Wanna hear a dumb ass thing I did? I know you do. We have a filtered water dispenser on our sink and am forever filling up water bottles. I'll stick 'em under the faucet and put the bottle on the side of the sink and do something else for the 10 seconds it takes to fill it up. Problem is I can't keep a thought in my skull for more than 3 seconds, forget the bottle and then it starts to overflow. Sometimes onto the floor. Usually catch it shortly after it starts but sometimes not. On Thursday, not only did I forget, but walked out of the kitchen entirely. Several minutes later, I do remember it's time to change the laundry and you have to walk through the kitchen to the laundry room. Oblivious that there is now a giant pool of water on the floor go walking through it and wipe out bad. One leg goes straight out while the other bends underneath. I was never able to do the splits, yet here I am totally spread out with both legs bent at angles they haven't been in decades. Also land on my spine that doesn't need any help hurting.
Yet I got up. Slowly. With all of my normal hot zones now burning, am stunned that I am not crawling to the phone to call 9-1-1 (which is 1-1-9 here). It just so happens that the first baseball practice of the season is in an hour and the second dumb ass thing I did this afternoon is to not call in hurt, but to go. Of course the pitching machine is busted and coach asks if I can throw BP. "Of course" says I. Not only is my groin screaming at me, and not in its usual good way, but I haven't thrown a ball in 3 months and have agreed to throw for the next hour or so. This batch of kids are young so don't have to throw too hard, and am doing the short toss behind an L screen and things are going as well as can be expected. Then this one kid gets a hold of one right back at my face. Hardest hit ball of the day. Face is about an inch outside of the screen but manage to jerk it safely behind it before the ball whizzes by. Honestly could feel the air the ball disturbed and could read the trademark on it. Dodged the proverbial bullet and instantly felt good about my reaction time, and in the next instant, felt the muscles in my neck had seized up. 3 days later, can still barely turn my head. What a dumb ass.
Betty has a brutal work trip schedule and wasn't planning on seeing her much through October, but a 10 day trip was cancelled last minute so we get her here for a few days. I do enjoy our car rides to and from her office and we sometimes have interesting chats.
This morning, she was telling me about a colleague that is having a hard time conceiving. Has gone through several IVF proceedures and is not having any positive results. I ask if she is considering alternatives to having her own such as adopting. There are so many abandoned Filipino babies here that it is a real issue. The workers come, legal or no, and they have kids that they cannot afford or have no legal status, and they are abandoned. As they are not Taiwanese and have no papers, they are in this weird limbo. Have been trying to figure out what happens to them or even if Taiwanese can adopt, but if I was in a similar predicament as this person, would be looking to see if adoption was an option. Betty says "Never" would a Taiwanese adopt one of these kids as that isn't the culture. Have heard this as the reason for several things recently, and not just the local culture, and it makes me see red. Not doing something that would make your life better, and may save the life of another human because of what...getting cross-eyed looks at the park or having the nasty ass old relative that says racist shit cause they are from a different era make comments behind your back (or more likely to your face)? Am gonna come back to this in a future episode but am having a hard time understanding the motivation of a large section of humanity these days.
Gonna put a prediction into the time capsule here. Of the 5 QBs' drafted in the first round of this year's draft, Josh Rosen will by all measure have the most successful career.
Part III - The Bay Area.
Got to town and had a couple weeks staying in Palo Alto. Worked with my sister so I could be there for the two weeks she were going on vacation to be near our mom. She doesn't need us to be there, but it puts her mind at ease so these were the two weeks of the calendar for our visit. Babydoll's job in Taiwan was over so she joined me for a week, and then one of her girlfriends came down from Seattle and we all hung out for the second week.
We've been to the Bay Area so often that it feels almost like home and sightseeing isn't really on our agenda, and as this was the same girlfriend as last year, we didn't need to do all the touristy stuff again. With one exception. I wanted to take her to Alcatraz last year but didn't book in advance and tickets sold out. Planned way ahead this year and since I'd been and wanted to make it fun for me, booked the sunset boat for the island.
Note to anyone visiting San Francisco...go to Alcaraz. It is historic, a very well done and interesting tour, and the views you get of the bay are unparalled. And since you are going, book the last boat of the day. Not only do you go over as the sun is waning and you get brilliant views of the city in daylight, but you then get the changing colors on the bridges and city as the sun sets and then come back to the city as the sun is down and everything lights up. Spectacular.
