto my laptop. I was, of course, out of my chair in a moment to move the dear little MacBook to dry ground, to pour the liquid from the keyboard, to grab handfuls of towels from the kitchen so I could mop up the water spreading rapidly across the desk and cascading onto the floor.

And in the midst of all of this--again, blame it on any of the factors above--I somehow managed not to think, Hmm, perhaps I should shut this little sucker down. Because even though there was a flare of unusual brightness ebbing and flowing in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, I had been in the QuickBooks zone, dammit, and once I'm out, forget it. So I thought I'd try to stay.

But I called Isaac and left a message seeking advice, and his reply via voicemail was unmistakeable: "Em, turn it off NOW, unplug it, take out the battery, and make sure everything is absolutely dry or you could fry the motherboard." I like my motherboard as is, thanks, so I took his advice and wound up spending the better part of an hour ministering to this little machine with a hairdryer set on low.

That gave me time to think. So I thought, hey, it's sort of like taking tender care of someone you love who's sick, like that passage from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye I always find so striking. Then I thought, God help me that I can even compare blowdrying my laptop to caring for the sick--my interpersonal skills can't be that much in decline.

But they're not, of course. I think it's just that what bubbled up last night, hard on the heels of the desire not to see an expensive piece of electronic equipment give up the ghost because I can't drink and enter data at the same time, was a sort of innate desire to care. And at that moment, what could I care for but my wet laptop?

Damn if that doesn't sound like perhaps the most dorkwad and socially inept thing I could say, though I don't mean it to be. What I mean is actually something much sappier: that there's something in me (and, yes, allow me to extrapolate wildly: in most of us) that's just hard-wired to nurture someone, something, somehow. Take a Someone out of that equation and you're left to put your energies elsewhere--which is how you start to ooze down the slippery slope of emotional investment in your laptop screen's well-being.

I hope I can slow that fall, at least, lest I start expressing serious concern about the smudges on my once lily white wrist pad.

Duty

Yes, yes, yes: it's part of being an American citizen, of living in a democratic society, and so on and so forth. I appreciate the civic responsibility aspect of jury duty, but that doesn't mean it's not phenomenally and achingly boring.

I made my way this afternoon through the metal detector at 850 Bryant, through a bag inspection by a bitter, bitter police officer who barked out, "For those of you stupid enough to have missed the 20 signs posted on the wall, open your bag for inspection as you approach me, and don't even think of putting your bag on the table until the person in front of you has left, and I cannot believe I have to deal with this same idiocy every single day." Up in the jury room, my fellow citizens and I were subjected to a video on the merits of jury duty, followed by some waiting, then some more waiting, until many of us were called off to various and sundry courtrooms.

Then it was downstairs again, and into court with a fellow who may hold the title of World's Slowest Speaking Judge. He seems reasonable enough, and I have no doubt of the importance of the info he shared with us, but man alive, it took what felt like hours just for him to explain how the whole process works (which, of course, the aforementioned video had also done, but no matter). We did get a break, which was a relief, but upon our return, 22 of us--yours truly not included--were called for the first round of introductions and questions. The day ended with Potential Juror #14; we resume with #15 tomorrow afternoon.

I wish I could wring from this some great moments of people watching, or some intrigue about how the case might progress, or a strong sense of interest in the judicial process at large, but alas, not so much. It's really just dull.

When I was summoned for jury duty in early 2004, I hoped and ached that I'd be called, and for a long, involved, drawn-out trial at that, so much did I want to get out of the trek to Mountain View and its ensuing woes for as many days as I possibly could. Of course, no such luck: my week of obligation passed without me so much as having to go near the Hall of Justice. This time, when I stand to lose precious client hours and even more precious dough, there's as good a chance that I'll be called to serve as there is that any of my fellow prospects will. (And yes, I know that many of the other people in that courtroom with me stand to lose just as much, and, moreover, that that's the nature of the system. That doesn't take away the sting.)

Viva justice.

Undivided

Sometime around mid-January, I realized that my life life was becoming entirely too wrapped up in my business life, which is to say that not a day passed in which I didn't do something work-related, whether meeting with clients or dealing with admin stuff or writing or any of the dozens of other things I need to do to keep things chugging. Of my own volition, I long ago gave up on having an actual weekend (of the Saturday-Sunday variety), but I always figured I'd make up for it by having some time off at some point in the week.

