Grease Is the Word

Enjoying Sing A Long Grease at the Castro Theater.

Beating the Heat

Today's weather and how I'm coping.

Table for Two, Please

Shopping today. Taking my new area rug out to lunch.

Burn, Baby, Burn

A Higher Power wants me to go to Burning Man.

That’s the only logical conclusion I can draw from the events of the past two weeks. I certainly didn’t plan to take my first step toward attending a counterculture art rave in the Nevada desert when I woke up Aug. 18. It was Benny’s first day of school, and my main concern was getting a spot to take his picture before the bell. Which I did, of course.

But my friends Andrea and Michael were there, and we fell to talking. Michael’s an artist who takes his amazing lighted sculptures all over the U.S. (including Grand Rapids, Mich. of all places) and Andrea does sound editing for motion pictures. Just standing near them made me cooler, so it was no surprise to hear them talking about Burning Man. They go every year as a family and their son Milo is one of Benny’s closest friends.

“You should go, too, you and Ron and Benny,” Andrea said.

“We don’t have tickets,” I said.

“You could get them on Craigslist.”

“Uh huh,” I said. I could just see myself getting mugged in the Castro by a drug-crazed lunatic pretending to be a drug-crazed lunatic with a Burning Man ticket.

It was intriguing, though. So I went home and scanned Craigslist, and yes, there were plenty of tickets, but the face-value ones were like day lilies, blooming and dying in minutes. So I gave up on my dreams of practicing radical self-expression on a dried-up lakebed and reorganized my kitchen cupboards.

Andrea, however, didn’t let it lie. She started emailing me tips for snagging a hot ticket, and when it became obvious I was ignoring them, she started casting for one herself. (By now Ron had made his total – and sensible – lack of interest known and I was looking for only one ticket. Benny was free.) I found myself time-stealing at work, reading articles about the event and staring agog at the pictures and vehicles. On Thursday, Aug. 21, I received the text – she found one, and bought it for me. The first and biggest hurdle was overcome. Benny and I were going to Burning Man in a week!

But I needed a vehicle pass. I quickly connected on Craigslist with a guy who lived just 15 minutes away. I picked Benny up from school and swung by and we met up at the corner by his apartment. Hurdle number two cleared!

By now Benny was catching on to the whole thing. “You need a bike, Mom,” he said.

Oh, crud. I didn’t have a bike. I didn’t want to ruin Ron’s nice bike in an alkaline desert, and anyway it was a road bike. I needed fat tires for the playa. So I emailed a bicycle shop in North Beach. The next morning Ron and I turned up before work, and there was the perfect mountain bike, a “burner bike,” for $120. Then we needed a bike rack, so the next day we went to REI, which of course was having a sale, and picked up one of those crazy racks you stick on the back of the car.

So obviously a Higher Power Has Spoken: “And thus shall ye attend the bacchanalia and spend thy days wiping desert dust off ye child.”

That’s not to say the course to this reckless enterprise has run entirely smooth. I haven’t slept well in days. The bike rack turned out to be an enormous pain to install. (The instructions said it wouldn’t fit a Honda Fit, but the Internet said no, it won’t fit a Honda Fit Sport, and then we had to figure out the measurement between the rivets, and so on …) The list of provisions I needed to pack grew longer and longer and longer, and Andrea just wanted to know what costumes I was bringing.

Costumes? I’m over here pricing ski goggles and getting Benny’s sleeping bag repaired and she wants to know about my kick-ass wig and sequined halter top. My wardrobe tends toward the Boring Mom About Town side of style, and I was simply going to have to radically participate in the community wearing my khakis. Anyway, I needed provisions. I printed out a list and took it to Target, brought it all home and took everything out of its original packaging (“Leave No Trace!”). Then I wrote down everything I forgot and snuck out of work yesterday to finish my shopping at the hardware store (mask, propane tank) and Walgreens. I also talked to my brother Greg, who recently returned from his Army deployment in Kuwait. He thinks I’m crazy, but gave me good advice about surviving desert environments.

