The Conical Glass: October 2007

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Boo

It's Halloween, and I expect trick or treaters will start roaming the streets anytime now. Sadly, there will be no candy offered here. A couple weeks ago, I asked my friend Rose Anne, who lives a few blocks away, how many trick or treaters they usually get on Halloween; since we've lived in an apartment for so long, I haven't had to worry about handing out candy for many years. "Oh, we don't do Halloween anymore; we just leave our porch lights turned off," she said. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that was even an option. Ordinarily, I think it's fun to see cute kids in their costumes, but we had our furniture moved over to the new house today and I really don't feel like spending the evening on trick-or-treat watch, especially since I'll be here alone tonight. Plus, all the stress I've been under lately has driven me to eat more than I usually do, and I worry that Joe would come home to find me passed out in a heap of fun size Snickers wrappers. Better to just keep it out of the house.

My running clothes are around somewhere, probably in a box marked "Sewing Room" or "Baby" -- we got all of our moving boxes on Freecycle, and I didn't always do the greatest job of crossing out the original labeling. Of course, packing and schlepping boxes is excellent exercise. We tried to move a lot of the smaller stuff ourselves, so the pro movers were left with the biggest items: the monolith and its corresponding media unit, our bed, my large desk, the loveseat, etc. The 7-man crew (most of them Tibetan) managed to load and unload all of it in 5 hours, most of which was probably the travel time required to take stuff from our condo, down the two elevators, to their van. Moving stinks, but the process was relatively painless. (Stu Miller, in case you're looking for a great mover in the East Bay.)

At one point, looking at all the boxes, I said that moving made me wish I could just get rid of everything and live a monastic life with nothing but the clothes on my back. "Do you know how often I hear that?" asked Stu. "Every day. People say, 'Oh, just drive it off a bridge.'" Like Steven Wright said, "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it"; you may only have a 2-bedroom apartment, but you wouldn't want to pack it all up and move it.

Today would have been the 90th birthday of my great-Uncle Andy, who died two days ago. Sadly, he had been severely disabled for quite a few years, but he will be remembered by everyone who knew him for his good humor and charitable acts. I won't forget how excited he was when Joe appeared on "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" a few years ago -- he loved quiz shows and crossword puzzles, which, fortunately, he could continue to enjoy even as his body failed him.

posted by 125records @ 4:35 PM 3 comments

Friday, October 26, 2007

Think before you toss

I never would have guessed that the most complicated thing about moving would be learning the new trash and recycling system. Back at the condo, all trash was bagged and sent down the chute, whereas papers, cans and bottles went into bins in the garage. (It was quite an innovation when, about a year ago, we stopped having to sort our papers from our cans and could put them all in the same bin.)

The situation here in Brigadoon is quite different. On our first morning here, we received three cans -- a small gray one and two larger ones in blue and green. The gray one is for trash; the blue for recycling; and this is where it gets complicated: the green one is for "organics." I had assumed that the green can would just be for leaves and yard debris, but according to the trash collectors' web site, it's also for so much more. Used Kleenex and tea bags can go in the organics can, which is good, as my office trash can contains those two items almost exclusively. Newspaper goes in the blue can, unless it's food-soiled, in which case you throw it in the green can. Paper towels that wiped up food spills go green; ones you used to clean the mirror with Windex are regular trash. Q-Tips with wooden wands are organic, the plastic ones are not. Frozen food boxes, which I used to recycle with our newspapers, are supposed to go in the green can. Wine corks are green, lids and caps are blue.

If you're stumped by anything, there's an email address where you can send your questions. I feel like it's going to take me a while to learn the recycling ropes, and will require lots more trash cans inside the home; in the bathroom, for instance, I'll have to have one can for tissues (organic) and another for used dental floss, toothpaste tubes and deodorant packaging.

posted by 125records @ 1:04 PM 1 comments

Sunday, October 21, 2007

See the movie, don't read the reviews

I love going to sneak preview screenings because I think it's so cool to see a movie before every plot twist has been dissected in the media. Sure, sometimes you wind up seeing a "Fur" or "American Dreamz," but getting to experience a gem without knowing anything about it first makes it all worthwhile.

The poster for "Dan in Real Life" is a close-up of Steve Carell's face, looking out at the viewer as he rests his head on a stack of pancakes. His expression is sort of forlorn and resigned. This was enough to convince me that "Dan" must be a Sad Steve Carell movie, and I will always go see Sad Steve Carell ("Little Miss Sunshine," "The 40 Year-Old Virgin"), while skipping Wannabe Blockbuster Steve Carell ("Evan Almighty," "Bewitched"). Indeed, "Dan" is a tour de force of S.S.C., as he plays a widower struggling to raise his three daughters, one an adorable fourth-grader, the other two surly teenagers.

