improper invitation timing

southern comfort just invited me to an event at a winery for DECEMBER 12.

dude, that is more than a month away. i said that i'd be in town then and that it sounded fun (because i'm way too polite sometiems). srsly?!? december 12?

not to mention the fact that i can't even commit to buying a ticket to go home for christmas yet (i mean, i'm going, it's just a matter of *when*) and now i apparently have plans with a dude i've gone out with a few times... for DECEMBER 12?

this is whack.

ok. i just sent a follow-up alerting him to the fact that it's a little far in the future. with humor. hopefully he is not offended, but picks up on my concern.

Pets and sustainable living

A recent study has estimated that owning a dog is, from a global warming standpoint, equivalent to owning and using two SUVs, and a cat is about the same as a VW.

I'm not going to argue with the numbers - it all depends on where you draw your box when doing a life cycle analysis, and carbon footprint calculations can be argued all day long. However, what about the improved health of pet owners over non-pet owners? Surely a healthier human is less of an environmental tax than a sick person. What about those pets that are shelter, or rescue animals, compared to those that come from breeders?

I do have a bit of guilt around my (newish to me, as of April 09, but adopted at age 11) cat. I don't feel guilt about her food, for some reason, even though she's a total carnivore and her food isn't organic. Her litter is Swheat Scoop, which is made from non-food grade wheat, grown domestically (yay!). However, every time I clean out her litter box, I am adding a plastic bag (reused!) of feces to the landfill, which sucks. And I'm not springing for biodegradable litter bags. Nope.

Ba-ay Bridge is fal-ling down. Fal-ling down. Fal-ling down.

An AlertSF email:

The Bay Bridge remains closed indefinitely with no estimate for re-opening by Caltrans. Please avoid impacted areas and utilize alternate forms of transportation. No further AlertSF notifications will be made unless there is new information about the expected opening.

(Ok, I made one little edit. The email came with indefinitely spelled indefinately and so I fixed it.)

Oh, and "a lot of people" = 280,000 cars. Dayum. I am happy to not be one of them as part of my daily (all in-town) commute.
Background and informative article here.

down to one, definitely time for a new crop

Ze boy status.
Got my camera back from Cutie. He dropped it off at my house on Friday evening.
(AB - he had it b/c we were taking pictures at a friend's party and then I forgot to get it back from him.)
And I'm done with that one.

I owe Spork a conversation along the lines of, "You're married, that is not really appropriate to me. Call me in six months."

And I'm going to see Southern Comfort tomorrow evening. He's making me dinner. I called him while I was on my way home after a wedding on Saturday night and he was highly amused. I'm not totally done with him yet and he seems to be picking up on my need for a little more, uh, autonomy.

Potentials at the wedding? Eh, a few. One guy from San Diego who seemed very chill, in a good way...but then when he and I started talking, he was way too nervous. I'm very scary, I know. I think got me a drink at the after party, but didn't really hold my interest...especially since there were non-nervous, chatty cute guys around. Being the stupid drunk girl that I was, I probably set that drink down and went to talk to someone else. Or handed the drink to another friend. Who knows? I didn't expect to find anyone at the wedding.

I have had one random hook-up at a wedding reception... Few years ago a coworker of the groom (my cousin-in-law). My cousin loved that the last picture in the online photo album from the photographer was a shot of the two of us slow dancing and definitely not looking like we just met.

Anyway, time for a new group... perhaps at Halloween?

Belated weekend dating update

Wow. Thanks for all the advice about SST.

Amanda pointed out that I failed to update on Cutie. He's cute. And a little too "fresh out of college" still for me, just in the way he talks about his friends and drinking, etc. Also, a huge turn-off (Ugh. Please, there must be a better way to say that. Not my favorite phrase.) for me is listening to a guy complain about things being expensive. *I'm* not rich. I know that shit is expensive sometimes. But I don't want to hear about how you don't go to the movies because you just can't justify the $12 ticket. That's something my mom (love her, really) would say. Why are we out to dinner? I can't help but think about that when you say, "I've got it" about the check. I feel like an ass then.