Mom seemed to be doing as well as can be expected. Seems happy most of the time and is getting into the rhythm of her new place. She does complain about getting her nails done and since I like to have my toes cleaned up got the name of my sister's nail place and booked us together. It is located in the heart of trendy Palo Alto and while the prices were higher than most places elsewhere, they were very reasonable for P.A. ML had never had a pedicure in a place where they had the massager chairs. At least that she could remember. She had been complaining about her toe and that she needed new shoes, and within seconds of the gal working on her feet, she cleaned out whatever was going on and she found instant relief. I remember some story about a lion and a thorn from my days in Catholic school and it was sorta like that. The lady taking care of us was a riot. She was from Vietnam and I tell her that I am living in Taiwan. She volunteers that a lot of Vietnamese ladies marry Tawianese guys and goes on to add that is because a lot of the Taiwanese ladies marry westerners and there aren't enough locals to go around, so they import the Vietnamese ladies. I have recounted the exact same thing to you in these pages my friends.
With Babydoll and later when her friend was around, we had a few sayings and phrases that we would bat back and forth to each other in glee. We picked up where we left off with my hatred of the word 'actually' and had some laughs over its usage. I am adding a new one to the list of words and phrases that bug me and it is "can you not". Note to anyone that if you say 'can you not' do whatever to me, I will double down on that thing until you rephrase it into a more polite way. Can you please do/not do whatever is a good place to start.
B-doll thought it was a riot whenever I said "in my day and age" and we would riff on that quite a bit. "In my day and age, the # symbol was called the pound sign" elicited the biggest laugh.
A new one for the girls was my use of the term SLAB. This generation loves them some acronyms and SLAB is one from my day and age that is short for SLow Ass Bitch. When in Palo Alto, SLABs are the majority. If you don't believe me, here is the sign that welcomes you to town.
SLABrinas for girls, SLABarinos for boys. Am not gonna go into another long rant about how infuriating the passive aggressiveness of the townsfolk are to everything in life cause there has to be 20,000 words in here about that, but every year it feels like it is going to new extremes and they graduated to being aggressively passive. One day I am walking and am about 10 feet from the crosswalk of a 4 way stop. A car, the only one in sight, starts to cross the street in front of me and I hit the corner right as he is about to go through the cross walk on my side of the intersection, so the dude is more than 3/4 of the way through the intersection and he stops. To let me go. While he is in the middle of the street. WTF?
One day we're all in the car and I pull up to the intersection. I am the first car there and stop short of the crosswalk just as a dude is riding his bike across in front of us. "Woah woah woah" he says as he gives us a dirty look. I honk of course, and can't remember if I give him the finger or tell him to have intercourse with himself, but off he goes followed by his ugly duckling family. This was a high traffic controlled intersection and am pretty sure the law is to walk those effin' things across anyway. Saying 'woah woah woah' became a thing we'd say whenever someone did the slightest infraction and have found it to be a useful way to difuse tension. Like when someone is agitated and you want to say 'calm down', which always has the opposite affect. Try the three 'woahs' and you may get a laugh instead.
A couple more random SF notes.
Was in the city, excuse me THE CITY, a couple times and everyone in that dump has some affectation. Skunk striped hair, bizarre forced speech impediment, or oddly placed piercing/branding. Everyone. They even walk in a manner that begs 'look at me'. Everything has to be fabulous and precious and their 'originality' seems just the opposite. And the place leads the planet in crazy people monologuing loudly in the streets. Just read they have a new task force dedicated to go around town cleaning up/pressure washing feces off the streets. The city, ooops...CITY, has received 14,000 calls from people asking them t come clean it up in the first 6 months of this year. They don't identify how much of it is human or if it is just dog owners too lazy to clean up after their mutts, but the old saying that SF is the place where you walk a mile up a hill to watch a homeless guy shit in the bushes is outdated as they are openly crapping on concrete. Will discuss the homeless situation on the west coast of America in a future post, but SF has submitted a strong resume for being the most disgusting.
They do have the best sports team t-shirts though
Took the girls and Mom to the Cheesecake Factory. We planned to go to the one in Palo Alto but looking it up right before we left, found that it had closed permanently. We all had that particular hankering and agreed to sit in traffic for an hour to go to the nearest one still open. We had a great time. Loud and funny and the food was quite great. A fried artichoke as good as I've ever tasted and their calamari has always been the best. Told some of the long time Palo Alto SLABs about it and got the aggressively passive response that you can imagine, complete with eyerolls so big you'd need a whole stick of butter for. Sure the portions are big (another one of those things that "Europeans think Americans do wrong), but who gives a crap. We can share them. Take some home maybe. Or perhaps I am hungry and/or a fat ass and I want a giant burger with extra bacon on it. Place is good and fun and just because it isn't from some artisanal organic farm and served on a giant plate where the food only covers 20% of the surface, you look down your nose at it? Woah woah WOAH.
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