A City Hall that is both beautiful and helpful

Can you believe that? I know, I know. As usual, there is background to be provided. Last year about this time, I got it into my head that I should see a financial planner to make sure that I was doing things right with my money and to get some objective outsider to determine whether or not I was going to meet my goals. The biggest piece of advice he gave me was to get my affairs in order. After he heard about my accident and how I had the accident and didn't have a will in place, he almost made me do it right in front of him. So a year has passed and I finally got around to getting all the paperwork together to have a will and also create a living trust of which I am the trustee of the trust until I pass. I'll stop with the morbidity. But the most important step is to actually legally change those things that I own from being mine, but instead being owned by the trust with me as the trustee who makes the decision. I've basically created a shell corporation for myself. The most significant item to be moved into the trust was the house. It required my housemates and I to change the deed of the house to have the two of them and the trust as the owners of the home. We had our form notarized and then it had to officially recorded by the San Francisco Recorder/Assessors Office. This office is in the large City Hall building. As you can see from the following photos (not mine but taken from the web) SF City Hall is actually an amazingly beautiful building. It's of the Beaux Arts style. (I have no real idea what that means but I know that the Beaux Arts is always used in conjunction with City Hall.)

Never in my wildest dreams would I have allowed myself to believe that the offices inside the building were actually efficient, functional and dare I say...helpful? The Recorder/Assessors office closes at 4PM so I had to boogie back to SF to make it in time before it closed. I got there and the line to record the document had no one in it. I walked right up to the woman clerk, but I had to get an official description of our property, so I was sent to the main line. After three minutes, where every single clerk was working with a resident, I got my form printed out. I asked another question about the homeowners exemption and my clerk called the guy who handles the exemption. Not only was he in the office on a Friday afternoon, but he came right over and listened to my question. He went away and a couple minutes later came back with the reason why there was a mixup and a solution. He gave me a couple forms to fill out and upon being returned in the mail, the exemption would be in place for the 2006-07 tax bill.

I moved back over to the first line. There were five people in front of me, but it became quite clear that each person's time with the clerk was less than a minute, and before I knew it there I was with the the clerk. $12 later, my paperwork was done. I had one more question, but she pointed me to the main desk again. I got another clerk who then called over the guy who's in charge of addresses and all that stuff. He too was in the office on a Friday afternoon and came right over and answered my question.

I was done. I walked out of the office and out of the building completely amazed at how easily the whole thing had gone. There really is something called a functional municipal government.

MOMENT OF HISTORY: This same Office of the Recorder/Assessor is the same office that issued marriage liscenses to all the gay couples that got married back in 2004 when the mayor of San Francisco decreed gay marriage legal in the city.

"Incorrect"

Tonight I served as a judge for the school Spelling Bee, think Spellbound. Because students can compete only until they are in 8th grade, the participants were all Middle School students. I wasn't the announcer so I didn't have to give the language or origin or have to provide the definition. I was the judge who, after the participant finished spelling the word and then said the word as an indication that he or she is done, said "CORRECT" or "INCORRECT".

My biggest fear was that there would be some controversy that I, and another teacher, would have to make a decision that someone would be unhappy with. A couple of near misses did come up. The first was when a girl spelled "CATHEDRAL" but her letter H was preceded by a very long sound that wasn't much like H but quickly became H. We gave it to her. The second occurred when the announcer mispronounced the word "SCOURGE". The boy spelled it incorrectly, but we gave him a second word, which he spelled correctly. In both of these cases the student was ultimately not one of the top three spellers in the competition.

The 3rd place boy went out on "TERCENTENARY" which means the 300th anniversary or its celebration.

The final two girls misspelled "EPISTEMOLOGY", "CENTAUROMACHIA" (a specific Greek battle) and "EREMITIC" (characterized by a ascetic solitude in life). The 2nd place speller missed "TROIKA". The winner correctly spelled it and then won by correctly spelling "AYATOLLAH".

You would not believe the seriousness with which the Scripps National Spelling Bee takes itself. There is an official booklet with 500 official 2006 School Spelling Bee words in 7 different categories. Every word has a pronuciation guide, language of origin, definition and a sentence using the word.

