Surprise, Surprise

I've gotten elaborate with my surprises, recently. I went away for a weekend women's retreat with my church this weekend, but got a little under the weather about half-way through and came home. Maybe I was homesick, or Arne-sick a little too. I thought I'd surprise him, and boy did I. He thought I was an intruder, and I had to wait about 15 minutes before I could even give him a hug!

Then, Wednesday, Jennifer Kain and I cooked up a good surprise for our guys. We surprised them with reservations at Range, our favorite restaurant in SF, to celebrate the release of the Girls Rock DVD. We'd planned to meet at a little Burger Joint around the corner, with our men, and let them in on the surprise (and the fact that we'd *all* be having dinner there). So I lolligagged at Little Otsu, and when we got to Burger Joint, I insisted that since this date was my idea, that I order for us at the counter (so I could just order us fries). Then the fries came! What to do?

I told Arne that we had reservations at Range. He had the biggest smile on his face, but when Jenn and Shane came in, mass confusion ensued. I had to tell Shane that I had reservations for four 3 times before he figured out that we hadn't just happened to run into one another...

Regardless, dinner was delightful, the service was stellar, and our men were truly surprised (and perhaps also a bit bewildered)... :)

The Tour

I got a fun tour of MobMerge this morning very early. Basically, it's a quick and easy forum for using judgments from real people (a la Amazon's Mechanical Turk) so you don't have to do them all yourself. In technology, and search in particular, it seems pretty obvious that there are some good applications. But what I'm breaking my brain over right now is how to design a study with MobMerge that could be valuable for Non-profit Evaluation (which is what I'm currently mixed up in - and really enjoying)...

I can tell that I've most likely gone off the nerd deep end. It's just pretty fascinating. I like all that technology leveraging human intelligence business.

Hair!

Went to see a rough cut screening of what is tentatively called "The Beard Project" yesterday. I quite liked it once I got there. Getting there was all about me trying to turn the wrong way onto one-way streets, but the popcorn I had made and ate nervously while driving helped make it all ok. By the time I'd arrived, all the popcorn was gone, though. I'd hoped to bring enough to share.

I like how good stories are about one thing, and invariably another. This movie's story was obviously about beards, but it was also about being on the margins of society, about how men are asked (or demanded) to conform, about the little things we all do to protect ourselves and about the filmmaker herself.

I can't remember, or better yet, I don't remember because I've never actually seen it, but I feel like the musical Hair might have some of the same themes. How is it that it can mean so very much to do something as simple as not shave your legs (think of the country song "Did I shave My Legs for This?!?")? I remember cutting my hair very short within a month after I moved to San Francisco from Athens, Georgia, in part because I wanted people on the street to leave me alone. It worked, or the attitude that I wore that haircut with worked.

Now that I think of it again, though, I could very well have been cutting my hair when I moved here as an act of mourning. At the time, I didn't have any large bowls of olive oil and brewers yeast covered popcorn to keep me sustained as I kept trying to turn into oncoming traffic.

Scared of Mike

I'm scared of Mike. He makes people vomit. At my wedding, he made about half of the extended bunch of wedding party and party wedding beg for mercy... Well, they would have begged for mercy if they had been able to breathe.

I have totally miscalculated my husband. I now believe that he told Mike that I didn't think his class was super hard. I did forget to mention that I *am* absolutely walking most of the hills and that I'm being very easy on myself, but it has to do with the following. For about five years now I haven't been able to run more than 20 minutes without only being able to walk at a shuffle due to I.T. band problems. (Turns out, the trick is rolling your hips and thighs out on a foam roller. Hurts like the dickens!) So when I posted last that the SF Outdoor Fitness class didn't kill me, I meant that I was still able to walk. What I hadn't yet experienced was the calf soreness that was so intense in the following days that I revolved my entire schedule around how often I had to go up and down our one flight of stairs. And I do *like* to sound badass, even if I'm not.

And now we're off to class, where all my terror come to fruition. If you see me hobbling down the sidewalk in the next few days, know it is *definitely* my fault. I never should have stared/blogged the dragon in the face! Didn't I know when it vomited back at me it would vomit fire!?!

