maenad.net : jnl

dry spell

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 18:44:22 -0800

Seth last saw me at his & Joanne's wedding at the end of August in Maine, standing in the prow of a canoe on his parents' lake going down with the waterlogged ship. So of course his question to me a few weeks ago over dessert at the Salt House after the Lines ballet was reasonable: What have [I] been up to lately? I racked my brains. Keeping the Internet running, was the best I could come up with. That, and the social externalities that entails: No small quantities of hoppy Pliny The Elder (and vegan buffalo wings!) at windy-day Bender's nights, discussing promotions and outages; champagne and IP addressing and other arcana at Hôtel Biron; whiskey and chocolate to take the edge off the adrenaline. I can't think of much else to show for my time.

It shouldn't be surprising -- the fourth quarter is rapidly snowballing downhill right on schedule, picking up speed and un-battened-down objects like a dust storm on the playa or a stoned katamari. Our oncall rotation is losing warm bodies, one more when Nathan's soon-to-be baby comes; I've had only a week between shifts these last two months. But the social bookkeeping still feels sparse.

My gracious secondary let me trade off a night oncall last Thursday, so I dragged roommate Kyle up through the Lower Haight to see Múm. Gazing between the heads of tall people, up through a green haze, at the adorable Icelanders (aren't they all?), I remembered hearing that language a year ago, standing in clubs in Reykjavík. How intense, and how fleeting, was everything that week! -- like the "spirit-driven" cocktail a well-meaning bartender warned me of at Range last month -- so much so that somehow I just seem to never get around to finish editing the rest of my photos from the trip.

Exciting as it is -- and even so imperfect that that was! -- keeping the Internet running doesn't quite compare, even when there's whiskey involved. Nothing has.

I can run again, at least. Eight months post-surgery, a mile around the hill overlooking Shoreline Amphitheatre after finishing a week of primary-oncall on Friday, or the same distance around the still-green panhandle on Sunday afternoon, bikers zooming by and couples strolling in their elusive coupledom, does not hurt my knee. It's been three years since I could run -- a long dry spell. In many ways.

imbibed and embodied

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:46:01 -0700

Being oncall thankfully doesn't take the same toll as it did in the beginning. I've set my pager to make a much less scary noise, which superficially helps (it's more, "pardon me, but the Internet may be down"); though Trisha's SMSes from Zeitgeist Tuesday night as I blearily slept did each administer a little jolt of adrenaline, the spike is manageable, even when sick and drowsy. If the entire network melted -- or hell, even a large chunk of it -- I'm sure it would be straight back into all-neurons-on-deck mode; managing more minor crises within SLA from a dead sleep, however, appears to be doable. Suboptimal, but I must admit it makes me feel less like I'm malingering, at home with my Thera-Flu, extra-soft Kleenex, and pager.

I had no one but myself to blame, though. I stretched one day of birthday usurped by a wedding into a full week: Unplanned late-night beers combined with roommate encouragement led to even-later-night birthday-cake baking (they licked the Kitchen-Aid bowl). I poured flutes of Veuve Rosé Wednesday night mostly for myself, doing the electric slide in my party dress and slippers to Michael Jackson until 2, 3 in the morning (who's counting?) with Jaime, Matt, roommates, and (surprise! Susan's jaw dropped to see him on my stoop) Ryan, flown in from Ireland for four days of assorted festivities. I may have procrastinated all Thursday afternoon, drinking teammates' homebrew instead of writing peer evaluations. Ryan later fished two leftover beers out of my fridge, opened them with his wedding ring, and told me more about DNS. Susan & I lounged Friday, getting our nails painted a lurid pink, discussing the rest of my trip to Dublin. Burritos, willpower, and addenda kept us up handily Friday night, dancing both on Cody's annual trolley and without, even sans the usual handholds. I slept three hours and then went to an all-day choir rehearsal. Rick took photos of me Sunday, laughing in drainpipe reflections as I switched lenses back to my trusty Sigma f/1.4, swearing never again to stray; observed that the clocks in the Clock Bar were all twelve hours off. And this all before I went oncall last week. Health regained by Friday, Weaver & Trisha picked me up in Lucas's borrowed black Infiniti, bumping techno as we drove from wine to wine to champagne, advice and Manhattans, handstands that should have ended poorly, birthday presents and black leather coats and piles of purses and pajamas and oh god where did Saturday go? Discarding all diurnal plans, she & I nonetheless rallied for Il Trittico at the opera that night, gingerly proofing our stomachs on a glass of wine at Nopa.