Some of the words on the list were new ones to me. Anyone know the definition of "DELTIOLOGY" off the top of their heads? Email me if you are lazy and won't look up the answer. The definition of the word is not one anyone of us would ever have thought of in a million years.

INCORRECT!!

Not much has changed since 1938

My housemate forwarded me this website address called Bernal Heights Preservation. If you poke around the site you might stumble across the area dedicated to the streetcars that were ubiquitous in this area and probably all of San Francisco.

The intersection of Cortland Avenue and Prospect Street in 1938

If you look closely, the second house from the left is 121-123 Cortland Avenue. The house no longer has pillars and the staircase now has a lefthand turn, but it appears essentially the same. The house to the left of my current home is the building I lived in when I first moved to San Francisco. It looks exactly the same. Great architecture breeds longevity!

For those of you who are keeping score....

Today, a judge in the State of Maryland rejected a ban on same-sex unions, ruling that defining marriage as only between a man and a woman unconstitutional. You can listen to a story on this by following this link to the story on NPR. If you go to the link you'll see that there are currently eight states that have some sort of same-sex marriage law or case in that states court system. In my lifetime, I have been a resident of five states in the US. I found it an interesting fact that all five of those states are in the list of eight that are at the forefront of the same-sex marriage issue. Washington State, New York, Maryland, New Jersey and California, the five that I have lived and paid taxes in, are joined by Iowa, Massachusetts and Connecticut. To bring Statistics into the discussion......correlation? Yes! Causation? Questionable at best.

...and not just because the Seahawks are winning

When I decided to write about my recent self-observation, I had to temper myself from my initial desire to say that A sucked. Instead I made the effort to try and explain why B is more satisfying to me in comparison to A. Enough of the mumbo-jumbo. I'm referring to the fact that the first newspaper website I check in the morning is not the San Francisco Chronicle. In fact the Chronicle is on average the fifth new site I go to in a day, sometimes not until the evening. Remember, I'm not going to say that the Chronicle's website sucks. I'm going to try and point out why the sites of the other papers are more informative, at least for me.

Who's up first? Well, surprisingly, and not surprisingly, it has become The Seattle Times. The Times lists one line summaries of what appears to be ALL stories from all of it's sections. Since I grew up in Seattle, I am drawn in my stories that reference things, people and places I have known since childhood which gives them a sense a soap opera quality. To use the easiest example when it is mentioned that the last playoff victory for the Seattle Seahawks was back in 1984, no longer is this true by the way, it has personal resonance for me since I remember that playoff game when I was a freshman in high school. Another thing that I find really useful about the Seattle Times page is that on the major stories, they list all the related stories, graphs, charts, pictures right under them, but most importantly, they tell me whether or not it's a .pdf or simple link. More information is good.

Then I usually quickly go to the NPR site because I like their national political correspondents, such as Ken Rudin and Cokie Roberts. Plus it gives me a chance to think about Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and Peter Sagel, sigh. But the NPR site allows me to multitask by listening to a story while I'm reading another.

The New York Times comes next. I particularly like the Education and Real Estate sections of the Times, but I also find the this venerable paper finds angles on stories that other media outlets don't. Things always seem more interesting when written about in the Times.

Then it is off to The Washington Post. The reason isn't because of news but because their online Crossword works well and doesn't require anything beyond a simple registration to the paper's website. I know there are probably many other crosswords online, but I'm a creature of habit.

Then I'll hit the Chronicle, when I have the time, to read about local stuff.

Equate this to the joke forwarded to you by email

All readers of the blog know I have an obsession with the NPR show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I've seen it taped twice, in Chicago when I spent the summer of 2004 all across the country and last February when the show was taped in Berkeley. And don't get me started on my devotion to host Peter Sagel. But during this weeks "Listener Limerick Challenge", the three panelists were over the top in mocking the name of the prominent San Francisco high school Lick-Wilmerding. The fact that it aired nationwide made the moment that much better, at least for a teacher at a rival school. It was TRULY priceless.

