In front of me this morning at a stoplight was a truck from A-1 Septic Tank Service. Across the back was written, in cheery blue script, "We take shit from everybody!"

Quitters

I thought about smoking again today when I saw an ad in the local paper for a quit-smoking program offered through the local LGBT Community Center. It's called "The Last Drag." Ya gotta hand it to the gays, they never pass up a good pun.

Quitting smoking is a difficult thing, and anyone who's going to try deserves our support. Here's some sites that provide facts about smoking and tips on quitting from:

• The CDC.
• a coalition of government agencies called, collectively, Smokefree.
• The American Cancer Society, one of my favorite organizations and one I wish I could devote more time to.

Finally, the ACS also has a site, with information about how you, the friends and family of someone who has decided to quite smoking, can support them (hint: don't yell "Quitter!" at them every time you see them).

The only thing I miss about smoking...

... is the breaks. Smokers get more breaks than the average worker bee to go an indulge their addiction. I got used to being able to set aside five minutes a few times a day to think about things other than whatever was on my desk. I didn't relish giving that up when I quit smoking. Luckily, Al Gore had already invented the internet when I gave up my smelly habit. I don't know that I could have ever quit smoking without the internet to distract me.

Now the internet is the best way to refresh (or "distract," depending on your perspective) my brain during the work day. How Stuff Works is a favorite site. The articles are all written by about a dozen people who are apparently staff at the site. My suspicious nature leads to believe there is some kind of "angle" here, something else at work... but I haven't found a consistent bias to any of the material.

I like the science questions:

What is spider's silk made of?

How spacesuits work.

How solar cells work.

Useful DIY tips:

Fixing a hole in drywall.

How to treat a cat that has been sprayed by a skunk. My experience with cats tells me that flushing out a cat's eye with water is not quite the simple task that this illustration would lead you to believe, but maybe I'm just being cynical.

How to repair small appliances.

And then there's the stuff you really want to know:

Could I lose weight by getting my ear stapled?

How crack works.

What is foot and mouth disease?

How do aphrodisiacs work?

Why are booger sticky?

What are the best over-the-counter remedies for a hangover?

Enjoy.

Update

6:26pm: Two bowls of cereal, two handfuls of pistachios later. No longer ravenous, but still hungry. When's dinner?

Redline, part 2

But, really, what a great workout. I think it's worth another shot.

Like crack, only legal and you don't get skinny.

So I decided to try and find some new pre-workout supplements to boost my energy because I've really been lagging lately in the mornings. I wanted something that was pure energy and did not claim to be some kind of appetite-suppressant. That whole TrimSpa, Hydroxycut thing is just pills for fat people who want to eat Cheetos and lose weight all through the miracle of a few little pills. And good luck with that. Meanwhile, back in reality, I was hoping to get something that was more of an athletic energy booster (I like to stay away from the phrase "performance enhancer" since that has kind of negative connotation... thanks, Barry). So I was looking for the kindof pills meatheads from the gym would take when they aren't shooting themselves with horse hormones. You can already tell this story is going to work out well, can't you? A couple of years ago, TB drank a can of Redline and called me from his apartment parking lot, where he'd been walking around, "trying to hold (his) shit together." Apparently it gives quite a jolt when taken on an empty stomach and TB, no stranger to the GNC, was having a violent case of the shakes. He alleged it also made him paranoid, but who can tell? So now they make this stuff in pill form, and since the FDA hasn't banned it yet, I had it in the back of my mind as a potential. But I'm a pretty risk-averse person, especially when it comes to unregulated supplements. But after about a week of feeling like my morning run was taking place in a large bowl of jello, I complained to JFJ, who as it turns out, it also on the Little Blue Bottle. Aha! I tried a few last week but forgot to take them consistently, so this morning's spin class was the first real test.

5:20am: Take 2 redline and eat half a banana (learned from TB's mistake and will not take on an empty stomach. Also warned by JFJ, who gripped my shoulders in a Obi-Wan to Luke manner and whispered, "Always... take with food.").

