A New Dominion

I’m a little competitive. In life, and in board games, and other types of games. Sometimes I get carried away.

I stopped playing Risk because of one terrible experience in the college dorms, when I formed an alliance with my friend Josh, and then in a few turns I broke it and invaded him. He gave me some kind of disappointed, “I can’t believe you did that,” look, and then he and the other two people we were playing went to dinner at the dining hall. But I was too upset about my treachery to eat, and I stayed in the dorms feeling bad about myself.

Later, I realized that was stupid, and it’s just a game. I had a late dinner. But I never forgot how swept up I got in that game of Risk.

Drew’s friends recently introduced him to the card game Dominion. One of his friends has this insane expansion pack, with like a million different types of cards. I’m not even going to try to explain the rules.

Drew taught it to me and Erin over the weekend, so we could play while we watched the 49ers game. (Could our lack of attention be what caused…? No, surely not.) The three of us played three rounds and each of us won once, which is nice and PC.

Last night, Drew and I played again and he won, but it was close. I think I like this game! I like the dimensions I’ve been introduced to so far, and I like the way there is some interaction between players but it’s not overly based on that. (Like Ticket to Ride, the other addictive board game brought to you by Drew’s friends.)

I guess what I want to say is…in this world of Words with Friends and Hanging with Friends and Scramble with Friends (Boggle! omg! so fun) and Tiny Wings and Qrank and Fruit Ninja and Temple Run and Harbor Master and Flight Control…it’s really nice to sit down in a single room with RL friends and play an actual board game.

Even if Drew mostly wins.

Sweet Sleep Talking 16

Last night I woke from a dead sleep, parched with thirst. I fumbled for the water bottle next to the bed and enjoyed that middle-of-the-night drink of water that is always so so much better than a daytime drink of water. Why is that?

I must have made some kind of noise, because Drew said, “Is that…is that water?”

I handed it over. He drank all but a mouthful (terrible habit) and then handed it back, and said, “Now hurry, hurry, go back to sleep. Don’t waste it.”

This morning when the alarm went off, I said, “It’s 6:00. Are you getting up?”

He said, “Yes, turn the alarm off.”

I said, “No, I’m setting it to snooze.”

To which he replied (sounding totally hurt), “Aw, come on! Don’t be like that.”

Then I think we both slept for another 9 minutes.

For all I know, he was actually awake for both of these. I mean they’re not THAT farfetched.

The Art of Bad Tipping

Over the holidays, some friends and I went out to dinner at a place that we have gone several times before. It was a late dinner, so although we had to wait for a table, the restaurant wasn’t full or bustling or anything. But the service was pretty terrible. We just kept waiting for things that should have appeared quicker. Things like a server, to take our orders.
 
Once we had our food (which was not delivered by the server, but by other food deliverers), one of us had to flag down a server (not our server) to ask for a spoon. About five minutes later, our server appeared with a spoon and said, “Oh, they already brought you one.” Then she wandered away.
 
My root beer mug sat empty, although the menu states in all caps, “FREE REFILLS,” through the last three-quarters of the hour we were there.
 
Once we were clearly finished eating, some bussers came and removed the plates…and then we sat and talked, which was nice, but that’s the appropriate point for a server to come back, ask if you’re interested in dessert or coffee or anything, and then drop off the check. We finally had to flag her down to ask for the check…and then again to pick up the check.
 
When it came time to write in a tip, the table was all in agreement that we should make some kind of statement with this optional dollar amount.
 
Which brings me to my main point – what’s the appropriate way to tip poorly, when you want to make it clear that you felt the service was below par? One person argued that we should leave a zero tip, because that leaves the clearest message. But I think that generally you should leave something so that they know that you chose to leave a small amount – and it’s not that you didn’t know about tipping, or maybe you meant to leave cash on the table or something.
 
I ended up leaving about 10%, which is pretty awful as far as tips go. But afterwards I was told unhesitatingly that I should have left a big fat zero. That 10% just makes it look like I am a bad tipper, but leaving no tip at all leaves the strongest message.
 