I'm not sure exactly how to provide a direct link to the broadcast, but here's the best I can do. I urge, implore, BEG you to go to the the page for this weeks broadcast and click on the link for the Listener Limerick Challenge. You are listening for the introduction of the caller. There is no need to actually listen to the limerick afterwards. TRUST ME, it's hilarious.

Right in our own backyard

Tucked into the southwestern corner of the city of San Francisco is tightly packed campus of San Francisco State University, which sits right next to San Francisco's only true mall Stonestown Galleria. Next to both SFSU and Stonestown is the highly competitive public magnet Lowell High School, one of the top high schools in all the state of California. Also down there is the freshwater Lake Merced which is surrounded by four outstanding golf courses. Two of the four are owned by the Olympic Club, one of the courses is the San Francisco Country Club and the fourth is Harding Park Golf Course. Note that it isn't Harding Park Golf Club for you see, Harding Park is one of two municipal golf courses owned by the city of San Francisco. Harding Park (named after President Warren G. Harding who passed away in the city) having the same terrain and flora as its more famous neighhbors is in itself a highly regarded layout. It regularly held professional golfing tournaments through the 1960's but had fallen on hard times during last couple decades of the 20th century. Five or so years ago, a private firm took over the business aspects of the course and brought Harding Park back to its former glory. The crowning moment of Harding's renaissance was its selection as the course to hole the finale of the World Series of Golf last year.

This morning, Scott and I snagged two spots of his friends foursome and we were off the 1st tee at 10:10AM. The morning started gloriously with bright sunshine and I was in shorts this first Saturday in January.

Scott and our two balls safely on and putting for birdie on the par 3 third.

Both of us three-putted the third green. However, the beautiful sun quickly turned to a steady drizzling rain and by the time we were on the 8th tee, it looked like this:

Rain, rain go away.....

We decided to call it a day after the ninth hole. Even though it had stopped raining, both of us had not brought rain gear so we were both soaked. Scott beat me, but I was able to observe some key differences in the way we approach the game. Scott is a firm believer in warming up by hitting balls on the range and practicing his putting. I just show up on the first tee, take a couple of practice swings and away I am.

Scott is a firm believer in yardage. He looks for the yardage markers and paces to his ball to determine the exact distance he has to get to the green. On the green, Scott is careful to mark his ball and squat down to read the line. Well, you can imagine that I'm the complete opposite.

Scott and I both have testy relationships with our drivers. The result is that Scott plays only with his irons. I pull out the driver every single time I can and let her rip.

We are, however, competitive in ability and agree that honestly reporting one's score is of utmost importance for the both of us even with our huge stylistic differences.

Sucked in by reality television

As the middle of January looms on the horizon, the television studios are getting ready to unveil their mid-season shows. Not all shows are new, but instead some will be commencing the shows second or even third season. In the case of these returning shows, we are often treated to a "marathon" of the previous seasons shows. During this first week of January 2006, Scott and I were sucked into a "marathon." I am going to reveal the show that has become our nightly addiction in the spirit of full disclosure. However, you MUST not roll out of your chair laughing and not finishing this posting. The show that gets us in front of the television every night has been Beauty and the Geek. Shut up. Shut up!

What makes it doubly shameful is the fact that Ashton Kutcher, yes Demi Moore's man, is an executive producer. Oh, the humanity! Now hear me out, please. I have found that most reality television shows attempt to show the action in an objective way, however there is always an aura of contempt for the participants. We're watching them, but making fun of them at the same time.

But this show pairs seven beautiful (and superficial) woman with seven geeky men. They are put into seven pairs and given challenges in which the women must do tasks that they stereotypically are not expected to be able to do, such as change a tire. The men are given challenges like giving a massage. The reason why I find the show compelling is that each person in the pair is helping their partner and in the process breaking down stereotypes and feeling more confident about themselves. It is a bit hokey that "romances" develop, but it's kind of cute.

So Beauty and the Geek 2 begins its run next week. I encourage you all to give the show a chance. You know where Scott and I will be on the Thursday nights.

If I ran the world......

Whenever I go to Trader Joe's the checkout lines are long and they move slowly. The long lines are indicative of a store that draws a lot of shoppers, but the slow moving checkout lines indicate that something is amiss. The bottleneck occurs when a customer reaches the cashier and simply stands there while the cashier scans the groceries and then piles them up on the counter to be bagged by either a bagperson or the cashier themselves. The customer simply stands there and does nothing.