5:55am: arrive bleary-eyed at gym and stumble over to spin class. Glare at perky instructor.

6:13am: Starting to feel more energetic. Is it just being warmed up, or are the magic pills working?

6:22am: Really feeling it now. The instructor has us go aroudn the room and decide what to do for 30-second intervals. Most people go with something like sitting for thirty seconds or standing for thirty seconds. I come up with a complicated stand-for-two-seconds, hover-for-two-seconds routine, which I enthusiastically try to direct by shouting directions, at one point letting loose with, "GO! GO! GO!" The man on the bike next to me rests his head on the handlebars at the end of my interval.

6:46am: Instructor comments that I was particularly energetic this morning. Several of the other women in the class nod. I dismiss the cool-down, throw on my shoes and run upstairs to where the treadmills are.

6:55am: After about 8 minutes at a 3% incline, the energy is beginning to drag.

7:02am: No, it's not! BURN, BABY, BURN!

7:22am: Listen to soothing music for cool-down, tempted to try some bench presses but opt to hit the showers instead.

8:05am: Ready and at work in record time. For the first time, I notice there is a massive hole in the middle of my body and it's expanding. I must close the whole by putting food in it.

8:11am: Bowl of eggwhites and an english muffin later. Still hungry. Eat a banana.

8:27am: Still hungry. Eat a bowl of oatmeal.

8:34am: Is there no amount of food that will satisfy me? Eat a protein bar.

9:04am: A little shleepy. Have some coffee.

9:52am: Email JFJ with concerns about overwhelming hunger. He instructs plenty of fluids and protein. Drink more water.

From 10am until about 11:30 is just a haze of trying to find food and stay awake. I feel like a giant lumbering around in slow motion. The extra energy helps you burn calories, sure, but how about the fact that you are driven to consume your entire body weight for breakfast? That's not helping shed any pounds.

At some point irritability kicks in and the momentary satisfaction of lunch is broken by the obsessive need of everyone around me to get on my last nerve. For some reason, everyone wants to stare into my office today. People gap, open-mouthed, as they slowly cruise by,a s though I am some kind of strange zoo creature. At one point I contemplate throwing my own feces at them but the logistics are overwhelming given my lack of energy. The afternoon has been survived only through the help of sugar and prayers to the sweet baby Jesus to help me get through the day.

JNC says:

It's harder to tell who's homeless these days what with headsets and fashion being the way it is. Sometimes you kind of have to smell them to really find out.

One thing I forgot to mention about Katie's visit was how I punctured her foot. Several months ago I dropped a glass in my kitchen and apparently there was still a chunk of glass somewhere on the floor. Despite the fact that I plod around my kitchen every day in bare feet, somehow she managed to find that one last shard on the ground. It drew a fair amount of blood, enough to leave a trail to the bathroom. Fortunately I had enough first aid materials that I wasn't completely humiliated.
This is a photo of her showing the bandaid on her foot, although it looks like I have surprised her by opening the door to catch her in the middle of giving herself a good spanking. Now that would really have been embaressing.

She's baaaaack!

I had the pleasure of hosting Katie on Tuesday evening as she made her way down from Alameda to SoCal. This was her first visit home after moving to Australia, and she was on her way down to a friend's wedding in LA.

She's eating as much Mexican food as she can while she's in California, so I took her to Olitas, one of the few places on the wharf where the food is as good as the view (Riva's being the other). She knew exactly what to go for - note the empty glass of sangria in the foreground. As you can see, Katie has not lost ANY of her enthusiasm for food! After dinner we went over to Red for a cocktail and then to the local adult store, Camouflage to stock up for Valentine's Day, her friend's bachelorette party and her upcoming booty call with the Aryan Science Experiment ("ASE"). The ASE was one of the dive instructors on our boat on the Great Barrier Reef. Katie took one look at him, licked her lips and called dibs. She's going to visit him in March to make sure his six-pack is still there.