Now almost everything is tucked into baggies and stuffed inside plastic boxes. Ron has put the tent and other camping equipment in the car. The ticket and vehicle pass are displayed in the mirror by the front door. Benny and I leave Thursday at noon, where the plan is to spend the night in Reno and arrive at Black Rock City Friday morning.

So why am I doing this, might you ask? I’m not entirely sure. Does anybody really know why they do anything? As far as I can tell, people go to Burning Man for their own reasons, reasons they themselves may not understand. For some it’s the drugs, for some it’s the sex, for some it’s the art, for some it’s the feeling of belonging in a world that feels less than welcoming. For some it’s the friends they bring. For some it’s an escape. My guess I won’t know why I’m going to Burning Man until after I’ve returned. In the meantime, I’ve got this black and silver dress from a past Halloween, perfect for dancing at the Burn. It’s a sign.

Pick Your Problems

Well, the honeymoon's over.

I've been drifting along in my dreamy idyll, working 9-10 hours in the newsroom on Tuesday and Wednesday, and puttering at home the other three days. I've been sleeping better and eating better and enjoying in-depth conversations about Benny's Squirrel Wars while walking him to school.

Ah, but obviously I was tempting the gods, or perhaps nature, which abhors a vacuum. So last weekend a swarm of subterranean termites, driven out of their nest underground by the rain and their own base desires, started coming out of the ceiling lamp. Ron and I beat them back with a vacuum cleaner and a roll of packing tape, and we haven't seen them in a over a week. On Monday the landlords (who I must admit have been very responsive and helpful about this) are sending their structural guy on his third or fourth visit, this time with maintenance guys, and they will do a final treatment.

But the whole thing was enough to freak me out, and on Monday I launched an apartment hunt, with two apartment viewings on Tuesday and two on Thursday. I stayed home from work on Tuesday to meet the landlord's structural guy for the first time.

But then, just to make a party of it, on Tuesday I discovered that my credit card information had been stolen. There I was, sitting at the dining room table (which had been moved away from the Buggy Lamp and now was pushed in front of the sofa) staring at two online purchases from DSW I didn't make. Now I love DSW as much as the next woman, but I'd successfully resisted the temptation to snap up a half-dozen pairs of sandals to celebrate Daylight Savings Time and I resented someone doing it for me.

So there I was, facing bug infestation and credit theft -- all I needed was a nice earthquake to finish me off. You know you're having a bad Tuesday when it's a toss-up whether the exterminator or the cop will show up at the apartment first. The cop arrived around 3 (the landlord's termite guy wouldn't be able to come until Wednesday) and took information on the credit card theft for a police report. Our credit union said it didn't need one to fix the unauthorized charges, but I wasn't taking any chances. I'd heard enough bank horror stories -- what's to stop them from saying, "Oh, we only waive the police report on Mondays and Wednesdays and only if you have at least $20,000 in total balances ..." Even credit unions can develop banklike qualities when under strain.

Anyway, so I spent Tuesday on the phone, clicking and calling and pressing pound and sitting on hold and giving the last four digits of my SSN, or Ron's SSN or Callisto's SSN or Benny's maiden name or whatever. I put security alerts on our credit reports and changed the credit card number on our iTunes and Netflix and other sites after looking up all their myriad passwords.

By Thursday night I was collapsed on the sofa, feeling cranky, stressed, overwhelmed and anxious. Sounds familiar, no? Benny was neglected, Ron and I were bickering. Remember those days? Well, they were back again. Only now it was my personal life tying me in knots, not my work life. I didn't think this was much progress.

But then I thought: Hey, pick your poison — assembling judging books or fighting critters? Making groveling phone calls for award nominations or battling identity theft? Looking for lawyers or looking for apartments? All said and done, I think I'd rather face my current problems than manage one more Green Business or Real Deals, or Corporate Counsel or Chief Idiot Officer Awards.

I mean, this week's problems are real-life issues. These are problems people can understand. When I cry: "I had to cold-call 100 companies and beg them to nominate their in-house counsel for the diversity category!" the honest response would likely be "What the Fuck?" I cry "I had to call DSW Shoes and tell them I didn't buy gift cards for someone in Loveland, Colo.!" people understand.