It's the relentlessness, and the concomitant loyalty, that I love about SRE. Why else would I have been editing Craig's design doc (more red ink than his text; I did warn him) over a glass of wine at Café du Soleil while waiting for Weaver? Why else holding the pager for the pay of a few rounds of cocktails while sick? Why carefully shuffling bits into the night if the smoketests aren't passing? It's this combination of the fierce whiskey, champagne, certitude, and awesome, imbibed and embodied by these people.

Perhaps I glorify it. So be it: It's my world right now.

birthday wedding

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:19:05 -0700

I leaned my helmet to the side of Mike's last night as we rode his old Beamer bike (the newer one having been badly dinged at the track at Laguna Seca a few months back), me in shiny black heels and jeans under the short-skirted dress I'd had on for the wedding, over the dark hills leading back to the city from Walnut Creek. He'd been right: coming over a crest around Orinda, the air suddenly changed, and I became glad of my leather jacket, which had been slightly stifling as we'd stood in the warm summer evening outside the reception hall, saying our goodbyes after the pot-pie dinner, champagne toasts, Scott in a black utilikilt dancing with Courtney, glowing in white as brides do. I'd met the other brothers of that clan; the parents too; each raising their eyebrows knowingly (oh, you're Nori!) as I said my name (which was, selfishly, gratifying). Ate wedding cake for my birthday; invited myself over to dinner at the houses of both old and new acquaintances. Weddings have for me an element of the bittersweet in them: mostly in the usual slow-dance; this one, in small part, for the obvious juxtaposition of the might-have-been.

And so we rode back, silent but for the hum of the motorcycle's engine, Mike & the newly-29 I, into the foggy chill of our city, Coit Tower shining out from its north edge, the view from the bridge more visible for not being through a windshield. I can't quite tell if it's a sense of the unfinished, the finished, or the not-yet-begun that stuck, subtly, in my craw. I've always liked that years for me begin in the fall -- you've been fun, 28, but I think I'm ready for a new one.

sunscreen, water, and dreams

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:23:48 -0700

Familiarity for me, I think, is social. When Joanna drove by on the back of an art car, misting me before she recognized me; when Sean in his furry vest and goggles spotted me outside the fire-spinning platform; when Cody in a red wig was effusing about his first burn atop the motorized birthday cake, driving across the desert toward the illuminated Man; when Dustin was standing inside the advice booth dispensing counsel; when my group's trajectory intersected in the pure dark of the deep playa with that of Dave and Ann, lit only by mutual headlamps and EL wire; when Maya asked for sugar and Seth lounged among pink cushions and Jamie went for pancakes and Michelle came by for a gnome -- then did I begin to piece together the bits of a disparate city that knows me, a city in which I am, as they say, home.

(And not to say nothing of Craig and his tricycle-guitar; Matt & Emily and their profferings of rosemary-lime cocktails in my tin camping cup and avocados; Jaime & Vince and their whiskey, sandwiches, Tecate; and all those whom I intentionally found.)

I slept enough on the playa, in my silver tensegrity hut (that I, at least, thought resembled a strip-mined Hershey's kiss surrounded by scaffolding); drank wine with the neighbors under a blacklight in my white-glowing-purple fringed dress until a reasonable hour; declined to wander one night when my foot hurt. I wore bright pink boots and gold hot pants. Bach's cello suites played on nearby giant speakers one morning; I relaxed in the shade, still holding my toothbrush, and slowly remembered the prelude and fugue of the 5th.

