serendipity

The Assimilation has Begun

 
 Today the recycling program that has taken over San Francisco finally moved far enough south to land on our part of the Peninsula. By and large it's a good thing, even The Right Thing. The world cannot afford so much garbage.

Like little garbage elves bringing presents, the truck rolled through the neighborhood while cans were thrown joyfully at the curb. The elves gave us three new cans apiece, carefully color coded so we would all know what to do:

Black is for icky garbage, which we should have none of. I know this because this can is much smaller than the rest of the cans. But my one neighbor's icky black garbage can is much bigger than the rest of the cans in our 'hood. Why is this? Are they allowed to create more garbage? Is this because she's on the homeowners association board and I'm not?

Green is for green. Isn't that sweet? Butchering your neighbors trees? Put those branches right here. Didn't finish your dinner? Shame on you, there are starving children everywhere. Scrape your plate in here. Yes I know there are flies buzzing around. Keep your mouth closed, plug your nose and scrape. Oh, you don't have enough arms for that? Suck it up, sister, it's for the planet. P.s. That dog poop you are required to pick up off the grass, the kind that in the normal world would be allowed to break down and fertilize the soil?  That goes in the garbage can. No, it's not green. No it's not. Well then stop feeding him that. Poop is garbage. Put it in the black can.

Blue is for, um, water? Mother earth? Children's toys? No, silly. Blue is for junk mail! And the free newspapers no one ever reads. And diet coke cans. And tequila bottles. Now you're speaking my language. I like blue.

Now, I know this sounds a little confusing, and also unfair since I'm pretty sure we are still paying people to sort all of this stuff back at the plant. Which means that not only do I get to create an awful, sticky, fly-ridden, worm-loving (not those worms, those worms cost $20/1000), smelly hotel for mice and rats, but I get to pay money for trash coordinators too.

Just in case you aren't clear on what to do, and make no mistake, if you're not doing this now you will be soon, here's a pic of the super incredible, who knew it could be so clear, if it's cheetos it goes in the black, unless you didn't actually eat them all then put it in the green, except no, not the bag, I think you can recycle that, so let it be blue, instructions.

 

Bonus question: If a recycling truck leaves San Francisco at 8am and travels 35 miles per hour south on 101, and a garbage  truck leaves San Jose at 8:30 to drive at 42 miles per hour north on 101, who the hell will get the rats out of my garage?

You mean they're not really angels?

What a way to spend a day. While I'm at home, rebuilding my tiny-little-of-no-consequence-to-anyone-but-me web site, I'm watching the Silicon Valley elite turn on each other like the sharks they've always been. And yes, I'm laughing my ass off.

The color commenters seem to fall into three camps: first there are the fan boys, those who worship the money and the men who dispense it, regardless. These are the folks who think that cursing and listening to hip hop qualifies as gangsta. (And oh my god, who says "gangsta" anymore? Send that back to 2002. Take it back to the same guy who sold you "playa.") Next up are those who were burned by the evil moneymen. Bitter and ready for blog vengeance, they are thrilled to jump on the burning bandwagon with their now-worthless convertible pitchforks. Lastly we have the VCs themselves, protesting too much.

Squeezed in the middle like so much plankton are the hard-working saps trying to spin straw into gold: the entrepreneurs. For $500K they gave up 60%, their first born and, er, special favors.

For those of you who might be late to this party, here's recap, in chronological order. I think:

Scene 1: If only they'd bought him a drink, things might have been different:

Scene 2: Oops, did I tweet that aloud?

Scene 3. Fuck you motherfucker

Scene 4. You all suck. I don't suck. And I hate you 

Scene 5: The movie

Who said this wasn't high school?

Tongue on Tongue

It's never a good thing when he gets secretive in the kitchen. He's a good cook and his food is always delicious,  but whenever he starts hiding ingredients it means he's about to Broaden Our Horizons.

To accept The Broadening is a relatively small price to pay to have someone else take care of dinner every night and  I'm not here to complain or do anything that might jeopardize his willingness to continue cooking for me. That said, if you asked me whether or not I'd want to eat lamb's tongue, cow's brain, head cheese, tripe, thymus (with pancreas!) or squirrel for that matter, after the hysterical yelp of laughter you would have been met with some serious "are you nuts" eye rolling.

