Sparkwood & 21

Google+, I am About to be Up in You

Due to work and the postings of people I really enjoy, I'm diving into Google+.

Yeah, I know what I said before. This crow is delicious.

Getting Trashy (No More Dump and Run)

Here's a little something different about waiting tables in California versus Tennessee (the only place I was ever a server), besides the health care and minimum wage: by law restaurants have to not only recycle, but compost.

That means three different bins in the dish area: a black one, a blue one and a green one. Food scraps, paper products like beverage napkins, coffee grounds and other "organic" items go in the green bins, plastics and glass from wine bottles go in the blue, while very little, actually, goes in the black.

I'm in full support of this mandate. I used to stand at the enormous trash barrels at Outback Steakhouse and frown at all the wasted food and landfill fodder. It really made me sad. This arrangement feels a little less gratuitously wasteful.*

So, it's awesome that there are three bins.

But hoo boy, do three bins take a lot of extra precious time. 

You're in the weeds, and your table are so fucking mad at you, and you come into the kitchen with a complicated arm load of dirty table items, and you can either dump everything with a quickness into a single, massive tub then gingerly sling flatware into its proper stack and be on your way. 

Orrrr, you can get to the kitchen with the same complicated arm load of dirty table items and stand there trying to determine whether the paper liner will decompose or if that plastic will degrade, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to just dump and run.

But this is better, even though it is more difficult. And it's just different. Sooner than I know, it won't be.

*And for heaven's sake, the portion sizes at Outback Steakhouse contribute to a tremendous amount of food waste. Another plus for smaller portions than that of a trough. 

[photo credit]

Two Cats Go Cross Country

I am worried about these two. When I adopted them from a shelter on the Upper East Side I had no earthly idea that I might be moving 2500 miles away in under a year.

But here I am.

I mean, here we are.

I'm scared that one or both of them will bolt in the security line at the airport and take the next plane to Mexico. I'm afraid they'll get lost like Jack. I'm terrified that they will be traumatized by this move.

But besides taking them back to the pound, I have no choice but to move them. And besides, after ten months together, I am pretty darn attached to these rascals.

I hope they'll be okay.

Fuck Yeah, Beth Spotswood

You guys, guess what? Not only do I get to move back to the City that holds my heart (and sometimes my hair), but I get to live in my favorite neighborhood in all of San Francisco: The Mission District. The entirety of San Francisco kicks ass, but that vibrant, sunny little spot in the center of the peninsula is the best. Mostly due to the sun.

BUT, GUESS WHAT ELSE? I get to live with Beth.

Yep! One of the people I most admire and adore the most took me in. We're gonna be roommates. She's even kind enough to allow the cats to come.

I'm so very glad that Beth had a spot for me. Without her, I am not sure I could have moved back to San Francisco at all. In fact, her opening her home to me was the impetus to get the ball rolling back west.

So, thank you, Beth. You'll never have to touch the litter box, I make a mean egg-in-a-hole and I'll serenade you while I'm in the shower. Because I am grateful.

See You Soon, San Francisco

I'm going home.

I've been in New York for exactly one year. For me, one year is plenty. 

I'm going back to San Francisco. I'm moving to California on December 1.

New York is a lot. For this gal, it's too much. Did you know that I hate crowds? Oh, yes, I really dislike crowds.

As I write this I struggle to think over the stabbing sounds of horns outside my windows. I'm sitting as high as clouds, and I can see all the way to Brooklyn through the haze. The view here is spectacular, but the view I miss is that of San Francisco as it spills out at 360 degrees from atop Bernal Hill.

I've discussed this with another former San Franciscan, and together we agreed: there is something miraculous about being able to pull back and take in your city from high above. San Francisco allows this at every turn. Each next climb is a new look at the splendor that is San Francisco, so beautifully nestled between the stark sea to the west and the placid bay to the east. It's the most gorgeous city I've ever stepped foot in, and I want to go back. So, I am going back.

There is so much to do here. There is too much to do here. It overwhelms me. It makes me spend money I don't have. I can't climb a hill and pull back and take it all in. If I lived here all my life I'd never scratch the surface of all that this vibrant city has to offer.

I feel like I can handle San Francisco. It's my size.

I got lost in the vertical horizon of New York City. I couldn't find my way. I grew stronger as a result of the struggle, but it sucked me dry down to my bones.

It's hard to live here. If you can handle the hard, it has to be worth it. My God, the place is crawling with world class everything. If you can stand the snow and the summers and the crowds and the expense and the grind of commuting and the non-stop jostle that is living in New York, then the payoff is tremendous. But I don't need world class everything. I don't need the best ballet in the word. Just having a ballet to go to suits me just fine. 