Not so thus far in 2007. So I set a goal of one work-free day per week--and almost as soon as that goal came into being, it was utterly obliterated. Not since Christmas vacation have I had an utterly work-free day.

Mind, the fact that business is booming is a delightful thing, and (listen up, universe) I'm in no way complaining about the work that has (and, I hope, will continue to) come my way. What's starting to wear, though, is the sense that the rest of my life has to be crammed in to the little spaces between my work life. Yes, owning a business means there's not really a strict division between me and the company, but more and more, there's almost no division at all. And even thinking about that tires me.

A quick check of my calendar reveals that my next meeting-less day is March 1, more than a week and a half hence. In the meantime, my To Do list continues to grow at a pace that makes me want to hire my own assistant. (That's an entirely reasonable idea, but of course Find and Hire Assistant would be their own To Do list entries.) It sets my head spinning, and makes me want to take to bed (which just reminds me that the one task I really wanted to do this weekend--buy a new mattress--remains sadly undone).

I've written before about practicing what I preach, and though I might be good at that in some realms, when it comes to work/life balance, clearly I'm doing a horrific job. Would that it were easier and less overwhelming to change that.

Smug

This is the time of year when my half of "how's the weather?" conversations with friends and family back east tend to sound something like this:

"So, what's it like there today? ... How many degrees below? Really? And that's not taking wind chill into effect? Wow. ... Here? Ehh, probably somewhere around 65. It's been sunny all day, too. ...Yeah, and we ate outside at lunch. ... Yup, supposed to be like this for the rest of the week..."

...and so on. Because listen, people, payback for the fact that I often find myself bundled in wool come mid-July is the stupendous weather we have in late winter. There's possibly no better time to be in San Francisco than February and March, when it's fog-less, sunny, impossibly mild, and generally beautiful. Spending time outside isn't an exercise in fortitude, it's a pleasure. The days are getting longer (last night, it wasn't well and truly dark until well past 6) and, if you're in the right spot (which is to say, not mid-Market), they're often punched through with the sweet smells of things opening on trees and in the soil. Nights are still chilly, of course--but then, nights are always chilly, and this month's haven't been so bad as to prevent me from, say, sitting at an outside table at Absinthe for foofy drinks and dessert with a cute boy deep into the evening.

So to those of you north and/or east of me: nyah nyah nyah nyah nyaaaah nyah. I know that smugness will come back at me (and then some) when June rolls around and I pull out my fleece, but for now, it's delightful to remind you all that I'm so, so, so glad I'm here and not there.

The Preaching and the Practice

(Or Our Friend the Golden Rule)

The online dating thing was, at first, a lark. Having poked about in the Men for Women ads on Craigslist for a while (and having been largely, though not singularly, underimpressed), I decided I would post my own ad and see what happened.

The answer: a lot. I got a heap of replies, many of them legitimate and kind, some of them baffling, a few downright annoying (such as the fellow who wrote to tell me that my photos made me look 42 rather than 32--um, thanks--or the guy who ripped into me for being negative, for allowing my "New York and kickboxing" side to dominate, and for having "a worldview that excludes children" because I said I didn't want kids right away and wasn't looking to date single dads). Without giving up work, eating, exercise, and every other activity in my life that requires time and attention, I couldn't reply to all of the messages I received, and I didn't try.

But I did reply to several and, in the end, wound up meeting up with five of the guys with whom I'd corresponded. They were, to a man, interesting, kind, engaging, fun, and pleasant to spend time with. With the exception of one, though (interestingly, the least likely candidate), I didn't feel the spark/friction/flare/other inadequate term I need to feel in order to feel like there's real dating potential with someone.

Herein, for me, lies one of the difficult (and crappy) things about online dating. That spark thingy is of supreme importance to me; without it, even the kindest, most attractive, most fascinating person won't feel like a good match for me romantically. That's why, I think, I've generally dated or had relationships with only guys I've met in person first--at a party, through friends, randomly in some venue or other: I can tell whether I feel that sort of indefinable ping straightaway. Somewhat illogically, I'm happy to let the deeper getting-to-know-you process come after that ping detection. Online, of course, all of that happens in reverse.

