Drink Diary

Almost 3 months ago, I began meticulously logging every drink I had. Behold, the sobering result.



The blank patches would be my trips to NYC and New Orleans, respectively.

Yeesh. By San Francisco standards, I suppose this is normal. But then, San Francisco is a dangerous yardstick. One that tells you, "you don't drink nearly enough to finish your mission here on earth. I think you need a cape."

Not counting my two "strikes", I've drank ~3.8 drinks a day. Not terrible, but also technically "drinking to excess", daily.

Another sobering stat: assuming $4 a drink, I'm spending roughly $500 a month on booze. Enough for that timeshare in Oakland...

OCD Super Power Fantasies

Lately, I’ve been fantasizing about super powers. Not grand, superhero powers. But more tangible, OCD’ish ones. At 32, it appears I’m settling even in my super power fantasies :)

If only I had the power to:

• Sleep with anyone in any yoga class
• Sleep with any girl named Jessica (Jessicas are sluuuuuts)
• Have an ATM that dispensed $500 free cash every day
• Have 1/10th of a penny each time someone crossed a busy intersection


I think I can safely deduce from this that I will never be rich.

Parking a Date in San Francisco

Driving home from the bar at 2am, I turned onto my street and started to look for parking. Parking is normally pretty bad in my neighborhood. At 2am when youre half drunk and wanting nothing more than to pass out, it's a nightmare. Not seeing the miracle spot right in front, I began my usual route through the neighborhood hoping for something on the next couple blocks. Ten minutes later I'd finished my usual route empty handed and began the depressing process of driving in concentric circles further and further away from my apartment. God, I just want to fucking park! As my blood slowly came to a boil, I realized that the frustration I was experiencing was eerily similar to the frustration I'd felt about something else. When I passed what looked like a spot, only to realize that it was about a foot too short, I realized what it was. Looking for parking is like looking for someone to date. And as it is in most big cities, dating and parking can be a bitch. As I drove down street after street with no open spots it all began to fall into place. The secrets of parking and dating revealed themselves to me. Every person is a parking spot.

The taken spot: Women like to say that men are like parking spots. All the good ones are taken and the rest are handicapped or too small. I think you could say the same thing about good women, except the too small part. When a good person becomes newly single they're like a good parking spot. They last about 2 minutes. If you're really serious about getting one, the surest way to go about it is to circle around the block like a vulture waiting for someone to pull out. Even then, you will often have the experience of seeing a spot open up only for it to be taken by the car in front of you (probably driven by your neighbor).

The almost spot: What a waste of curb! If only the cars around this spot hadn't taken up so much space! This spot is like those people who are only half available to date you, meaning they aren't really available at all. When the people around this spot parked they saw all that extra curb, and knowing they wanted it to be easy getting out, took up just enough extra to squeeze you out.

The mirage spot: Like many people, this spot is good from far but far from good. From a distance it looks like youve found a spot, but when you get a closer look you realize why. Its kind of like the person you find attractive from across the room only for it to be ruined by going over and talking to them. The worst part about this spot is that after you realize its not a spot you have to wonder how many people have driven by thinking the same thing.

The illegal spot: The curb is red, but hey, you've had a few beers.. it's late.. and what are the chances of the fire-truck coming home anyway? The spot is lonely. It has needs and so do you. Even if you get a ticket you can afford it ... Parking in a reserved spot on the other hand is a different story. If you get caught your ass is getting towed and you deserve it. I don't care how many beers you had. That's no excuse.

The reserved spot: Basically, your car pays rent for this spot. In the city it can range anywhere from 50 to 200 dollars a month. This is the spot you long for on those long, lonely nights looking for parking; a spot that's always waiting at home for you. The parking equivalent of marriage, this spot can cost more than its worth, but if parking in your neighborhood is bad enough, when a choice spot opens up you gotta lock it down.

The valet spot: Gold digging whores. Only worth it if you've got so much money you can't be hassled with parking anymore.