I miss the nature that San Francisco provided. It's a big city in the midst of some of the world's grandest scenery. When people talk about being in San Francisco and being able to be at the ocean one day and skiing the mountains the next, you've heard it a hundred times before. But until you've lived in that kind of paradise, it's hard to comprehend. San Francisco is splendid. New York is splendid, too, but in a grittier, harder, more concrete way.

I'm going back to San Francisco a different woman. New York City is a spanking, and I've learned many a lesson. So many that I know I won't know the breadth of them for a long, long time.

I miss San Francisco so much that I am going back without a job. I've secured housing, but I have yet to find work in the city by the bay. I've been looking, but it's difficult to get hired from 2,500 miles away. I don't care. I can temp, I can wait tables, I can stock shelves, I can work three jobs if need be. I will make it work.

My job at Modest Needs Foundation was incredibly fulfilling and the skills and experience I gained there will carry me far. I am grateful for my time there, but that job requires that I be in New York. And as great is New York is, it isn't great for me.

I'm selling everything I own to afford to move back. I'm bringing my cats, my clothes and a few other valuables, and heading west. What lies next, I have no clue, but I'm up for what ever adventure may await.

San Francisco makes me happy. I did an important thing in coming to New York, but it's time to go home.

Thirty days and counting.

Near Miss: Weekend Awaiting a Hurricane

This weekend was my first hurricane.

I grew up in Tennessee, which is not tornado alley, but that Southern state gets its fair share of tornadoes. Those I’ve dealt with before. In fact, tornado warnings and watches were so commonplace, I joke that I spent half my childhood in the basement.

Tornados are fast and unpredictable and they jump around. One minute it’s on Bearwallow Road, the next minute it’s all the way over on Highway 49. You are usually only at risk for about, say, 30 minutes. Then it’s over. If you are lucky, you go back to bed. 

This plodding, continent-sized hurricane business is new to me. 

They tell you it’s coming days in advance. You can watch it move. Your city can close down the entire mass transit system a full day before the first raindrop. There is lots of time to prepare.

The waiting, my god, it’s excruciating. It’s really fucking scary. You’ve got media people screaming that you are going to die, and after the first twenty or so hours you kind of start to believe it. 

My friend Jo put it perfectly, “…sitting and waiting for something to strike that might hurt you or not is panic-inducing in its very nature.”

The cats could not stay away from the windows. They were chasing raindrops with their paws, and I kept shooing them away. I tried to read, nap and other indoor activities to keep me occupied, but all I could do with stare at my phone waiting for more news about the hurricane. 

Slowly it slumbered this way. 

And then it was here. And it was about as powerful as a hard rain.

The wind has howled louder, the building has swayed harder and I have been more in awe of a simple thunderstorm. I was thankful—so happy, really—but also fired up and ready to fight. I mean, I wasn’t going to bare knuckle a hurricane, but you spend so long steeling yourself to its eventual onslaught, that when it barely shows up in the ring, you have all this pent of energy percolating, swirling inside you, festering.

I had images of a screaming sky, walls rocking, glass shattering, hiding in the stairwell for safety. None of that came to be. Thankfully. Sadly, others were not so fortunate.

It was a very quiet—eerily quiet—weekend. The people on the streets and in storms preparing for the storm were speaking to one another as if they were old friends. There was nervous energy. There were cats in carriers in pet stores and so few cars on the road.

The city was still.

Do Not Want: Google+

Let's talk about Google+ for a hot minute. Errbody else is, and I can't resist a good bandwagon.

I first learned of our new social media overlord's existence on Twitter, where I get most of my news. And my immediate reaction was, "Oh, fuck."

I ignored it for a couple of days. Stuck my fingers in my ears and sang LA, LA, LA. Didn't want to see it. Hoped it would go away.

No dice.

Soon I was getting notifications that I'd been added to these cultish-sounding Circles and I knew I had to shake hands with reality. Google+ is here.

It may not be here to stay, but dammit, it has parked its ass on the couch with a beer and your remote and it isn't hitting the door anytime soon.

Okay, fine, I admit it. Once I started getting notifications I wanted in. I like being FIRST! at new online servies, even if I discard them like an OK Cupid date if they don't put out. I wanted my wristband into the potentially happening new party just in case the venue became overrun.

I got my invite, walked past the rope, took a look around the club, saw a few familiar faces and a lot of white space. Then I left.

I'm scared to go back.

Google+ is, I fear, a part-time job I desperately don't want to take. But if I want to eat, I will. As a blogger, marketer, outreacher it is essential that I stay abreast in social media, new and old. I enjoy it, so really, no complaints, but with Google+ I am afraid it's going to be a huge project that ends up sucking major time.

My attention is already splintered by the likes of Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, and shall I go on? Will Google+ supplant all of those? Or will it become one more digital commitment?

I don't know. And I'm frightened to find out.