And that, as I've discovered, can mean that sometimes I just don't really connect to people, even though they sound great in words (and, often, *are* great in person). The reverse is entirely possible, too: I may well not induce sparks in the guys I meet.

Here's where it gets muddy. Over lunch the other day, I asked Josh his opinion: what do I do about the guys I don't click with romantically but who might make great friends? He laid out the options. "Well, you know what a guy would do--just never e-mail again. But you could be classier than that, and just write back and gently tell the truth."

I like to think of myself as being one who generally aims for "classy" (though some might debate that point), so I figured I'd go for choice #2. But it took an honest e-mail from S, the guy I went out with on Tuesday, to actually get me to sit down and write.

S sent me a message yesterday afternoon thanking me for meeting him for dinner and asking for my honest assessment of the date; he mentioned that he wasn't sure if either of us had felt a spark, but said perhaps he'd missed something. I replied and said, essentially, I'm with you--we're not destined for romance, but sign me up for the friend thing if you're game.

And then I planted myself in front of Entourage this morning and wrote similar messages to the other guys I'd gone out with in the past few weeks, because I'd rather be forthright, tell the truth, and float the possibility of friendship (which I don't really see as a second place prize, though I know that's often how it comes across) than just disappear into the ether. Further, it feels a bit like adhering to some odd combination of the golden rule and the whole concept of "If you don't vote, you can't complain": I can't rightly be a jerk to others and then complain about others being jerks to me.

So here's to that elusive spark, and to C, J, G, S, and me all finding it somewhere, with someone. In the meantime, here's to truth, openness, and the willingness to take the harder path.

Cold

Right. So much for my overly confident belief that my immune system was hearty enough to deflect the sniveling cold that had affected many of the people around me in recent weeks. After convincing myself that the craptastic feeling that settled in early last week was due to some combination of four hours of sleep on Saturday night/Sunday morning (for the record: not enough, though I have good reasons not to complain too forcefully), crazy overwork, and a Sisyphysian (J, please correct spelling/usage here) To Do list, I had to admit by Wednesday morning that it was, in fact, a well-established cold.

So I haven't been my best self for about a week now, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes in a largely futile attempt to get my sinuses to calm down, trying to cough and blow my nose and sniffle and hack in as dainty a manner as possible (which is to say, not very), watching as clouds of tissue balls fluff and expand to fill my wastebaskets. I can't remember the last run I took, which makes me edgy and puts me out of sorts. (Must, must, must go tomorrow, all else be damned.)

The most disappointment aspect of illness for me, I think, is my inability to see it as a forced vacation or a reasonable excuse to sleep for countless hours on end, and then to rise only to clear the Kleenex carpet from the side of my bed and refill my water glass or tea mug. All of that would be nice, but no: when I get sick, I get impatient, itchy with thoughts of all the things I'd like to (or need to) be doing but can't. Knocking furiously on wood, let me never find myself faced with any sort of actually debilitating illness; I would go well and fully loops.

I woke this morning able to breathe through both nostrils (another annoyance of colds: the forced decline into mouth breathing) and no desire to toss back another dose of Alka-Seltzer Cough and Cold (purchased last year, I believe, when the pharmacy at Walgreens was closed and anything with pseudoephedrine was thus unavailable). These are good signs, leading me to believe that tomorrow might even be 95% tissue-free and that I might soon be able to conjure up a post on something more interesting than the status of my nasal passage blockage. Onwards!

Minneapolis

So, in preparation for the Certified Professional Organizer exam I'll be taking at the NAPO conference in April, I've been reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to Project Management, one of the books on the recommended resources list. I got here--

"Now you know how the work breaks down in your project. You've taken all the goals of the project that were developed in the SOW and have broken them into specific work packages. But that's just one important step in planning. Now, let's take a look at sequencing the work in a network diagram."

--and decided, Nope, let's not! I'd much rather add to my TaDa List of Things to Do in Minneapolis.

For those who have absolutely no reason to be in possession of this knowledge, I will reveal that this year's NAPO conference is taking place in the aforementioned half of the Twin Cities, and, quite honestly, I couldn't be more excited. Minneapolis is one of those cities I've only ever flown through (the airport is really quite nice) but have wanted to actually visit. I hear good things about it all the time, and get the sense that it's a progressive and forward-thinking place. Plus, it's increasingly full of interesting modern architecture and art.

