Blogs are from Mars

I hadn't planned on posting anything tonight. Not even the sick stuff I learned about Superman and Spiderman over pizza. But I found some tasty software that I'm using to compose this post with, and you know me, if it is in the least bit geeky, I'm there.

So what is this delicious morsel of blog writing goodness? It's an app called MarsEdit. It's been around for a while, and while I hate to admit that I'm familiar with the name, for whatever reason it never clicked that it would work with Blogger allowing me to compose offline and post later. Mmmm, now that's appealing!

I've been using it now for all of 5 minutes so I can't really give a review of it just yet, but I will say that so far I'm impressed. Drafting this post has been a lot faster than the web interface I've been used to. Over the next 30-days (which is how long the trial period lasts) I will hopefully have the chance to put it through its paces. Now if they'd only come up with a version for my iPhone I would be in blogger bliss.

Why aren't you re-watching: American Beauty

I'm so ashamed. I'd forgotten how excellent American Beauty is. I had been putting of watching it for years. It's literally been sitting on myself, still in the wrapper, since the day I bought it 5 years ago. What a fool I've been for taking it for granted all of this time. The storytelling. The characters. The performances. The music. The cinematography. The art direction. It's a modern masterpiece. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening could not have been more perfect. Thora Birch is entrancing. Wes Bently is engrossing. Chris Cooper is gut-wrenching. And Allison Janney is surprisingly heartbreaking even in the scenes where she doesn't say a word.

The DVD has been retired back to its case for an hour already but the high you feel from watching something truly exceptional and so utterly captivating is sticking with me. I feel so inspired to create, to reinvest time into the pursuit of the film making ambitions of days gone by, to remind everyone there's a experience waiting for them on DVD that outshines brainless summer television broadcasts and big-budget popcorn flicks at the theater or pretty much anything made in the past 10 years and you owe it to yourself to watch it as soon as you can. And apparently I was inspired to write the longest sentence in the history of this blog. Phew! If you've got a DVD player and receiver capable of processing DTS 5.1 soundtracks, I highly recommend watching the movie with the DTS 5.1 soundtrack over the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. I won't bore you with the details, but your ears will thank me.

Open a nice bottle of red wine—it isn't required to make the movie amazing, but trust me, it ties in perfectly even if only from a color pallet perspective— and watch this movie tonight!

Living the American Dream Nightmare

There goes the neighborhood. Well, technically it's the neighbors whom are going. But what they're selling for is unnaturally skewing the home values in the rest of the neighborhood lower. Right now my home is almost worth less than I still owe on it. I'm not sure what I should do. I'm clearly in over my head, and according to this Lifehacker survey titled "Are You Living Below Your Means?" I'll be totally boned (and not in the good way) with just one moderate sized personal emergency. I know I should count my lucky stars that at least I haven't reach foreclosure status yet like so many other Californians, but with the end to this economic (and now emotional) depression anyone's guess, it's often hard to keep one's mind in a positive frame. It's time to reevaluate which is more important, the emotional freedom that living alone offers, or the financial boost having a roommate will provide. Owning this home has turned out to be far from what I had dreamed it would be.

Eighteen Candles

On über stressful days, I want nothing more than to come home, have a little comfort food for dinner and enjoy a little comfort movie for relaxation. Today was one of those day.

The food: Spinach Lasagna from Trader Joe's

The movie: Sixteen Candles

Now the lasagna from TJ's is a relatively new discovery for me, but Sixteen Candles, well that's whatcha call a "classic." I watched it so many times growing up that I can recite entire sections of the movie a la Rocky Horror-style, and actually have at a small 16mm screening of it at a central valley university many summers ago. It was there that I saw a gay couple for the first time; they were so adorable together and I was both admiring their courage and envious of their love. What I'm getting at is… it's impossible for me to feel down after watching it, especially the ending… the lights off, on the dining room table, with the cake, the candles, and, of course, Jake Ryan.

Jake Ryan was probably my first crush. I was knee-deep in puberty the first time I saw the movie, and before I knew what gay was, I knew I wanted Jake Ryan. Hell, I still do. He's dreamy. Both the character and Michael Schoeffling who plays Ryan. Sadly, Michael retired from acting many years ago, just before I graduated high school, so his body of work isn't huge, but it's quality and really, once you're Jake Ryan, you've pretty much set for life.

