So, I read last night AND this morning and somehow I think that grants me a blogging break, despite the fact that I have nothing of note to say today.... so I will talk about parking.
Pasadena has this law, which they only have posted on one sign somewhere on the outskirts of town, probably behind a tree, that there is NO PARKING on any city streets between 2-6am, except by exceedingly-difficult-to-obtain permit. Hence, the ticket on the moving van on night #1. So, I go down to the city permit office to obtain a permit. This, however, requires some rather pesky obstacles. First, you must submit the auto registrations of every registered automobile at your residence. So, for me to get a permit, I had to make my roommate copy her registration and fill out a form too. Second, your registration must reflect the address at which you are applying for a permit. Well, funny now, but when you change an address with the DMV they don't send you an updated copy of your registration which reflects your new address. So I only have one with an Oakland address on it. When I call the city to bring the extreme difficulty of this procedure to their attention (because I am sure I was the first to notice, and do so), they tell me to get a second copy of my change of address form when I go to the DMV. I mention to them that I was a good citizen this time and submitted my address change before I moved, via the mail, and have no intention of returning to a DMV anytime soon to fill out a form I already submitted, just so they can stamp it. So, they decide they will accept my Oakland registration and a copy of my student ID (???).
In the meantime of all this, until I gathered all the requisite pieces for my permit application, I had to call a phone number every night and leave a recording describing my car and stating where it is parked and where I lived, so they wouldn't ticket it. Now, I have a temporary permit that is hanging in the window while I wait for them to decide whether or not I deserve a real permit. My temporary permit expires on Thursday, so I have to go back to the parking office by then to renew my temporary permit so I don't get ticketed while I'm waiting for my permanent permit, which will then expire on 12/31 and I will get to do this all over again for next year!
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
God: guaranteed to work, or your money back!
... soothing baroque music.... Prayer Power(tm) audio technology... that's right folks, get prayer results faster and with less effort than you ever dreamed possible! Golly, did you know that you have a right to be rich? Just click here to get started.
Maybe we can ship a few of these CDs to Somalia, so we can spend their aid dollars on X-boxes and Hummers instead.
Maybe we can ship a few of these CDs to Somalia, so we can spend their aid dollars on X-boxes and Hummers instead.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Attack of the killer pigeons
Last night, I grabbed dinner with a classmate before Family Development. It was a nice night... sunny and 70 degrees, perfect for enjoying a leisurely burrito out on the balcony at the Paseo. About three bites in, however, these pigeons started landing on the railing, one by one, and they were no ordinary pigeons. They looked kind of evil, and they had hairy (feathery?) feet, and they wouldn't disappear despite much shoo-ing and insulting of their mothers. "Hey, did you ever see 'The Birds'?" Karen asked, and no sooner did that question leave her lips than the ringleader pigeon dove onto her plate, landing with one foot in a taco and the other in a side of beans, and started thrashing. Three more pigeons joined in. Salsa and refried beans were flying everywhere. I think Alfred Hitchcock may have been onto something.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Eggs over-easy, scrambled me
So, I was thinking about donating my eggs.
It's quite lucrative, actually -- I'm worth $6,000 for being a tall, thin, white college graduate with high SAT scores and no family history of major hereditary disease. As I approach 30, it beats making $8.50 an hour at Starbucks, and it may be my last year of eligibility. Plus, I've rented my body to science before... and aside from the side effects of a week of nausea and a now-permanent craving for mexican food, it worked out pretty well.
On the down-side, it involves a process called harvesting. Ick.
But I'm getting hung up on some of the ethical part. Not the usual reasons that people think of, though. I'm not worried about the idea of having a real live actual biological child somewhere in the world. Unlike the author of this article , I think there's a heck of a lot more to being a mother than just growing a baby (don't get me started on the rest of the her ideas... let's just say that people like that are the reason I speak softly when I say I am a Christian). My ethical hang-ups have nothing to do with what defines a family. They actually have to do with the fact that, unlike that author, my faith makes me so pro-adoption that I have a hard time justifying being a source of new babies when there are so many already who need families.
That idea unsettles me, though, not because of its implications now, but because it causes too many unanswerable questions in too many other times and places. The logical outcome of that ethic is that down the road I'd adopt kids rather than having my own, even if I can. This is fine with me now, as I'm not currently particularly under the influence of my biological clock. Thus, it's easy to sit here and be a windbag about adopting, vs. having one's own baby the "usual" way, vs. spending thousands and thousands of dollars to have one's own baby with a little help from Craigslist, ordering a la carte characteristics in a donor like food off a menu.
