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.