There is a plot twist that happens about 15 minutes into the film that I'm sure every single reviewer will give away, since usually if something takes place that early on, it's considered fair game. But I really enjoyed getting to experience the film without knowing the twist was coming. So if you're a Carell fan, or just a fan of quirky romantic comedies, I implore you to see "Dan" without reading anything about it first. Heck, if a TV commercial comes on, turn it off. (I just watched the trailer on YouTube, and of course it gives away most of the plot.)

This afternoon, while our third open house was going on, we went to see George Clooney's new film, "Michael Clayton." I really don't like it when movies are named after their lead characters, unless that character is already a known quantity (e.g. "Gandhi"). The title "Michael Clayton" tells you nothing. He could be a football player or a jewel thief or a dentist. As it turns out, he's a lawyer. I had already read a couple reviews of "Clayton," but it's got a pretty complicated plot, so in this case, knowing a little bit of the story in advance probably helped me get into it. Clooney is excellent, as is Tilda Swinton as the icy lead counsel for a big agrochemical company. It's not what I would call an entertaining film, as it deals with pretty heavy topics (evil corporations, mental illness, crushing personal debt, etc.), but it's well made and worth seeing if you wish Hollywood was making more serious issue pictures for grown-ups along the lines of "The Verdict" or "Missing."

Maybe I should say "issue pictures that aren't about the war," since there seems to be a bumper crop of topical war pix this fall -- "In the Valley of Elah," "Rendition," "Redacted," "Lions for Lambs," etc. I'm hoping maybe there'll be something on the fall/winter slate that's not quite as much of a downer as "Redacted" and not quite as idiotic-looking as "Fred Claus" or "Alvin and the Chipmunks."

posted by 125records @ 6:37 PM 6 comments

Friday, October 19, 2007

Soft market = opportunity!

I've been getting really good feedback on these real estate related posts, probably because everyone is fascinated by home-buying and selling -- why else would HGTV keep cranking out shows like "My House Is Worth What?" and "Designed to Sell." Of course, when your own home is on the market, you don't want to wake up to the headline "Home sales in Bay Area crash to 20-year low." If you are a home seller, it's as if you're being told, "You're selling your home now? Are you insane? You'll be lucky if someone offers you some old bottle caps and spare sofa-cushion change for that thing! Why didn't you sell a year ago, when even a run-down shack in Crack Alley could generate multiple offers way over the asking price?"

Of course, during those halcyon days, there was no way Joe & I could afford to buy a house. I didn't want to see a horribly inflated sale price as merely a starting point for cutthroat competition. (Indeed, we made the only offer and paid exactly the asking price for our new place.) The sellers are also moving up, to a larger home elsewhere in Brigadoon. Surely there must be others out there who figures the soft market is the perfect time to go home-shopping.

Now that our condo is on the market, it's fair game for anyone who wants to come see it. I'm supposed to get some notification when someone is coming by so I can grab the dog and skedaddle, but today, I was in the middle of a business phone call when a real estate agent and his clients knocked on my door. I hurriedly ended the call and picked up the leash and my "go bag" (which contains a magazine, iPod, crossword puzzle, etc.). As I was hustling out the door, the male client said, "It seems like we had to go an awfully long way to come up here. Is there a shortcut?" "No, I'm afraid that's it," I answered brightly. Since I've been living here, I've had recurring dreams about a magical elevator that runs sideways. Oh, how nice it would be if such a thing existed, and could whisk us from our door directly to the street.

Since the real estate business is one known for its spin (no house is ever "small"; it's "cute," "cozy," "adorable," "charming," etc., and fixer-uppers are inevitably "full of potential"), I hope the Realtors can sell this place as being "private," "secure" and "quiet."

posted by 125records @ 4:28 PM 1 comments

Thursday, October 18, 2007

The greenest library

I had to make myself scarce this morning since our first open house was scheduled. One of the laws of real estate is that the owner cannot be present when would-be buyers are looking around. Our Realtor did let me know afterward that about 16 people had come by, and a couple of them seemed genuinely interested. There is now a display of fliers on our coffee table (pristine! No magazines or remote controls are allowed to mar its surface!) featuring photos of our condo with the headline, "Stunning Bay & City Views!" I guess that's better than what I could have come up with. "Do you love elevators? I mean, really love elevators? If so, welcome to your new home!"

