burning man or bust

I am off this afternoon to Burning Man. Will be back on Sept. 7 with a thick coating of dust and glitter paint, a lot of stories and photos to go along. Until then! Black Rock City HO!!!

carrying good karma

Sometimes I think I am the luckiest person alive. Those of you who read along during my travels may recall June of 2004, when, in two separate manuevers, I lost both my ATM card and passport, both of which miraculously found their way back to me.

This past weekend I went for a mini-retreat at Harbin Hot Springs, where I inquired in the front office about my favorite ring, which I'd lost in their dressing room four months earlier. They had it, neatly taped to a piece of paper in the Lost and Found box. I shrieked when I saw it; it's my favorite ring I bought in Calcutta on my last day in India and I was gutted when I lost it.

When I got home this time, I realized I'd left my prescription glasses. I called the next day and the sympathetic bespectacled man on the other end of the line not only informed me that they'd been found, but offered to mail them to me at no charge.

Today my purse was stolen while I was visiting a customer. As I often do, I carelessly set it down while I was running around the store. Someone must have noticed my lack of attention, grabbed it and bolted right past the security desk carrying my blue silk purse (from work, of course). I spent the next two hours in the security office, watching replays of the security video, cancelling my credit cards, calling AAA, the Toyota dealership, the locksmith and my roommates, trying to sort out what to do next.

I called my office to let them know that at that moment, I had no phone or access to my car- the lifelines to my job- and wasn't sure when I'd be back in business. In the background I heard our office manager let out an elated yell. Someone was calling her on the other line to let her know they had my purse and found the office number on my business card. We got connected, I cried, she delivered my purse back to me with everything present and accounted for aside from the cash in my wallet. While walking down the street, a car had driven by and hucked my purse out the window onto the sidewalk, at the feet of my new guardian angel, Marie. She had scooped everything together and tracked me down.

How is it that things always seem to come back to me? All I know is, small miracles like these just make me want to do all the good I can in this world to keep the karmic cycle rolling.

Thanks Marie. It's your turn to see fortune's smile.

you can take the girl out of New England...

I'd forgotten how much I love New England. It makes me so wistful and nostalgic. I went to college in Western Massachusetts and, aside from my 2nd class reunion in 1999 when my closest college friends and I got together and once more gossiped in the dorm halls in our pajamas and drank beer at Packard's, I haven't spent much time there since.

Since Boston is a two hour drive away from Smith and I didn't get my driver's license until senior year at the ripe age of 22, I didn't spend much time in the city during school and so it's still a pretty undiscovered novelty to me. S and G's wedding ceremony was held in the unmercifully non-air conditioned St. Steven's church in the historic North End. (With its charming old brick buildings, small network of crisscrossing narrow streets, Italian restaurants and slew of beautiful Catholic churches, it's surprising to me how little resemblance it bears to San Francisco's own Italian quarter, North Beach.) S looked absolutely stunning and it nearly made me cry to see the expression on G's face as she walked down the aisle towards him. God, they are so madly in love, it's written all over their every gesture and interaction.





The reception was held at the Lyman Estate, a gorgeous spot in Waltham, a western suburb of Boston. There was a huge greenhouse in the back, as Mr. Lyman was a plant enthusiast who liked to grow his own tropical fruit. (Coincidentally, he is the same Lyman who built the Lyman Plant House at Smith). I ate some grapes off the vine and pondered buying a key lime tree, the first I'd ever seen, so I could make my favorite desert back home. (A mutual friend of S's and mine, Kyle, reassured me I could find a key lime pie tree in San Francisco and thus should hold out.) The caterer duplicated S's Trinidadian family recipe for spicy pepper shrimp and her mom made the cake herself.

There were pre parties and after parties, and much silliness was gotten up to by the wedding crew.