Caveat - bitching about something like how expensive it is to buy a house, or tuition or something like that. Totally fine. But normal stuff? Don't tell me about how you save so much money by drinking at home instead of out at a bar - especially if we are in one.

Anyway... he still has my camera so I'll either have to see him again, or maybe he can drop it off for me.

Onward.

SST, or "Southern Comfort," as coined by CP.
We had made tentative plans for Saturday night towards the end of coffee, but then I said I needed to think about it, due to the whole age thing. You all are fantastic with your comments. Really, I loved hearing from you. So, I did email him back...after making him wait/suffer a few hours ;) and told him that I'd like to see him again. We emailed back and forth that afternoon and at some point I found out that my Friday evening plans fell through... and took him up on his offer to go to dinner. Why not? It's not every day that I meet someone and have fabulous, comfortable conversation and flirting, right? And let's not forget the kissable part.

Without going into tons of details... we ended up having dinner on Friday night, kind of last minute and then Saturday, as planned. And then he brought take out over to my place yesterday. Yes, this is a lot in a short period of time. But, whatever. Fun. SST/SC is charming and outgoing. The kind of guy who has a conversation with the bartender and knows people at various restaurants and could get dropped into a party and have a great time. He is generous with compliments and invitations - such as to join him and a friend at brunch on Sunday. But...

He has two (WTF?) cars. Neither is particularly great on the gas mileage.
He drinks bottled water sometimes (but then asked if it was okay to just use a filter, so there's potential for conversion there).
He does not seem sold on municipal composting.
I'm not sure if he's into outdoorsy stuff at all, but he does have a commuter bike and a surfboard.
He is, at least, acting, like he's really, really into me. It's kind of overwhelming. I don't want an insta-boyfriend.

Said that my cat is fat and made fun of her. Poor thing. Otherwise, got along with her quite well.
Oh, and there are the previously discussed issues. The 42 and short&slim.

Spork and I haven't gone out again. He called about going out on Sunday, but I was exhausted. I may try going out with him again, but with the potential to have the "you're still technically married, let's be friends (cuz he really does seem cool)" conversation.

And those are all the updates I have for now. I may email a few new guys tonight. We'll see.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

Articles like this make me feel like such a hypocrite.

We've long said that cutting meat and dairy out of your diet, or at minimum cutting back deeply on their consumption, is one of the most powerful personal steps you can take towards mitigating climate change. But new analysis from Worldwatch Institute shows that the impact of raising livestock and poultry is much greater than previously thought and actually amounts to approximately 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions:

(Treehugger article, by Matthew McDermott)

I don't drive, buy mostly organic food, local when possible. I also try to purchase other locally made products - luckily, there are a few Northern CA organic personal care manufacturers (Alba Organics, for one). I generally remember to buy carbon offsets for my flights. But really... I eat meat. And dairy. And eggs. (you know, except when I'm vegan once a week) And switching to vegetarian (well, actually vegan) eating would potentially be the most impactful change I could make in my life, wrt global warming.

Augh. The guilt.

It gets worse, people. I don't always buy organic meats. Eggs are probably, eh 60/40 (organic/not). Why? It's not generally an accessibility issue. Totally a $ thing. Organic, free-range, grazing... easily double the price of conventional.

Whine.Why is this so haaaaaard? End whine.

