| October 19, 2005 | 'There are places so dirty that we have to wear gloves.' |
If my packing made Bocce nervous, the movers made her go completely ballistic.  She was outraged and barked non-stop for the first 2 hours they were working in the house. I kept her locked in the upstairs bathroom, which unfortunately has a glass door so she was watching and giving her "This-is-an-outrage!"-bark as they removed all the contents from the house. I think she thought they were robbing us. Eventually, all the ferocious barking took its toll on a dog who is acclimated to a life of incessant langor, and she surrendered and curled up on my bathmat in an exhausted heap. I didn't let her out until the movers were finished. It was best that she didn't witness the fast and furious dismantling of the household by three people we had never seen before. I wanted to shield her from the upheaval. As the shelves and furniture were removed an embarrassing abundance of dust was revealed on the hardwood floors. Dust bunnies, dust kittens, dust tigers, dust dragons -- we had a whole dust menagerie. "I'm sorry! I'm never at home to do housework," I said to one of the movers. "Is this place totally disgusting?" "No!!" he said, becoming animated. "This place is not bad at all. There are places that are so dirty that we have to wear gloves." He made a sickened face. "Ewwww! Really?! That's gross!" I said, feeling terrible for him, but suddenly feeling much better about my own dust menagerie. I swept and vaccuumed after they removed most of the big pieces, and hours later after they left with all of my stuff in a giant truck on its way to Los Angeles, I let Bocce out of the bathroom where she had been locked away. She sniffed around at the empty house, nails clicking on the hardwood floors as she slunk around looking for a nonexistent cushy surface to curl up on. When she realized that Big Plum (the purple velveteen couch) and my bed were both gone, she looked perplexed by the empty house. I scrubbed clean the kitchen and upstairs bathroom, and began to pack my car full to the roof. When the Beetle convertible was almost packed to the roof with the remaining boxes, I realized that the cactus plants were left up on the ledge in the upstairs bathroom. I didn't want to leave them behind, so after the car was packed full, I lodged them in the front seat between Bocce and me in the car. I left San Francisco at 7:50 p.m., driving East over the Bay Bridge with a very nervous thin-skinned dog perched precariously atop a shaky stack of clothing aside of an extremely prickly plant. She looked at me dubiously as we began the long drive south. Labels: beetle, bocce, dog, moving, packing posted by Jess Barron @ 7:55 AM 
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| November 21, 2003 | Never Trust a Hippie |
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"Never trust a hippie." -Some incredibly appropriate graffiti I saw on Dolores Street So, I had my Beetle towed to this garage I go to in my neighborhood that's run by hippies. They told me the problem is a "defective fuel filter," and it's a part that they put into my car this time last year. I was like, "Umm, you know I could have died when my car decided to stop in the middle of the road and leak tons of gas out the back!" They were like, "Well, we won't charge you for the labor on that part." The bill was still somehow $661. They obviously decided to pad the bill in other areas... After making my wallet substantially lighter, the head hippie, Jerry, offered me a t-shirt celebrating their garage's 25th anniversary. It's emblazoned with a Grateful Dead red rose wrapped around a wrench. It's hot. Yes, I somehow manage to find the humor in these absurd scenarios. It's a talent I've honed. Labels: beetle, sanfrancisco posted by Jess Barron @ 2:36 PM
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| November 19, 2003 | Broken Down Beetle Blues |
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I almost certainly would've died on the freeway this morning if my friend and co-worker Andy hadn't asked me to carpool with him down to Sunnyvale to the office this morning. About 5 minutes after picking Andy up at his house on Dolores St., we were driving at 35 miles per hour up the hill near Dolores Park and my car just went completely dead in the left lane. Luckily I was able to get it halfway over into the side lane before we lost all velocity. If I hadn't have driven across the Mission to pick Andy up and had just been driving by myself to work, I already would've been one the wily 101 freeway in the busy morning traffic going 70 miles per hour at that point. There is no way I would not have been hit. I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised. I mean, this is the same Beetle that exploded on me in Los Angeles right after the 2-year warranty ended. So, we turned on the hazard lights and we called a tow truck from the cell phones. They told us they'd be there in about an hour. And then we called our bosses. And then Andy got out of the car to go to Muddy Waters to go get us coffee. When he climbed out the passenger side of the car, he said, "There's a lot of liquid spilling out of your car." It was gas. "You should get out of the car," Andy said, "because if someone comes speeding up this hill and clips you from behind, it could be dangerous." I watched CHiPs when I was little. I'm afraid of exploding cars. So, I waited sitting on the sidewalk and people driving up Dolores glared at me for having a car that died halfway in the right lane. Then Andy returned with coffees and pastries and took pictures of me and the blue, blue Beetle with his cell phone camera. The tow truck guys thought we were on crack. Labels: andy, beetle, commute, sanfrancisco posted by Jess Barron @ 1:38 PM
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| June 4, 2000 | The Busier the Better |