So Joshy and I have booked a room at what appears to be by far the most gorgeous and delightful hotel in the city, and we're ready to take the city by storm. Know somewhere we should check out? Please share it. We want to see as much of the city--on the beaten path or off--as we can.

For the record, I would also be happy to accept applications for Adorable Tall-ish Skinny-ish Minneapolis Alterna-Boyfriend Who May or May Not Be an Artist or a Musician or a Writer or Something (there seem to be so many potentials!), so if you fit the bill, drop me a line. (Also for the record, astute readers will note that the Joshy mentioned above shares with me a fondness for boys, so don't think I'm pulling anything funny here.)

Right, then. Time now to explore the fascinating world of The Network Diagram: A Map for Your Project.

How the week began and why I yearn for its end

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Darkness coming

Sunset over the Charles River,
midway between Boston and Cambridge,
11/26/06

Perhaps the most jarring thing about being on the east coast for Thanksgiving was the astoundingly early hour at which darkness fell. We're certainly not enjoying long, lingering days ourselves here out west, but at least some semblance of daylight sticks around until 5.

Not so in New England. At Mom and Dad's, I'd look out the window into what appeared to be at least 7 p.m., only to discover it wasn't even 4.45. In Boston, I took some photos of the sun setting as the Red Line crossed the river; when I got to Harvard Square, emerged aboveground again, and looked up at the bank clock over the station entrance, it read 4.31, and behind it was smudgy darkness, as if the remains of the day had been sucked down a drain.

My first thought as I stood in front of the venerable Out of Town News waiting for Paula was, Damn, I am no longer fit for anything like an actual winter. But then some relentlessly cheerful part of me piped up with a reminder that although we're on this steep downhill slide of light loss until December 21, once we hit bottom on that anemic day it's once again a sweet (if painfully slow) climb back into brightness.

I'm stunned, still, at how much night we have to slog through for the next several months, and at how the window of opportunity for daylight activities grows narrower and narrower. My kingdom for a chunk of sun-drippy June.

Miscellany: November Edition

English Bay, Vancouver (Look, CIC, are we not meant for each other?)

Inapt Colloquialism of the Month
Eric (after we've walked over the Burnside Bridge in a wildly roundabout attempt to get from Vancouver's West End to Granville Island): I'm sweating like a pig.
Em: Do pigs really sweat?
Eric: Actually, no. They can't sweat at all. That's why they have to roll in mud.

Confession of Vaguely Embarrassing Recent Additions to iTunes
So, look. It's true that I just burned the remainder of the iTunes gift card Mary gave me--and, further, went on to spend actual money--on some songs that would make me keep my iPod constantly under wraps if I had any musical shame whatsoever. Luckily, I don't, and can admit here to my extensive readership that, were you to look in my Recent Additions playlist, you'd find the following:

Take It on the Run--REO Speedwagon
Change--John Waites
Second Hand News--Fleetwood Mac
Do They Know It's Christmas?--Band Aid
Africa--Toto

I also tried to buy Shannon's Let the Music Play, but the iTunes store had evidently had enough of me by then, as it kept lobbing error messages my way. Don't think I won't try again, though.

At any rate, I've been listening to all of these tunes with a somewhat alarming frequency, and am overjoyed to find them either inscrutable or wildly overblown. Take the REO Speedwagon tune: is the guy on the side of his lady or the neighbors who've been telling him she's been messing around? You might think you know the answer, but take a closer listen to the song. He lays out his fears about her cheatin' ways, then disses the people he's heard the story from, then pretends he wants nothing to do with his lady if she does in fact "got a boyyyyyyyyyfriend" with whom she stays "out late every weekend," and THEN says he doesn't believe the accusations, "not for a minute." Is the song really an in-depth exploration of the complex emotions that arise when one is faced with the news of a partner's possible infidelity, or is it just utterly nonsensical?

Fantastic for entirely different reasons is Do They Know It's Christmas? I fondly remember wasting significant amounts of time at work with Stephen and Scott intricately dissecting and mocking the way overblown lyrics to this song. To wit:

• "There won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime." Really? No snow anywhere in all of Africa?
• "Where nothing ever grows; no rain or rivers flow." (Except, um, the Nile.)
• "Do they know it's Christmastime at all?" If they're among the continents millions of Muslims, probably not.

