I remember why...

This is a direct response to my last post, musing about why I don't spend enough time with my good friends here in the Bay. I remember why now. My wallet and my body can't handle it. Oof.

What would we do, baby, without us?

Fun fun fun! I just had the best time in New York with my crew. A lot of them are former SF-ites who have left the Bay, but, embarrassingly enough, some of them are good friends who live less than a mile a way from me, who I haven't seen in months.

How did this happen?! We used to hang out every weekend! I guess life gets in the way sometimes, but we all realized how lucky we are to have such a great posse. I'm hoping we will all see each other again soon (though I'm not sure my liver can handle it), but I hereby pledge that I will see my SF buddies a lot more often. Swear. Sha-na-na-na!

P.S. States of New York and/or New Jersey: we apologize for running that tollbooth.

Eat, Pray, Whatever

Photo credit Penguin Books

I finally succumbed to pressure and read Eat, Pray, Love. If you haven't heard of it, you're probably a man. This book is one of those Oprah-induced phenomena that every woman over the age of 25 seems to have read. I know several women who say this book "changed their life."

I have been hearing about it for a few years, and almost bought it on several occasions, but something held me back. I generally hate books that are "one woman's journey around the world to find her own path within her heart" type of things. I hated The Alchemist (I know, I know, that's like saying I hate baby bunnies).

But a good friend recommended it, and I was stuck in the airport for a few extra hours and decided to bite the bullet. I read it almost all in one sitting (at the airport, on the plane, on BART -- there was a lot of sitting to be done).

The good news is that I liked it more than I thought I would. The writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, is very likable and funny and a very good writer. My favorite parts were from the beginning through the section where she spent four months eating pizza in Italy. The praying part (in India) was kind of a snooze. I think she quoted one of her friends saying something like, "I so wish I wanted to do that" when she told them she was going to live in an ashram in India for four months. That's how I feel, except I don't even really wish I wanted to do that. By the time she got to Indonesia ("love"), you knew she was going to find love, so it was just a lot of skimming until she found it.

The title kind of gives the plot away, but I guess the plot is not so much the point. "It's the journey," or whatever.

Three stars, if I could Yelp it.

Of course Hollywood is turning it into a movie starring Julia Roberts. Lame. I also found out that an article Gilbert wrote for GQ was turned into the movie Coyote Ugly. Ouch.

Paused

Lately I feel like my life is stuck on pause. I see all kinds of interesting and tantalizing things in my future, but I can't access them. It's quite frustrating.

Isn't it the Buddhists who believe in living for the moment and turning a blind eye to both the past and future? That's a tall order, and I admire anyone who can do it successfully. As a capitalist society, we are taught that the more we work and gain now, the more enjoyable things will be for us in the future. We go to work so we can earn a vacation. We are nice to people so they will be nice to us later. We invest in the stock market with the hope of future profits.

It's difficult to imagine a purely existential life. The future is not always so far off. It's happening. Right now. And now. And now. And now.

New Niece!

This is my new niece, Reeya:
Possibly the cutest thing ever, with the exception of her brother (it's a tie). For a newborn, she's pretty darn adorable. Now my next statement may generate some controversy, and I hope I'm not cursing myself, but I stand by it: not all babies are cute.

I know it's not their own fault, and that doesn't mean that they won't grow up to become more attractive, and that they aren't already wonderful and amazing little people. But some of them are funny looking.

I don't have anything against ugly babies and scary children in public, but there seems to be a very high frequency of them in advertising. I can't understand it. Why would you want a scary kid to sell your product? It's not good for business.

Photo courtesy Fisher-Price website