chillow

love this sign--perfectly representative of warning signs at tourist sites all across Japan. If only I could figure out how to make a living proofreading signs there....must be a HUGE market for it...!

Seeing this pic--taken at BAPE, a hugely popular clothing brand based in Aoyama, Tokyo--makes me want to go back to Japan. How cool is this dude??

Okay, so thanks to that trail run trip, I have a gaping wound below my right elbow that I've fondly nicknamed "The Alien Amoeba." Various yellow-purple bruises and scabby scrapes dot the skin between TAA and my wrist. Unlike the similarly puss-y (that's PUSS-y, folks) wound beneath my knee, which is easily hidden, TAA has put in an 8-hour appearance at my office every day this week. Yet not a single one of my male coworkers has said a word.

That's right--I work within six feet of three mouthy men who share a propensity for uttering a phrase that describes the action of, well...of ripping one a new &*#hole (I'm gagging just thinking of this set of words, which I detest) and none have so much as inappropriately joked, "What, are you getting your ass kicked at home?" I thought I'd get to share my war story at work, but nope. What a letdown.

If I were at my old magazine job I'd have my fabulous female colleagues checking in on me ten times a day, bringing me ointments and ice-cream and begging to hear, again and again, how I flew through the air. Sigh! Are men oblivious? Do I even have to ask? I asked my husband, and he said: "Huh? You mean you hurt yourself again?" Fine. So I am always falling and banging and bruising. But the guys at work don't know that!

I was jogging along a trail in the wooded hillside 10 minutes by car from our apartment this afternoon, watching the sun and shadows play with the rocks and roots in the hard dirt path when BLAM--I went flying. My iPod and headphones (which I hadn't been using at the moment) skidded one way, my sunglasses slid off the path (lost 'em) and my left knee and right elbow got incredibly intimate with the ground. They ground into the ground, actually, though after I pulled myself up I was relieved to see that my blood wasn't flowing freely (it must have been as stunned as I was). And that nothing was broken. Looked like I had a second elbow, though, and a second, lower knee, the way both sites ballooned from flat to bulbous in the space of just one fast fall.

The moment before I went down I recalled in vivid detail what it had felt like 11 years ago when I tripped and introduced my chin to a knife-sharp rock during a pre-college orientation backpacking trip . Wound up with 50 black stitches inside my cheek and down my chin, and a giant bandaid that stayed on through the first week of college. (How cool was I?) Until today I haven't been able to recall that pre-accident sensation. (Ah, there it is: the silver lining!)

The thought that made me most anxious was that strangers might try to help me on my one-mile jaunt back to the car. But the dozen or so folks I passed either didn't notice the three-inch swath of blood seeping through the skin on my leg or figured I was fine, since I was, actually, running. (How else to get back quickly?) I really didn't feel a thing--just self-conscious. Now, two hours later, of course, my arm and leg hurt like hell. I cried in the shower as I attempted to clean the dirt from my knee with a $10 bar of soap from my magazine editor days (freebies rule!) while my husband was scanning the aisles at Safeway for medical supplies. And to think that just yesterday I was telling him that I couldn't wait for a few dotty bruises on my leg to heal (no idea how they got there) so I could wear my cute summer skirts again. Hah! I feel just like a 10-year-old. Which is what I'd been planning to joke to strangers on the trail if they'd asked me, in alarm, if I was okay: "Oh, I'm fine," I'd chuckle, slowing down. "I just wanted to know what it felt like to be a kid again!" Now, if I could only channel my ridiculously high 10-year-old metabolism, and spend my recovery sucking on cold metal spoonful after spoonful of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream....

Nothing quite like waking up at 8am on a Saturday, scoring a table by the window at a neighborhood cafe, and lounging for an hour over a good cup of coffee and the New York Times. (I'm slowly adding the SF Chronicle to my leisurely read mix, too, but I imagine it'll take a while to adapt completely.) We hit
Mama's Royal Cafe, apparently a neighborhood institution, for the first time.

My short stack of perfectly fluffy buttermilk pancakes was way more than I could eat--and probably the best I've had in years. Must say that Bay Area pancakes are far superior to their chewy, institional cousins found in Manhattan. Loved Mama's diversity, too, which mirrors Oakland's incredible diversity. Love when I go places and most people don't look like me! And the 20-something servers' get-ups reminded me of the garb my Japanese junior high students piled on on the weekends. (As far as they could get from their conservative blue skirt/white sailor-top uniform.) In other words, the servers look like they got dressed blindfolded, with varying patterns and colors vying for my attention. Yet it worked. Must say I don't understand the look a male server was sporting, though--the waist of his jeans rested right at the lower nip of his taut little butt, with an expanse of yellow-green and purple striped boxers blaring out above. Feel like my mother (or any mother) for saying this, but what is the point? Can that possibly be comfortable? And how the heck do such low jeans stay up at all?

Oh, and I read an article in the Times about a guy who killed his wife and chopped off her head, then hurled the head out the window of his pick-up truck while speeding down the freeway, then crashed his truck into an oncoming car, killing two (more) people. Of course, he didn't die. The fucker.

Four weeks ago Adam and I rented a yellow Penske truck and hauled the entire contents of our Hell's Kitchen apartment across the country. Three weeks ago we landed in our up-and-coming (a.k.a. very slightly skethcy but mostly fantastic) neighborhood in Oakland. Two weeks ago I turned in my first bitty piece for the alt weekly newspaper I'm now working for and breathed a huge sigh of relief that I could, in fact, still crank out a story on deadline. One week ago it sunk in that we're really LIVING here. That we're not on some extended work-play holiday, but actually staying here. For good. (Until I get a job as a foreign correpondent for a major media org in, say, Turkey.) Bye-bye semi-truly glamorous magazine editor job in the big city (my colleagues at Marie Claire moved into what critics are calling the best new building to hit the Manhattan skyline in decades just days after I left), hello hard news reporter gig in a one-story building in another big city that seems much, much smaller. Yet full of opportunties. My fingers are crossed! (Makes typing hard...)

Found this on Flickr..."hale_popoki" took it and posted in on March 20, the first day of spring. So beautiful!

Adam finally meets his hero, Topiary Stitch, a fine fella indeed. (And isn't his hat damn cute, with just the right amount of lovely seashell accent?)

My artist brother Pete was commissioned to make this for the city of Philadelphia back in the fall for some public "ride your bike!" awareness campaign they did. Pretty cool, huh?

Couldn't resist sharing this tidbit...a journalist friend got this cake delivered to her at work, from PR at a new underwear line, packaging also pictured here...was a huge cake. And really delicious! Yum. Fly, indeed!

I didn't know this much vacant sidewalk space existed within a few blocks of our apartment--it's practically enough room to hold a game of kickball. Almost.

And isn't there something so innocent about this pigeon, like perhaps you don't even want to kick it, not even the littlest bit? Another New York rarity. Sigh!

Adam took this pic with his new $20 camera, which has a special name I'm forgetting at the moment. He's taken lots of lovely square photos--will post some more....