While Hobie hung out in Joe's office, I had one especially important task: I needed to apply for a library card. I'm going to refer to our new community as Brigadoon, because it is, in a way, an enchanted village -- it may not appear only once every 100 years, but to outsiders, it retains a slight air of mystery. It is its own little self-contained world, which is one of the things I've really come to like about it. Our house, with its high backyard fence and noise-obscuring fountains, is a little world within a world -- a world blessedly free of elevators. (Sorry, but if you'd spent the past couple weeks moving boxes and furniture down two elevators, you'd be obsessed with them, too.)

Anyway, the Brigadoon Main Library is relatively new, and a certified green building. The walls were insulated with recycled denim (!) and the carpeting is made of recycled plastic bottles. Good news for people who are worried about the tectonic time bomb in our midst: it's built so soundly it's determined to be one of the safest places to be in Brigadoon in case of an earthquake! There's a cafe, cleverly named Dewey's. Oh yeah, there are lots of books, too.

Now that I have my Brigadoon library card, I truly feel ready to move to my new community.

posted by 125records @ 4:47 PM 5 comments

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Bookcase thieves

Did I mention how much I hate elevators? This morning, I had made arrangements for someone to buy a huge teak bookcase that I'd decided wouldn't look so good in our new place because of all the wainscoting. Joe & I managed to get it down Elevator #1, and when we got to Elevator #2, it turns out that elevator was out of service. So there we were, with a 7-plus-foot-tall bookcase that weighs about a million pounds. We certainly weren't going to carry it down six flights of stairs, and we didn't want to bring it all the way back up to our apartment. We decided to turn it on its side and leave it near the elevator, making sure it was close to a wall so it wouldn't be in anyone's way. (Leaving things in the hall is hardly unknown around here -- our neighbors have had an empty plasma TV box by their door for almost a week now.) Once the elevator was fixed, I was going to call the purchaser to come over and help me with it, since Joe had to leave for work.

A few minutes ago, I got a call from a Realtor who wanted to bring over a physically challenged client to have a look at our place, so I went downstairs to see if the elevator was working again. It was, but the bookcase was gone. Who would abscond with a gigantic bookcase? Personally, even if this means I'm out the $50 I was going to charge the person from craigslist, I won't be too disappointed, since it was such a struggle to wrestle it into the first elevator -- it barely fit -- and I wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance. But still... strange.

Last night, I finally did something fun and went to see Bob Mould at City Arts & Lectures. I realized that I've been a Bob fan for over half my life. I've seen him with Husker Du, on his first post-HD solo tour, with Sugar, and post-Sugar solo; I think the only musical guise I've completely missed out on is his DJ'ing gig. (He came to San Francisco to spin records last fall, but Joe & I were out of town.) It was Bob's 47th birthday and I've got to say, he's looking terrific these days. Rock critic Michael Azerrad interviewed Bob about his life and career, and then Bob played a 30-minute solo set of songs, including one from his forthcoming (Feb. 2008) CD. Afterward, Bob signed copies of his new DVD and chatted with fans. Is it not amazing that the guy has been making music for almost 30 years and he's still coming up with fresh sounds? Plus, I found out that he writes an advice column for the Washington City Paper! The man is amazing. I wasn't quite sure if I enjoyed the evening so much because it was truly a great event or because it simply meant I wasn't packing & moving, but who cares; it felt like a reprieve.

posted by 125records @ 11:35 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Clean 'n guilty

When you're about to have dozens of people walk through your home, you want it to be clean. I really wanted to hire a cleaning service to tidy it up for me, but as I've blogged about before, after reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Louise Rafkin's Other People's Dirt, I had a real anxiety about asking people to do that job, even if I was paying them. However, I figured it was just the one time, so I did some research and found an employee owned cooperative in Oakland that uses only nontoxic and natural products. Surely I would not be exploiting people if they were business owners, not just workers, right?

I made arrangements to have the more extensive "move in/move out" cleaning done, and my neighbors (whom I will miss living above!!) were kind enough to allow Hobie and me to hang out in their apartment while the cleaning people were at work. I went downstairs with a couple magazines and my laptop, figuring it would take a couple hours, tops. After all, I had done a major decluttering, and made sure the place looked good for our Realtor's photo session on Saturday.

I started to feel progressively guiltier as time passed. The two women worked for three and a half hours. Was it that bad? After I'd paid and tipped them, I looked around the place. I have one of those protective plastic covers on my computer keyboard and I noticed that it had been cleaned of all the crumbs and debris -- geez, I'd always meant to do that myself, but had never gotten around to it. The oven was gleaming inside and out. The wood floors had been washed, the shower doors were grime-free, the stainless steel kitchen sink was polished to within an inch of its life. Thanks to the natural products they'd used, everything smelled nice and fresh, with none of that yucky bleach/chemical odor you usually associate with cleaning services.