And yet I've eaten all of those things. And as much as I am loathe to say it, most of those things were pretty damn good (not the head cheese though, I may never reconcile myself to head cheese). Sweetbreads, when you take away the "pancreas" word, can be quite delicious. Tripe tacos are a genuine favorite, as long as I don't think too much about it.  As often happens with my secretive chef, I didn't know I was eating squirrel until I was actually eating it. The flavor was a little nutty, but in a good way. It didn't taste like chicken, more like stewed rabbit, or beef that had been cooked a long time, it was tender.

The other day my secretive chef came home with a couple of cow tongues and a look that said "I don't want to hear about it." Despite his best efforts to evolve the Neanderthal in his kitchen, he and I both knew this one was not going to go down easily. I come from New Jersey, before I met him I had never eaten anything more exotic than okra.

The thought bubble over my head was easy enough to read: Cow Tongue. Hell No.

He left the tongue in the back of the fridge for a few days, hoping, I guess, that I might forget it was in there. I almost did. Until this afternoon when I smelled something delicious gently bubbling on the stove. In spite of the aroma, I was not excited. But was I cooking? No. Did I want to be cooking? No.

I can't tell you why I have a problem with cow's tongue. I mean, after you've eaten head cheese and squirrel, cow's tongue is practically mundane. It's just, I guess, that I grew up thinking there are parts you eat and parts you don't and tongue is a part you don't. Even if it is, as he likes to say "just a muscle."

I went back to my office,  pondering my options. An alternative dinner was out of the question. Our family motto is "This is not a restaurant" and that rule applies to everyone, even if we originally made it up for the kids. I couldn't pretend not to be hungry, we work together and he knew I hadn't eaten much during the day. There was simply no way to opt out without hurting his feelings or starting an argument. 

I went back the kitchen (cocktail hour!) a little too early and saw more than I was ready for. He'd pulled one of the tongues out of the broth and was skinning it. Oh lord. Tongue skin is rather strong and he had to pull - and use a sharp knife - to remove it. He put the skin aside 'cause, um, that's the Bad Part of the Tongue.

Dinner was good. The tongue had simmered on the stove for the better part of an afternoon and the meat was tender and delicate. He served it in a light tomato sauce, over pasta and the kids ate it all without us once having to say "finish your dinner." Okay, they didn't know it was a tongue and we never told them. When they asked "what's for dinner?" he answered "beef" which is technically true if not very specific. I said nothing - there's no reason for them to grow up with my food prejudices.

I don't know where this prejudice come from but it runs pretty deep. Maybe it has to do with kissing, or if not kissing, the idea that I am tasting something that, under different circumstances could taste me back. I know, that's a little whacked. I mean, I don't worry that a leg of lamb is going to kick me, or that a pig shoulder is going to hug me.  I don't anthropormorphize my food. 

And yet.

The Mister says when he was a kid he and his brother used to laugh at cow tongue and want to play with it. "It's such a funny meat" he says. Ah the French.

Life in a Glass Apartment

I'd already been struggling quite a bit with my blog. One post would be about work, the next about my kids. A post or two about some personal angst, then something random from the news or high-tech industry. Blogs need themes, don't they? Some kind of focus so folks know what to expect.

On the other hand, and there's always another hand to be had on this topic, the title of this blog is Serendipity, which by it's very definition implies a lack of focus. Even though I'm moving blog homes and could change my title I'm keeping it, 'cause I'm clearly lacking some focus here. Plus I find the word serendipity to be optimistic, and I like that.

The beauty of Vox was that I could lose focus in full view of a small audience that was totally controlled by me. If I lost confidence in a person and decided I couldn't share with them, I just lopped them off the neighborhood tree and moved on. My friendly, closely-controlled audience would grow and shrink like the tide, but there was a constancy in the supportive souls who seemed interested in my words. Lord help them.

That tree house is scheduled for demolition, the wood sold to developers, or left for scrap. I've moved into a glass apartment, AKA TypePad, where everyone and anyone can see everything. The worst part I think, is that I don't know who the visitors are and I have no way to find out. The gamut ranges from no one to friends to complete strangers. How do they find me? What do they think of me? Do I care? No. Yes. Maybe. Ask me tomorrow.