Can I draw a line? and where? and how do I feel about drawing it in pencil? I don't particularly like the idea of changing my ethics when it suits me, but I have to leave room for the idea that someday, my clock might start ticking and I may understand the issue differently.
I guess the real questions are ethical ones in general:
a) are we willing to follow our ethics to their logical conclusions no matter where they lead,
b) is that the point of having ethics? (having something to help determine our actions when culture, emotion, and gray area abound), and
b) is adjusting our ethics in the face of new information caving in, or is it just humility?
I suppose those all have debatable answers (I'm a sucker for a good debate). Regardless, don't worry, I'm not going to be hauling my eggs off to market anytime soon. And if any of you have room in your lives for an AIDS orphan from Haiti, I can hook you up.
It's quite lucrative, actually -- I'm worth $6,000 for being a tall, thin, white college graduate with high SAT scores and no family history of major hereditary disease. As I approach 30, it beats making $8.50 an hour at Starbucks, and it may be my last year of eligibility. Plus, I've rented my body to science before... and aside from the side effects of a week of nausea and a now-permanent craving for mexican food, it worked out pretty well.
On the down-side, it involves a process called harvesting. Ick.
But I'm getting hung up on some of the ethical part. Not the usual reasons that people think of, though. I'm not worried about the idea of having a real live actual biological child somewhere in the world. Unlike the author of this article , I think there's a heck of a lot more to being a mother than just growing a baby (don't get me started on the rest of the her ideas... let's just say that people like that are the reason I speak softly when I say I am a Christian). My ethical hang-ups have nothing to do with what defines a family. They actually have to do with the fact that, unlike that author, my faith makes me so pro-adoption that I have a hard time justifying being a source of new babies when there are so many already who need families.
That idea unsettles me, though, not because of its implications now, but because it causes too many unanswerable questions in too many other times and places. The logical outcome of that ethic is that down the road I'd adopt kids rather than having my own, even if I can. This is fine with me now, as I'm not currently particularly under the influence of my biological clock. Thus, it's easy to sit here and be a windbag about adopting, vs. having one's own baby the "usual" way, vs. spending thousands and thousands of dollars to have one's own baby with a little help from Craigslist, ordering a la carte characteristics in a donor like food off a menu.
Can I draw a line? and where? and how do I feel about drawing it in pencil? I don't particularly like the idea of changing my ethics when it suits me, but I have to leave room for the idea that someday, my clock might start ticking and I may understand the issue differently.
I guess the real questions are ethical ones in general:
a) are we willing to follow our ethics to their logical conclusions no matter where they lead,
b) is that the point of having ethics? (having something to help determine our actions when culture, emotion, and gray area abound), and
b) is adjusting our ethics in the face of new information caving in, or is it just humility?
I suppose those all have debatable answers (I'm a sucker for a good debate). Regardless, don't worry, I'm not going to be hauling my eggs off to market anytime soon. And if any of you have room in your lives for an AIDS orphan from Haiti, I can hook you up.
Randomata
Ooh! Oooh! It's my favorite thing EVER.... (here's a hint)! For most of you, summer probably ended a while ago, but we still had the air conditioning on all of last week. Yesterday, though, it rained. Lots. Nickel-sized hail, even. Booming thunder. Torrential downpour. The palm trees on Los Robles bent over in the wind like old men, straining to hear the sloshy "ping!" of rain bouncing off of manhole covers and see the newly-minted marshes sprung up in front yards everywhere.
All in all, it was really splended timing for me to take up crocheting Saturday night at Sarah and Sarah's apartment. So last night, I made my first hat in my Gospels class, in between copying down lecture comments from my professor like "let's finish up Mark real fast, and then we'll talk about demons."
All in all, it was really splended timing for me to take up crocheting Saturday night at Sarah and Sarah's apartment. So last night, I made my first hat in my Gospels class, in between copying down lecture comments from my professor like "let's finish up Mark real fast, and then we'll talk about demons."
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Awkward Email of the Week
Do you ever just get an email that makes you go, what the @*$#&??
Yesterday I was contacted by someone claiming to be the long-term girlfriend of the guide who trekked with us through Peru four months ago. Recently, after reading all of his email and talking to his friends, she has come to believe that he cheated on her with one of us, and wants us to confirm or deny these rumors so that she knows whether or not to move out and go back to Australia. Today, she emailed three more times. Huh?? What am I to do with these emails? Do I have an obligation to write back to someone I've never met, whose presence and story come out of nowhere, or do I ignore her, knowing that I have information that, if I were her, I might want to know? I mean, it's not like the guy was an angel, but he was my friend (and a darn good salsa dancer), and I don't know her from Adam.