Because of my dust allergy, it would be useful for me to have the new home professionally cleaned on a regular basis. This company obviously does fine work and the two young women were cheerful and professional. I just need to get over the guilt that comes with paying someone else to clean up after you.

BlatantCommentWhoring (tm Yellojkt): Do you employ a cleaning service? If so, do you feel weird about it?

posted by 125records @ 6:08 PM 4 comments

Monday, October 15, 2007

Designing to sell

A few weeks ago, I had thought it might be fun to do some kind of a "Moving Diary" thing here, but the whole process is so exhausting that at this point, I figure that I'll catch up on my blogging after we've moved. (Ditto sleep -- I'm hoping my rampant insomnia will abate once we're in the new digs.) This morning, I woke up early, terrified at the prospect of having to go to the title company office and sign the papers allowing us to borrow a kajillion dollars (note: amount approximate) to buy the new home. At this moment, after signing lots and lots of documents, I owe a frightful amount of money. Once our condo sells, the amount will be a tiny bit less frightful.

In case you haven't sold a property recently, or watched the HGTV program "Designed to Sell," you might not be familiar with home staging. In this tough market, home sellers don't just let people troop through their house -- they have a professional come and make it look like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog before it goes up for sale. Because I'm kind of cheap, I didn't want to pay the $3,000 it would have cost for a traditional home staging. (Most stagers have warehouses full of furniture and accessories; they make you put your crummy old sofa in storage and bring in a fancy new one.) Instead, I hired a young woman named Eileen to come in and work with our existing pieces. Eileen spent several years working as an assistant to a stager and she doesn't have her own storehouse of furniture. She walked around our condo for a while, taking notes, and emailed me a long list of suggestions -- put all of our CDs into storage, for instance, and paint the oak vanity in the guest bathroom white. Then she went shopping and bought a bunch of throw pillows and plants. With a new slipcover for our love seat, new bedding, and bright white towels that we're not allowed to use, the place looks awfully spiffy. Total cost, including Eileen's fee: around $600, and I get to keep all the stuff she bought. (She just sold her own house and it was only on the market for one day, so I'm hoping the magic will work for us, too.)

Our Realtor is holding open houses here on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, so by this time next week, I should have some idea of whether we'll be scheduling a refi or getting ready to pay two mortgages for a while. He's convinced it's going to sell quickly, but it's hard to be overconfident when the Chronicle has been running an almost-daily series with the not-at-all-alarmist title of "MORTGAGE MELTDOWN." At least Joe & I are proof that even in this market, banks are still handing out kajillion-dollar mortgages to qualified buyers; hopefully, someone out there will be equally qualified and ready to plunk down a bunch of bucks on our condo.

posted by 125records @ 1:13 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Changing views

Whenever I pause and look out my office window these days, I think: In a couple weeks, this won't be my view anymore. It's not a terribly exciting view -- I can see two gas stations and two mini-storage places, the highway, some houses, and a bunch of eucalyptus trees -- but for ten years, it's been my view. Everything is making me nostalgic all of a sudden, from the diligent but decidedly amateur sound of the kid next door who practices his violin for an hour every afternoon, to the hum of the custodian vacuuming the hall first thing Tuesday morning. My new view will be much more intimate: a brick patio, trees and other greenery, visible through a set of French doors. The garden is surrounded by a tall fence. I'm moving from a very public sphere to a far more private one. On warm days, the sound of children playing Marco Polo in the pool will no longer carry up to my room.

Unlike a lot of people who live in apartment buildings, I always really like smelling the cooking odors that waft through the halls; some weekend mornings, I'd take the dog out and it would smell like bacon and I would reflexively feel my mouth start to water, even though I haven't eaten bacon in 20 years. A few days ago, I stepped into the elevator (I cannot bring myself to feel nostalgic about the elevator. I will not miss the elevator.) and was hit by a slightly perfumey smell and was instantly overwhelmed by an image: my grandmother, my dad's mom, has arrived for a visit and I bend down to give her a hug. The air smelled just like her and for a moment, I felt her presence. That's never happened to me before. I wanted to stay in the elevator and keep riding up and down, but I had places to go and besides, it would have seemed awfully strange if someone else had gotten on and there I was, sniffing the air.

I've told a few people that I'm moving and so many of them say the same thing: "Oh, I hate moving." My grandmother stayed in her home for over 60 years and died there at the age of 91; my parents have been in theirs for about 40. I knew I didn't want to stay in this condo for another 50 years. I wanted a little yard for Hobie to run around in and where I could hang up my laundry, Joe wanted to be closer to his office, and it will be an enormous relief not to have to ride up two elevators and walk down two long hallways to get from our car to our front door. But I think it's not just the physical part of moving, packing up all of your stuff and putting it in a truck, that's difficult; it's getting used to a whole new environment, new neighbors with their quirks and customs.