Despite my deep enjoyment of the distributed nature of this community of 50,000 that assembles each year in the middle of the Black Rock Desert, I yet feel (because surely the time for annual resolutions is following an event like this -- in which one reaps what one sows; one is confronted with needs and expectations and must address them -- and not on some arbitrary Gregorian signpost (and hell, it's almost my birthday!)) that I must this year circle the wagons, focus on my own community before the larger network. It's a bit counterintuitive to this widely-cast extrovert, but something tells me it might be time.

Now, after the annual best shower ever, my hair is clean! I have cuticles again; I have freckles across the bridge of my nose, right under the goggle line. We did pretty well for ourselves in the relative wilderness for a week, but this whole shoulders-of-giants civilization thing is, as remembered, pretty rad. Every year, it's lovely to exist temporarily on sunscreen, water, and dreams. But every year it's better to return. Perhaps that means the worlds are pulling together.

just in case i go

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:42:46 -0700

Each August, all of San Francisco whips into a bit of a frenzy. It begins with deliberations ("Should I go this year?"; "It's so much time and effort ..."), speeds forward into planning ("Where can I get a cheap bike?"; "Do I really need underwater housing to protect my camera from the dust?"; "I can totally make a vest out of hot-pink fake fur on my friend's sewing machine in a few hours"), and escalates into mild panic ("Help! My ride fell through!"; "Where was my packing list from last year?"; "The tepee doesn't fit in the truck!") -- at least, for most. (The rest of the city, of course, just sits back and watches bemusedly, anticipating a week no wait for brunch in the Mission, even if Home Depot is cleaned out of rebar.)

While it's true that I've been ordering extra things on Amazon right up until the eleventh hour, so much so that my desk looked a bit like Christmas with all the boxes coming in), I haven't felt as panicked about the preparations as I have in previous years. I've already got the things I need (the headlamp; a bike in sorry-but-serviceable condition, especially if I manage to recover the seat in the remnants of that fake fur; a solid supply of stripy thigh-high socks); I've picked up a few extras (more frilly skirts; and updated point-n-shoot; new boots), and, despite the fact I haven't actually put them in their bins yet, I'm feeling rather on top of it.

Who was I kidding about not going this year? I have only myself to quote about the necessity of going back. At the same time as I told myself I was leaning away from it, I was yet washing dust out of last year's costumes -- I told Ari as I folded a sequined, shoulder-padded top, that it was just in case I go to Burning Man; he said, Nori, all your clothes are just in case you go to Burning Man. I'd been telling myself that I had work to do, but for fuck's sake, there will always be work to do. And there's this thing called a "work-life balance," that even my manager invoked when I pulled him aside last week and started babbling worriedly about my relatively small number of vacation days saved up, my projects, my momentum. Eh, small potatoes -- I would like to go run around the desert in my new pink boots, please.

So, I'm going. And the thought makes me jump around gleefully when it really pops into focus in my head: The broad blue sky, the long and level sands, the people, the promise. The chill, the blinking lights, and the fire after dark. Living in a Hershey's kiss tensegrity structure for a week. And, hell yes, my new boots.

