in love with an expensive material possession

After several years of badgering, my dear parents bought me an ipod for Christmas. Since the year is 2007, it has video capability, which it has cleverly used to ensnare my affection. The New Yorker wrote a convincing piece on how the individualization (and ultimately downsizing) of movie watching through devices such as the ipod totally destroys the whole experience (and point) of film, with which I totally agree. But I have to say that when given the opportunity to buy Zoolander for 9.99 and then have it available ANY TIME in MY PURSE for watching, all intellectualizing of the movie watching process goes out the window. There are also free things to download, like MTV shows and casting specials, which further clutter my mind and vaporize my dignity, but the excitement of a mini-tv in my purse is too much to bear. I remember once yearning for one of those 3 inch TV’s that were popular accessories for family camping trips with the purpose of providing “the boys” with baseball game watching capabilities while deep in tick country. Now I have one and, as long as I don’t lose my purse, nearly every experience can be diminished by TV!

A brief, but amazing visit from my brother

My oldest friend in the world, Will, rode a wing-ed arrow into town last week for a mere 24 hours. Through either the voodoo magic of time freezing or great time management, they ended up jam-packed with goodness (reminiscences and catching up on the current state of life, with a dash of super Mario Brothers). He was in town on official business, which involved listening to people talk about why he should want to bring his enormous brain to their company and solve problems related to making huge sums of money.

Being of no money or knowledge thereof, I learned a lot of information about the money business. For example, I know now that a mutual fund is when someone’s pile of money is nestled into a variety pack of investments. I also now know that “private equity” is the job to have as it is “high risk, high reward”—companies buying other companies and fixin ‘em up and then reselling them for a profit, sort of like refurbishing old cars. I learned that working with the right private equity firm can make one a 100 millionaire in approximately 5 years. This was news to me, as I thought only ballers and movie stars could make that kind of dough.

It all started on Tuesday, when Will unexpectedly arrived early for his day of presentations. I whisked him off to a sushi restaurant downtown for some catching up and a lesson on the practicality of Shout disposable wipes. After his meeting, we drove to EPA for a Pruett staple—pizza. We met my lover and chowed down. Will and my lover had not seen nor talked for many years, and I believe it was a joyous reunion. We went home to play Blokus, followed by a few rounds of Super Mario Brothers. We both remembered the levels and secrets on each level pretty well, which means that we must have spent a good portion of our youthful brain development time on video gaming. It brought so many memories into clearer focus. Throughout our time, Will and I were able to share childhood secrets and triumphs from the safe distance of adulthood and it was awesome--like reconnecting with an old friend, except one who understands where all of your bad habits came from and might also possess them (ie totally awesome family therapy)! I also learned a lot about his current life, got to know my sister-in-law better (anecdotally) and hear cute Frank stories. A rousing success!

Holiday Round-Up

Moms and pops are gone and the homestead is filled yet again with the yelling of only two people, rather than four (well, actually only three as mom doesn’t participate in plebian behavior). All in all, I’d have to crown this year a rousing success! December started off with a trip to the land of wind and a visit with the Kleins of the northern ‘burbs. Their young girl children are so smart I become discouraged about the prospect of my own offspring as they surely could never be so bright and cute. Here’s a picture of the youngest (Dina) in dance class.

Mom arrived on the 16th and declared the weather in San Francisco to be “freezing”. Luckily, it was nothing a little In-N-Out burger couldn’t fix! She performed an insane amount of gift wrapping the first day she was here. It’s hard to resist slipping one’s own presents in her sights when she’s on a roll. I can openly admit that I did not resist and had my mother wrap most of my gifts. For shame! We also spent a day visiting the EPA police department for a certificate of clearance and drove to cosmopolitan Fremont in order to deal with Costa Rican residence card issues. Dad arrived a week later and we all crammed into the Impala for a trip to Lake Tahoe. The hotel I booked was a little on the budget side, with a space heater next to our bed and a rather small TV, but fun nonetheless. The best part was wrapping mom and dad in winter clothes. For some reason they remind me of dogs in sweaters—such an unnatural look for those particular animals.

We visited the casinos, which was sort of boring.

We couldn’t find any good walking places on Lake Tahoe as there seemed to be cruise boats taking up the lakefront. We bought a map that gently reminded us that the Lake Tahoe region had many other lakes besides the big one, so Natan and I went on a wintery walk to fallen leaf lake.

I also got these people out there! (they refused to walk down to the lake as that would then necessitate a walk up from the lake)

Rachel arrived on the 25th for a visit and stayed with Matt and Jazmin. We went to Santa Cruz where I had the most delicious vegetarian hamburger with fake bacon, onion rings, cheese and BBQ sauce. Overall, we did a lot of eating, and game playing.

We also communed with these guys:

When Rachel left, I had two glorious days left with the old folks. Our time was mostly filled with shopping, movies and trying to decide between Jack in the Box and McDonald’s for dinner (so familiar). They left on New Year’s Eve and Natan and I experienced Pruett withdrawal symptoms. We were in bed by 10 (me reading The Female Brain and him reading The Odyssey), and asleep by 11. I did, however, get snookered from two and a half glasses of wine at dinner time (around 6:30) on the first day of the new year. After expressing a deep, sincere love for my cat and laying on my face under the Christmas tree for the “experience”, Natan indicated that he was slightly weirded out, at which point I went to bed. Another successful beginning to yet another new year!