"The good times are killing me.
Jaws clenched tight we talked all night, oh but what the hell did we say?"
--Modest Mouse, "The Good Times Are Killing Me"
Tonight, Friday (Oct 14) from 6-8p.m. Pacific Time I will begin my radio show called "She Said, She Said" (which Allyson might later be joining me in co-hosting -- I have my fingers crossed) on Pirate Cat radio. Tune in tonight on 87.9 FM in San Francisco. You can listen on the web at: http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/listen.html. My show is mostly a talk show about sex, pop culture, and news events, but I will also play some music. Tonight August will be joining me and we'll be playing songs by I Am The World Trade Center (who I started blathering online about back in 2001), the decemberists, Bright Eyes, The Dears, belle & sebastian (of course) and others. Feel free to email me your music/talk topic requests. Also, I will be giving away free tickets to see SoCal devil punks Deep Eynde at El Rio on Sunday Oct 16.
Two weekends ago, on October 2nd August and I joined Pirate Cat DJs Monkey Man and Flood Damage, broadcasting live from SF's first-ever Love Parade. Here's a pic of us standing in front of the DJ table.
Flood Damage and I interviewed the revellers, and pondered on-air why SF couldn't just have a "Hate Parade"? Here's a pic Mici took of me interviewing a guy on stilts. We asked people to tell us what they hated, and most people just said "George Bush." (We were all wearing t-shirts made by Mici and Monkey that said "I hate George Bush.") A few brave folks gave a bit more colorful answers like "e-tards" and "anti-drug laws." It's funny how when you offer a microphone to people and tell them they can say anything on the air, they will mostly shy away. Here's my photoset from the event.
By the way, this Saturday (Oct. 16) from 4-6p.m. PT you should listen to Punkture, hosted by Flood Damage. This week Flood will be interviewing President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (and former-SF-mayorial-candidate and resident hottie), Matt Gonzalez. If you're looking for some uncensored underground political commentary, I recommend you tune in to 87.9 FM in SF. (I will be tuning in online from Boston.) To tune in online, go to http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/listen.html. To see a schedule of all the shows on Pirate Cat radio, go to:
http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/dj.html.
So, where the hell have I been? Sadly, I had to take a 5-month break from blogging due to tendonitis/repetitive stress injury in my wrists which was really bad due to my crazy work schedule. I did several months of physical therapy on my hands and wrists, and learned that I need to cut-down my daily hours spent at a computer: 14-hours per day just isn't healthy. I remember years ago, reading Justin Hall's post about the dangers of repetitive stress due to coding HTML, but despite blogging and working on the web heavily since 1996, I had honestly never had a problem with my hands until last year.
My mom, who is a waitress and florist, had surgery for carpal tunnel on her right hand last December -- and she said it hasn't made her hand 100% better. So, because I make my living through typing and coding and copying and pasting, I need to take care of my damn hands.
Of course, I was still working at the computer approximately 10 hours each day for my jobby-job, but in addition to ditching my blog I also cut down on personal emailing and IM-ing whenever I could. (This explains why you haven't heard from me via email or IM in months.)
And honestly, there has been more stuff than ever to write about. I've been to a power tools drag race, The Phoenix Festival up in Washington, Simone and David's wedding at Fairytale Land in Oakland (August and I went dressed-up as Alice and the White Rabbit), and we went camping in Yosemite with Owen and Bethany, and much more.
My friends have also all been impressing me with all the stuff they've been up to, for instance:
* Mindy drove cross-country to move from SF to NYC and is currently spending 30 days travelling with her mom in Croatia.
* JP contacted me (after a year spent out-of-touch) and he is living in Texas he sounded like he is doing well.
* Esther rode her bike down the coast from Oregon to California, and when she arrived in San Francisco we all partied (a bit too heavily) down at the Zeitgeist.
* Missy published a book that was in the Top 10 on Amazon.com for much of the summer.
* Lana finished her two-year stint in Teach For America, and found herself a job at an HIV/AIDS outreach center in Houston, TX.
* Allyson and Bryan met Dave Mathews (Bryan's all-time favorite musician) while they were working up in Seattle on the Farm Aid show.
* Heather and Eugene decided to leave SF and pack-up and move to my favorite city on the East Coast: Providence, Rhode Island. (I loved living there back in 1998, and would seriously consider living there again.) All of their friends in SF were teary-eyed saying goodbye, but August an I might be seeing them this weekend in Providence. (We're flying to Boston on the red-eye tonight after the radio show to visit my mom.)
* Jeff spent 2 weeks in France with Lance and Daniel
* Andy took a new super-secret job on the Yahoo! Search team. (He can't tell you what it is!)
* Jen left Yahoo! (and the financial glory of stock options) to attend a graduate prgram at Berkeley in Information Science. So far, she says it's pretty freakin tough.
* Mici is studying like mad for her LSAT test to apply to Law Schools for next year.
* Selena and Carlos got engaged
* Ellen and Jarrod got engaged
* Leanne and John got a kitten
* Owen and Bethany decided to get an apartment and move in together. (This means Ric and I will sadly be losing our fabulous housemate, and are now looking for someone to live in our dilapidatad Victorian without any gingerbread. A replacement Owen: a "faux-en," if you will...)
And by the way, I haven't eaten anything in three days!
After hearing Bryan talk about the two three-day fasts he completed over the past few months, and noticing that he seems so incredibly healthy now -- both Allyson and I decided to try it, and we are both fasting RIGHT NOW. I'm on day 3 of my fast, and I can't believe I've gone three full days without any food or beverages other than water. (The only thing I'm consuming with calories in it is a drink of hot water mixed with two tablespoons of molasses and a fresh-squeezed lemon 3 times per day.) Allyson is on Day 1 of the fast. It's pretty crazy-sounding, but I think it will help us make positive changes in our lives/habits. The caffeine withdrawal was the hardest thing for me. It was terrible. I had a headache behind my eyes for 10 hours yesterday. I couldn't take any painkillers, because I was worried about upsetting my delicate and empty stomach, so I just rode through the pain. But it sure sucked. I'm now considering cutting caffeine out of my diet completely. That might be blasphemy since my workplace (Yahoo! in Sunnyvale) has coffee bars with free lattes and espresso all day long.
The three days' of fasting fasting has had rough parts (the caffeine withdrawal, a bit of lightheadedness, and some nausea), but right now I feel FANTASTIC.
I'll break my fast with a banana tomorrow morning at 7a.m. ET when I wake up from my red-eye flight from SF to Boston. That's right -- after we finish tonight's radio show, August and Bocce and I are heading to SFO to hop on a plane to Boston to visit my mom.