I won't even start in on Second Hand News (mainly because I still can't figure out what the hell it's actually about).

Analyzing lyrics of guilty pleasures from the 80's is surely a sign either of intellectual apocalypse or a keen and inquisitive mind. I will hope fervently for the former.

Why I Have a Serious Crush on that Tall Boy from Portland, Reason #37
Because the voicemail message he left me on Saturday morning began, apropos of absolutely nothing, with a minute-and-a-half mockery of/tribute to Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac."

European Things I Miss
Listening to Adam babble away happily in Adamish; the croissants from my favorite cafe in Florence; limoncello fatta in casa; climbing belltowers and stuff; wine at approximately every meal; and the unabashedly dorkwad thrill of seeing license plates from places like Monaco (yes, J, Monaco!) and Finland.

Important Phone Care Note

From the user's manual for my fancy-ass new Razr: "Don't try to dry your phone in a microwave oven."

I'd like to meet the person who prompted this warning.

Thanks, Part 2

San Gimignano. Yeah, it's like that.

After I left Slovenia, I went by train to Florence, where Monique fetched me from Santa Maria Novella. My train ride--which required a transfer in Mestre--more or less encapsulated the Italian portion of my vacation as far as language went: I could more or less sort of vaguely kind of understood what was said to me ("Is that seat free?") and could more or less sort of vaguely kind of stammer and/or gesture something back, but if the interaction required me to use a verb, forget it. I don't do Italian verbs.

Luckily for me, Monique does, and did, which saved me a number of blank, grinning stares (I have no idea what you're saying, sir, but I can smile and nod) and ensured that we were able to do things like eat, rent a car, and secure housing when needed. She also put up with my mockery of "interesting" historical facts, braved the experience of driving standard not only on Italian motorways but also into the zonas pedonales of San Gimignano and Siena (not--I repeat, NOT--recommended), gamely tagged along on various wine tasting excursions, did the whole sightseeing thing in Tuscany even after a night of violent illness and general sleeplessness, and was good enough to celebrate my small linguistic successes (such as ordering a panino and purchasing gelato--again, sans verbs).

So thanks, Monique, for housing me, and skillfully operating that stovetop coffee maker, and pleading our case to the carabiniero in Siena, and translating Con Air for me a second time, and basically saving me from being one of the tourists I tried so hard to avoid. Mille grazie! (For the record, that's one of approximately twenty-seven things I know how to say in Italian; next trip I'm upping that count to at least forty-three.)

For Mike Zarkin, Wherever I May Find Him

It started like this: Val went on MySpace to look at Isaac's music page (or something) and somehow managed to find the page of someone who looked ridiculously like Bryan O'Neill, with whom we'd gone to high school and who Val had dated for a while roundabouts junior year. The page didn't use the creator's real name, though, so she showed it to me to get my take on whether it was actually Bry or not. (My assessment: yes. Yes it is.)

I then said, well, maybe he's also on Friendster and we can gather some additional clues. So I signed in and we searched for profiles that included "East Lyme." Bryan wasn't among them, but we did find a few other familiar faces, including Tracy, who had managed to find me and make me a friend sometime last year. (Are you following this? Good.)

So we looked at Tracy's page, and, this being the point of Friendster, looked at Tracy's friends--one of whom appeared, at least in cyberland, cute and charming in that delightful tallskinnyalternaboy way that I'm such a sucker for. We clicked through his photos and read his profile before signing off for the night.

I was surprised the next day to find notice in my Inbox of a message from this boy waiting for me at Friendster. He, of course, could see via the annoyingly addictive Who's Viewed Me that I'd looked at his profile, and he began his message, "Hello friend of Tracy." I replied. He replied to my reply. Continue that line.

He mentioned in one of his notes having just visited the source of our connection (i.e., the aforementioned Tracy), which led me to wonder how she's doing and where she is, and, in that moment of curiosity, to crack open my copy of the 1992 East Lyme High School Valhalla to see if she had signed it (no, at least not from what I could tell), and then to do a quick browse of photos and messages scribbled across pages.