It was a brief visit but Katie is one of those friends who you can not see for yonks and when you finally get together, it's like you hung out yesterday. She'll be back in August for her sister's wedding, so I'm hoping I can get her down here again, maybe have a beach-themed Ya Ya event in Santa Cruz. In the 15 hours she was here we ate a ton of food, had sangria and cocktails, and spent too much money on sex toys. I think it's safe to say she'll be back.

Can we talk?

It's Scrumpy's birthday this weekend, and that has me thinking about family. Family I wish I'd known better, like my dad. Now that he's gone, there's a host of questions I wish I'd asked him. But you don't really think about this stuff until you get older. If you want to talk to your family about their history, and about their thoughts on life generally, Real Simple magazine has a list of "personal history" questions here. It's a great resource for figuring out what you want to know. Some of the questions may be difficult, like "Are you happy with the way you and I get along?" and others are fun, like asking your parents to describe their best memory from when you (and your siblings) were young.

If you use any of the questions, let me know how it goes!

No news is good news.

Check out Arianna Huffington's post of a memo from Fox news in which staffers were instructed to "be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents... thrilled at the prospect of a Dem controlled Congress." Ahhh... manufacturing the news is so much easier than actually reporting it. Maybe that's not completely fair. Fox news has really taken the time to address some of the really pressing questions that concern America today (you'll have to follow the link to get the joke, people. I'm not making it that easy).

For more stories about the corporate media to delight and enrage, check out mediamatters.org.

The ball and chain on the other foot.

Hoov posted this on the Ya Ya blog and I just had to reprint it here. The article, about how women today are less likely to get married (and how they're okay with that) raises some interesting points. The Chron is a little behind the times on this one. Time ran a cover story last year about the new single woman and the real estate market, always with an eye on statistics, quickly responded when single women began to dominate the condo and single-income buyer markets. Another article, also in Time, notes that in the last 30 years the number of people living alone has gone from 5% to 27%. Traditionally, women have been the ones who push for marriage because it has given them stability they didn't have as single women. Now that women can be successful, stable and single, marriage is on the decline.

My generation is the first to really grow up with the equality that the 60s feminists (men and women) fought for. We reap the rewards of those pioneers, although my generation eschews the labels and symbols of that movement. Burn our bras? Heck, no, a sexy Victoria's Secret bra will set you back at least $40. It probably wouldn't matter to our mothers' generation, since that bra gets worn under a suit in the boardroom. We embrace femininity as a source of power, not something that compromises it.

But are we destined to be single? The generation of women raised to with the idea that they could be independent are also more education and earning more than ever before. The market is catching up, gearing traditionally male-oriented products like cars and home repair products to single, professional women. As women learn to do it all, what gets left behind is the role that was filled by the husband. I'm left feeling kind of sorry for the guys, whose traditional roles have become outdated. Their wives bounce a baby with one hand and balance a checkbook with the other while the husband is lampooned as the helpless airhead, the Homer Simpsons and Tim Taylors of the world. I'm frustrated by the final impression of the article - that men are increasingly seen as a source of good genes for procreation by the alpha female. As satisfying as it may seem to see the power pendulum begin to shift towards women, we have to keep in mind that the goal of feminism in the first place was equality. We'll have to remember that as men develop their own modern identities.

Women see less need for ol’ ball and chain
By C.W. Nevius, SF Chronicle
January 28, 2007

Are husbands becoming obsolete? You have to wonder. A recent New York Times study, based on 2005 census results, found that for the first time in American history there are more women living without husbands (51 percent) than with them. To which many men must reply: Uh-oh. After all, how many times did they tell us to put down the toilet seat and pick up our socks? Could it be that a hubby is -- like the big, smelly dog that keeps chewing up shoes -- turning out to be more trouble than he's worth?

"We are definitely looking to have a fulfilling relationship,'' says 35-year-old Gia Colosi, an Intel executive and president of the San Francisco Spinsters, a philanthropic and social club of about 175 college-educated single women. "But at the same time, if it didn't happen it wouldn't be the end of the world."