I’m really not sure where I stand on this. I usually tip pretty well, because I like the idea of positive reinforcement and I’m generally happy with the service. My generosity goes up if I frequent the business and if they start to recognize me. I don’t want to be the girl who never tips. And I remember working food service and how each time someone stuffed a dollar in the tip jar, it would just make my day.
 
I also hate to treat anyone badly if I don’t know their situation. Was our server just having an off night? Did her boyfriend just dump her? Was she up all night with some kind of home repair problem? Who knows? On the other hand, she is getting paid to do her job – that extra 20% of our table’s check isn’t guaranteed to her, and she knows that she has to work to get that optional money out of her customers.
 
She wasn’t overtly rude, and she didn’t make any mistakes. She didn’t blow cigarette smoke in our faces or bring us all the wrong meals. She was just absent the whole time. So what’s the best way to handle that TIP line on the credit card slip?
 
Retrospectively, I feel okay about that 10%. It’s not as harsh as leaving nothing, but I didn’t have to smilingly hand over a fistful of extra bills beyond what the meal cost. I hope she was just having a momentary lapse of concentration, and that today she is back in top form, slinging plates and scooping up gratuities.
 
I also hope that the next time we go back there, we’re seated in another section…something in the other room, perhaps? No? Well, we can just sit at the bar, thanks.

The Devolution of an Apartment

Because I missed the boat on having a comprehensive wedding blog (one of my top 5 regrets ever), I have become slightly obsessive about documenting everything just in case it’s important. Most lately, the devolution of our apartment.

Here it is near the beginning of the breakdown. The hutch is (mostly) emptied out but everything is basically still there:

As the hutch and dining room set move out, everything else starts moving around:

The bedroom and my awesome red shelves, now emptied of books. Well, almost:

The living room only seemed to grow more crowded as we packed, despite my giving away 6 bags of clothes/shoes/etc, and 2 boxes of kitchen stuff, and us throwing away tons of trash:

Possibly making some progress? The desk is gone from the bedroom:

The couches, now freed from their restraining covers, move their waterprint patterns out the balcony and over the side (no room to get them out the front door).

Drew blinds me with the dresser mirror. Maybe he’s tired of me taking pictures while he and his dad move the heavy stuff.

So much room!

Yet still so much stuff!

While Drew and his dad drove the couches to the storage, I made it my job to clean off the bed.

I liked to put blinders on and pretend that this was all that was left. Ignorance is bliss.

The truck filled with boxes:

Our stored stuff, filling up the space:

My plan was to open every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen that still had stuff in it, and close them as I emptied them out.

I got some boxes from work with some strange codes on them…

Progress!

Then a break to take pictures. The masks were mostly because I was using Easy Off in the oven, and that stuff is toxic. But then it was fun to just keep them on.

I am really loving this afternoon spent with my head in an oven. So fun.

Actually, this is preferable.

The final day. Seriously, what is all this stuff.

FINALLY! What a giant bedroom.

What a sparkling bathroom.

What an empty living room!

And of course, to say goodbye, San Bruno had to dress up in its finest.

So long, first apartment in our married life! You were a good little apartment! I will think of you fondly!

Setting a routine

We’ve been in our new place for a week now. I can now say comfortably that I do not think we made the worst mistake ever moving out of our apartment. (That was a very real fear a couple times there.)

We’ve now had time to settle in, figure out what stuff goes where, and get used to sleeping in a new bed. We’ve each decided which shower we prefer. We’ve cooked meals in the kitchen. This morning I hosted our book club here and we made lunch for our four-person book club. (It was awesome.) (We should entertain more.)

We lived in the other place for over 2 years. I had a routine down. I knew exactly what I did every morning, and while it was a lot of back and forth from the living room to the bedroom to the bathroom to the bedroom, I knew what each step was and there was a very precise reason I did everything in that order.

