Round 2

DTL leaves notes as friendly reminders around the place. Most recent instance:
Leftovers and their doggie bags neatly placed on a table in the lobby with a note explaining composting and how we should all do it.

Moral: dtl went through the trash outside, realized someone didn't compost when they should have, took said trash out of the trashcan and put it on a table. inside the building. gross.

Note belongs on our fridge now, where I expect to see many, many more. Oh I cannot wait.

Society

I live in a society of old crotchety men.

Example #1:
Don the Landlord (dtl for easy reference) has several times informed us that he in fact "cannot predict the future" so he isn't sure if he can meet with us the following day. Seriously?! All my other landlords were fully capable of predicting all sorts of things. Worthless.

Example #2:
At 8:15 Friday morning the POD delivery truck begins unloading the POD in our driveway of sorts. oldman A comes out (clearly just awaken by the noise of the truck) and throws a fit about how he won't be able to get his truck out of the garage. Oh contrare dude, but whatever, you've been on this earth longer than I. He goes to his truck, doesn't even try to get his truck out and makes the nice POD man move the POD. Get this: the man proceeds to drive his truck out of the garage, around the block and parks up the street. We see him walking back into the apt building not 5 minutes later. THEN over an hour after we finished unloading the POD, oldman A brings his truck back. He did nothing. Nothing with his truck but make a point and an enemy or 2. Adam knows he won't be friends with this guy, but I apparently have this awful guilty conscience and feel like I need to be nice to him. But it is quite easy to type out less-than-friendly things.

Example #3:
While carrying up said boxes and things, I pass through a group of 4 men congregating in the hall talking about us. My hearing aid is on. fyi. oh baby, is it on.

And this is just 7 days in to the year-long lease. When I say I am anxious to see what my future holds, it is an understatement.

My Big Girl Panties Fit

I am public transportation's worst nightmare. On day one in the city by myself I decided to attack buses and stuff all by my lonesome. My goal was Target -- fitting isn't it. The "easiest" one to get to was 13.6 miles away. Doesn't sound bad at all, but wait for it. I realize I need to walk to the correct bus stop, ride that bus, walk to the Bart, ride that for a while, then walk the remaining 1 mile to the store. I confidently walk to the bus stop. Get skipped by the right bus then hop on the wrong bus, but navigate a way to the Civic Center nonetheless *with the help of a nice lady. [This is where the nightmare part comes in. I am that person who stands at the door asking the driver if they go to a certain place, probably pronounced wrong, and then proceed to fumble putting my money in the machine, despite what the driver says, since let's be real -- I don't know anything at this point, and almost take out the elderly in the front few seats as the bus speeds off.]
So long story short-ish, I self-diagnose my trip as a victory. I personally think "victory" can be defined as making it to your destination, right?! And that I did. It ended up taking almost an hour and a half and included a text to a couple people declaring that I would most certainly take a $&*&$%$# cab back to the city. After some therapeutic Target shopping I decided to put my big girl panties on, if you will, and ride this whole public transpo thing out. The ride back was better. I was feeling more confident and decided to get off on a different stop and take a different bus route back to the house to try and master another interchange in this city. Moron. If something works, do it. A lot. I get off in the Mission. I need an Owner's Manual for SF since I can't carry Adam around in my pocket. There were people everywhere and I was a smidge frightened. I even saw a syringe and a man's butt (not together, although I am not pointing fingers) when the long sleeve shirt he had tied around him as a skirtpantshort situation went awry. You know those times you wish you had sunglasses so you could stare at people in stealth mode and not be caught. This was not one of those days. I was avoiding eye contact like a champ. No shades even. 1 pm. I am a weenie.

I think my moral is that big girl panties are big for a reason....?....I have no idea.

Oh and speaking of big girls. I got to listen to an elderly gentleman nicely discuss how there are always "dumb kids who don't move to the back of the bus. Kids who went to high school, maybe even college, and can't read or write." Aaaand since there was all of 1 person between the ages of 8 and 40 (yours truly), I am almost certain this kind sir was talking about me.

Dear Old Man,
If I could have moved to the back of the bus and not been mashed against people while tightly smothering my purchases so as not to be mugged, I would have. And I am sorry for ruining your sure to be peaceful and clean ride on the bus. Bite Me.
hugsandkisses,
Lauren
Trinity University '06

Life Lessons in Progress

Soo...
Having just moved to San Francisco, there are some things I am learning:

• Walking everywhere is awesome, until you hit one of the 783,921 streets that are at 48 degree angles. One might think only the uphill ones are bad, but I'm learning the downhill ones require some body control as well.
• Buy a motorcycle. You will get so much respect.
• Parking.sucks.
• Crosswalks actually mean something. I have seriously been reminded (by drivers out their window) that I do not need to sprint across the street, they will, in fact, wait.
• There are 71 cities in one and each has its own lovely characteristic.

I would venture to say there are more coming.