The loss of privacy controls is the hardest part to swallow. The jagged pill stuck in my throat that I can't quite get down. The spotlight, even when only illuminated to a small faceless crowd, feels hot and intimidating.

And yet, I don't appear to be done writing. My battle with writer's block, now compounded by the necessity of managing my google results, is being actively fought. What to write about? The answers seem to have changed now that I'm here and not in my tree house.

It's funny, as much as people think I'm extroverted and public and out there, the truth is that my public persona has always been tightly managed. I reveal my layers based on the audience. It's always honest, always me, but the amount of me is dependent upon to whom I'm talking. I don't lie, I just don't always reveal everything.

So of course I moved into a glass apartment.

When I first started blogging it was experimental at best. Truth be told, I started because I was working for a blogging company and felt it would be hypocritical to sell blogging to others without doing some myself. Over time I started to find my voice, the one that tells stories, the one that can package up a slice of my life and present it in a few hundred words. Sadly it always seems to take a few hundred words.* Now that I have found my voice, I can't get myself to shut up.

How to manage my need for privacy and my need to share? This is the part I don't know yet. Most glass apartments have at least one or two solid walls for privacy. In TypePad there is only "draft" mode. It's either me or everyone and it turns out I'm not much of a diarist. I want to share my stories with other people, even the nameless, faceless ones.

So pardon me while I adjust the lights, move the furniture around and fine tune my voice (again) for this new space. I promise to stop whining about my need for privacy and the death of Vox soon enough. In fact this post might even be the last one on the subject. Regardless of how I might feel about it, I was the one who decided to keep blogging.

So let's get on with it.

 

 

*Twitter has helped a little,  those 140 characters can only create shavings of life, not slices. 

The Erector Set

The boy had an erector set he loved very much. It was so shiny, so strong, he played with it every day, even when he was supposed to be doing other things. He built the strongest platform he could and then started upward: towers, pillars, cranes, skylights and winches. The erector set platform was limited but reliable. You could pile hopes, dreams, diatribes, recipes and masses of drivel onto it and it would not crumble. Not everyone could play there, however. Admittance was  more or less limited to the smarty pants, those who understood erector sets, who knew which cables to tow, levers to pull and buttons to push. The erector set playmates talked a lot but didn't exactly share. They played publicly with themselves and others for the people who adored them.

Then the boy got a Lego set for his birthday. Full of color, all of the pieces clicked together in one way or another. The shapes weren't always pretty and the lego platform was a little unsteady, but the playmates who played with the Lego felt connected by it. For the first time they understood what this game was all about. Blue touched red touched yellow touched green touched orange and ad infinitum. Odd structures were built; smaller groups were formed to explore new ideas and directions. People who didn't technically know what they were doing came and played anyway. Unsteady, unwieldy but pretty and understandable,  the Lego toy was familiar, fun and welcoming.

But it was not built to last.

The boy and his friends had so much to do these days, they barely had time for toys at all, much less two (three!) completely different sets of them. The toys required resources: time, special skill sets and yes, even money to maintain. They did not have enough of any of those things and worse, they were being told by everyone that what they really needed to do was to stop playing and focus.

How to pick between toys? It wasn't very hard since the erector set play group was a lot bigger than the Lego play group - and they had money. But what if they could merge the toys together and create one really great, amazing, toy? Simply take the best of both and make everyone happy. Using his best glue gun, a mass of rubber bands and some shiny paper clips the boy and his friends tried to force the two toys to play together. Alas, the erector set had no touch points for the Lego pieces, there was simply nothing to hold on to. 

In his heart the boy knew the erector set would have to win. It was, after all a superior toy. He was already growing out of his Lego phase and hardly ever played with it. He would never ever tire of his erector set. After a while he gave up the Lego set, understanding that he would have to live without the pretty colors and ease of use. Shiny metal would rule, and while he might look wistfully on his Lego days, he was also a little relieved to put such childish things behind him.

He put the Lego set away, said goodbye to the friends who could not or would not migrate to the erector set play group, and faced the future.