The scary spot: No wonder finding this spot was easy. You have to be out of your mind to park your car in this neighborhood. Slumming it for a little while is probably okay, but park here for long enough and you might lose more than your favorite CDs.

The perfect spot: It's right in front of your door. No walking for you! Halleluhya! Downside: If parking is bad enough in your neighborhood you now can't move your car. Every time you think about moving it to go out with your friends you cringe at the memory of all those late nights spent desperately cruising the streets for any spot that will end the horrible search. How could you give up that spot? So this is like finding the perfect girlfriend. Its kind of like having a reserved spot without having to pay all that money (marriage). Just know that eventually youll have to move your car, and in two minutes, the spot will be gone..

How to Deal with the Homeless

Living in San Francisco, homelessness is not just a problem you read about. Every day on my way to work I come face to face with dozens of people living on the street who ask me for help. It's made me think a lot about the way society treats the homeless and what I should do when I'm approached for money. I've been doing some research and have come up with a few simple strategies I thought I'd share.

Human Shield: If you're lucky enough to be walking close to someone, position yourself so that they're in-between you and the bum. It's now their problem to deal with. Once in position, keep your eye on the shield. A clever shield will sometimes pull a counter maneuver on you, abruptly slowing down and veering away when you reach the bum, leaving you in the line of fire.

Cell phone force field: If you're talking on the phone you are surrounded by an invisible force field that allows you to completely block out the world. It would be rude of you to not give the person you're on the phone with your undivided attention, and even ruder for a stranger to try to interrupt you.

1,000 yard stare: You take on the vacant stare of a veteran traumatized by combat. You're too busy looking in the distance for insurgents to notice the spanger.

Confrontation: If you see the same bums everyday this might be the best solution of all. I've not tried it myself but my friend Keri at the breakfast place I go to every morning swears by it. Just walk up and give the bum a piece of your mind. "Look, I work too hard for my money to just give it away to lazy bums. Get a job!". While this may be difficult for some of you to do, consider it a long term investment. Instead of having to deal with the same person every single day you only have to deal with them once.

The crazy: Being crazy sucks, but one side benefit is that people tend to leave you alone. As you approach the bum, he'll be thinking of a way to start a conversation. Beat him to the punch and start one with yourself first. My friend Mac is a master of this technique. I think it's because it allows him to let out some of the crazy he keeps bottled up inside while performing his duties as a sane person.

Primetime of Your Life

One of the dangers associated with my job as a technical analyst is that I feel compelled to graph things that probably shouldn't be graphed. Last month when I turned 28 and rounded up to thirty, I got into a conversation with a coworker about quality of life. I said that my quality of life has been increasing every year and that I didn't see any signs that that would change. "So you're on a linear upward trajectory huh?" asked the coworker. "Not so much linear" I said, reaching for the white board marker. And thus began my meditation on quality of life as represented by a one-dimensional curve. Ironically, right after drawing and labeling the axes - quality of life (QOL) vs. Years - I got busy with work and didn't have time to plot my quality of life. The next morning however, I walked into my cube to find that someone had plotted it for me, with a series of large blue dots. The dots presented a rather grim scenario, starting very high in early childhood and dropping steadily through the years, reaching near zero at fifty, and then slowly coming back up in the seventies and eighties. Who could've done this? Most of the people I work with are at least ten years older than I am, so whoever it was wasn't exactly psyched to be on the planet. Or maybe they were plotting my quality of life? Naw. My coworker and I speculated as to who it might be but produced no good guesses.

Figure 1. Quality of Life (QOL) vs. Years

Several days passed and still I hadn't found time to plot my quality of life. Every time I turned around in my chair the dots would stare accusingly at me, predicting my quality of life if I didn't take time out to examine it. Is that what happened to the person who plotted them?