Being the geeky Geometry teacher that I am, I find it fun and a creative outlet to try and pack my groceries into as few bags as possible, while still maintaining the shape of the bread and protecting the integrity of the eggs and fruit. The logical part of me finds it a moral obligation to utilize myself at this time to perform the act of bagging the groceries to minimize the amount of time I spend in the cashier transaction. My line moves just a bit faster.

The cashiers are always grateful by my act of bagging my own groceries. I always reply that were Trader Joe's (or any grocery chain) an economic incentive (i.e. 2% off your bill) for customers to bag their own groceries, it would obviously have the lines move faster, but there would be many more unintended benefits. For example, the company would save money by needing fewer cashiers and bagpeople.

Yup, if I ruled the world.....

Sometimes the spoof exceeds the original

Rarely do I find the emails forwarded from friends to be anything particularly noteworthy. Usually, I open the email, read a couple lines and then hit the delete button. However, this spoof of the current hit movie Brokeback Mountain had me howling. So without further delay, check out Bareback Mountain.

Snail Mail

Every couple of months I get an envelope in the mail originating from New York City. It's always the same. It's one of the long rectangular envelopes with my name and address written in ballpoint pen. I'm sure that the envelopes I send back East have a same kind of consistency. Since 1990, I have had the joy of having a snail mail correspondence with a friend of mine that I met on the famous "Love Boat" (ok people, once and for all, there is NO BOAT involved). Somehow early on, we began writing to each other by letter (typed not handwritten) and we've both committed to it. OK, a shout out to a certain cousin and his wife in San Diego who are readers of this blog! You know who you are! Anyway, I have kept every single letter she has written me over the past 15 years. I think she has done the same with mine. We could probably reconstruct the majority of our lives over the past decade and a half from these missives. I usually wait a month or so before I write back because letters are never just dashed off. These are usually four to five pages (single spaced with 12 font) descriptions of what is going on in our lives. Yes, on occasion we do have to contact each other on the phone, or an email, but 90% of our communication has been the good old fashioned letter. So Jennifer C. hats off to you for your willingness to hold up your end of the bargain. I'm willing to do this as long as you are. And knowing the stubborn tradition loving types we are this could last another 40 or so years!!

A person who has affected my life

Many of you ask about my mobility and my health post-accident and most of the time I reply that everything is pretty much hunky-dory. I can't point my toes, which makes running impossible and I find standing in my barefeet very uncomfortable so I simply avoid it by always wearing something on my feet. No big deal. There is one huge pain in my life and that comes to travelling by air.

Remember this guy?

Yeah, the shoe bomber from 2001. This man, has probably more than any person, affected my life. Four years since his little "stunt" travelling through America's airports requires us to take off our shoes and put them through the x-ray machine. Simple for most, but a huge undertaking for me. I now have a couple options.

The first, and one that I have to undertake if I don't plan ahead, has me approach the TSA person and hold out my x-rays. I then ask to be able to walk through the machine with my shoes and then I will sit down, take off my shoes and then have them x-rayed separately. Because of this request, I am immediately flagged and put into the high-security line. This requrires my to be wanded by one of the TSA people. If the alert level is orange or above, the sensitivity of the wand is so great that my barefeet set off the the wand, which causes further inquisition. But after showing them my x-ray and being cleared, then most TSA people are interested in the story of my feet and well, being the cheerful and giving person I am, off into the story I go. If I am lucky, this whole encounter takes less than 10 minutes.

My second option, one that I discovered works like a charm is to pack a pair of flip-flops in my carry-on. Flip-flops are not required to be removed and so I can zip through without any issues. But, the sight of my changing into flip-flops in a cold city like Seattle in December does cause people to raise and eye-brow or two.

So, hats off to you, Richard Reid, the shoebomber. Thanks for causing such a hassle in my life.