I wish I had more in common with Molly Ringwald's character of Samantha (wasn't Molly absolutely perfect?!), specifically ending up lip-locked on a table over cake with the man of my dreams who sought me out. Unfortunately the only thing we really share is that my family once forgot my birthday. You've probably already figured out how old I was when that happened. It was my senior year in high school and come to think of it, my school forgot my birthday, too! I remember getting into a public disagreement with our principal over when my birthday actually was. What can I say, it was a really small high school — only 29 seniors, 9 of them were boys — and as the student body president I just couldn't let him think he was right when he was so very wrong. Other than that, I just let it the day play itself out and sure enough, it wasn't until the next morning that I weepy-eyed mom woke me up apologizing for forgetting my birthday. I just chalked it up to the fact that I was adopted and remembering such dates were optional; it says so in the adoption papers I'm pretty sure. Long story short, while the guilt was there I did not reap any rewards from it. Which was fine as I hoped it just made me more like Sam in the movie which would mean I would end up with my own Jake Ryan someday soon.

That was forever ago and, obviously, I'm still Jake-less. Part of me is always the optimist so I'm still holding out hope that maybe I'm just 20 years behind schedule and that my Jake and I will finally find each other and we'll slowly lean in and kiss in the darkened dining room. The penultimate romantic moment. That is until the thirty-six candles on my cake set us both on fire.

In the meantime, I shall happily survive swooning vicariously through DVD. *swoon*

He held my stripped nuts in his hand…

Today really didn't end up exactly as planned. I got up this morning and on a whim took a quick shower in order to skeedaddle over to the movies to catch up on my must-see summer movie list which I had been a little slacking on. Caught up with "The Incredible Hulk." After that I picked up a sandwich and headed over to a different park than yesterdays outing, a better park with better grass and a better water feature, for an impromptu picnic and to continue reading When You Are Engulfed in Flames. The gentle breeze and steady white noise of the fountain in front of me made it easy to get totally lost in the pages or wonderful stories. The comfortable folding canvas chair I picked up at a drug store helped my body relax as well. Before I knew it, more than 3 hours had zoomed by and it was time to start my Sunday routine of Target and Trader Joes. Blissfully relaxed I merged into freeway traffic. Barely minutes later, BANG! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! "Oh shit!" was the only thing that I could exclaim as I frantically tried to get my car over to the shoulder amidst the Sunday drivers who had apparently never heard the term before and rather than drive a sane speed instead chose to believe they were on the Autobahn. There goes anything even remotely resembling "blissful" and/or "relaxed."

I'm not the complete nancy boy others might mistake me for, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty under the hood with simple routine maintenance or changing a flat — I've even changed a tire on the 101 by SFO on the median shoulder (it's really more of a suggestion of a shoulder than a real shoulder) with cars whipping by at breakneck speeds (not unlike today) — but so help me, I couldn't get the bolts loose to get the bad tire off. Seriously! They were on way too tight and even putting my full weight into it had wouldn't get them to budge. Worried that I might cause the car to fall off the child's toy they call a jack and crush my foot trying to get the bolts loose, I had no other option but to call for roadside assistance. To his credit he showed up sooner than originally estimated and while I filled out paperwork, he took his chances with the tire swap. While he worked his mechanical magic (with the aid of some real tools), I stood out of the way and out of the hot afternoon sun wondering why the universe feels compelled to balance things out like that.

Couldn't I just have a nice relaxing day or weekend? Must it be cut short with a potentially life threatening predicament? Yes, I realize that I'm being a bit melodramatic, and yes, it's really more a coincidence than part of the universe's doing, but it feels good to be able to put the blame on something outside my control. I didn't notice that my roadside guardian angel (whose name was actually Angel, go figure) had come up to me while I was lost in thought. When I finally became aware of his presence I realized that he was apologizing for stripping my nuts. That's funny, I didn't know I had gotten lucky. Then I looked down to see a pair of horribly mangled orbs of metal. My lug nuts! And they were practically unrecognizable. I was a little surprised when he asked me if I wanted him to put them back on and let the next mechanic battle with removing them or simply leave them off. "Um, you're probably more an expert on these things than I am, but wouldn't it be unsafe to drive with only half of the lug nuts holding the wheel on?" I quizzed? He sheepishly agreed and turned to put them back on the car. When he was done he reminded me not to exceed 40 miles per hour and not to drive further than 50 miles on the Radio Flyer wagon wheel of a spare. Thank goodness it's Sunday and absolutely no tire shops or auto repair places are open because heaven forbid people who work 10 hour days Monday through Friday ever want to get some work done on a freaking weekend. Now I can go straight home without the distraction of buying new tires, or picking up the week's worth of groceries that are part of my Sunday ritual.

