We keep the ringer on the bedroom phone turned off, for the most part, so when I heard the phone ringing at 12:15, I thought it was the television. Of course, I was watching Rent, and the phone in the guy’s flat sounds nothing like any of our phones, so I did finally glance over and see that the caller ID was active, and the area code was from Minnesota.

I knew, of course, that it’d be Julia (Bripadme to the LJ crewe) calling from Cupertino, where she’s spending her weeknights for the next month or so. “Melissa!!!!!!” she shrieked into the phone so loudly that I could actually count the six exclamation points. “Guess where I am?”

But I knew. Well, sort of.

“San Jose!!!!!!!” I squealed back, using SEVEN exclamation points, because, hey, I’m the one writing the entry. (Actually, I did not squeal. I never squeal. Ever. Well. Not in public. But I was properly enthusiastic, if a little jealous because I’ve been homesick all month, and it’s not improving. )

Anyway, she was calling from the middle of Stevens Creek Blvd to ask for advice on late night dining. I’d recommended Hobee’s because no one should miss out on such a place, but it was after ten in California (obviously) and since it’s Sunday, it was closed. She found an IHOP as I was looking up addresses for Denny’s (which I knew would be open, though the only one I’m familiar with is the one on Bascom in Campbell) on the web, but it, too, was closed. (As I’m writing this I’ve just remembered that the IHOP on N. First in downtown San Jose is open past ten, but sending her to downtown San Jose, from Cupertino, after having been on a plane all day, seemed cruel. I mean, if I was gonna send her that far, I’d have just sent her to Original Joe’s.)

I need to remind her that there’s generally a nifty piano player in the lobby of the SJ Fairmont at night. She’d enjoy it, I think. (Actually, I dated a guy who played piano at the Fairmont way back in the mists of my pre-Fuzzy life, but that is a completely different story, and I’m saving it for the book, I think.)

Anyway, I finally just sent her back the other way on Stevens Creek, knowing that if she went far enough she’d eventually hit Safeway and/or McDonalds, and I recommended she check out Miyake for lunch while she was in town, so all is well.

But the ten minute conversation we had was enough to wipe away the remnants of me being incredibly frustrated and disappointed in myself earlier tonight, and it was good to talk to her, however briefly. *sigh* I really need more women friends.

My last words to her, “Hah, I’m giving you directions in a city I don’t even live in. I am so blogging this.” And so I’ve done.

Last year, with the help of all of you, I raised (roughly) a thousand dollars for Habitat for Humanity

This year, I’d really like to double that, but I need your help now. (I’m also considering a different charity. Something smaller. $1000 goes farther for a small charity than a large one.)

First, I need help with an over-all theme. You may remember that I solicited pix of doors last year, and used them, along with song lyrics, as inspiration for entries and flash fic on a theme of houses and home. This year, I’ll likely be MoBlogging at least part of it, because of external committments, and because it’s way easier to stay awake when you’re out and about.

Second, I need a support system. Especially during the wee hours of the night. If I know you, and you’re local, I’m willing to host a sort of “Slumber Party for Grown Ups,” just to have help staying up. If you’re NOT local, please consider chatting with me over IM during the ‘thon. This helps more than you could ever know.

Third, I need your money. (But not yet.)

Blogathon 2006 begins at 9:00 AM EST on Saturday, July 29th, and lasts 24 hours, with a required post every half hour. Charities are chosen by individual bloggers, and must be able to accept online donations. No blogger ever handles any donated funds..

I say… And you think…?

1. Band :: Aid
2. Tan :: Shoes & pink shoelaces
3. Mount :: Ararat
4. Arcade :: Pinball wizard
5. Customize :: Specify
6. Hamburger :: Mary’s
7. Solid :: State
8. Forbidden :: Forest
9. Deter :: Desist
10. Torment :: Sweet torture

Like this meme? Play along here.

A few years ago, I did a month-long meme in which each days post was centered around a letter of the alphabet, and each letter was handled sequentially. I don’t know if the original meme-host is still hosting it, but I like having a theme to work with, however loosely structured it may be, and since Sky has asked me to share my thoughts on Astrology, I thought I might just do the whole alphabet, while I’m at it.

* * * * *

Your Horoscope For Today

It would be easy to begin this with something easy like, “I am Leo, hear me roar,” but the truth is that most of the time I don’t feel very Leo-ish. I’m horribly awkward in large groups, inhibited until I really warm up to people, and generally disinterested in 98% of the population of the world. (The remaining 2%, however, which is made up by the folks who are competent, talented, intelligent, funny, etc., fascinate me to no end. If you’re reading this, or if I read your stuff/hang out with you/interact with you at all, you’re in that 2%, and I probably have completely inappropriate fan-girlish feelings about some aspect of what you do or who you are.) So, apparently, I’m a Leo who had her self-esteem reserves removed at birth.