Miss Manners Weighs In

The Christmas card saga will never end even though I try and put it behind me. What gives? Here's what Miss Manners' column advised as proper Christmas card ettiquette in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday December 19th, 2005:

"........However, signing one's name to printed inanities, or mass-producing a composition about one's petty triumphs over the year, is not keeping in touch. Keeping in touch means writing one's sentiments with one's very own hand. This may be a full letter, or on the words "Merry Christmas" added to a picture card, but one must write it oneself.......Miss Manners will only add the requirement that they nevertheless write out a message, however brief, between the poesy and the signature."

There you have it. What we all should be laughing at is the irony that I, perhaps the person who worries least about ettiquette, had his instincts validated by the court of highest authority, the one and only Miss Manners. BOO-YAH!!!

How's this for a distribution?

So, I lied, there has to be one more posting about Christmas/Holiday cards. This one relates to the fact that I finished up my cards today (those of you receiving them will think I am a total geek, just you wait). As I was about to haul them to the blue box up the street, I got it into my brain ask where all these cards are going. So being the zip code guy that I am I counted out the following distribution:

These are the number of cards being sent to zip codes starting with

0 13 (Puerto Rico, New England and New Jersey)
1 9 (New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware)
2 3 (DC, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas)
3 1 (The Southeast)
4 3 (Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana)
5 1 (The Upper Midwest, the Dakotas and Montana)
6 4 (Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska)
7 0 (Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma)
8 4 (The Rocky Mountain States, Arizona and Nevada)
9 36 (California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska)
Intl 4 (Netherlands, Austria, South Korea, Canada)

The breakdown of 9's is as follows

Southern California (91, 92, 93) 5
Northern California (94, 95, 96) 19
Hawaii (96) 0
Oregon (97) 0
Washington (98, 99) 12
Alaska (99) 0

Doing this made me happy!

Closure on the holiday card saga

A couple hours after Tuesday mornings feelings dump, S told me that she had crossed me off her Christmas card list and that she was incredibly incensed at the original posting, but that she wasn't going to bring it up to me until after the New Year. The course of the discussion took us all over the map, but the essence could be boiled down to 1) what exactly is the role of the holiday card and 2) how different life is between those who have children (especially newborns and toddlers) from there single friends.

The first issue is easier to address. To S, the card is simply wishes the receiver of the card well, the hope that things are well in their lives and to let the receiver know that the person is in the senders thoughts. To me, I've always expected more than that. It is my belief that because these people are an important person in the story of our lives that it's unfortunate that we can only see each other rarely and have this once a year communication. This communication to me deserves more than a cursory "throw something in the mail". I have friendships with different people from different points in my life so the type of communication I have with them is different and I try and reflect that in what I send, even if it is a couple sentences long, I feel I have given the relationship some respect. Simply stuffing the card in to the envelope to me feels like, as my colleague CD so eloquently put it, "relationship on resecitation (sp)".

This lead to the more critical discussion and that is that it is a luxury for those who have young children at home to take time to sit down and type out an email or write a letter or even make a phone call. Ok, point taken. Yes, when I come home, it's a place where I am not being pulled in 55 directions at once. So S told me that it is the job of the single person to change their strategies and instead of just relying on the other person to initiate contact, that I as the single person needed to reach out and often times more than once or twice. When it is me that is always calling or emailing it doesn't mean that the other person doesn't want to communicate, it is often they can't. Here comes the key issue and that is I always feel like it's a burden upon my friend with kid when I want to call. How many times have I called and gotten the friend/parent while they are trying to do three things at once, and I get about 50% of their attention. So, that makes me feel really good, or they say that they'll have to call back. That actaully makes me feel worse because I feel as though I'm another thing on their list of things to do.

This conversation had me in tears in the office and I don't even know why. Was it the friendship on rescicitaion realization? Was it that I was being insensitive into the demands of parenthood? Was it S's making these statements and me feeling like an insensitive prick? A combination of these or all? So, I'm still confused and baffled by lots of things here, but I know that I can try and make sure to make the effort to reach out to those friends of mind who have young kids and to be understanding about the constraints on their time and energies. As for the cards, well I can simply do what I think is right and model the behavior myself. As off today, I'm over this whole saga now. I'm putting it to bed.