Thoughts?
Yesterday I was contacted by someone claiming to be the long-term girlfriend of the guide who trekked with us through Peru four months ago. Recently, after reading all of his email and talking to his friends, she has come to believe that he cheated on her with one of us, and wants us to confirm or deny these rumors so that she knows whether or not to move out and go back to Australia. Today, she emailed three more times. Huh?? What am I to do with these emails? Do I have an obligation to write back to someone I've never met, whose presence and story come out of nowhere, or do I ignore her, knowing that I have information that, if I were her, I might want to know? I mean, it's not like the guy was an angel, but he was my friend (and a darn good salsa dancer), and I don't know her from Adam.
Thoughts?
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Random Adventure of the Week
Last Friday, I went to a trivia competition in Little Tokyo with my friend Phillip... it was a benefit to fund scholarships through the Asian American Journalism Association, and was populated mostly with journalists and lawyers and other assorted folk who read the paper a lot more often than I do. My trivial knowledge is apparently mostly of the trivial sort, while theirs seems to relate more to useful trivial about literature and current events and the like.
Out of five 20-question rounds (which, if my brain is still worth anything, amounts to 100 questions), I maybe knew the answer to five or so, mostly in the arts and entertainment round. Plus, there were a few I was really close on (unfortunately no partial credit), like "who were the four original Ramones?" (I got three of them, apparently Dee Dee joined later). I also knew that Persephone was a goddess of the underworld, and that Elvis died on August 16, 1977. I did not, however, know the name of some big rock in British Columbia, the exact date of the London tube bombings, or who wrote Remains of the Day. Feel free to write in and scold me if you think those were easy.
Mostly I just sat around in bewilderment, enjoying the free food. And at least we beat the high schoolers, even if they were the state smarty-pants decathlon champs.
Out of five 20-question rounds (which, if my brain is still worth anything, amounts to 100 questions), I maybe knew the answer to five or so, mostly in the arts and entertainment round. Plus, there were a few I was really close on (unfortunately no partial credit), like "who were the four original Ramones?" (I got three of them, apparently Dee Dee joined later). I also knew that Persephone was a goddess of the underworld, and that Elvis died on August 16, 1977. I did not, however, know the name of some big rock in British Columbia, the exact date of the London tube bombings, or who wrote Remains of the Day. Feel free to write in and scold me if you think those were easy.
Mostly I just sat around in bewilderment, enjoying the free food. And at least we beat the high schoolers, even if they were the state smarty-pants decathlon champs.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Top Ten, give or take
Top Six Reasons for my Love/Hate Relationship with Family Dynamics Class:
(Make that five reasons... it's almost time for Sex & the City...)
5. it's a bit too intense to put a name to every quasi-dysfunctional thing that you, your family, and your friends do.
4. in a word (that I can't remember the meaning of): "schismogenesis."
3. referring to families using"the cybernetic metaphor."
2. it always makes me cry, but when I do I'm surround by 53 other wannabe therapists who, for the most part, know how to respond appropriately.
1. they tell us not to go home and practice therapy on our friends, since we have no technique yet, but it's kind of like giving a kid a bb gun and hoping that telling him "this might hurt someone" will stop him from testing it on his sister (no, Kevin, I won't let that one go. It's only been 17 years). It's just so darn shiny and new, I have to pull the trigger.
(Make that five reasons... it's almost time for Sex & the City...)
5. it's a bit too intense to put a name to every quasi-dysfunctional thing that you, your family, and your friends do.
4. in a word (that I can't remember the meaning of): "schismogenesis."
3. referring to families using"the cybernetic metaphor."
2. it always makes me cry, but when I do I'm surround by 53 other wannabe therapists who, for the most part, know how to respond appropriately.
1. they tell us not to go home and practice therapy on our friends, since we have no technique yet, but it's kind of like giving a kid a bb gun and hoping that telling him "this might hurt someone" will stop him from testing it on his sister (no, Kevin, I won't let that one go. It's only been 17 years). It's just so darn shiny and new, I have to pull the trigger.