In case you haven't noticed, that's becoming a prevailing view. Stephanie Coontz, author of the award-winning "Marriage, A History,'' has said, "There is no going back to a world where ... marriage is the institution that organizes people's lives." Take the case of San Francisco hair and makeup artist Teresa Callen. A single mother, she says she left a lousy marriage 12 years ago and admits she ran smack into all the expectations of a traditional role. "I was scared, really scared,'' says Callen, now 44. "I thought I couldn't do it alone. I got engaged to someone else right away, but I couldn't go through with it." Instead, Callen looked around and realized that she had lots of options. She went back to school, got a degree and carved out a life. Coontz says the new trends for women -- college education, financial independence and less pressure from society -- have changed the rules. One of the most important changes, she says, is knowing that you don't have to depend on your husband for a living and "if it doesn't work out, you could leave."

But that's just the tip of the husband-free trend. According to a New York Times analysis of census data, not only are women marrying later, they also are less likely to remarry right away if widowed or divorced. So why aren't there an equal number of men living without wives? Only 46.6 percent of men do. The reasons: Men don't live as long as women, and widowed women are more likely not to remarry and live happily alone. So it was no coincidence when a 2006 study by the National Association of Realtors found that 22 percent of home-buyers were single women. Not only is that an all-time high -- single men were at 9 percent, by the way -- unmarried women also purchase 40 percent of condominiums.

"It's a different generation,'' says San Mateo's Lorri Lee Lown, the founder of Velo Girls, a women's cycling club. "My mother couldn't have bought a house by herself. But I can.'' Erika Lodge, a 25-year-old investment banker and member of the Spinsters, says: "The financial freedom is the biggest component in this. Everyone has definitely noticed that things are changing with women in general.'' And what do the single men think of this? Well, as politically correct males in the 21st century, they know what they are expected to say.

"I think if you talked to most guys in my age group,'' says John Gartland, 34, who is president of the San Francisco Bachelors, "they would say they want a dynamic, independent, successful woman.'' But Gartland's friend and fellow member of the Bachelors, Eric Noland, is honest enough to admit that dating an extremely successful woman might take some adjusting. "It wouldn't be threatening,'' says Noland, a financial planner for Williams-Sonoma, "but if I met someone who was high-powered, there might be some feelings of inadequacy. I think that's a very male reaction.''

There's the rub. Women have clearly changed, but some of them say men aren't keeping up. Lown may be the model for the new single woman. Forty-one and never married, she worked in the corporate world until she took up biking after a long layoff. She loved the exercise and experience, but not dealing with the men's cycling clubs. "Men compete with each other,'' says Lown, who has a master's degree in gender relations. "And they also compete with the women. Women don't want someone to be rude and give them smack talk going up a hill. They want encouragement.'' That wasn't likely to come from the men, so Lown started Velo Girls, for serious female cyclists, in 2002. The club now has more than 1,300 members and last year organized 299 rides, only a few of which included men. "I had no idea it would take off like this,'' Lown says. "It was a huge surprise.'' The interesting part is the demographic. Lown says about 60 percent of club members are between the ages of 30 and 55, "rather affluent, college-educated, and with lots of free time available.''

That's because, in many cases, they aren't married. Nor are they clamoring to invite some men along. "This is definitely not a place to meet singles,'' Lown says. "A lot of women say, 'This is my ride, not my boyfriend's or my husband's.' " Not that they haven't tried it. Lown runs a few "singles'' rides each year, and the last one was the whole new male-female disconnect in a nutshell. "I don't know how many times I had to tell the guys to chill out,'' says Lown, a competitive cyclist who has no problem keeping up with the men. "I finally had to tell them, 'Look, if you are trying to meet women, ride with them. Don't show off. Don't go crazy. That's not impressing anyone.' '' OK then, men say, what are we supposed to be doing? "That's the million-dollar question,'' says Noland, 33. "It's becoming more of a challenge. As guys, we are going to have to come up with some other measures of success for our relationships."

