Haight Street That Great Street (I Just Want to Say)

Image by Sebastià Giralt via Flickr

Lunch today with the Drunk Boyz, those USF patricians, something I used to do far more often when purse was full and liver was limber, able to bench press a quart of the pure Hippocrene and beg for more.

Yes, it's all slowed down, the socializing after work that gives sparkle to the workplace. What changes? Workplace friendship or merely tax law?

This was actually socializing before work in the sense that most of us aren't teaching or working otherwise to advance USF this summer season. That is, it is not something we are on payroll doing, though actually we can't NOT work on USF's behalf at play or rest. We learn and we plan. This joke is now officially at an end: We really do spend a lot of time getting ready for our fall classes, mistrusting repetition. Regurgitating old notes suggests a lack of attention, a surrender to ease. I worry myself with wanting to do better.

Anyway, today was a traditional lunch. We went back to Martin Macks, which burned down a year or two ago and which we had kind of abandoned because the illegal waitresses -- oh sweet Irish lasses about whose county origins we could always joke -- did not quite always get our kidding. But now the refurbished MM, though noisy as the inside of a bell, did have quite a pleasant new waitress/bartender, both curvy and willowy and *a patter*. Old gentlemen like old dogs like to be patted, at which point they growl in their sleep. Her white hands fluttered like birds, distributing attention among the ancients.

At some point a 3rd/4th/5th round of drinks was ordered, and this sweet miss said, "I've got that covered." Ah, that's what keeps us coming back, that courtesy in or cups that assumes we will live to drink another day.

Old friends, old stories and always something new. Did you know goats were grazing at USF this summer, tending the lawn?

BW was in attendance. We hadn't seen him in years -- literal years -- and it was good to see him, the gray in his sideburns and the halt in his step notwithstanding.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

That would be your "Ulysses" by Tennyson. What comes first, the drink or the poetry.
Sometimes I get confused.

Kwame Oboglo's Christmas List

KO wants to drop a little hint to his bride about what he'd like to find under his missile shield, make that Christmas tree, in December. What it is is a cupholder for your sniper's rifle.

That's my own holiday wish: May all our snipers be drunk.

(Credit where credit is due: lovingly stolen from Wired.)

Sonia Sotomayor and the 'Anti-Deposition'

Image via Wikipedia

I was deposed in a lawsuit some years ago, a lawsuit of our own choosing with a high-priced lawyer of our own choosing. I was prepped all day the day before the deposition. The basic message was: Listen to the question and answer the question but no more than the question. Make the lawyers questioning you work, and they'll get tired and back off, leaving unsaid some things we might not want said because the question was never quite exactly and precisely asked.

You pick your moments to elaborate if the questioner has set up some point you want to make. You aren't always terse and on point, just *most* of the time.

I'd have to say Judge Sotomayor (as she should) is doing the opposite during her confirmation hearing. Explain, explain and explain some more. Use "context" a lot. Understand that many of the senators are reading from remarks prepared by staff, and that their follow up questions are also prepared. If your answers don't always seem to address the questions, neither will their follow ups if your answers are voluminous and nuanced enough.

Mostly stay calm. When these old crackers see a woman display any kind of emotion, they think:

rag fit

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Reuters Journalism Handbook is Online

I wonder if something like this like is the way to go for my reporting classes? The question is how much of it do you make the students print out. I mistrust the complete elimination of hard copy from the classroom.

Bloggers Are Dissed, Get Sad (Filed to Show to My Classes This Fall)

Two pipsqueaks sitting around talking

Somewhere A Childlike Reporter is Waiting

Big Pat Daugherty twigged me to this.

Escaping the Ambush

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Today at the neighborhood farmers' market we stumbled upon a couple cages set up by Oakland Animal Shelter volunteers -- two cages, four kittens, a handsome Bengal pair and a less handsome grey kitten lumped over an even less handsome black kitten.

It was the latter pair I warmed toward, of course, always on the side of the undercat and remembering our two black cats: Lawrence, who died young of feline leukemia; Oliver, who died in bed next to me last December, almost 17.

They were loving kitties, quite insistent on worming in and huddling up. Also, I've read many places that black cats have a harder time getting adopted and are often cruelly tormented, such cruel fools so many people are. So I think I now must always have a black cat, just to put a grain of kindness on the scale.

But no kitties today, not until E. retires, which I am beginning to think she never will do. I want her to be home with kittens, enjoying them and bonding. This next batch could be our last batch, actuarially speaking. Even if we survive this next lot, I'd not get kittens again but some fine old homeboy or homegirl, ten minutes from execution.

That will be then. This is now. So: kittens! But not today. We mutually tore one another away from those beautiful kittens in the cage, all fuzz and fun and big neonatal mugs.

Tonight I find in Daily Kos a bit of a tearjerker about euthanizing a beloved cat. Mine were certainly jerked. I don't understand people who don't like cats. I prefer cats, but I like dogs. Maybe these people saw their parents having sex ... with dogs?? Bowwow Oedipus, I guess. Got to be some explanation other than a withering of the soul.

What My New Bike Looks Like

Almost too pretty to ride, though it rides like a dream.

Mr. Abbott and Mrs. Costello

Image via Wikipedia

E. is reading her NY Times and says, "My ex-boss from Alameda County and you look like the Pillsbury Doughboy."

I said, "What?" a couple times, and she said the same thing. This was hurtful, and I finally said so because we all have a quiver of zingers -- mostly sly and indirect, which makes me wonder if you keep boomerangs in a quiver -- but comparing me to the Pillsbury Doughboy is definitely not in my wife's repertoire because I am not totally unlike said yeasty fellow.

Oh that's not kind, I said.

What? Oh. Hah! she said. No. Yoo not you. John Yoo, the Bush enabler who brought shame to a regime that already had its full share.

Big old plump John Yoo. We laughed and laughed, and I sucked in my stomach.

Howard Dean on Health Care Reform:

Biking: Return of the Kings

Image by richardmasoner via Flickr

Pat and I biked today, but the little camcorder needed fresh batteries,and so only an account is available, not the eyeballed version.

Beautiful day on the Bay trail! My new bike is quite nifty, lighter than the ones I borrowed from Peter and Chris and suited to my frame. (Peter is several inches shorter than I am,and Chris is several inches taller.) The simple fact of 'yours-ness' also counts for something. I am *one* with the *machine*. Or, to put it another way, I didn't fall off, not once.

We'll do this once a week. My heart will soften at the beauty of bayside, and my buttocks will harden. (They darn well better.)

Fact Checking: I'll Park This Here Until School Starts and Then Show It to the Kids