Parking is difficult, I told my friend David, by way of explanation. After all, I do own a car, and San Francisco does have streets, and even parking spaces, I swear. I swear by the Muni, unfortunately, so what's a guy to do? Few, very few people delight in the arrival of the 44 O'Shaughnessy bus, but I am among this minority. And here it comes, right up Bosworth Street, looking mighty and looking new. That's right, this sucker is brand spanking new, not to mention engaged in the burning of biodiesel, Read more [...]

I'm sure my mother warned me about shears. They are dangerous, after all. But was she really warning me about sheers? If she was, it's too late. They are now part of my daily life and lingo, sheers are. Turns out they are those gauzy curtains that block out the neighbors' view without interfering with most of your own. Maybe you thought they were called gauze curtains? You were wrong. Sheers. That's what our decorator calls them, and that's what Restoration Hardware calls them too. Restoration Read more [...]

Let me report that San Francisco has been marvelous for my core...the latter being a bit of American fitness lingo. In fact, one's bodily core refers, in my limited understanding, to abdominal muscles, back muscles and so on. Always good to have a strong torso, I say. And so it has come to pass, increasingly driving the streets of this fair city, that I can boast of my strengthend core. No, there have been no trips to the gym. No weight machines. Nothing except driving. And here lies the unanticipated Read more [...]

The Destination Bakery is my destination this particular morning. And I am aware of the flimsiness of this mission. It's arbitrary, unnecessary…and in my burdensome work-oriented mind, insufficient. What would suffice? The very thing I don't want, a paying job. Thus, our conditioning. Never mind, for this is not enough to deter me in any significant way. And damned if I am not bouncing out the door and down the hill well before 10 AM in search of…well, what? Well, escape from the pressures, if Read more [...]

This very morning I was imagining the next time I have to go through airport security. And thinking a lot about, not airports, but security…and, for once, I am imagining this moment with pleasure. Really, it's because at the end I can collect my “personal items" and also collect Jane. She will be waiting just outside the "security" area…but well inside the general security area that is my life. Not too much lingering on the Orwellian name for the personal frisking and baggage probing airport Read more [...]

When our decorator...yes, I am surprised to say, we have one...sent us a bill for window curtains, well, things reached critical mass. We'd rather spend this on starving children, Jane said without an ounce of irony. Indeed. With the planet going to hell in a gilded handbasket, we felt like enablers. And it felt good, saying no to some cloths dangling in front of windows, a.k.a., draperies. The decorator's proposal would have draped draperies in most, but not all, rooms...at a cost equivalent to Read more [...]