Are guys getting the message? Oh, who cares, women say. They are moving on regardless. Consider Sheila Moon, a San Francisco fashion designer, who is a single woman in her 40s. Moon worked in the fashion industry for years, doing contemporary sportswear, suity-stuff." But four years ago, she saw this trend of "encouraging women to enter activities that are usually more male-dominated," and decided to design a line of women-only cycling clothes. Today, Moon's designs can be found in stores in 23 states, from Florida to Oregon. The average person might be surprised to hear that women make up a higher dollar value of the bike retail market than men. Lown jokes that the reason is that a "man will buy a bike, a pair of shorts and a shirt. A woman will buy a bike and 10 outfits.''

Now, just to make it clear, there wasn't a person we talked to who wasn't interested in a solid, long-term relationship. "Deep down, people want some sort of a partner,'' says Gartland. "Most people still get married.'' "And women do have the biological clock,'' says Colosi. "I think a lot of us still hear about our parents wanting grandchildren.'' That, Gartland hopes, is a guy's ace in the hole. "We will really know we are obsolete if the birthrate keeps dropping," he says. "We still have that one useful reason to be married."

Relationship Advice: Valentine's Day Edition

Gentlemen: Have a dozen roses delivered to her workplace. This works for almost any occasion, including birthdays and I Really Screwed Up This Time.

Ladies: He wants oral sex. Don't worry about the right size shirt, a funny card, scented candles. Oral. Sex.

Disclaimer: Neither of these will help you get your campaign manager back if you slept with his wife, no matter how many times you tell him you were both really, really drunk.

Update on dangerous driving

So I was telling the "crazy driver" story to JFJ and when I got to the part about me prancing toward the coffee shop and making eye contact, he's like, "Oh that guy must have been freaking out!" I was expecting to be told I should have run for my life, so this kind of stopped me in my tracks.

"Eh?"

"He totally thought you were coming in there to yell at him."

"Well, maybe, but why was he clutching the card rack, looking like an 8-year-old who's just been told they're going to Azkaban?"

"Are you serious? Guys are terrified of getting yelled at by a woman in public."

"What are you talking about?"

"That's the worst thing! If it was two guys, they'll stand there in the parking lot and yell at each other all day. But a woman you don't know, just coming up to you and letting you have it? Ooohhh..." his voice just kind of fades out, and he shakes his head and shudders.

This really threw me. I was scared of the bald, angry driver. Unfortunately, women are used to seeing every unknown man as a potential predator. And, you know, he's bigger. The idea that he was freaked was, frankly, wildly amusing.

Can I bring my whiney?

FML just called me from LAX. The person in front of him in line at the security checkpoint had a bottle of wine in their carry-on. They were told they could not bring it on the plane. "But it's not liquid, it's wine." they complained.

An odd experience on the way to work this morning. I was driving down the street that I live on to the first major intersection when the car in front of me, a green Mitsubishi, stopped and put their left signal on. Although they were in the left turn lane they had stopped about fifty feet short of the light. I noticed there was a driveway on the left and figured that’s where the Mitsubishi was going to turn as soon as traffic coming the other way had stopped. I was too close to his bumper to pull around him, and it would only have brought me to the red light, so I just waited for him to turn. I’m never in much of a hurry on the way to work.

As I waited for oncoming traffic to clear and the Mitsubishi to make a left into the driveway, a bright blue truck sped around my car and the one in front of me, tires squealing as he cut around the cars, clearing my bumper by about six inches and coming to a screeching stop at the light. It was such aggressive driving, that it must have been an attempt to communicate a message, although I couldn’t figure out quite what that message was. Maybe he disapproved of the Mitsubishi’s left turn, or he was just in a huge hurry.

The cars coming the other direction cleared and the Mitsubishi went left into the driveway. I pulled forward, ending up right behind the blue truck as the light turned green. At the next light, he came to another sudden stop in the lane going straight and then suddenly pulled to the right to get onto the street that goes towards the highway. It turned out we were following roughly the same route to the freeway, although his route involved weaving dangerously in and out of traffic, stopping in one lane and then suddenly accelerating into the other. Although I was hanging back, wanting to avoid any of the mayhem, we still kept about the same pace and I ended up on the freeway only a few cars behind the blue truck. Apparently extremely aggressive driving doesn’t actually make traffic go any faster.