Pondering Web 2.0

You know, we may be the only generation that as a whole is allowed to forget their terrible, terrific, frightening and fabulous childhood and teen extravagance, only to have everything thrown back in our face in our early middle age by social networking connections. There's a reason we forgot about C. Whatsername (she frightened us) and K. Whosywhatsit (how appallingly mean/self-centered we were). And now there is a reason that we dream of our childhood archetypes again. In the end, is it worth the present-moment-connectedness to also have to endure connecting whatever we've become with whatever we've been?

Love it!

Last night we had Notorious V.E.G. over for dinner, and as happens a lot these days (and not just with him) the conversation turned to houses and whether sooner than later might be a good time to buy a house, at least in the previously terribly expensive Bay Area. My lovely husband and our fantastic chef, advocated that it was a good time, but only if you were ready to *love* a house. Notorious pushed and pulled on that concept from various angles, and I dissolved into what can only be called an "I don't have a house and I want one" temper tantrum. Thinking about the whole issue this morning during a swim, I think if I have to pick a principle about house-buying, I'll stick to Arne's: plan to *love it*, or else wait to buy.

I guess what I'm saying is that especially in the current market, which has inevitably hit below the belt of any trend and any reputable forecast, without actually loving the place you'll be living and being in it for the long-haul, you seem to really risk your sanity and definitely your financial well-being if you're not thinking about a big investment like a house with love as a first defense.

This love it first attitude is one of the things I really like about Arne, and something I hear that he likes about me. He's got a lot of love in him, and when he focuses it on something he really wants, I believe wholeheartedly that the thing he loves will begin to exist and enrich him. I'm speaking specifically about his movie now. Girls Rock! Movie is so great because you can see how much Arne and Shane loved the stories of music and a smidge of freedom transforming the lives of girls. I am continuously overwhelmed by this work of his, and so very proud of him. Just a few days ago, he said to me that he was so very glad to have had the experience of making Girls Rock! and that having worked on a subject that meant so very much to him was really a gift. How else would you get through the crazy ups and downs of creating, producing, and distributing a movie?! The industry is full of hyper-excited individuals who never call you back, and a kind of continuous negotiation that it turns out is never done. I'm really proud of Arne for honing in on the thing that makes the craziness worth it: Love! And with the DVD release having also been such a wild ride, it comforts me that at least some of the time, Arne's passion for the subject and the love he put into the movie make him feel just giddy about the accomplishment of sharing this work with other people. Love seems to be really the only approach that makes sense right now, anyway, since everything feels so unstable and unknowable!

I remember the story that my parents told me about the house I grew up in, on a little lake in Georgia. They hadn't even seen the house yet, but as they were driving around the lake, a flock of around 80 geese (some years we counted as many as 120) flew over the car to land in the lake. At that point, before seeing the actual edifice, my mom loved the house. It was a truly fantastic place to grow up, and a great investment for my parents, though a struggle to keep from time to time. In retrospect knowing how close they were to not keeping it, I wonder if looking through love only was the best plan. But then I think of really every childhood memory being tied to that house and that place, and I feel pretty darn good about their decision to put us there.

What I know

They say you should write what you know.
I know I had Borscht for lunch today (but I don't know for sure how it's spelled).
I know that after I went to bed at 3 on Saturday morning, I continued to get serenaded (ie screamed at) for the next hour and a half. And I liked it... :)
I know that my calves are sore. Been running with Arne's running group SF Outdoor Fitness. Don't tell Arne, but I thought it would be a *lot* harder than it is.
I know that waking at 6:30 to exercise is not my forte. Actually I'm terribly bad at it.
I know that having a back up plan is a good idea, and also something I enjoy working up. It's been a trip to know that in the event that Arne and I only have enough money for seeds and canned goods to last us through until growing season, we've got a plan.
Lastly, I know that there's a lot more hard work to be done, but some of it is being whittled away at. Makes me feel good to know things are in process.