I stayed with Heather, my dear friend from Smith who lives in Braintree, a southern suburb of Boston, in the home in which she and her father before her grew up. What a strange and wonderful feeling to be in such an old house with so much history. The longest I've ever lived anywhere is five years, and that was from birth - 5, so I hardly recall it. Since then I haven't stayed put anywhere for longer than two years. I think I'd like to.

On Sunday, a spectacular thunder and lightening storm lasted most of the afternoon and we spent the day talking and watching the storm from the front porch. In the middle of a downpour, we put on our bathing suits and merrily sloshed through the standing rain in the garden to pick tomatoes for a salad.

Now I'm back in my room in San Francisco. The summer fog lingers around like a cold you just can't shake. I'm jetlagged and exhausted and getting way too used to my morning Americanos. Two more minutes 'til tomorrow. Good night!

waiting for SuperShuttle

I'm off to Boston for Stacy and Gian's wedding. The happy couple are too wonderful a match to describe. I am going to cry, I just know it.

treasures and oddities

On my way to pick up my Burning Man bike from Valencia Cyclery, I wandered into Paxton Gate. Drawn in by a beheaded giraffe, stuffed and finished with a neatly-stitched seam along its mane, I was amazed, amused and befuddled by the store's collection of taxidermied animals, pinned bugs, penis bones, antique prosthetic limbs, strange plants and stuffed mice dressed in Victorian outfits. I felt like I was in the middle of a recurring nightmare I used to have about being locked overnight in a natural history museum.

While perusing the selection of stuffed wild cats and rhinocerous beetles, I had fond memories of afternoons over at my friend Aaron's house in high school. His parents were a devoutly pious, physically mismatched Portuguese couple (his mother resembled Julia Child and his dad, Richard Simmons) who bought a church that had been converted into a house some decades earlier. Thick velvet window coverings sealed the windows of the living room, lest the sun cast a damaging ray on the giant oriental rug covering the dark wood floor. An antique harpsichord dominated the center of the room and the eyes of a bear skin rug, stuffed peacock and mounted buck's head on the wall greeted visitors. Behind the bar, a freezer safeguarded Aaron's father's kill from numerous hunting seasons. Slabs of freezer-burned fowl and game stuffed every available shelf and drawer. The most disturbing thing in the entire house, however, had to be the life-size statue of the Virgin Mary standing, with palms gently together and head cocked slightly to the side, directly overlooking his parents' bed from behind.




In news, work is going fantastically well (big recent win, I sold to the company that runs the San Francisco Zoo gift shop, which runs another 15 major gift stores across the country, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium). It's requiring loooong hours and a lot of focus, but I've managed to retain some balance in my life and live it up on the weekends.

Last weekend I went to my friend Mark's 18th Annual Toobism trip on the south fork of the American River, about three hours northwest of San Francisco. We spray-painted our tubes, wore body paint and dragged several coolers of beer down the river with us. Some of the more fearless jumped into the river off a 40-foot bridge while some of the more immodest skinnydipped along the shore (you can guess for yourself if I was either fearless or immodest). The 80 of us camped out overnight and 13 of us stuck around to repeat the trip again the next day. Such a good time!

This past weekend I went to Sonoma for some R&R at my roommate Amy's summer house. The house belongs to one of her clients, the granddaughter of Gamble (of Proctor & Gamble). The house was beautiful and a great escape from the inpenetrable fog that has been hanging over San Francisco for the past few weeks (you may be familiar with the adage attributed to Mark Twain, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.") We chilled by the pool, fired up the grill, tossed a frisbee, bounced on the trampoline and soaked in the hot tub. Under Amy and Paul's patient tutelage, I finally learned how to dive. I was so happy and relaxed when I got up for work this morning, I even smiled all the way down the court house to reclaim my car, which had been towed from a rush-hour no-parking zone at 7AM. I kept smiling as I paid the $184 bail fee and even managed a grin when I saw the bonus $60 parking ticket awaiting me on my dashboard. Summer can just have a way of making everything feel ok.