| August 17, 2005 | Brides, Bachelorettes, and my Scorching Hot Social Calendar |
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Forgive me, dear reader. I've been kept away from the blog-a-log internets by my scorching hot social calendar, which had me driving to Tahoe to get gussied up in pretty party clothes with August, Owen, and Bethany to attend Jen and Deneb's wedding. Their wedding was up on a mountain, and we had to take a scary cable car to get up there. And I'm afraid of heights. But we somehow survived. And Jen looked beautiful, and Deneb rocked out. And August, Bethany, Owen and I sat at a table of 8 with Kurt Loder. Yes, *the* Kurt Loder from MTV and Rolling Stone. I was really excited to talk to him, but he didn't want to talk to us very much. Maybe we're really, really obnoxious? Or maybe he's just really, really shy? (He did seem to enjoy August's conversation about '60s one-hit pop bands he loves like Herman and the Hermits.) On the way back from Tahoe, I took August to Sonoma to celebrate his 29th birthday and getting accepted into the 39th ranked Law School in the country (U.C. Hastings). Yay! I celebrated with him so hard and at so many wineries that I ended up throwing up. Not just once, but many times. And I was the only licensed driver out of the two of us, so we were stuck and had to spend an additional night in wine country and then wake up at 5:45a.m. to drive back to S.F. to pick up my velvety fruitbat of a dog from the kennel and then drive down to Sunnyvale to make a 9a.m. meeting. I guess I should be thankful I didn't throw up at the wedding. Then I worked really hard for three days, and did the radio show, and flew to Denver for approximately 28 hours for my friend Ellen's bachelorette party. This weekend, I hafta do all of my Burning Man packing and preparing, and then the following weekend I leave for the playa for 9 days. When I return from the playa, it will be September. I will have one weekend to unpack and clean up my stuff, and then I will be flying out to Vail, CO for Ellen's wedding which I'll be a bridesmaid in. The next weekend I'll fly up up to Portland for Selena's wedding. Monkey and Mici just decided to elope next weekend because she's too busy with Law School to handle taking time out for their October Marin wedding. In October, I'll make 2-3 weekend trips down to Los Angeles to (hopefully) find myself a new home down there (I plan to move to LA on November 1), and then I'll fly to New York for the ONA conference for that last weekend of October. Then I'll start moving. Basically, my entire life is scheduled through November 1. My head is spinning and I have a lotta plane tickets and hotel reservations. Does everyone else have a lot going on too for August, September, October? Or is it just me? Labels: august, bethany, owen, photos, tahoe, travel, wedding, wine posted by Jess Barron @ 12:48 AM 
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| May 11, 2004 | You Should Get to Bed |
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I was choking on a cornflake You said, "Have some toast instead." I was sleeping maybe three hours You said, "You should get to bed." -belle & sebastian, "Stay Loose" (my favorite song off of 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' which is still a pretty damn near perfect album, if you ask me.) A lot of days this spring had belle & sebastian soundtracks and the sun has been so warm and all the colors look so highly saturated, and as a cute boy I know has said, "It just seems like everything's going faster when you're in a convertible." It's true, and also you can smell the jasmine and eucalyptus trees. You prolly think I've been neglecting my blog 'cause I've been off in love or something like that running around, having fun. Well if you bet on that, you're only half right. I've been working whack amounts -- we're talking 70-80 hour weeks for the past few months. Basically, I'm working on work for almost all of my waking hours. It's pretty insane. No lunch breaks, and no blog breaks. In fact right now, it's 2:30a.m., and there's a boy in my bed trying to sleep, and I'm typing on my laptop propped on the pillow 'cause I'm so caffeinated/agitated that I can't sleep (I got home from the office at midnight), and I need to be online starting work again at 6:30a.m. in just 4 hours. It's vicious. I'm also suffering from tendonitis in my wrists from too many work hours spent using my keyboard/mouse. I hafta wear big, hard plastic wrist braces to bed to help my hands get proper blood circulation. They're hot, lemme tell ya. I sense a new fetish will be created around these things, as more and more tech workers need to wear them. But somehow, I've still been managing to have some fun. It's just sleep I'm lacking. For Owen's 30th birthday, our housemate Ric built a 9-hole mini-golf course inside our apartment. See, it was pretty freakin' impressive. Here's a drunken video we shot of the mini golf mayhem. And then lots of people came over and we played pac man drank lots of beer and sangria and ate copious and plentiful meats augmented by cotton candy (brought by Mindy) and a fabulous birthday cake (brought by Bethany). I saw my favorite show yet -- belle & sebastian at the Warfield on April 30. The accoustics in that venue are amazing! They sounded like velvet. And, appropriately, they performed (a pretty much impromptu) cover of one of my favorite Velvet Underground songs, "I'll be Your Mirror." (A boy in the audience said that it was his birthday, so they offered to play him a song. They asked what his name was, and the boy said "Nico." So, they started into the Velvet Underground cover for him.) Bobby has amazing stage presence and charisma without being too contrived. When he said, "I hope you all realize how lucky you are to live in this town. We love visiting this place," he really meant it -- they talked about Pac Bell Park and baseball games, and then launched into "Piazza, New York Catcher" with its San Francisco-themed lyrics. They also played my all-time favorite b&s song "Sleep the Clock Around" off of 'Boy With the Arab Strap.' I first heard it years ago when Jeff put it on a mix tape for me, and I've never gotten even a tiny bit sick of it. One of my friends from Vassar days, Jon Swerdloff, visited California for the first time (from NYC) last month, and we spent some time at the end of April hanging out -- I showed him around the city and took him to wine country. For Daniel's birthday, Mici threw him a surprise party at the Ebb Tide. I fell asleep (damn work!) and missed the beginning part, but everyone said he was really surprised. Mici did a kick-ass job. Everyone had fun. And then Daniel gave Mici a kiss. Oh, and I must be getting sleepy, 'cause I almost forgot about the karaoke with the live band at El Rio. Allyson took pictures that made me look like Jack White. Labels: karaoke, owen, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 2:31 AM
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| December 10, 2003 | SF Mayoral Milkshake |
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"Matt Gonzalez's milkshake is better than mine. And Larry Harvey's Harvey Milk-shake may be the best damn milkshake of all." -me (who else?) Owen and I voted together this morning. We walked across the street to our polling place (an elementary school) at 7:45 a.m. When we put our ballots into the counting machine, he was number 24 and I was number 25. And then the polling people offered us donuts. It was so cute. Matt Gonzalez's milkshake just might might bring all the girls (and boys) to the yard. One of my male friends (somewhat jokingly) said, "I like Matt because he's a hipster guy, and he kind of reminds me of myself." And Selena, who was visiting SF from Los Angeles for Thanksgiving, noticed all the Gonzalez posters hanging up as we walked around the Mission and said, "I wish I lived in San Francisco, you guys have such a cutie running for mayor!" I was listening to one of the big local alternative rock radio stations over the weekend and they were talking about the mayoral race. "This race seems to be all about hair," the DJ said. "I don't feel like I really know anything about where the candidates stand on the issues. It's really more like 'Gavin Newsom has slicked-back short hair, so he's a total Yuppie big-business guy' and 'Matt Gonzalalez has cool messy hair and he's in a band, so he's into supporting San Francisco's artist community.'" Labels: gavinnewsom, milkshake, owen, politics, sanfrancisco posted by Jess Barron @ 10:21 AM
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