hey, it's annie.
(updated occasionally)
It smelled amazing.
Nobody believed me when I told them how good the coat smelled. They thought I was being ridiculous or playing up my silly crush. But they were wrong, as they soon discovered upon smelling the jacket for themselves. I could have sunk myself into it all day.

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Thursday, June 18, 2009
The West Coast has been traumatized (or, HFB)
A week after seeing Scott in San Francisco on May 1, he flew to Portland. A week later, I flew 5,944 miles to Spain not really knowing what would happen when I opened the door and found him in our Barcelona room. I kept joking that we'd either hate each other or be madly in love by the end of the trip. Things ended somewhere in the middle, and then we flew back to our respective states. We saw each other a few days later due to his friends' wedding, and a few days after that we saw each other for a few hours, and now he's 5,918 miles from here. (That sounds far, but until last week, it was 8,707 miles from here, so it's all a matter of perspective.) In a little over a week, I'll see him again, and a few days after that, I'll be 643 miles away from home in his house.

Thanks to the magic of the chatbox, we talk in the mornings; he, hours ahead in the future, tells me what to expect during my day. My daily routine has been shaken up, strangely and somewhat suddenly, and I'm not sure what to think of it yet.

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The rain in Spain falls not at all
As previously mentioned, Scott and I went to Spain. As you can see, we had a horrible time and annoyed each other to no end:

OR DID WE? Scott and I don't know each other very well, or at least we didn't before going on this trip. I think we'd met maybe three, four times, through Sabrina. I am notoriously difficult to travel with (sorry, friends with whom I've traveled) because I need a lot of alone time and because I tend to get crabby whenever I find too little to eat. Before embarking on this trip, I warned Scott of my toddler-like tendencies, explaining these things and apologizing in advance for any bad behavior.

It wasn't until after we'd parted at the Barcelona airport, when I was nodding off over the Pyrenées, that I realized that not only did we have a squabble-free adventure, we had also spent the entire week together without interruption (save for bathroom breaks and showers, of course). That is the longest amount of time I have spent straight with anybody aside from my parents, ever. Either I am becoming more mellow with age or Scott is the world's easiest person to travel with, but that was a nice surprise. (A not-so-nice surprise: It was difficult for us to find good food in Spain. Where did we go wrong?)

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Monday, May 25, 2009
Mission: possible
Moving to the new neighborhood has changed my experience of the city immeasurably. Generally speaking, I always lived just outside of the happening neighborhoods, exchanging activity for lower rent. It was fine as long as I had two-wheeled transportation and, more importantly, motivation to make the trek to whatever activity was going on. But my homebody tendencies are strong, and more often than not, I'd wind up lollygagging at home instead of socializing. (Exceptions were made for shows at the Empty Bottle, a three-block walk from my house.)

Now I live a block off the main drag, on what is probably the prettiest street in the Mission. I'm surprised by how much happier I am in general now that there are things to do where I live. If I want hot cocoa, there are three decent places within a two-minute walk. Late-night Coke? A block away. (Probably late-night coke, too, but obviously I have no interest in that.) Poori, pupusas, pizza, croissants, ice cream, everything so close.

These are some of my favorite neighborhood characters:

Beardy bookstore boy was sympathetic when Minou went missing, and he allowed me to post my handmade sign in the bookstore's window. Whenever I buy a book, he is friendly in the way that makes me think he'll be labeled "jolly" when he's someday a roly-poly septuagenarian.

The Commuter has freckles and bright eyes. I noticed her shortly after moving to the neighborhood, observing that riding MUNI with cute lesbians on the J rather than angry teenage thugs on the 31 was an upgrade. We wound up randomly meeting each other at a bar on St. Patrick's Day — I knew she looked familiar but couldn't place it —  and now we catch up with each other whenever our commutes collide. Sometimes I feel embarrassed because she works to help homeless people find jobs and assistance, whereas my job is not nearly as socially important.

Speaking of lesbians, gruff video store guy and I argue about whether Bound deserves to be called a neo-noir. (I say yes; he says no.) I love my local video store because the workers leave little notes on the cases, and they clearly love cinema. It costs more to rent from them than it does to load up Netflix, but I think I am going to let my red-envelope habit fade away.

Mr. Pretentious lives up to his nickname, always dropping philosophers' names to see if I'm stumped or impressed. He is tedious and yet I enjoy disliking him, which is why he's on the list.

I don't drink too often, but sometimes Barbara is a bad influence, and we will have a post-work glass of wine or two. The last time we did this, I later teetered into the coffee shop for hot cocoa, where HFT Barista flirted with me. It was all very confusing, because somehow she knows my name, and she said I was, quote, striking. Of course I was tipsy and flustered by this, because somehow it is more flattering to have a lady flatter you than a dude. It is more likely that she is not HFT at all, that in my blotto state I started making things up in my mind, but it's nicer to imagine that someone has a crush on you than not.

Sad married guy sometimes gets on the train at the same time I do. He looks like the kind of guy who is stuck in a loveless marriage. I don't know why I think this, but the guy just has this look of quiet defeat, and I manufacture domestic dramas for him in my mind. Other times, Fake Paul Krugman gets on the train.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009
Betty quote of the week
"The chipmunks are EATING my pansies !!"

For decades now, my mother has been losing the war against a small army of rodents. She hates the chipmunks for burrowing into her garden wall, for wiggling their tiny bodies into her store of birdseed, and, now, for EATING her pansies. I am not a hippie, but I think the universe is trying to tell her something: that no matter how much humankind would like to triumph over nature, cute little rodent bandits will always prevail. And they'll have flower-breath.

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Saturday, May 23, 2009