I have a habit of dwelling on the negative rather than the positive and so it was no surprise that I began to get down about having to take surface streets to and from work, which more than doubles my commute time. Plus with issues at work the next couple of days, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get my tire replaced within 50 miles because I live just far enough from work that one full commute would meet or surpass the quota and I'm not sure I can take any time away from work to get this fixed. While I'm sure things will work out, right now it doesn't seem possible. But, then again, at least I'm not dead. I should be happy to be alive and a stranger's help in getting my nuts off, even if they were a bit too manhandled in the process. Better manhandled than not handled at all, or say the saying goes, right?

Parking it

Taking a cue from yesterday's successful adventure-for-one, I decided to make today my own and make part of the city my own as well. One of the things I miss about my last apartment back in San Francisco, was that it was central to everything. I didn't have to drive to go grocery shopping, or to get take-out, or to go to the movies. One of the advantages of a city like SF is that it's compact, growing vertically rather than spreading horizontally like the sprawl taking place all around it. Some of the sprawl can actually be a good thing when it's put to good use, or should I say spared from being put to use. There's a great park that I knew existed but up until last night I didn't realize could soon be a place to hang outdoors and just chill with a good book. So for nearly four hours today I sat on a (rather uncomfortable) bench beneath a shady tree and got lost in the stories of David Sedaris' latest book, sometimes laughing out loud with only the ants milling beneath my feet, sometimes on me, around to hear. It was so nice and relaxing, the occasional runner, cyclist, and overhead plane the only distraction and even then just barely. If the bench was more comfortable I would have stayed longer, but alas, there were errands to run and another movie to see—though not solo this time around.

As for tomorrow, I think I'll be heading back to finish up the tome, hopefully on a more comfortable seating surface. I may also bring my running shoes and make use of the great trails that border and sometimes overlap the rivers and creeks which quietly make their way on the outskirts of the highrises. I set a goal on Nike+ to burn 2000 calories in 30 days so I'd better start working on that. Time to stop parking myself on the couch and start getting myself to the park instead.

Happy Independence

On this, the day of our (well, for Americans) independence, I find myself back at the movies (Wall-E to be specific) and once again blogging during the preshow. I'm flying solo, and enjoying the independence such flights of fancy for one offer. My only regret is that I should have decided earlier in the day that I was going solo rather than expecting my phone to announce a call, text, or email, the person on the other end enquiring about my agenda for today and wanting to hang out. While I did make good use of the hours I kept myself "on standby" I feel foolish for doing so, for convincing myself that I need other people to help me enjoy my day, rather than taking control of it from the start and allowing myself to enjoy the day as it unfolds. Not the first time this has happened, and probably not the last. It is something I know I need to get better at. Even though I recognize that I do it in part because I don't want to miss out on a chance to spend quality time with friends, I also recognize that it's a form of dependence that isn't healthy. I shouldn't feel I need to keep my schedule open in case they change their minds. I should feel comfortable making plans by myself, for myself. I shouldn't feel obligated to change my plans to accommodate a change in theirs. I don't feel any of that just yet, but at least I'm now working on it. It all comes back to reclaiming my time and making the most of it, doing everything from mundane chores to the special treats, like going to the movies. And it's OK to put my own desires, interests, life first. Oops, the show is about to begin, and the lady who just down right beside me smells to high heaven of flowery perfume. We're talking she bathed in it! Be back soon.

…

Two hours later, I'm now freezing my ass off on an adventure of total impulse to watch some 4th of July fireworks down by the river. Having never gone to the annual display, I'm not sure I'm even in a spot where I'll be able to see them clearly, but there's a ton of other people gathered here so my hopes are high that we can't all be newbies and staked out a poor viewing locale. Maybe this is just the thing I need to feel more connected and comfortable living here. That is, if I don't freeze to death first. It's getting hard to type on my iPhone as my hand is shivering and my thumb is cramping up. But no pain, no gain, right? And if this adventure turns out to be a bust, at least I can always get in some exercise walking along the river. Wait, what was I talking about before? Oh yeah, independence.

Well, I guess this is me, celebrating my independence while the rest of the nation celebrates its independence, taking time for myself to do something I want to do, for once not looking to others to provide happiness, companionship, validation. And while it would be nice to have someone here to share this moment (or lack thereof if I can't see the fireworks) I remain optimistic that sooner or later I'll find that someone who makes me as much as a priority as I do them. Or maybe I should just get a dog; they're less picky.