Anyway, while I have a very vague understanding of the signs of the zodiac and how they apply to personalities, and while I recognize terms like ‘rising sign’ when they are tossed about, I don’t really have true comprehension of what it all means and how it applies, and, as with many spiritual things, I’m extremely skeptical, and I just don’t like the notion that any external force guides or controls what we as individuals do with our lives. (I feel the same way about organized religion, actually, and the truth is that I embraced (semi) regular church-going more for the sense of community than for any burning desire to get closer to someone else’s concept of God. Well, also, I like the music, and singing in the choir is fun. Ecept for the robes. So not loving the robes. But I digress.)

It may not be entirely fair to lump Astrology in with organized religion, and in truth, I don’t dismiss any of it out of hand. I’ll confess that when it comes to such things, I tend to pick and choose the bits that are relevant to me, and pretty much ignore the rest. Do I read my horoscope? Once in a while, sure, but more for entertainment than for actual information. (I gravitate to Free Will Astrology as much because it’s snarky than for any other reason.) Do I blame Mercury being in retrograde when I have a sucky day? No. Because I don’t think Mercury is responsible for what I do. And I’m far more influenced by the weather report than by any particular alignment of planetary bodies. (And come on, horoscopes are vague on purpose. Anyone can interpret them in any way possible. As with any prophecy, at some point it’s all self-fulfilling.)

Do I think my friends who DO believe – truly believe – in all this, are stupid or naive, or wrong? Never. But I think it’s their belief that makes it so. Religion, after all, isn’t about fact, it’s about faith. It doesn’t matter if the religion involves praying at an altar or calculating the paths of stars in the sky. And deep down, or maybe not so deep, a part of me envies their ability to just trust, accept, and get something out of it. It’s just that my mind doesn’t work that way. I’m not wired for it.

Sky, this doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hear your thoughts, or interpretations, and it doesn’t mean that I disbelieve everything. It just means I’m skeptical. I love hearing your thoughts and ideas, because even when I don’t entirely agree with them, they make me think about things in a new way. And a change of perspective is NEVER a bad thing.

A while ago I posted a meme in which someone gave me a letter and I was to write about five things which begin with that letter and what they mean to me. I then offered to assign letters to others. Recently, my blog-friend Beth, asked if she could have a letter, and when she’d written her post, I asked her if she’d send the meme back my way. She assigned me the letter D.

Degustation.
I first encountered this word in France, as we were driving from Bezier to Carcassone about four years ago. I kept seeing it painted on signs in front of farm houses, or on gates. I wondered about it, but it wasn’t until our last night in St. Thibery that I learned that it meant that the people in those houses were offering tastes of their wine, in order to elicit sales. Ben (or was it Bill?) one of the B&B Owners said that it reminded them of the word “disgusting,” but that most of the wines were quite good. They went on to explain that one should never drink white wines along the Canal du Midi as they’re blended from various grapes, and tended to be uneven, but that the reds were always excellent. They punctuated their lecture on French wine with samples. By the end of the evening, I was buzzed, high on life, and not entirely certain that the fireworks we shot off in the empty field behind the house weren’t just in my head. I spent most of the 13-hour plane ride from CDG to SFO asleep, though, so, it was all good.

Dreams
As a kid, I went through phases where I wanted to be a jockey, a singer (specifically Billie Holiday or Judy Garland), President of the USA, or a marine biologist. Oh, and I wanted to write great books. I think it’s cool that our dream-selves are often radically different from our real selves, but also, I think a little “what if” play is healthy. Speculating gives us ideas and inspiration. I also think it’s fascinating the way our dreams form our lives, even when the actual paths we take diverge in radical ways. I’m never going to be a marine biologist, but I live for the ocean-related shows on The Discovery Channel, and still have a slight obsession with sharks.

the Dark
I’ve never been afraid of the dark, as much as I was afraid of what might be lurking within it, but as I’ve gotten older, the childhood fears have given way to a love of darkness. The dark of night is when my mind is most alive, racing with ideas long after I should be sleeping, it’s also the coolest part of the day, when the heat and its accompanying tension break away, leaving sillky, smooth, restful nighttime in their wake. Isn’t it interesting, though, that light is just light, but dark is always THE DARK, as if it’s not just an absence of light, but an actual entity? Food for thought.

Drawing
I love art, and art supplies, and I would kill to be able to draw, but there’s some synaptic failure between what I see in my head and what my hands are capable of putting on paper. I am always eager to watch others draw, then, and to see how they work. For me, the process is as interesting as the finished product.