But I have to kind of start over here. None of my stuff is in the order it used to be in, for one thing. For another, the bathroom where I shower is not the bathroom where I keep the hair dryer and everything. So there’s a lot more back and forth, because after 4 work days I still haven’t quite figured out what my exact routine is. There’s still a lot of, “What am I missing here?” It takes me a little longer to get out the door in the morning. Which is fine, since my commute is about cut in half.

Drew’s commute is about doubled, which makes our commutes about the same length of time now. Which is nice.

The good thing about getting a chance to recreate your routine, is that it allows you to build in some good stuff. I am trying to build the following things into my routine:

• Healthier eating, specifically snacking – we’ve purchased a lot of fruit in the last week, and I’m also depending a lot on those frozen vegetables that you steam right in the microwave
• Cooking dinner – in the last few weeks at the old place, we basically gave up cooking anything besides chicken nuggets on a baking sheet
• Going to the gym on the way home from work – theoretically I can avoid the worst of rush hour if I wait it out in a spin class
• More walks – it’s so pretty here, and there are lots of places to explore before hitting the library on the way home.

I also want to try to be more of an adult in 2012: meaning, I want to fold my clothes as soon as they’re clean* and make the bed every day and wash dishes as soon as they’re dirty. Honestly, I have less hope for these resolutions than for the others.

It’s fun to remake yourself every January 1st. And I feel like this year we get an extra boost to help facilitate that!

*I’m rolling my eyes as I write this, since I know that every single clothing item I own is freshly laundered but stuffed into a laundry bag on the floor somewhere. I guess I know what I’m doing tonight.

2011 My Year In Status

Facebook does this thing I enjoy, where you can sort through all your status updates from the year and then it puts them into a pretty jpeg for you. The writing is a little small (that’s the first time I’ve ever said that!) but I still like the concept of seeing my entire year like this.

There are things I entirely forgot about – and lots of things that I totally thought happened over a year ago. This year was definitely not boring – but also not too eventful.

Unfortunately I couldn’t fit all of the statuses I wanted to. So here are a couple that I had to leave off, that I still enjoyed rereading and reminiscing:

• First attempt at homemade lattes: aborted!
• Just found out this play is called Seagull. Not The Seagull. Good to know. First preview tonight!
• You know she’s your BFF when she texts you how much she loves you…in drunk Spanglish.
• To the old woman sorting through the trash dumpster at 8am: I know you were most likely just looking for recyclables, or even treasures that some wasteful entitled person threw away…but you are the reason I’ve gotten all OCD about shredding all my personal documents.
• Today is No Apologies Monday! Did you make a faux pas today? Don’t say you’re sorry! I was 10 minutes late to work…but I’m not sorry!
• Things trending on Yahoo right now: HIV, M Night Shyamalan, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. #NoApologiesMonday
• A word problem: If Safeway has a “Buy one, get two free” promotion…can two adults eat 3 lbs of strawberries before they go bad?
• If USPS is going to “deliver” things by tossing them onto the balcony 3 days earlier than the expected delivery date, it’d be nice to get a heads up so I don’t leave the package out there in the rain all weekend.
• I definitely thought the royal wedding was tomorrow. Who gets married on a Friday?? Was Westminster Abbey booked for another royal wedding tomorrow or something?
• Jonathan Amores: a fervent enthusiast of good theater plays
• Drew: Are we an item? Me: Yeah. Right? Drew: Eh, I don’t really believe in labels.
• I ate so many jelly beans today. : (
• From Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” – “In the “Great American Melting Pot,”…New York is that chunk of garlic that you bite into thinking it’s potato and you can’t get the taste out of your mouth all day. It all blends once you mix it, but sometimes you really have to grind it against the side.” I miss you, NYC!
• I would really like to go up in a hot air balloon.
• Finally used a Starbucks treat receipt! First time ever!
• Drew: “We have a very important decision to make and I think we should both say what we think at the exact same time. Should we get a Christmas tree this year? We both say what we think on three. Ready…one…two…three–” Drew and me: “YES.” Drew: “–because it’s Christmas. Okay, good. So we’ll do that.”
• I drove for 3 minutes in the carpool lane, before 9am when it’s open to all. Rebel!