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If you were wondering and waiting in antipication of why my car went "Boom!" last weekend, here is the official answer: It turned out that my pretty blue Beetle's battery exploded. Alas, it wasn't covered under the warranty, because as the mechanic guy eloquently and existentially put it: "sometimes you get a bad battery." But, it's all fixed now -- and I suppose my experience with the explosion could've been a lot worse. Like if I had driven to Tijuana for Memorial Day weekend. I will just file the whole car incident under "How to lose $400 without really trying." Grrr! I really need to remember to sign up for AAA. Selena tells me that membership includes a bail bond. Apparently, in the event that you are ever thrown into the clinker, those Triple A peeps will front your bail. That's pretty sweet.) The last few days have been some of my favorite since I've moved to Los Angeles. I've been feeling so good, and doing things that I'm enjoying so deeply. I guess it began with Tai Chi on Thursday morning. I knew I needed to try lots of new activities to help myself to not focus on Lee and to also get me to start trying all the things I wished I could learn. And that very morning Selena came in to work with a book of all kinds of courses. We started looking through it together and decided we wanted to take: belly dancing, bartending, tai chi, yoga, self-hypnosis, drum lessons, conversational Japanese, and DHTML. We had to narrow it down a bit, so that we could focus properly and so that we'd have *some* free-time left. We decided to save belly dancing and conversational Japanese for later. But then we decided that we're going to join Barry's Bootcamp too. We're starting that tomorrow, and we're going to be doing it every day at 6:45 AM. Yes, that's AM. Wish me luck. It may just be too hardcore for the likes of me. We'll see. So, Selena and I started going to a Tai Chi class last Thursday night, and it really helped me to get over the negative funk I was in. It takes so much concentration to learn the movements, that I was able to get completely out of my head for the three hours while we were in class. It's one of the only activities I've found that is completely relaxing for me. It eradicates all of my anxious feelings. Now every morning and night I keep practicing the postures we were taught, and I can't wait to learn more this week. I wonder if yoga will be this good. I can only hope. On Saturday, I had breakfast with Adam (who is the singer for Timonium, a darkly ethereal band I might go see play this Tuesday night at the Silver Lake Lounge, but I'm not sure because that's the night that Jeff comes back from NYC). And then we went to Rhino Records (which, as it turns out, is only about two blocks from my house). We spent a few hours there, hearing new music on the listening stations and also listening to older CDs in the used section. Adam told me that he thought I would like a British band called Broadcast, and when I listened to their CD "The Noise Made By People," I fell in love. I bought that CD and also Dimitri from Paris' mix CD "A Night at the Playboy Mansion." I also bought a few used CDs (Laika's "Sounds of the Satellites" and Shudder to Think's soundtrack to the film "First Love, Last Rites.") After Adam left, I went up onto the roof of my apartment building and listened to music on my discman for a few hours. I mostly focused on the Travis CD "The Man Who." It's a great album. My favorite song is the first track "Writing to Reach You" (yeah, it's probably not surprising that a web writing person would relate to that one, huh?) I just love the opening lyrics: Everyday I wake up and it's Sunday This morning I went bowling in the Valley with Ray and Selena. I learned how to bowl the real way, (as opposed to my old method of just rolling the ball with both hands in the between-the-legs stance). After bowling we had coffee at Buzz in West Hollywood. And then I went to visit JP, and we had a great time. After that I went to see Robert Mapplethorphe's controversial exhibit "The Perfect Moment" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Labels: beetle, jp, la, losangeles, music, selena posted by Jess Barron @ 10:16 PM
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| May 29, 2000 | We Like the Cars, the Cars that Go "Boom!" |
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This past Saturday night while en route to a party, my car exploded in my friend Chris's parking garage. Well, it didn't really explode. It just went "Boom! really loud and scary-like, when I put the key in the ignition. The doorman inside the building even heard the "boom!" And then the whole thing was dead, and there was smoke coming out from under the hood. It was very scary; you can even ask JP. We couldn't understand why a new Beetle that had just turned two-years-old would do something like that. It didn't stop us from going to the party, though. Chris kindly drove us, and we put off calling a tow truck until our return. Chris works at Anteye, this website where users submit their film and video shorts. I met Chris through Kim, one of my friends from home who I've known since 4th grade. They went to U Miami together. The party was cool. Chris and his friend Patrick are absolutely hysterical. I pretty much forgot about my car's demise until we returned to Hollywood later that night to call the tow truck. It cost $220 to tow my car from Hollywood to Santa Monica Volkswagen. Grrrrrr! And I don't even know what's wrong with it yet, since it was a holiday weekend and no one has been in to look at it. I seriously hope that this mysterious problem is covered in my warranty. Cars should not just go "boom!" JP and I went to another party that Chris invited us to on Sunday. It was at some producer guy's house in Santa Monica. He had a huge deck that overlooked the ocean. It was gorgeous. But it's in a weird part of Santa Monica and it took JP and me two hours to find the place. At least we were able to entertain ourselves in the car by playing Hole's "Celebrity Skin" and every mix tape we had access to. Labels: beetle, la, losangeles, party, web posted by Jess Barron @ 7:33 PM
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