Endless Summer
I just checked the weather page. It is supposed to be NINETY DEGREES here on Thursday. For the love of all that is holy, it is MID-OCTOBER!! I cannot go pick out a pumpkin in shorts.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Hope, part one: baby steps
My poor friend Phil has borne the brunt of a few of my cynical ramblings these days. I think he gets most of it because not only is he a fellow cynic too... but at heart he carries a deep, abiding hope - and that is like a lighthouse in a storm for me. So, after spewing on him last week, I tried to write him back today to share my little baby-step of hope... here's how it came out:
So I prayed, expectantly, yesterday morning. Or at least hopefully. Or are those two really the same? Anyhow, I don't do that very often. Regardless of what I try to convince myself I believe, in practice I don't usually expect God to show up on a micro level... I secretly figure he's too busy worrying about the starving children in China to worry about me, since I'm already so priviledged in most senses of the word. But I prayed a teeny prayer of expectation. Nothing big - just a little one. I prayed for the grace to cut myself some slack, I prayed for the strength to not have to lean into my cynicism to make it through the day. And I prayed that I'd be interrupted, and be open to it, if God's agenda for my day was a little different than mine.
Long story short, I got all of those things. I opened up for two seconds when I turned back to say hello to someone I didn't honestly have much of a reason to stop and talk to, and found myself in a conversation that I believe was on God's agenda for the day, even though I hadn't even thought of it as a possibility. I think God used both me and a classmate to be Christ to each other, when we really needed it, when I was really just about to walk right by and miss it. The prayer was small, the answer was small. My cynical side would like to write it off as coincidence. Maybe it was. But I needed to know I made the right decision to be here, and that if I fail, God will still be with me (even if I have to spend the rest of my life looking for work on Craigslist). And even though we spoke of none of those things in conversation, for me, the nature and quality of the interruption spoke to all of them.
Anyhow, praying expectantly and feeling that God has heard - and answered - always brings up questions, and I start wondering: does this mean I'm going to start seeing God as some kind of holy vending machine? Ask for something, pull the lever, and wham, God will overnight it to me? Then I went to my Gospels class tonight, and that's exactly what the professor talked about -- given that Jesus is here, and the Kingdom of God is in effect, but we ain't out of the woods yet (temporally speaking), how does the "already but not yet" affect our expectations of God? And how are we to pray in the midst of that tension?
So I figure if a New Testament scholar doesn't know the answer to that question, it's OK if I don't have a clue either.....
So I prayed, expectantly, yesterday morning. Or at least hopefully. Or are those two really the same? Anyhow, I don't do that very often. Regardless of what I try to convince myself I believe, in practice I don't usually expect God to show up on a micro level... I secretly figure he's too busy worrying about the starving children in China to worry about me, since I'm already so priviledged in most senses of the word. But I prayed a teeny prayer of expectation. Nothing big - just a little one. I prayed for the grace to cut myself some slack, I prayed for the strength to not have to lean into my cynicism to make it through the day. And I prayed that I'd be interrupted, and be open to it, if God's agenda for my day was a little different than mine.
Long story short, I got all of those things. I opened up for two seconds when I turned back to say hello to someone I didn't honestly have much of a reason to stop and talk to, and found myself in a conversation that I believe was on God's agenda for the day, even though I hadn't even thought of it as a possibility. I think God used both me and a classmate to be Christ to each other, when we really needed it, when I was really just about to walk right by and miss it. The prayer was small, the answer was small. My cynical side would like to write it off as coincidence. Maybe it was. But I needed to know I made the right decision to be here, and that if I fail, God will still be with me (even if I have to spend the rest of my life looking for work on Craigslist). And even though we spoke of none of those things in conversation, for me, the nature and quality of the interruption spoke to all of them.
Anyhow, praying expectantly and feeling that God has heard - and answered - always brings up questions, and I start wondering: does this mean I'm going to start seeing God as some kind of holy vending machine? Ask for something, pull the lever, and wham, God will overnight it to me? Then I went to my Gospels class tonight, and that's exactly what the professor talked about -- given that Jesus is here, and the Kingdom of God is in effect, but we ain't out of the woods yet (temporally speaking), how does the "already but not yet" affect our expectations of God? And how are we to pray in the midst of that tension?
So I figure if a New Testament scholar doesn't know the answer to that question, it's OK if I don't have a clue either.....
Sunday, October 02, 2005
I (heart) teachers
I just want to thank all the teachers in my past (except for Mr. Baltz, from third grade, because even though I don't remember you, my mother still tells me stories of how I cried every morning before she dropped me off at school because you were so mean). I am sorry my gratitude is so late in coming, but just now, finally, after attempting to teach geometry to 26 14-year-olds for three hours, I get it. And I want to thank you all for making it through every day without without impaling one of us with the dull pencil that we got up to sharpen seventy-two times.
Things I Wish People Would Stop Saying, Part I
"Oh, you totally look older than 22. I mean, I wouldn't have been surprised if you were 22, but you could definitely pass for older than that. Just not older than 24."
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