Diaries
I’ve owned several diaries, journals, blank books and such over the years, but I can never stay loyal to them. I feel like whatever I put on nice paper has to be GOOD, instead of REAL. When I was introduced to OpenDiary by a friend, I knew I’d found my niche. Blogging gives me the freedom of a diary in that I can write whatever occurs to me, and comes with feedback and external accountability. What could be better?

That’s it for me and the letter D. Want a letter of your own? Let me know!

My aunt, Patricia Klindienst, will be doing readings from / signings of her book The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America

tomorrow (today)
Saturday, June 10th at 2:00 pm at Filoli
(here’s their blurb about her)

and
Monday, June 12th at 7PM at Cody’s Books (on Fourth Street) in Berkeley.

as well as on
Saturday, June 24th from 11:30 am – 1:00 pm
at Common Ground Garden Supply & Education Center in Palo Alto.

You should totally go.

(Also, she’ll be in Seattle on the 21st and in Santa Fe, NM on the 17th. )

A placeholder, and an acknowledgement. Or several.

Beth: Letter accepted. A divine post about d-words is forthcoming.

Sky: Topic acknowledged. An entry is in the stars…

Janet: I’ve thought about the topic of which you wrote (Vampire!Snape), but I prefer His Snarkiness to be entirely human. Still, I’ve been noodling with my original vampire story here and there, and might post bits of it to moonchilde in a week or two. Remind me?

HAPPY FRIDAY

“Find wall. Beat head against same.” It’s a phrase a friend of mine often uses when she’s feeling exceptionally frustratred, and one that was my mantra today.

It began with arriving at work to find that my key card was mysteriously non-functional. Or, well, mostly. Once I managed to get INSIDE the building (thanks to a well-timed trip from one of the janitors) all the OTHER doors responded to the flashing of my badge just fine. I could even use it to trigger the exit function of the very same door that wouldn’t let me in. (These are high-tech revolving doors, that talk to you as you travel through them. “Please step into the doorway,” they say, in the kind of tone generally reserved for children and the criminally insane. I keep expecting them to take on the properties of the doors in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and tell me to have a nice day, or thank me for stepping through them. *shudder*. Also, I live in fear of my hair getting caught in them on windy days, and me dying a dismal death by scalping and subsequent crushing by door. Not that I have a vivid imagination or anything.)

Then, I arrived at my desk to find that the doors were open. The manager on-duty apologized, explaining, “We lost one of D****’s files, and since you’re covering her desk…” I don’t keep anything terribly personal in my desk – I mean – feminine hygiene products, yeah, but those don’t count. And anyway, there’s only one man in our department – everyone else is female, but, because we’ve been so swamped, I haven’t had a chance to strip my turndowns in about six weeks, and they’re jammed into the bottom drawer in a truly frightening fashion.

Anyway, in the process of closing the drawers, there was an ominous THUMP and I turned to find that three files had slipped behind the drawers to plummet to the floor. It took three people, two screwdrivers, and the assistance of a security guard to rescue the files, which, of course, were the one’s I’d left on TOP of the drawers (inside, lest we violate security) to take to underwriting first thing.

Three hours later, I felt like Michel from Gilmore Girls on one of his worst days. It seemed every stupid person in the industry was on the other end of my phone. “Hi I faxed a file an hour ago; do you have stips yet?” Um no. It takes at least 24 hours, and you didn’t send an appraisal. “I have a file with an open chapter 13 and only one active tradeline in good standing. Can we get an exception for not meeting minimum credit, and also go to 100% LTV, on a purchase?” Can you READ your underwriting manual? We don’t even do open bk’s on REFIs, and they haven’t managed to handle ANY credit without lates.

I went to lunch, more to get away for a bit than because I was hungry. The restorative properties of freshly grilled salmon and steamed broccoli with soy and wasabi are amazing, by the way. Feeling almost perky, I returned to the chaos of our department, and, while, admittedly I did bring my lunch back because I’d already taken fifteen minutes to get it, and couldn’t afford even that much of a break, the afternoon went a little better.

Well, until a rep from a city on the east coast decided I was the cause of all problems with his loans. I don’t even handle his region. But, yeah, whatever.

And then the afternoon mail came. More files. We’re already working on half-staff because of training. We have only two underwriters on the floor, because THEY’re in training, and our ops support folks are ALSO in training, well, those who aren’t bailing from the department like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

In addition to all this, we’ve got the spectre of being called to work on Saturday hanging over our heads. Around three, the regional VP came out to the floor and said we had 43 files left to process. One of my teammates asked if we could just stay late and finish. VP said it would be voluntary, but he was game if we were. Six of us stuck around til 8:30, trading files at the end, so that we’d all finish at about the same time. None of us will walk into work tomorrow with nothing to do, but at least there won’t be rollover.