Hmmm, there must be something underneath

Well, last weeks "pet peeve" posting has caused quite a stir. I dashed that piece off in a quick ten minutes, but I guess it is pretty clear that there was emotion behind it. But I didn't really believe it at first. The first comment was an email from Mom stating that she thought I must be angry at the fact that being a gay man, I wasn't going to ever have children and something must stem from that lingering bitterness. My initial reaction was, because it came from Mom, that she was way off base. By the end of this post, it will turn out that she was kind of in the ballpark, perhaps she made contact but her proverbial baseball curved off into the stands. Scott had also made a comment, actually, his lack of comment was the real comment, but I blew it off. However, when a friend of mine emailed me directly to tell me her reaction to it, I knew that something had really struck these people in my life that something was out of whack with me.

So, as I always do, I sat down and stared at the wall and sorted through what I believed to be my feelings about the "photocard as christmas card" anger. In retrospect, the storm began to brew last week when a colleague of mine (not in my department) and his wife are due to have a baby any day now. There is some uproar about the "not so progressive" policy around paternity leave. A letter was going around and I was asked by another faculty member to sign it. Granted, I believe that the rules should be changed to reflect the values of the institution, but I decided that I didn't want to be associated with an issue that clearly wasn't ever going to benefit me. I know that sounds horrifically selfish, but it is one of a couple benefits that I, as a single (gay isn't even an issue) non-parent faculty member will NEVER use. It's money that I can't even try and get because I'm single and don't have children.

Around the same time, I was asked to donate money towards a baby gift. Standard procedure. We also found out that another faculty member's wife was pregnant and I saw more cash leaving my wallet. Then we had our scheduled faculty meeting (which could be distilled into a memo of announcements) morph into a "words of wisdom" for oncoming parenthood and cake celebration. This joyous occasion as one of my colleagues who has been trying for a couple years to get pregnant had to sit and watch and wonder. It was feeling like all baby, all the time.

So that's part I. The second part of my "scrooge-ness" can be distilled as an equivalent to the time when a first child gets all pissy because all of a sudden its parents are splitting their energies between the firstborn and the newborn. I'm the firstborn in this situation. I have all these wonderful friends in my life and we all met and had these amazing experiences together when we were younger. First, life taking us across the country and world scatter us all over. So I've lost part of them first to geography. One by one, my formerly single friends found partners and began to do "couples things", a world that I can be included in but never truly feel welcome. At least, their spouses and partners are adults and always persons of intellect and quality so even though I lose part of them to their partners, I gain another friend. It's a wash. But the loss in this case is that I can't experience the world in a way that they do. I'm not privy to married/partner life and all the other couples and their orbits. And don't even ask me to try and comprehend and empathize with the issues and emotions around being a part of a pair.

Then comes the ultimate loss. The arrival of the child/children. If you thought I was at a loss to understand on an emotional level the issues of coupledom, well you can imagine how difficult it is to translate an theoretical idea of what some emotion/fear should be into really understanding and anticipating how to communicate and relate to those who do/are experiencing parenthood. Add to that the irrationality of those parenthood feelings/fears and I feel like I'm on eggshells.

I've "lost" a person who was at one time a friend of substance in my life. This person would warrant mention in my autobiography. This person would certainly be part of some hilarious story in which the joke would be on me. This person would come across in a positive light and would be amazed at how I could think of them in such high esteem. However, the course of life has removed them from my life. There is little about our lives anymore that are similar. And I don't think that our lives being different is all that bad, in fact, it's something that should be celebrated that each and every one of us has pursued a career or passion that was true for each and every one of us and is living a life of genuine happiness and contentment.

So, it hurts when the only thing that remains as a representation of our friendship arrives in the form that I complained about. And it's not the picture of the child, really. It's that it would have taken the sender a minute, maybe a maximum of three minutes to jot something down about them the person who is raising that cute kid in the picture staring at me. So really, I feel like (and I know this is completely childish and immature) I would rather not even get a card. Even though the sender is celebrating the development of their child and the picture is a snapshot of the incredibly hard work, loss of sleep due to worry and all the diaper changes, it's not something I can understand at the core level. At its most crass level, the baby/child/children 1, Ernie 0. And there isn't even a chance at a rematch/do over.