I may smell a vegetarian week/month/planned out X days a week coming up. With my current ninja training 2x a week, half marathon training and trying to lose weight... I don't think that full-time veg is the way to go for me. But could I do vegan 1x a week and planned vegetarian 2x a week? Probably. I mean, I'm on my way towards an unplanned vegetarian day right now...

hidden dairy alert - pumpkin spice latte

Coffee. Oh, how I heart thee. My mom, she's a Starbucks mocha addict. Seriously, I can make her day by sending her a Starbucks gift card to fuel her crack purchases. There isn't a Starbucks where she works, so she has to slum it with Caribou sometimes. Poor gal. Anyway, unless I'm back in the I-L with Mom, or out with someone who's totally a Starbucksan, I generally don't go to Starbucks. There are lots of other options around that could use my coffee dollar a little more - from the small cafe, to Peet's (their regular coffee is battery acid, but a dash of milk/soy and it's delicious). And, if I'm near a place like Blue Bottle or Philz, then maybe it's my coffee dollar$, but it's fantastic coffee and worth the extra coin.

However, like so many people out there, I dig the Pumpkin Spice latte. It's a seasonal thing at Sbux and, like seeing people walking around with those red Sbux cups, is a nice reminder that the holidays are on their way.

I also dig food blogs. And while I'm not a raw foodie, or a vegan, I like reading their stuff now and again. Because I learn stuff like....
a soy Pumpkin Spice latte is NOT VEGAN! There's milk in thar! After a short search to find the actual offending ingredients (my usual blogger just commented that she was surprised to find that it wasn't vegan, without the explanation)...here you go -
Here’s the ingredient list for the Pumpkin Spice Latte:  sugar, condensed nonfat milk, sweet condensed nonfat milk, anotta (a colorant), natural and artificial flavors (which she couldn’t give me), and caramel coloring.

Along a similar vein, Happy Vegan Monday! Yep, I'm still rocking the weekly vegan habit. It's been well over a year now. Yay!

Cuz I'm a creep.

No, I do not have an earthquake/emergency kit ready. Yes, I need to make one.

However, this article helps to ease my mind (a little). The Hayward Fault, in East Bay, is c-r-e-e-p-i-n-g along - it moved 4.5mm in the past year. Seismologists think that these small movements help ease fault stress and reduce the chance for a big earthquake. Interesting stuff.

DOOOOOOOD.

Southern Story Teller is cute and we had a great coffee date. He brought me chocolates from See's and was wearing a stylish blazer with jeans, which is a guy look I totally love. Conversation was kind of bouncing all over the place and we were comfortable cutting each other off mid-thought and telling funny stories - not the interview-style first date that's all too common.

He's not tall. 5'8" is probably about right. And lean, so it's totally possible that I'd have the "I'm bigger than him" freak-out if we were to make out. He does look extremely kissable though.

BUT!!!
He lied about his age. WTF?!?! Apparently, one of his girl friends told him to say he's 36 because he doesn't really look like his real age, which is 42. 42. (I'm 31.) He was extremely apologetic about the whole thing and totally embarrassed. Of course, this was towards the end of our coffee break date, which - by that time I was totally thrilled to have met someone where there's the instant (in-person) conversation/flirting/cuteness/chemistry thing.

We discussed going to dinner on Saturday. I don't know. I've been purposefully leaving Saturday open to either do a last minute call to Spork (who said he was free and likes being spontaneous) or SST or friends or just kickin it at home with my cat and some hulu.com (Glee!!!). I am thrilled about the chemistry with SST and would have gone out with him again in a heartbeat... but do I give him a second chance?

fido has found a new home

i sold fido on monday night. it was very strange to do a large cash transaction out in the street on a monday night (thank goodness a friend came to help me), but it worked. fido is in the capable hands of a pizza delivery boy.

i am sad and relieved. fido was my first major purchase, pretty much ever. i bought him on my birthday in 2001, just six weeks after moving to california. and now... no longer mine. however, relieved to not have to deal with a car anymore. that street parking thing was killing me. i had to move my car 1-2 times a week, sometimes driving around for an hour to find a spot. major suckage.

so now, on to zipcar and motorcycles... and, of course, my bike. i'm planning to outfit my commuter with rear panniers again, get her a tune-up and maybe eventually buy one of these super sweet helmets -