And here's where Mike Zarkin comes in: there among the inscriptions from friends and classmates and acquaintances was a message from Mike, who, as I recall, was one of the school's resident conservatives, and a person with whom I frequently butted heads. We had many of the same classes, which gave us ample time to drive each other nuts, me the President of the ELHS Chapter of Amnesty International and Mike the one member of Don Bodwell's Poli Sci class who would stick up for the Republicans.

This is what he wrote:

Em,
Battling with you for the past four years of high school history and English has been great. It's always been a pleasure having you for a friend, even if we don't see eye-to-eye. I wish you all the best for the future, and I'm sure you'll go far. May you always see a thousand reasons to rejoice.
Love,
Mike Zarkin

Maybe it's PMS, or the jumble of emotions that always comes from looking backwards, or wondering whether the bits and pieces we heard about Mike after graduation (a tough time at college, a difficult exit from the closet, a return to East Lyme) were true, or some combination of the above, but reading his note made me sniffly.

I got sniffly because although one should never read too much into yearbook scribblings, I do believe that there was sincere benevolence in his words, and I can only hope (though I sort of doubt) that I had the maturity to write something even half as kind in his book.

I got sniffly because something catches in my throat when I wonder who and what I'd find if I went to one of my high school reunions--and who and what I wouldn't.

I got sniffly, Mike Zarkin, because although I've dodged my share of life's slings and arrows, I'm still amazed at all I have to be grateful: friends and family who love me fiercely, the chance to traipse around the globe, a strong and growing business, a gift with words, an intriguing boy in Portland, more goodness than I can really comprehend.

I still see a thousand reasons to rejoice, Mike, and wherever you are, I hope you do, too.

Thanks, Part 1

John, Adam, and Magda on Kanin

I recently returned from a two-week jaunt in Europe, the first portion of which I spent in Slovenia with my friend John, his ass-kickin' wife Magda, and their unspeakably cute son Adam. J and I had blazed a trail across much of southern Europe in 2002, and he was kind enough to offer to serve as host/interpreter/tour guide/source of entertainment this time around, too.

A damn good thing, too, as there's simply no way I would've survived in Slovenia without la famille Stephens. Not only don't I speak the language (beyond words which would allow me to call for ice cream, a stroller, an elephant, wine, or help), I don't drive standard, which would put me at the mercy of public transport, a sketchy proposition given my aforementioned lack of language skills. I also would've had to fend for myself in terms of shelter and foodstuffs, not to mention price computations (how many tolars is too many tolars?), sightseeing, and general cultural competence.

So J and M, try to imagine (can you imagine?) how grateful I am to you for your willingness to fetch me from Malpensa, ferry me back across the border, house me, feed me, drive me around the country, speak for me, entertain me, and generally welcome me into your home as if I well and truly belonged there. Thanks for being so unstoppably generous. I hope someday you'll bring the brood to SF/Vancouver and I'll be able to even begin to return the favor.

And to you, sweet little Adam, thanks for being the most charming and adorable howler monkey an auntie could ask for. I miss you to bits and pieces.

A thought

My upcoming international air travel has set a tiny, tiny seed of worry in my belly. I mean, the news from the world of aviation lately is not good; if it's not potentially deadly toiletries, it's an odd change to runway patterning in Kentucky that ends in disaster. J assures me that the hoo-ha over flying is much more subdued in the rest of Europe than it is in the UK, let alone the US, and adds that he's sure my flight from Frankfurt to Milan will be wildly uneventful. Fingers crossed, then, for the SFO-Chicago and Chicago-Frankfurt portions of my journey.

Anyway, I read a quote in yesterday's Times business section from some travelling businessman or other in which he said, essentially, that if airlines were ever to ban the use of laptops and other electronics on board, he'd need to be forcibly sedated in order to fly. This led me to think about the preponderance of laptops on any given flight, a good number of which must surely be either Dells or Macs. Given the recent spate of battery woes with both companies' machines, does it not follow that the probabilty of a laptop bursting into flames due to a faulty battery would be far greater than the probability of my (or anyone else's) shampoo or toothpaste serving as the base of an explosive?

Just a thought.

WebTV

A few weekends back, the founders of WebTV threw a 10th anniversary/reunion party for all of the company's original employees. It was amazing to see so many people who were once part of my everyday life, and to cast back to those years when the job was still really fun (our frequent complaining aside).