To end this post in a constructive way, I ask that those of you who send the picture cards of your children, please just take a minute to tell me about YOU. What are you doing in your life? What are the things, other than your child, that motivate you to get up each day? These are the things that brought us together as friends in the first place. These are the things that are going to keep us single people around. As for my issues with those benefits, most glaringly the missed opportunity at tuition remission at a private K-12 school, well, I'm just going to have to think creatively to see that benefit come to fruition. The inequities are as stark as me not having any benefit to another teacher who sent all four of her kids here for 13 years at 75% off. Umm, you do the math on that one.

I hope that I've explained the basis for my anger. I apologize for my bluntness. I don't apologize for the fact that I made light of what is a touchy issue for many of us who don't have children. Please remember what our lives our like because you were there once. We'll do our best to try and be sensitive to your feelings, joys and issues. However, for us it's in many ways an intellectual exercise and we might not always get it right. Thanks for making it this far. Good friends are willing to read to this point. Thanks, friend.

Pet Peeve

As many of you know, I have had (am having) issues with all of my heterosexual friends getting married and having children. I am not jealous in any way. Hello? I spend my days with 14 and 15 year old high school freshman. I get my fill of immature behavior. I have often threatened to write a book whose working title is something like:

"The Single (or Gay) Persons Guide When Their Friends Get Married and Have Children"

Topics would include:
1) How to not be a third wheel.
2) What not to say when you visit them in the hospital the day their first child is born.
3) How to avoid getting caught on the phone with your friend and having them put their soon to be talking (yeah, RIGHT!) child on the phone to "talk" to you.
4) Never attend a one year old child's birthday party. It's full of other married couples who have done nothing but spend every waking moment worrying about their precious baby. Write the check to the kid and stay the hell away.
5) Insist on being called by your name, never be called Uncle/Aunt So-and-So. You are a person, not a human gift giving/baby sitting machine.

There are many more tips that I can mention but you are probably wondering what the impetus for this posting was. It's Christmas time and that means that Christmas cards are flowing into my home at a rate of one or two per day.

Why do all my friends who have kids simply think that sticking in a photocard of their "adorable" child/children (and no picture of any adult in sight) with no personal greeting, suffices for a holiday card. I've learned absolutely NOTHING about what you did they did this year. All I can do is pull out the picture card from last year and see that Johnny/Judy can now hold a spoon and plaster food all over themselves. Come on people, put in a little more effort and care than that. Your actions (or non-actions as the case may be) are giving all you parents a bad name with your single/gay friends. Your lives are not to be lived only for your child. You, too, were independent, interesting and dynamic people at one point at an earlier point in your lives!

Someone's Birthday...

This past Sunday a group of 15 of us were picked up in two limos at the Diamond Heights Parking Lot for a day wine tasting in Napa. Armed with bagels, fruit and a fully stocked bar, the two limos were whisked up to the Napa Valley. First stop, Cakebread Winery. S. had arranged for our group to take an extended tour of the winery, the conclusion of which was an extensive wine tasting.

Our tour started with a walk through the grapevines. Being someone who is only now learning about wines (S has taught me now the ability to determine between families or reds and whites) I actually learned a great deal and put some of the words that I have learned in context. As you can see it was a fabulous day weatherwise.

The Cabernet Sauvignon vines have this unkept look because during the summer when the grapes are growing the leaves of the arching overhanging vines shade the fruit and traps heat underneath allowing the grapes to produce sugars for a longer time during the day.

This isn't a cucumber or zucchini, but actually will be a loofah someday when it is dried. The garden is on the Cakebread grounds and when cooking classes are held, the foods are taken directly from this plot.

The tanks at Cakebread Winery

Next stop, Peju Winery. This winery does not sell its wine commercially, only over the Internet, here in Napa or one can find it in top restaurants.

Peju's signature tower

We had our tasting in Peju's main tasting room which was the top floor of the tower.

Tasting at Peju

Here's a partial list of the wines we tasted at Peju.