I promise that’s the last of the 2011 retrospectives!

2011 In Review

And this is just one of the reasons that I love WordPress!

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Ready to be moved already

Every morning this week, when I’ve gotten up and come out to the living room, my first thought is always, “We’ve been robbed!”

I mean, I guess yeah, I would say I’m easily amused.

Although…maybe I’m just going a little crazy here and finding amusement where I can.

Also, having taken out almost all of the furniture, and everything off the walls, we’ve found that our apartment is delightfully resonant. Last night I was going on some little rant about something or other, and I realized in the middle of it that I could hear my voice reverberating in the living room. That had to drive someone crazy. Someone besides Drew, I mean.

It also means I don’t want to yell anything from the bedroom to the kitchen, like I normally would, unless I’m okay with all our neighbors hearing it. And, given that one of my priorities in life is to never be someone that other people eavesdrop on disdainfully, it makes for a lot quieter evenings.

Here are three things I’ll miss: the three cats that live around us. First, there’s Black & White Cat who mostly sits in the grass down the hill from our front door.

Then, there’s Backseat Driver Cat. I can’t remember the full story about him. But I’m pretty sure if you’re not looking, he’ll jump in your car while the door’s open, and then make annoying commentary from the back, like, “Why are you getting on the freeway here?” and “Oh…I would have gone to the other McDonalds.”*

Finally, there’s Ghost Cat. Ghost Cat is primarily seen at night in the fog, and is a swift runner. I took a picture of Ghost Cat but when I developed it, there wasn’t anything there and the inside of my camera was all melted. (Wait, that’s basilisks, not ghosts.)

I have no idea who owns any of these cats (well, I mean, Ghost Cat obviously has no owner). But I’ll miss seeing their tails disappear as they run into the bushes to hide. And I’ll miss Backseat Driver Cat telling me to turn on my headlights, even in the middle of the day.

*Sadly I have no picture of Backseat Driver Cat at this point, because once I made the decision to write a roll call of the Cats around here, he stopped showing up. I believe he’s self-conscious about his orange fur.

2011 New Year’s Resolutions: Finis

Now is the time to look back on 2011 and see which of my New Year’s resolutions I accomplished. I’m happy to report that this year went pretty well!

1. Get off of unemployment

In June of 2010 I finished up a contract job at Marin Theatre Company, and I spent the remainder of the year patching together work from MTC, the San Francisco Opera, and reading for Samuel French, as well as supplementing with unemployment. While it wasn’t the tightest things have ever been around here, it was frustrating to be constantly thinking about trying to get enough hours among all the jobs. My number one priority as the year turned from 2010 to 2011 was to get off of unemployment. Which I did, basically right away, when I started subbing in January.

2. Get a career type job

Subbing was very interesting and I learned something, I’m sure. But it was obviously not for me. And like I said before, I was tired of cobbling together a living. My number two priority was to get a freaking real job, with stability and health benefits. Which I did in February! So far, 2011 resolutions are going great!

3. Lose 30 pounds

Oops.

4. Pay off at least one credit card

Oops again. Well, that was a tall order and I might have guessed that it wouldn’t happen.

5. Help Megan to have the best wedding ever

Done and done. I might add, I also helped Liz have the best wedding ever. A good year for weddings!

6. Change everything to my new(ish) last name.

The things I hadn’t yet changed over to my new last name (from my 2009 wedding) were my Mastercard, my gym membership, and three store credit cards. As of this morning I had changed my Mastercard and my gym membership. I planned on just moving this resolution to my “2012 resolutions” list, but then I had this big burst of inspiration, and so I spent some time on the phone this morning calling around and changing the rest of it. 2011 ftw!

I want to mention that every customer service representative I talked to said, “Congratulations on your recent wedding!” when I told them why I needed to change my name. I was too embarrassed to say, “Thanks, it was over 2 years ago.” How time flies.