shared carrot cake and code reviews

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:32:04 -0700

Though I've technically been working the entire time, I feel as though I've been on vacation for a month: I'm slowly editing photos of Guinnesses and clover-dotted countryside, of meals and friends; I'm catching up, on morning shuttles with tea (I did not miss these buses, but I almost missed the guaranteed reading time), on the raging health-care brouhaha (it leaves newsprint on my fingers) and on three weeks' worth of New Yorkers; I'm remembering again what the world in 3G is like, checking email on my way back from yoga and posting photos of my vegan Thai iced tea from the cafe itself. Home is beautiful: August's fog spills, a slow, translucent blanket, over the low mountains to the immediate west of the Bay, a layer perched like a domesticated bird on top of Twin Peaks. I don't need an umbrella, unlike in Dublin, to guard against the subtle condensation of mist that combines with jasmine and laurel in the air on the sidewalks around Duboce Triangle. Vegetables, three weeks neglected, take on new meaning: salads full of small green leaves and nuts and berries; sunburst squashes explode in the pan; I've arrived back into summer's full flush of the glorious California tomato season -- it's all I can do to coerce the red-and-green mottled heirlooms, the juicy yellow plum ones, into the blender, into gazpacho, before a new batch arrives on Thursday (from whose whiskey -- Midleton, Glenfarclas 25, Redbreast, Macallan 18 on the metal tables on the balcony outside at work this afternoon -- I now make may way home). Beers are hoppy again: pitcher subsides to pitcher of Racer 5 back at Zeitgeist, between tamales and joints. Sam chuckled and shook his head last night at dinner as he remarked how perfect the Bay Area is for me, I for it. It's nice, having been gone, to remember how home this is.

There is, of course (to which I'm so prone), a bit of emotional whiplash -- there, I helped him mend a torn pocket; we saw the oldest passage tombs in Europe, archeology lectures and carved stones and his arms around my waist; we took a black cab to Belfast's dividing walls; he fed me carrot cake on a blustery, lushly green cliff overlooking the Irish Sea; we had a "spot of tea" at our B&B near the Giant's Causeway and later watched the stars; he played guitar and I sang. How could I not? But sixty to zero, now that we've left the lawless, unruly foreign land in which strictures do not apply, is just a bit jarring. Shared code reviews don't quite make up for it.

The city almost does, though. Eating fresh salads and vegetables until I begin to feel sleepy and need perfectly-roasted coffee, slowly regaining my groove at work, reminding my arms about chaturanga dandasana and my legs -- especially the right one, still weak from surgery yet ever stronger -- about half moon, I find that I don't want to leave again for a while. Tempting as prancing around the desert in boots and a frilly skirt sounds, I may just stay here this year: regroup, restrengthen. Me & my vegetables.

second Guinness, sans second-guessing

I've brought my laptop, perhaps incongruously, to Grogan's, a small, blue-upholstered pub just down the road from a little vegan café that could put Berkeley to shame. Craig & I came here his first weekend in Dublin nine days ago, photographing (and then drinking) the ceremonial first Guinness (and then of course the ceremonial second). I can't tell if my setup -- silver apple computer; iPhone perched next to me on the low table; bright messenger bag with a new copy of Cornucopia's cookbook open on the bench -- is a bit too San Francisco for the locals, but no one's looked at me stranger than the bartender, from whom I just now forgot to retrieve my €0.40 (well-learned tipping habits die hard).

God, this is better than last time! Everything about it is better: I have a specific project I came here to work on (because I am, of course, traveling on the company euro-dime, visiting our office, and the other half of my team, here), on which we're making good progress. Beaten my last visit by the tyranny of the potato and the Irish incomprehension of anyone who wouldn't eat meat were it affordable, I've left my dairy and egg avoidance back home, and am traveling incognito as a lacto-ovo (though a bit of a lactarded one, as two slices at Carlo's chosen pizzeria proved -- I "needed air" and walked, cheeks aflush, up and down the twilit block as my coworkers texted the phone I'd left back in the restaurant to make sure I wasn't about to pass out from cheese). Most days still contain some potato derivative, dish, or snack; but it's not the oppressive single source of calories it is to whatever remaining local benighted vegans there might be. I can eat pastries for breakfast, have milk (and sugar!) in the cup of tea offered to me by the affable and attentive owner of what must be the best-appointed, cutest-possible B&B in these kingdoms: on the north coast of Northern Ireland yesterday as Ryan, Susan, Craig & I arrived up the left side of the tiny roads from Belfast -- a proper "spot of tea," complete with a proper "biscuit." So easy!