I had tasted the wines at both Cakebread and Peju (come on I had to taste a wine that costs $125.....I mean the pragmatist in me was going "What the hell is so special about a wine to have it cost $125?") However, the little wine I had was making me loopy and so S cut me off. Peju was fantastic and we were off again. This time to the Merryvale Winery.

Merryvale

At the point in the day, I was enjoying the fresh air outside and dozing off due to my Asian gene deficiency.

The day ended with a stop at Domaine Carneros known for it's famous Tattinger label. Again, I took a pass on the tour and tasting.

The Napa Group in front of the Tattinger House.

The day ended with us riding the limo across the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset. Happy Birthday S.

NOTE: I just spent two hours going through all the blog postings eliminating last names. I've replaced them with the first initial of the last name. On about five separate occasions this year, I have gotten some word of a person mentioned being googled and having my blog posting with their name show up. So, in the interest of people's privacy, I've taken surnames off of here. If you find one that I missed, please let me know. Thanks.

So this is where aging Olympic rhythmic gymnasts end up....

Yesterday, for Scott and mine's eight month anniversary, we attended Cirque de Soleil's newest show, Corteo. The tent is set up in the parking lot of SBC (nee: Pacific Bell) Park just south of the Bay Bridge. Since picture taking is not allowed under the big tent, I am providing pictures that I lifted right off the web. Just like my experience attending the opening of Wicked, where I had no idea what to expect and ended up having a wonderful time, the same happened last night.

The show was a circus, but so much more. My favorite acts were the actually near the beginning:

Spinning Chandeliers with twirling and flying female acrobats.

The women would grab onto a part of the chandelier and twirl the strings of "pearls" or actual metal itself, all while swinging up and down and back and forth as the chandeliers were raised and lowered.

My favorite, however, was the "bouncing beds". I think the picture speaks for itself.

Beds that doubled as trampolines

The night was cold and blustery, but under the big tent, the air was electric and pumped full of warm air.

As we left Corteo and were driving home, Scott and I both noted that Corteo would only travel to seven cities throughout the United States. It underscored for both of us that one of the attractions of living in San Francisco is that it is a world-class city. It draws to its stages shows like Wicked and Corteo so we can experience them right in our own proverbial backyards.

A decision to not consume

A couple weeks ago, Scott and I went to Best Buy to check out something he was thinking of buying (BOSE speakers if I recall). I was wandering around, overwhelmed by the amount and variety of technology from which I could choose, when I saw it. It being a TIVO machine, which after a rebate (offer expires Sunday 11/27) would only set me back $50. Granted, this doesn't include the TIVO subscription cost, but the machine would be a mere $50.

My mind was going at warp speed trying to figure out how I would be able to have a working TIVO in my house since it requires a phone line and I am one of those people who ditched my landline to go mobile only. To solve this issue, I would need to purchase a $75 wireless card to plug into the back of the TIVO machine so it could communicate with my wireless router. But the best idea was to have Mom buy it for me for my Christmas present.

One of my mother's biggest complaints about both my father and I is that we have no sense of delayed gratification. If we want something, we just buy it. This then precludes my mother from buying that desired item as a gift for either of us. Not this time, however. I called and left a message for my Mom. I called my sister as well for secondary confirmation of my message.

When my Mom called back, not to my surprise, she had no idea what a TIVO was. There was no way I was going to be able to explain to her the difference between a TIVO and a VCR, therefore I told her to go down to Best Buy and talk to one of the salespeople. She did and this past Friday, she called and told me that I should just go ahead and purchase the TIVO down here since it didn't make sense for her to buy it in Seattle and then have me haul it back down to San Francisco. Score!!!

But as the weekend wore on and the rebate deadline approached, I took a hard look at my desire to have a TIVO. In reality, I know all of the cool features and the convenience of watching television without commercials. But I have pretty much eliminated television from my life. The genesis of my desire to have a TIVO was that I had missed setting the VCR to tape Gilmore Girls for three straight weeks. Yes, I have officially outed myself in the public domain as being a devotee of the WB's Gilmore Girls.

All I really needed was the ability to write a note to myself in my planner to set the VCR, not a machine to take care of all that for me. So that's how it is here at the end of November 2005. I remain sans TIVO.