One by one everyone in the office stopped by my cube and asked me about the dots, including presumably the person who plotted them. I would jokingly explain to them my little project and tell them I had no idea who'd drawn the dots. My boss jokingly said he was on a linear upward trajectory and drew a straight blue line that crisscrossed the downward sloping blue dots. The next morning I found a much more thought out line drawn in black. It showed a peak at 21 (the most commonly cited peak of life), followed by a rugged plateau that began sloping down after fifty. The morning after that another new plot appeared, the grimmest one yet. In dark red there were two square peaks, the last of which ended with a vertical drop to zero around age 38. Damn. They'll probably make me erase this the next time someone comes in for an interview.

But today I finally did it! I plotted my QOL in bright lime green. You can see a happy childhood, followed by a significant drop during adolescence that continues until age 18, followed by a near linear increase through my twenties. The little blip in my late twenties would be this year. It started out with the excitement of moving to a new amazing city and starting my first real job and has taken a down turn because its been really hard meeting new people and I get lonely too often. I'm optimistic though. There's so much potential out there I can taste it, and I feel like I'm finally figuring out how to realize it. Now it's just a matter of buckling down and climbing that incline. Maybe I should start working out ....

A beautiful sneer

Beautiful woman sitting with friends at a bar,

Leaning back in her chair, head tilted down, a strand of dark brown hair hanging over her face. She stares at the table with faraway eyes, the conversation raging around her. Her face is still but inside I see a sneering smile. A strange mixture of pleasure and disgust. The accepting of an ugly truth.

Exodus..... Movement of My People

Yes, for the third time in eight months I'm going through the hell that is moving. Oh, did I tell you I found a new place? I got the call back on Tuesday right after I'd given up and decided to move into a hotel. The new house is literally a block away from where I am now in the Mission. I'm moving in with three other people that all seem really cool. One roommate, Maria, is a late twenty-something who's opening a restaurant in San Jose. I've only talked to her for about twenty minutes, but I get a really good vibe from her. I don't know how old Martin is, but he seems like a cool guy.... works in the financial district for a venture capital firm that specializes in bio-tech. The third roommate I've barely said hi to but I'm assured by the other roommates that I'll love her.

I did have an experience earlier today that made me apprehensive though. When I called Maria this morning to see if I could start moving in I didn't get an answer, so I just walked over hoping to catch one of the other roommates. I knocked on the door and a minute later the roommate who's moving out answered the door. Shirtless and bleary eyed, he looked like I just woke him up. Turns out he's not starting the move until probably five thirty in the evening - hence my sitting here at the coffee shop writing this to you. We exchanged phone numbers so we could coordinate the move and I noticed he had a 480 area code.

"You're from Phoenix?" I asked.
"Yeah"
"So am I, what part?"
"Glendale, Chandler, then Tuscon. Where are you from?"
"Scottsdale mostly, spent a couple years in Tempe when I was going to ASU. I just moved out here about seven months ago for a job. How long have you been here?"
"About a year. I got a tech job in the city."

At this point I'm having another one of those moments where I realize I must fit into some bizarre, highly specific subgroup. I am not a special unique snowflake.

"So why are you moving out?" I have to ask.
"Well, Maria and Martin are never around and I was really looking to meet some new people. I just got a room in this five room house with four other people. It's a total circus."
"Yeah, I'm looking to meet some people too..."

So here's a guy, my age by the looks of him, who grew up in the same city as me, who also got some kind of technical degree from a college in Arizona, and moved out here for a tech job some five months before I did. And he's looking for the same type of living situation I am so he can meet new people. And he's moving out. As the ramifications of this information set in I felt a familiar sinking feeling in my chest. How long will it be until I move again?

The answer is probably a long time. I'm sick of this moving shit, and the roommates do seem like really great people, even if I don't see them that much. I can only assume that I'm following the well worn path that members of my subgroup must follow to where we're headed, wherever that is. Who knows, maybe I'll give this guy that's moving out a call sometime and see if he wants to hang out. Nicole, if you're reading this, we should all go out and have a Zonie party.