The day after the party, I started to do some (very soft) math, and realized that I can trace about 80% of my Bay Area friends (still here or far-flung) back to WebTV. Off the top of my head: Otis, Jed, DaveG, Jenney, Josh, another Josh, Geoff, another Geoff, Jeff, Eric, Renee, Erfert, Melissa, another Eric, yet another Eric, Stephen, Elissa, Kumi, Shayne, Daryl, Charlie, Sai, Sloo, Andy, Monica, Marcus, Joe, Jos, Chris, Scott, Adam, Deb.... No other aspect of my life--not childhood, not Vassar, not IFFCON, not NAPO--has netted me such a take.

Clearly, I had little enough love for what the company had become by June 2004 (which is to say, indistinguishable from the rest of Microsoft) to want out, and to make good on that desire. But it bears remembering that once upon a time, we got free lunch every Friday, and had knock-down, drag-out fun parties, and spent endless hours with our colleagues outside of the office by choice, and managed to hammer together a family of sorts here in SF that would become something so much greater than we imagined it would.

So thanks be to Steve, Phil, and Bruce. Thanks be to Braintrust for luring so many overeducated kids down to Palo Alto to answer phones or write e-mail. And thanks be to the dozens and dozens of people (you know who you are) who made the job what it was, and made it more than it might otherwise have been. In retrospect, I feel impossibly lucky to have been part of it all.

My vote for "Most Accurate Sound of Human Anguish, Troubador/Emo Category"

So, I know that Elliott Smith's "From a Basement on a Hill" was released posthumously, and may well have contained material that he never intended the world to hear. I also know there was (and may still be) some debate as to whether the knife-to-the-heart that did him in was self-administered or seen to by a second party.

But still: if there's any doubt that the poor guy was suffering some intense anguish, romantic or otherwise, before his demise, let a few listens to "Twilight" (off the aforementioned album) put it to rest.

The first couple of times my iPod shuffled the song to my attention, I thought, Sure is quiet (as well as Wonder if those are real crickets). Then it came into my ears during a run, and I actually listened to the lyrics. And damn if the combination of the dirge-like pace of the song, Smith's barely-above-a-whisper singing, and the words coming out of his mouth doesn't make for what might be one of the most angst-filled tunes ever.

There are countless downbeat songs out there, of course. (Did not master songster Billy Ocean once declare, "There'll be sad songs/to make you cry"?) But few of them sound like they've been pulled directly and painfully from someone's gut, and fewer still seem to be a desperate (if failing) attempt on the singer's part to stay on the good side of survival. "Twilight" does.

Elliott sings, "Because your candle burns too bright/Well, I almost forgot it was twilight./Even if I think that you are right/Well, I'm tired of being down; I got no fight." You can actually hear the desperate sadness, the achy giving up in his voice. I can't listen to the song now without thinking of it as a sort of unanswerable (and unanswered) plea, or a psalm of regret.

What you make of it

A number of factors lately (reading Flow, sighingly putting the whole K affair behind me, working with a client whose anger and sense that the world is against him seem to be the driving forces in his life, etc.) have increased my belief in the idea that, to a large extent, life is what you make of it.

That's an overly simplistic statement, to be sure, and you're free to lob at it whatever critical words you see fit, but in the end, it holds. There are so many things that are wildly beyond our control in life that in order to live with any sense of balance, purpose, and resilience, we really have to learn how to dust off our knees after a fall and get up again.

I spent a good chunk of the needs assessment I did with my client last night refuting (gently and constructively) his outright and implied claims that he's something of a helpless victim of the vagaries of his week. Normally, I don't go quite so heavy on the philosophical debating with clients, but this time I did--maybe because I was tired and my usual sense of restraint fell by the wayside, but more likely because any other recommendation I might make to him would be useless if he didn't let go of the world-against-me thing he seemed to be holding like a shield. I so strongly wanted him to start to understand that he has so much more power than he thinks he does to change what chafes.

At some point, I'm sure, I'll have to refer myself back to this post when I'm feeling like the rug's been pulled out from under me for the millionth time, or when I stumble upon a week filled with too many little glitches to deal with calmly and smoothly. But since last Thursday, when I officially watched something I'd been enjoying so much slip through my fingers, I've been more aware than ever that I can choose what to do here: flail and fight and rue what's wrong or get up and go on and find what's right.

I don't even have to think twice about it.