Diary of an adult runaway

I'm in an SF state of mind

Maybe it's because tomorrow is Michael Tolliver Day in San Francisco, or maybe because Ms. Feisty just posted about her trip or Tomate posted about the Haight Street Fair, but I got me a real hankerin' to head to the city by the bay. I want to sit on a corner outside a café and wait for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to roll by. I want to climb around Telegraph Hill and meet all the local cats and get glimpses of the Bay Bridge through the windows of houses along Napier Lane. I want to sit on the BART from downtown to Berkeley with Tamara and laugh until I cry as two drag queens trash talk.

But it's going to have to wait until next year. Until then, I'll read MTL (where's my copy, Amazon?!?!) (I'm going to have to do with this excerpt but what the hell, BRIAN IS 61??? BRIAN??? How can that BE???) and try to decide whether I should ask the tattoo artist Ms. Feisty found for us to do Elvis as I'd originally planned, or maybe a dragonfly on my ankle, if Elvis is going to take too long.

Why Rescue Me is the best show on TV:

Hot diggity dog, I truly love these guys. Only 2 more days until Tommy's back. Looks like he escaped the fire unscathed. Huzzah! Of course, it'll only be 10 seconds until he gets himself into more trouble. How this guy makes it out of anything alive is beyond me.

From the "Kids, don't try this at home" department: was feeling a little under the weather Friday, cold kinda thing. Meeting room perked me up because, with the big-ass crystal chandelier and gold cherubs on the ceiling, I could forget I was in a meeting. Long day, and on the way home I had a real fang for Vanilla Coke, first time I'd wanted it in about a year, so I stopped at the supermarket. No Vanilla, so I went for Cherry. Long meeting, too tired to cook, I grabbed something quick and starchy. Mistake #1. As the Hashimoto's has progressed, so has my intolerance to carbs--manifests itself in lethargy and joint pain the next day. Saturday morning, I could barely move. Didn't get out of bed until 12 and my shoulders/biceps were so painful that I climbed back under the covers and watched more West Wing. (Question to the writers: why the hell is Will always in the WW when he works for the VP? And why is he such a PITA? I've gone from being "eh" about this character to actively cursing whenever he turns up. Enough!)

About 3, I was feeling better. So what did I do? Yep, polished off the Cherry Coke. There went Sunday. Seriously. I can't do sugar anymore. The good thing is that pants that were once capris are now down to my ankles. The bad thing is I hate all the chemicals in Diet Coke, so that's out, too. Of course, I could just do a little Cherry or Vanilla, not a whole bottle, but no, that's not my way. Guess I'll just have to get lime Perrier. Somehow not the same!

What else? I know there was something. Oh yeah. This is funny:

And this (by Susan Branch) is sweet:

She forgot "Get an iPhone,"  but that's okay, I already had that one figured out. Can't wait to get mine, though I'll probably do just that and go for a second generation--unless the excitement gets too much for me, as it always does with Apple. I paid an extra $50 for my first iMac because my local place didn't have lime, I'd have to wait a week and I COULDN'T, so I went to the other side of town where I could get one and took a taxi home. $50 well spent, I did love that little green machine. Had a "discussion" with someone today still under the mistaken impression that Mac to PC file transfer is difficult. Couldn't convince them that I'd been doing it since 1992, the only hassles were on the PC side, Mac could read and recognize everything because Word for Mac had been around for years even then (since '85) although I used MacWritePro back then, a sweet, sweet little program that made MS pick up their act. Oh well, their loss!

Gotta go 1. transcribe today's writing; 2. watch some more West Wing; 3. stop Kody from trashing the bathroom. Losing battle, I tell ya. He's in the bathtub (no water, though I'm often tempted) playing with a straw and I have the feeling he's just about to attack the shower curtain.

My thrilling life.

You gotta fight! For your right! To paaaaaaaarty!

Ok, so things have been busy here, plus I basically CBF'd to blog for the past, you know, whatever. No particular reason, just ... CBF'd. Had lots of meetings then a few days off. Plus, it's been unseasonably cold and all I wanted to do was curl up and watch TV.

Which I did. I watched a few episodes of Sports Night and it didn't take me long to start thinking Aaron Sorkin did a little character recycling. Listen to the dialogue and you'll see how similar those characters are to The West Wing. Here's a handy viewer guide for you:

Dana = C.J.
Natalie = Donna
Isaac = Leo
Jeremy = Sam (which is interesting, because he's played by Joshua Malina, who played Will, Sam's "replacement" [in quotation marks because seriously, who could replace Rob Lowe? No one. Thank you.])

I'm still trying to work out whether Dan = Leo or Toby, or Casey = Leo or Toby, because they're quite similar but stick with me, I'll make it.

Went to see Pirates 3 on Saturday and ... not overwhelmed. Of course, I giggled with glee every time Jack came onscreen, because JD is perfect in that role. Perfect. And Anita (a new partner in crime) and I were the only ones to laugh at the "Use the tool" line (the place was packed with French speakers--packed, I say! They had their own Version Française to go to but nooooo, they clogged up our Version Originale cinema.) Overall, though, the plot felt incohesive to me. It felt like this happened then this happened then this happened without any real link. Course, I'll give Pirates 4 a shot. Coz we all know that wasn't the end.