7. Remember birthday cards for important family members this year

Well, unfortunately I had a couple lapses this year, and for that I am sincerely sorry. I have changed my system because having them in my planner is not working out as well as it used to – I’m just not in the planner often enough. I put the birthdays that keep slipping past me into my gmail calendar so that I’ll get a reminder 2 weeks out, so I can actually get something in the mail in time. 2012 will my card-sending, offending-no-one year.

8. Get a passport!

Thanks to Drew and the scavenger hunt he arranged for my birthday, I am now the proud owner of a passport. And I used it to fly to New York in October, so I know it works.

9. Write!

This was broken down into 5 categories to make it more quantifiable:

• Script Frenzy in April
• Submit to Samuel French Off-off-Bway Festival in July
• Nanowrimo in November (I made the conscious decision to stay sane this November)
• Blog 100 times over 2011 (the actual number is 168 public posts, counting this one)
• Look into a Record-Bee column (I actually submitted about four of these)

I’m feeling pretty good about this year! So it’s time to start making me some 2012 resolutions. While I ponder over those and try to make them as specific and achievable as possible…let me know what your biggest resolution is!

It’s Christmas in South City!

There’s this neighborhood in South San Francisco, where they must have some kind of agreement or something that you have to sign when you move in, because everyone goes crazy during the holidays. I love it. I aspire to one day live in a place where I’m forced to put up hundreds of dollars of decorations every year so people can come park in front of my driveway and take pictures in my front yard.

Oh, that came out as sarcasm, but I’m totally serious.

Drew, Erin, and I went the other night, but we just drove through and so all my pictures are a little blurry, as Drew was reluctant to stop in the middle of everything and wait for me to get the perfect shot. I had to just magically get it while he was stopped momentarily in the line of cars.

Here are an assortment of – but not all of – those pictures:

The blue house...

...next to the white house

Candy cane fence

One of many Santas riding motorcycles

The best house!

That last house is the best house – it’s one of the first ones you see on your way in and the last one on your way out. It’s the prettiest and the cleanest-looking. There aren’t any weird creepy anamatronics in the windows, and what you can see of the inside of their house is also nice and Christmassy. It’s just the best house of the bunch.

I could have taken my blurry shots and been done with it – and supplemented this blog post with a handmade holiday poem or something – but then last night some of us went out for dinner and on the way back, the one person in the car who you’d expect to be the least excited about Christmas, said, “Ooh! Ooh! Have you seen the neighborhood with the decorated houses? Can we go look at it?”

I mean, that’s just adorable, you have to say yes.

Plus, we had Starbucks, so we were all feeling the holiday spirit.

So we parked and walked around, which means I got slightly less blurry pictures. Although I think that, without a real camera and a tripod, I was never going to get magazine-spread-ready photos. But I mean…cameraphone diaries.

Here are some details I didn’t get during our drive-by visit:

A closeup of the best house, and their tree.

On any other street in any other neighborhood, this house would be amazing. But here, it's like...Okay. What else you got?

I just like the reflection of the house across the street.

A couple years ago, Drew and Erin and I did this, and I had a picture of myself in front of this wreath. Oh yeah, a lot of houses reuse their decorations.

This house goes for quality, not quantity. A real snow globe! These kids were losing their minds!

I just love Nativities.

This is the bear house. They have two of the creepiest trees ever - made all out of bears, held hostage with Christmas lights.

A closeup of the upstairs bear tree...

God knows I tried to take a good picture of us. But I look awkward in all of them. This is the least awkward-looking.

An assortment of characters!

I like the reflections here too

I'm hoping that these people are on vacation or something, and they don't hate their lives.

Mesmerizing

I remember this from last year too. I don't think they're all children. In my head this is a daycare center or something.

Drew likes this tree. He thinks it should be in Downtown Disney or something.

Geese on the roof!

It sure feels like Christmas here – and I can’t wait to see my family tonight and Drew’s family tomorrow! Merry Christmas, all!!