And, glaringly, so relievingly, hugely, there is no bullshit boy drama: no tightness of heart waiting in the basement of a pub; no thick glasses of Midleton proffered in consolation (only, this time, in friendship); no second-guessing of travel plans, apprehension, and fears borne out. Fuck, but that one threw me.

The comparison isn't entirely a fair one: October versus July, as now the rains are lesser and the days, instead of ending around when work does, extend into the night, only darkening around 10 (or even later, when I first arrived two weeks ago, as I dragged Craig out of a bar his first night to point out) as we're already done with dinner and on to the first pint; and then dawn coming absurdly early -- so early that we saw it last weekend, walking back from Paul's party in the sprinkling, ubiquitous light rain until 6am.

It's good, too, to be out of my usual well-examined life, all the eyes whose appreciation and scrutiny I regularly seek out -- even, almost, of the clarity inevitably gained in the process of writing this. It's almost blissful to hide out in this small green country of brogues and tea, potatoes and coworkers, pints of Smithwick's and road trips up the coast. I've made decisions I have not yet analyzed; planned my evenings without regard to obligations of laundry or society. It feels wildly refreshing.

Last night up on the north coast, Susan texted me as I was about to go to bed that the stars were out with a vengeance. We stumbled outside and blinked into the clear Milky Way, shivering in the winds coming in off from the ocean to Whitepark Bay until constellations had been identified and the chill chased us back to the warmth of duvets. I have just under a week left here in Ireland, and -- both for contrast's sake, and for the preset moment alone -- I intend to continue to enjoy it.

taking it slow

Tue, 2 Jun 2009 18:04:31 -0700

Rather than the usual May summer sunshine, I walked off my plane back from Pennsylvania Sunday night into the cold fog more normally associated with freezing July evenings at Zeitgeist, with the Tamale Lady making her rounds in a parka and me in my gloves and leather jacket. I brought east with me three pairs of wool socks and my new Nepali rainbow yak-wool slippers (a present from a kind wayfarer, now returned from his travels), forgetting that it might be in the mid-70's there, sandal-weather, green-hills-and-cows-chewing-verdant-cud weather, drinking-whiskey-in-a-rocking-chair-on-a-farmhouse-porch-in-my-bare-feet weather. It feels normal by now, though, to be halfway into the summer's strawberry season and to still wear a down vest for my walk to the shuttle every morning.

It's telling that I'm more surprised by the warmth out east than I am by slightly-early fog here: Foggy is what San Francisco is, and it feels more like home -- rather, less tentative, less shockingly new, less make-believe -- every time I fly into SFO and hear the captain announce that it's overcast. Of course it is.

(Toby picked me up at the airport. I can't help but be pleased that he did.)

After four and a half years in the Bay Area -- slightly less than that at Google (I am, as of a few weeks ago, now fully vested) -- I think I've finally stopped believing that someone will pinch me and I'll wake up. I have a library card and a choir; I know how to shell the English peas that arrive in my CSA box and I know where to get my knives sharpened; my basement is full of camping gear and dusty Burning Man costumes; my favorite bartender knows how I like my cocktails and I have preferences among the diverse bottles of whiskey that dot the balcony at work on Thursdays; I still like my job and have now been promoted twice within the last year.

And finally, from this base of solidity, I can begin to take it slow with the city (as with another party). Self-care projects, such as the more-or-less complete fixing of my knee, fit easily within the purview of feeling like my time here is not finite. The things I don't know, I have the leisure to figure out. Nothing drastic, nothing sudden -- just an extended hello, deepened every foggy morning.

champagne flu

Tue, 5 May 2009 20:22:23 -0800

I'm not in Mexico. I've barely even left the apartment today, actually; only to Safeway to get a lemon and bread to go with the asparagus soup I'd left simmering on the stove. I'd planned to be on a beach, of course, experimenting with the mutual limits of margaritas and twice-daily yoga practice, but then it seemed the better part of valor to not become a disease vector, to carry swine flu back home. And in an ironic twist, I'm sick now anyhow.