[Image via cambodia4kidsorg]

Cabbie Schooling Me about Mafia Influence in NYC

First things first: I have never seen a single episode of the Sopranos. Mob movies are not my bag. In fact, for a long time I went out of my way to avoid them. Guns and dudes and crime, blech. But, I think part of the reason it never interested me is because I never fully understood just how true much of it is.

Second things second: I sound like a moron in this video. I wish I had said less, but I wanted to keep him talking. I sound fresh off the tractor. This information may be common knowledge for lifelong New Yorkers or New Jerseyans, but it shocked the shit out of me.

Without further ado, this is a video I taped in a cab last night with a driver who has been living in NYC for 28 years. There is nothing to see; it's the audio that is interesting. In the 6 minute clip he talks to me about the mafia stronghold that still exists in the city. Fascinating stuff to someone virtually ignorant about organized crime.

The Time A Girl Wearing Nothing But a Bra and Heels Rang my Doorbell

There are plenty of people who would be thrilled beyond reason to have a young woman ring their doorbell at 2 a.m. wearing nothing but a bra and sky high heels. I am not one of them.

And yet, this was the very scene outside my studio apartment this Saturday night.

I was sleeping on the couch, like you do, when I heard someone ring my doorbell. I found this odd for several reasons, the primary of which is that I live in a doorman building, and I hadn't okayed anyone coming up. Also: 2 a.m.

Thinking I might be dreaming, I waited. Sure enough, the bell rang yet again.

I threw on some shorts and headed to the door wondering what on earth might be lurking out in the hallway. A gentleman suitor? A late night delivery of pizza and wine?

Nope: naked girl in nothing but a bra and high heels.

She tried to cover herself up once I opened the door, but she had nothing with which to do so. She must have seen my gobsmacked face that had just gotten a gander at her hooha, because she immediately exclaimed, "I'm so sorry."

"Are you okay?" I feared she may have been assaulted.

"Yes, I am fine. I just..."

"First of all, get in here." I ushered her inside, and she immediately went to sit on the end of my bed. Without her chonies on. Yeah. That's when I could tell she was drunk.

"I locked myself out of my apartment, and I was hoping you could call the desk and ask them to let me in."

"Of course!" I looked around for my phone.

"Wait, let me get you a robe." I pulled my robe out of the laundry hamper (so, it wasn't clean, but it was clothes) and handed it to her. "You can keep that," I told her.

I made the call to the front desk and told them my neighbor had locked herself out and could they please come up and let her in.

"Can she come down and get a spare key?" No, I told them, she could not.

I think she said she was sorry several dozen times. Assuring her it was fine, I was just thanking the stars I'd never gotten so drunk that I ended up locked out in a public hallway wearing nothing but stripper gear.

Her story didn't really add up. She said that she and her boyfriend had gotten into an argument, and he locked her out. Then she called him her husband. I hadn't heard any banging on doors or pleading to get back in. I mean, you have to have no where else to turn to knock on a stranger's door buck naked at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night, you think she'd be banging on the door where he boyfriend/husband was.

I further questioned her story when she asked me if she'd brought her wallet. She'd hadn't. And besides, who gets kicked out wearing nothing but shoes, but brings along their wallet? Fishy.

Once I got confirmation that someone would be coming up to let her into her place, I noticed her hair was wet. Not soaking wet, but damp.

So very odd.

I told her that someone would be on the way up, and showed her to the door, and she almost forgot her shoes. I picked them up--nude, patent leather Jimmy Choos--and handed them over. "My Choos!," she yelped.

She looked me in the face for the first time. "I know it's a really trashy way to meet someone, but thank you."

I'm not sure we met as much as I bailed her naked ass out.

After she left, and I heard her safely (?) back in her apartment, I wanted to tell everyone I knew: THERE WAS A NAKED DRUNK CHICK IN MY HALLWAY WEARING HEELS AND A BRA AND THAT IS IT. But it was nearing 3 a.m., and no matter how juicy a tale, I wasn't going to wake anyone up for it.

So, I put it here.

I Know, I Know, "It's Only Going to Get Worse"

It is officially December.

I mean, obviously, because that is what the calendar tells us. But weather-wise, it is also now officially December.

I need a raincoat with a hood. A sturdy one. Because this morning, when I tried to use an umbrella in 50 mph wind gusts, the gods laughed at me. I had a wild tussle with my cheap $10 umbrella in the middle of a busy intersection, and the umbrella won. That fucker turned on me.

You should hear the howls of wind from my apartment allll the way on the west side on the Hudson. It sounds exactly like movie ghosts sound, and I just know I can feel my building bend.

I am not equipped for this weather. And it isn't even cold yet.

A tiny boy decked out like a duck in all yellow rain gear was navigating the streets like a pro, avoiding puddles and leaning into the wind. I felt that kid staring down at my cheap boots and cheap leggings getting soaked all the way through, and I swear I heard him laugh.

[Photo by Alex Barth]