At nine-fifteen, I was finally home, and sipping a cold Becks dark with dinner (Boston Market, because I refuse to cook on days like this, and anyway, we’ve both been putting in so many hours we haven’t bothered to shop) and at ten I was lying on the bed trying to decide if I had the energy to shower. I napped a while, tried to resurrect my Zen Micro (it’s stopped allowing transfers, even after updating Win Media Player and the firmware of the actual device), and now, an hour after I should have been sleeping, I’m venting to my blog, so I CAN sleep with a clear head.

Find wall.
Beat head against same.

Some days, this seems like the best advice ever.

I pass by him every afternoon on the way back from lunch. I’m carrying designer coffee and wearing expensive shoes; he’s wearing a t-shirt and chinos beginning to fray at the cuffs. Always, he’s bent over two bibles, one English, the other Spanish, and his dark eyes dart from one to the other, as he searches for the key that unlocks language.

I catch the faint scent of hair pomade, and despite the gulf of years and cultures that separates them, I am reminded of my grandfather.

I consider pausing to say hello, but I never actually do so.

Sky asked me about hats, and the first thing that I thought of was my grandmother’s voice, thick as olive oil, issuing the command, “Put a hat on that baby’s head!” Until I was four, my mother and I lived in our Eyrie apartment, and I was both awakened and lulled to sleep by the sounds of surf and shore birds and the basso profundo tone of the foghorn, but the rest of the time, I heard a lot about headgear.

The sun-hats that were foisted upon my toddler-self, generally in preparation for trips down the shore, or forays into my grandfather’s garden, started my addiction, my fascination with hats, but it was the hatboxes in the back of my grandmother’s closet that really cemented the relationship. These were not the cardboard gift boxes we think of as hat boxes, but small, round suitcases of the red and grey Samsonite variety. On rare occaisions, I’d been allowed to use them as overnight cases, but mostly, they held hats.

I don’t remember which hats came from which box, but I do remember the powdery smell of the scented paper that was wrapped around them, and I remember specific items that were withdrawn, not just hats, although there’s a red felt hat that I’ve inherited that is my all-time favorite, but also a collection of French gloves (long lost, alas) and a sealskin muff that I loved to touch, to caress, really, until I was old enough to understand that it was real animal fur. For a while, I still loved it, almost as much as the fox coat she had, for the softness, and the novelty of such a thing, as much for the notion of those items being relics of a lost era (though I’m sure I wouldn’t have used those words at the time), but later, after I saw my first seals and sea lions (okay, well, maybe not so much the sea lions, which are pretty much just big bags of jelly that bark), I couldn’t bear to slip my hands inside that muff any more.

As I grew up, my love of hats grew with me. As a teenager, I had berets in every color, including a black velvet one that, after I accidentally melted a patch of it by tossing it onto a curling iron I’d left plugged in, became my personal version of Jo March’s writing cap, though, without the bow. (I have a lifelong aversion to bows on hats and underwear), and an equally large array of painters caps and baseball caps, which are the best thing when you have long hair, because you can draw your ponytail through the hole at the back. (My collection as dwindled a bit, but both kinds of hat are still staples of my wardrobe).

Other hats in my collection are a green fedora, that I wear when I want to channel my inner Katherine Hepburn or Lauren Becall, a black one, for Annie Hall moments, and an embossed and irridescent velvet crushable stovepipe hat that I bought at a craft fair in San Jose more than a decade ago. (That hat is one of a pair I have from the same designer, an adorable older man with a merry soul and a treadle sewing machine, who called himself the Hatterdasher. Headgear is better when it comes with a pun. The second hat is a purple and green plaid velvet golf / newsboy cap.) Then there’s the classic straw hat perfect for picnics or trips to the faire, and the velvet Fez my mother made for me one year. I have several crushable hats from various sources, some velvet, and some in cottons and twills, and , my most special, a white leather tricorner adorned with peacock feathers (that and a saber came home with me from a science fiction con one summer…you haven’t lived btw, til you’ve tried to hop a Southwest flight carrying a sword)

I could go on, as I’ve only talked about a tenth of my collection, but more fun would be to explain why I love hats. As with any accessory, they’re part outfit, part costume, and I use them to help give myself a mood or theme for whatever I’m doing – when you’re essentially shy, you NEED crutches like that – so, I’ll wear a black beret and all black clothing if I’m feeling subversive, or a fedora if I feel like I need confidence. Newsboy styles are for jaunty moods, and baseball caps are for hiding.

Or at least they used to be. Now though, I live in a climate that isn’t conducive to hat wearing, and work in a place where they’re against dress code (here’s me NOT ranting about the fact that adults are given a dress code in the first place, because it’s another entry), and I have to admit, I feel like some part of my personality has been boxed up with my hats.

But at least the box is the one with the suns and moons painted on it.