2002-12-26 - 9:31 a.m. suicide standing sucking in her cheeks... This photo has been the object of much discussion amongst certain friends since I snapped it during my holiday lights tour extravaganza... why is the snowman black instead of the traditional white (snow-color)? Suggestions have included: the family is african american; the snow was damaged by acid rain related complications; they were dead set on the bright white ight wreaths and needed some feng shui balance. Had this been set up on a lawn in my former hometown, I might have knocked on the door and asked...using the journalism past as a cover. Readers of these pages will have noted by now that I rarely leave the City by anymode of transportation other than airplane. I've probably only taken BART (our trans-Bay subway) to the East Bay twice. This is why, as I entered the BART station at Embarcadero Center, I stopped to peruse the system map to see if mine would be the last stop my train would make, thus relieving me of the responsibility of paying any attention to where I was travelling for the next 45 minutes, thus allowing for some serious reading time. I must admit to limited knowledge of East Bay geography. This was, I assumed, likely why I couldn't find the Pleasanton station on the map. (NOTE: I made a point of checking out this map on my return trip -- it didn't have this train line on it at all, thanks to someone having removed the entire easterly portion of the map.) Dressed in my long and lean vintage jeans, with my black square heeled boots, black fitted mid-thigh length rain coat, black fuzzy magic scarf, and thick black Audrey-Hepburn style sunglassses perched on top of my head, I was easily ID'd by a BART employee as "City folk". Before I could even walk over to a ticket machine, this kind man asked me where I wanted to go, pushed the buttons on the machine, fed it my cash, dealt with it not wanting to accept my change, and told me which train to catch. Now that's excellent customer service! And *not* what you typically expect to receive during this hectic time of the year... My weekend in the rural equivalent of suburbia flew by. My hostess was my closest friend since childhood. She's married, still teaching, and has a cute almost-two-year-old little boy. We spent lots of time reading books, singing silly songs, and playing with Fischer Price toys. This is likely how I got sick. I've spent the entire week scarfing down prescription cough syrup and hoping my sore throat/inflamed tonsils will just go away. Santa left me the most lovely gift under this friend's tree: a friends scrapbook. Full of photos and letters from high school. It was wonderful to look through those pages and remember how much trouble I continually got into. The friend who made it said her inspiration was to remind me how much of a kick ass girl I've always been, and how there's always been another boy (or two) around the corner, typically where I've least expected to find them (yearbook camp would be one such good example)...She rocks!! It was tough to leave her at the BART station on Sunday night to go home, but the City is where I belong, and where my (by now very grouchy) cat lives, so off I went... Another good friend, who is Jewish, had decided we were going to celebrate "Jewish Christmas" (in his words) by going to see a matinee of "The Two Towers" on Christmas morning then eating our weight in chinese food. Alas, the matinee was cancelled!!! And we'd bought our tickets in advance. Grrr.... The hand-written sign on the box office window said to come back after 1:30 and talk to a manager. When I got there at 2:30 (for the 3:00 show) the line to buy tickets stretched around the building, into the parking lot. My friend was already in line and asked me to work my magic. I walked up to the front of the line, and cut in to ask the box office woman if I could please talk to a manager about having purchased tickets to the cancelled show... she disappeared for a moment, then came back and said I should go right in. I rang my friend on his cell phone and told him to get movin'. We started to go in the door, only to be stopped by a ticket taker. I informed her we'd had tickets to the earlier show. She informed me that was the case for a lot of people, and we couldn't come in without a ticket. I stared at the girl for a few seconds, then said "the woman in the box office told me I could come in and it would be taken care of, so that is what I'm going to do now." For some reason, this seemed to do the trick. She said "OK" and let us pass. The manager apologised for our inconvenience and gave us a free ticket for a future show. Merry Christmas to us, indeed! In keeping w/the LOTR theme of the day, this friend gave me an awesome hard cover boxed set of the books, ilustrated by Alan Lee with the Tolkien maps in the end papers. This will give me something to read in bed this weekend, while sipping tea/whiskey/honey concoctions. My only compliant is the books don;t come w/any 8x10 glossies of Legolas....what a hottie! It's about to start pouring rain any moment, so I am going to hurry up and get dressed so I can go to The Pork Store on the haight and rustle me up some greasy breakfast/lunch. Greasy spoon diner food always makes me feel better...then, perhaps, it's off to the Richter show at SFMOMA... P.S. Please take my "completing 2002" survey. THANKS!! any comments? (0 so far) previous - next recently on almostgoldsf... in defense of an email box I came to do battle with SPAM - 2008-05-17 hello 2006 - 2005-12-31 Happy Thanksgiving - 2005-11-14 bon voyage - 2005-11-05 October already? - 2005-10-09