Had a huge meeting last week, ran for a few days. There was someone there who...well, alls I know is I'm going to make sure I vote in the next federal election--for the opposite party. My brother once told me a story about a friend of a friend of his, and it reminds me of this person:

The friend of a friend was called Victoria, and I don't know her last name so let's just say it's Brown. She was living in London at the time, shopping at Harrod's, waiting in line in the food department. In swanned a tall leggy blonde who at the time was married to Mick Jagger. She grabbed what she wanted then pushed her way in line--ahead of our fearless heroine, Victoria.

Victoria: Oy! I was here before you!

Blonde: Do you know who I am? I'm Jeri Hall.

Victoria: And I'm Victoria fucking Brown and I was ahead of you, so fuck off.

Jeri Hall flounced off, applause for Victoria following in her wake.

And finally! I did the rounds of the medical professionals this week, with a bit of Victoria Brown attitude. Now, my doctor is very nice, everyone's very nice, but that's not getting me anywhere. So essentially I told her:

1. I'm not going back to the surgeon she recommended, I didn't feel confident in him. (Ok, so not everyone's very nice. You don't grab the leg of someone obviously in pain and shove it across the other leg to see how much extension they have.)

2. Although my osteopath has done wonders for the muscles, he obviously can't do anything structural (which he's said from the start)--and with new x-rays showing a height difference of 3.3 cms between hips, it's obviously something structural, so give me a refernce to a chiropractor.

3. If one more person asks me why I can't stand with feet together and both legs straight, I will hit them because I'm paying them to answer that.

I also said that if I need to have the surgery, great, let's do it tomorrow, but I was worried that if they replaced the hip joint, how are they going to fix the hip height difference? Will it fix the difference? The doctor said she thought so, yes, to a degree, but then I'd probably need orthotics in both shoes to be completely level.

And that, my friends, is where I draw the fucking line. My argument is that this is a functional leg length disparity, caused by some incident, not a genetic disparity there from birth. I never needed orthotics before, I never had a problem walking or dancing or running away from the office when I should have been at work. I wore shiny red high-heeled shoes with pride and flair and without inserts, and I intend to do so again. I think she was a little taken aback when I said no, I would not be doing that, I would be having my hips aligned and then we'd see if I even needed the operation at all.

This morning I started researching chiropractors. I found one who sounded good so I shot him off an email bitching explaining my woes. Within an hour, he'd replied:

Yes the chiropractic adjustment can help for the hip problems. If there is a lot of arthrosis in the hip joint, you might still need the operation, but as you said the more the joints are moving the better the outcome. If the arthrosis is not so much the adjustments might even be able to avoid an operation.

No medals for guessing who I now have an appointment with.

I will party all night in my red high heels yet. Just you watch me.

P.S. Please keep your fingers crossed and pray very, very hard that Mother Humpback and her baby make it under the Golden Gate. They're so close!

Shhh, don't tell anyone!

...but I have like a teeeeeeny crush on Billy Ray Cyrus. Come on! How could I not, after this week's Dancing With The Stars? He can take the piss out of himself and he danced really well. And how gutsy is Heather Mills, doing a back walkover? As for Laila Ali, like her dad, she's a joy to watch. (Nice to see Robbie Williams there with his boyfriend.)

Speaking of joys, every year the maternelle next to me has a party and all the kids and quite a few parents dress up and parade around the streets with a Dixie band. On Saturday, there were princesses and super heroes and boy wizards galore going off. You can't see much, but here's a little video anyway:

Kids' party in Montmartre
Video sent by gabriellel66

Another joy to watch. Well, kinda. I finally got my hands on the last 4 seasons of The West Wing. Yes, La Maison Blanche is on TV here, but there's no way in hell I'm going to listen to the French mangle the snappy dialogue, or have someone else dub in Martin Sheen's laugh. But was the dialogue so snappy that I missed something at the end of Season 4? It's pretty much agreed that Sam's going to lose the California election and they're going to give him a promotion. And then it's just dropped, no more mention of him. And ok, the new guy, not his fault that he's not Rob Lowe, but there's no way in hell he could ever replace Sam Seabourn. Yeah, I know this is old news to the rest of the world, but I'm still trying to get over the shock. Did they think we wouldn't notice? Thank God for Brothers & Sisters, is all I can say.

 

What I did while I was watching The West Wing:

What I made while I wasn't: my own cleaner! Yes, I am definitely living the high life in the big city. But did you know that the air in the average house is 5 times more polluted than outside, and a good part of that comes from the "cleners" we use? So I whipped up 1 part vinegar, 1 part water and enough grapefruit essential oil to take away the vinegar smell, and now my apartment is sparkling--even the windows. And hey, if you're not worried about poisoning the waterways with chemical run-off, or keeping your pet's paws free from chemicals, then maybe saving money floats your boat: this costs about a buck a gallon. Huzza!

P.S. To the guy who called Nova100 in Melbourne saying he puts his car in the garage so he can surreptitiously wash it while Stage 3A water restrictions are in place: yeah, good one. Because of course your car being shiny is much more important than people having enough water to drink. And yeah, I might sound like (gasp!) a greenie, but when I spent a good part of Friday editing a publication with an article on just how dire this situation is, there's nothing even remotely clever about what he's doing. Grow up, dude.

What I'm loving: Starbucks' Cinnamon Dolce Latte. Combine with a turkey Croque Monsieur for a perfectly intense Sunday writing session. Double huzza!