When I took the exit from the freeway at work and pulled in the left turn lane to stop for coffee I found myself behind the blue truck again. This time I could see the driver better. It was a guy (surprise) with a shaved head, it looked like he was wearing a sweatshirt. He didn’t appear to be talking on the phone or doing anything that gave an indication about why he was apparently filled with rage. I couldn’t figure out where he was going. The only business open in the area was the coffee shop where I was headed for my morning java. Apart from that, there is a Hilton (maybe he was going to bust his wife in a hotel room with Gavin Newsom?) and residential areas. The truck was kind of construction-y so I thought maybe he was late to get to a job site. Or maybe he’s a plumber and was going to fix a burst pipe.

When he pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop, I got a little concerned. For the first time, I wondered if there was going to be a problem. What if he had noticed my car behind him and thought I was following him? I sat in my car for a moment, and watched him go into the coffee shop. As he went in, he glanced back right at my car. “Great,” I thought, “He probably thinks I’m going to come in there and lecture him about his driving and he’s ready to go apeshit on me.” Although I had thought of a few sarcastic comments for the crazy driver as I watched him almost cause about a half dozen accidents, I know better than to confront angry drivers… having been one myself. But nothing gets between me and caffeine so I got out, too, and walked over. I noticed he was standing near the door, looking through the cards. As I got closer to the door, he looked up and over at me. I was surprised to see that he actually had a quite pleasant face. The kind of person you’d pass on the street and say “good morning” to. As I pulled the door open, he froze with his hand on the cards. At this point I realized he had recognized my car and he thought I was following him. He didn’t look like the near occasion of apeshit. In fact, he looked kind of wary.

I picked a good day to be girly. Maybe I would have looked more like the kind of person who would yell at a stranger if I’d been wearing a pantsuit with my hair pulled back and glasses. But this is Friday and I was feeling pretty girly this morning, so I wore a short skirt, black platform sandals, did my hair and makeup and topped it all off with a short pink trenchcoat. I think it’s safe to say that he was a little surprised. So I did what I always do when I think that the shit’s about to hit the fan. I opened the door, make eye contact, gave him my biggest smile and said, “Hi!” Hand still planted on the card rack, he smiled, too and said, “Hi…” He appeared to actually be bracing himself on the rack of cards. I breezed past and got my coffee. At one point I realized he had ordered coffee too and was behind me at the coffee “stuff” table. I left without saying anything else and waited in my car for him to leave the parking lot. Maybe it was my imagination, but I would swear he was driving a little slower.

silver lining

I did just invent a new slang word. Getting "Newsomed," which is when one person close to you betrays you with another friend who is close to you. For example, "Jenn totally Newsomed me by going to the Castro Street Fair with FML and not telling me."

Or would you prefer "Gavined"? The trouble with that is that I like to refer to overly-gelled hair as "Gaviny" so I don't want the two to get confused. Let me know.

AIGH! AIGH! AIGH!

I'm so distraught! Why is this so disturbing? Here's why:

1. He not only had an affair with a married woman, he had an affair with a close friend's wife. It's skeevy enough to sleep with a married woman, but you're buddy's wife? C'mon. That's so much worse.

2. Male politician with great politics and charisma, betrayed by his philandering? Sound familiar, Mr. Clinton? Now the right will get to use his stupidity to undermine all the good work he’s done. When you are a politician, you’ve chosen to live a life where your causes are affected by your private and moral choices. If you’re going to undermine the sanctity of marriage by sleeping with someone’s wife, maybe you aren’t the best person to try to promote equality in marriage rights. Ugh. I can just see the religious right tut-tutting all though the Bible Belt.

3. And this is the thing about male politicians. When women get drunk with power, they just turn into mega-bitches. But men have to make it about sex. Why, why why?

4. My fall-back plan, that I would meet, marry and wean Gavin off excessive hair gel, is clearly in the toilet. I may have to resort to real relationships.