In the bleak pre-winter

[rootbeer1]

So, my brother and his wife, who moved away from San Francisco to Tucson last year, are coming back to visit us this Christmas. Back in 1997, when qbear and I visited them (a few months before we moved here), my brother, compulsively over-organized as he is, made a checklist of San Francisco landmarks and tourist attractions for us to mark off as we saw them. He considered this great fun – “See how many boxes you can check off!” he’d tell us. “See if you can beat your cousin Larry’s score!”

So, now the shoe’s on the other foot, and since he’s visiting us here in SF, I’ve made a checklist for holiday activities for him to do. He’s just the kind of guy who must get 100% on a “test” like this:


In among such traditional holiday activities as “Watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD” and “Turn on cheery holiday lights on the Christmas tree,” I’ve cleverly and oh-so-subtly included a few extras:

( ) Take your hosts out for a cheery holiday dinner
( ) Scrub a cheery holiday bathtub
( ) Go outside to enjoy a cherry holiday weeding and gardening
( ) Clean a cheery holiday kitchen

If he wants to get a perfect score, he better get to work!

* * *

The NME, the weekly British music newspaper, has listed its top 50 albums of the year. And, old fart that I am, I only have two of them (Beck and Dylan). And out the 48 other groups listed, I only have albums by six of them.

Fifteen years ago, I would have been familiar with 90% of them. Just goes to show you … pop music is a young person’s game. Takes too much energy to keep up.

* * *

Trying out Gold’s Gym this week. First night there, I see a dozen people I know, including, way off in the distance on some cardio machine, capy. (Or someone who looks a lot like him.)

Not sure if I’ll stay with Gold’s. It’s not as convenient as my current gym chain (which is pricer and has less extensive equipment, which is why I’m trying out Gold’s in the first place). Plus, the exercise floor is so huge, it’s intimidating. (And the men are so huge, it’s intimidating.)

* * *

If you’re participating in that sex meme that’s going around and would like me to contribute, leave a comment here. (You have to bare your desire for me to bare myself, before I bare myself about my desire to be bare with yourself ...)

* * *

And I rarely post memes, but because I was tagged by tbass, who’s just a cutie …

RULES: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose 10 people to be tagged and list their names.

These aren’t that interestingly odd, but I’m not that odd a person.

1. I have broken my leg (tripping on a sidewalk) and broken my collarbone (falling off a bicycle), but I didn’t injure myself skydiving, bungee-jumping or downhill skiing.

2. I started baking cream puffs for my family when I was around 11 years old. One of the things that attracted me to qbear was that he was also an early cream-puff-maker.

3. Before we bought our house here in San Francisco, we panicked, and briefly considered chucking SF and moving back to Albany, N.Y., where real estate was cheaper.

4. At 244, I’m now the heaviest I have ever been. (But my waist size is still 36, so I’m assuming that I’ve mostly put on upper-body muscle.)

5. I take no daily medicines, but I do take a ton of vitamins: a Centrum multi-vitamin, calcium and glucosamine (both to help my leg heal), Vitamin E, chromium, saw palmetto, gingko biloba and a zinc/B-vitamin/magnesium combo. Since I’ve started taking all these vitamins I haven’t had any serious colds.

6. Whenever I drink something to excess, as in to the puking point, I lose all taste for that drink for several years. Happened with beer, then happened with liquor. (Haven’t puked in years, so this may have changed.)

7. Acquaintances seem to think I’m extroverted. Those who know me well know it’s all an act.

8. I smoked pot twice in college. Didn’t get high either time. That was it for me, drugwise.

9. I broke my glasses at a show by the Damned at the Ritz in Manhattan, back in 1985. Three years later, my glasses went flying at a Ramones show, but I later found them in a corner by the stage. Can’t recall what condition they were in.

10. I have a photo of me with Mick Jones (of the Clash) and Mick’s young daughter, taken in 1987. Mick is wearing his usual white B.A.D. lab coat of the time.

* * *

And now, a Santa many of my friends would like to see more of …

Comments

[quuf.livejournal.com]

That's cuz you misplaced your trifocals.