It certainly could have something to do with my weekend: absent the usual yoga, I sang twice with International Orange, celebrated concerts, celebrated Phil & Morgan's wedding, and then did all three in combination. The choir sailed through pieces we'd struggled with all season, our hardest repertoire to date -- or maybe it was the two glasses of champagne at the wedding reception that blunted nerves (funny how I can't even attempt that on viola -- it'll blunt those muscle memories, too). We drank bourbon at David's after Friday's concert: we stayed up too late talking, we sang rounds, we opened another bottle of cava. Singing replaced dinner after the wedding Saturday; a final glass of wine from a smiling, familiar bartender back at the reception replaced a midnight snack. And then even less sleep than that, due to a distress call from Jaime, and drunken comforting.

So it's probably not swine flu. More like champagne flu.

It does mute this time, though; blur the edges: In a buzz of preparation and anticipation, I'd suspended my newspaper, gotten a fancy new lens for my DSLR and a sundress in which to sit on the hypothetical beach, rejected meeting invitations during the stretch, planned to not be oncall. Yet there I was at work yesterday, updating the whiteboard someone placed outside my desk with my latest status (above "applying for the patent on whiteboard tweets"): "not in Mexico." Sigh.

Perhaps my vacation this spring was knee surgery: that week when I sat on the couch, high on hydrocodone, ate T's cupcakes, talked with Olivia, and just slept. (And to show for it, I have a knee, and a foot, both almost entirely pain-free!) Perhaps, despite the fact that the only beach readily accessible to me now is the cold Ocean Beach, I'll take time off and stare at the waves of the Pacific. Because, abroad or no, I really am still waiting.

biding time

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:58:49 -0800

I'd hoped it would be rainy this weekend, as my iPhone weather widget was predicting on Monday (itself pushing 90 in the south bay). If I had to be stuck inside oncall on the weekend, everyone else should be, too! But instead, it's sunny, which I grudgingly found myself enjoying as I walked up Market to Janet's early yoga class this morning, Craig covering for me so I could test the flexibility of my operative knee and the strength of its attached leg using the heuristic of repeated utkatasanas. (Verdict: I can do Pigeon! And Camel, even! But still not really half-Hero. Each week, something obvious strengthens, I can do a new pose. I've increased my appreciation of inversions, which I've always loved, and even the long-hated ab work, since it doesn't require legs in the same way.)

And being stuck inside on my couch actually isn't so bad, as I go through the daylight music on my iPhone, edit photos and debate with myself the relative merits of potential new lenses, and eat an almond croissant purchased this morning to be an afternoon treat, comfort for when I would be getting paged. Which I haven't been. (Don't say that too loudly -- I'm not superstitious, yet nor am I totally convinced that I can't jinx this scary beepy device sitting on the table next to me.)

I'm biding time, like I have been since T went off to Nepal three weeks ago -- time until he returns; time here on this couch this sunny weekend oncall; time until I leave for Mexico, to do yoga on the beach on Isla Mujeres and then avoid getting killed by either warring drug cartels or now swine flu in Mexico City.

Two weeks off work -- I've never done that before! I told Cody of my dream last week that I was notified I'd been promoted by a lemon left on my desk, which I broke open and ate, which was sweet. He told me I needed a vacation. I'll happily take one, if only this nascent pandemic passes. Stupid pigs.

I do feel a bit silly, sitting by the proverbial phone. T's been off the grid in the Himalayas for these last two weeks, and I like a modern-day sailor's wife write him emails.

Errands and loose ends to tie up both seem to multiply before a vacation. But perhaps it's less that I have so much to do, and more a need to keep busy? Soon.