When we were looking for a house, we were only looking forward, and now that we're getting ready to leave, I find myself unable to tear my gaze away from the rear-view mirror. A couple more weeks, and I hope I'll be ready to embrace the new view.

posted by 125records @ 6:01 PM 5 comments

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Time after time

On Nov. 1, 2006, I wrote about my experience with jury duty. It is a topic that comes up frequently here at the Conical Glass, because I get jury duty every single year. "Knowing my track record, I'll probably get another summons 366 days from now," I predicted.

As it turns out, I only needed to wait a little over 11 months! Yes, today's mail brought a fresh jury summons (for Nov. 5) from the fine folks at the Alameda County Courts. I am completely stumped why some people, like myself and my friend Janet A., are called year after year like clockwork, while other people claim they have lived here forever and never get that fateful envelope in the mail. Of course, chances are I'll call in on Nov. 4 and be told I won't have to report, but still, it's bizarre how regularly I am summoned.

posted by 125records @ 6:56 PM 0 comments

Friday, October 05, 2007

Hitting the target

In the recent news reports about Google's acquisition of online ad firm DoubleClick, many privacy advocates are concerned about the use of Internet users' data. "Will Google combine the two data systems to map not only what someone searches for, but also which sites they visit, videos they watch and ads they click across the Web in order to better target marketers' promotions?" asks this article on Cnet News.

Right now, my attitude is: bring on the targeted ads. For some reason, the amount of spam that I'm getting has really picked up lately, to between 300-400 emails a day. It all goes into gmail's spam folder, but because of the occasional false positive, which happens maybe 2-3 times per week, I need to quickly scan the subject lines before I delete it all. What I've found is that approximately 75% of my spam is about penis enlargement. (It could even be higher than that; a lot of my spam is in Korean and Chinese and other languages I don't read.) Here's a quick sample of today's missives, so you can see what I'm confronted with every single day:

80% of women think their partners penis is small
93% of women do not mention small penis size, for fear of hurting their lovers' feelings
94% of women agree a larger penis is a visual turn-on
(I'm sure that those statistics are based on in-depth scientific investigations.)
ladies like em big, so i enlarged my cock just to please them
hey man, your girl feel down with your shorterPenis, our herbal pill can longer
Any bigger and i would be in a circus
(That's right -- Giant Penis Man is always the highlight of every Barnum & Bailey Big Top.)
Making your woman happy is very important for repeated sexual encounters
Tired of being ashamed of your penis size? Leave it for losers!
Take care of you and your penis!

Anyway, I hate to break it to the spammers, but I don't have a penis. If the subject lines were actually relevant to me ("96% of dog owners think their dogs are absolutely precious! Doesn't your pet deserve Vaxadog nutritional supplements?"; "Tired of bad NPR reception? Our new antenna is 63% longer than the competition!"), then it would make this daily chore less onerous. Google is taking over the world, and I for one welcome our new advertising overlords.

posted by 125records @ 2:03 PM 2 comments

Monday, October 01, 2007

Vote 9/12 in 2008

Over the weekend, someone asked me who I was supporting for president. I said I didn't yet know, and in truth, none of the candidates should want my support, considering that in the past, I've been for such unsuccessful contenders as Gen. Wesley Clark and Paul Tsongas.

Now that the New York Times has freed its op-ed columnists from behind the Times Select pay wall, I can go back to reading them online. (For some reason, I could never bring myself to shell out the $40 or whatever it cost, just to see what Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman happened to be saying this week.) This column by Thomas Friedman is absolutely dead on, in my opinion. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Joe & I went to see Paula Poundstone last night at Cobb's Comedy Club. I've been a fan of Paula's since she first became a popular comedian in the 1980s. In 2001, she was arrested on a charge of felony child endangerment, which evidently stemmed from driving her foster children while intoxicated. She was sentenced to several years of probation and spent several months in rehab. I hoped at the time that she would emerge sane & sober and ready to make a comeback, and that's what's happened, fortunately. She now drinks nothing but Diet Pepsi (over a dozen cans a day, she said during her act) and has three adopted children. She is arguably the funniest panelist on one of my favorite radio shows, NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" She generally plays theaters these days, not comedy clubs, but Cobb's lured her back as part of their star-studded, month-long 25th anniversary celebration. She is a very funny lady, and someone who can now look back on her woes with insight and wry humor.

posted by 125records @ 2:20 PM 2 comments

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Name: Sue
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