People know what a credit report is; they don't know what a nomination spreadsheet is. People know what a bug is; they don't know what a Community Champion is. I was pretty mad this week, but at least I did't feel like a total loser stressing out over the number of solar panel companies in my FileMaker Pro document.

So maybe this was progress after all.

Escaping the Hive

For the last year I’ve looked like your typical newspaper worker bee ... but I’ve been plotting and scheming.

Actually, those who know me well know I’m always plotting and scheming. But my goal in 2011 was quite simple: to leave my newspaper editing job. The deadline was Nov. 28.

My plan was to write freelance articles, get more involved in Benny’s school, pursue my own writing projects and generally make life better for the whole family. To make this possible, Ron and I spent 2011 paying off debt and adding to our savings. I worked a ton of extra hours through a colleague’s maternity leave, which helped. An inheritance from Ron’s father helped took care of the debt and we’ve been socking away every dime we could.

Then in November we decided to extend my departure date to Feb. 3, so I could do one more completely ridiculous work project and we could save a little more. My newspaper asked me to work two days a week until they found a replacement for me and I’m happy to do so.

So we did it! After Feb. 3, I’ve been working two days a week. It sure felt like a long road, though. I kept a little diary to keep my spirits up, counting down the days, tracking our financial progress, drawing up complicated schedules for my time after Feb. 3.

The schedules, alas, went right out the window. But I have accomplished a lot: In the first three weeks I wrote a play, started a short story, cleaned out the closets, rearranged furniture, chaperoned a Benny field trip and hosted a playdate. I spent most of one Friday cleaning out my papers, which took forever. I was shredding bills from 2010, with even a little 2009 mixed in. It's very cathartic, shredding bills from now-closed credit cards and other nasty baggage. Ron, meanwhile, found it easier to work out regularly and focus on his own job.

Monday, Feb. 6, was the first day of my new schedule and it did go mostly as I had imagined. I slept through my alarm and woke up at 7. Ron had already left the house. I put on my workout clothes and walked Benny to school.

Perhaps I was a little too relaxed; we were so involved in talking about the “Wicked” musical “Cupcake Wars” episode I’d watched the night before that he ended up tardy and we had to stop by the office to get a slip. Ooops. Then I came home and watched news channels and cleaned the apartment. Then I went to the grocery store and dry cleaner. Then I taught myself Scrivener for the fourth time (since every time I master the damn software, I end up not touching it for weeks and have to learn it all over again). Then I worked on a new idea for a short play until it was time to pick Benny up.

It wasn't the most organized day off, but it was fun.

Ignorance is truly bliss

Reading the San Francisco Chronicle's web site is always an adventure. Today under the label WE RECOMMEND:

* Pregnant Pacifica woman killed by family pit bull
* Broadway actor who had teen sex drops Calif. show
* Giant rodent spotted on Calif Central Coast
* Woman dead in Caltrain collision -service halted
* Heart attack kills Philly cheesesteak stand owner
* Teen dies after falling on Yosemite hiking trail


Frankly, I don't want to read any of them.

Arrival Day 2007: How Far We've Come

Every year around this time we celebrate Arrival Day. It was July 22, 2007, when Ron and I loaded up 3-year-old Benny and the cat and flew to San Francisco. It was the culmination of 7 months of preparation, including six weeks of separation from Ron and five months of trying to sell the house.

It truly ranked as one of the most stressful periods of my life and every year I take a minute to see how far we've come. Four years ago on this day I was awake at 1 a.m. in our Ann Arbor house, our luggage piled in the empty living room. The whole house smelled like cleaning wipes, since we had a showing later that day.

By July 2008, I'd survived a year at the Business Times filling in for a senior editor, produced a giant real estate publication, negotiated the sale of our house to Andy and went with Ron and Benny on our first trip (a few days on the coast) since arriving in S.F.

By July 2009, we'd managed to to pay for Benny's fiendishly expensive school for two years and managed to score a spot in a good San Francisco elementary school. The recession was clamping down, with layoffs and paycuts at work, so we huddled in a tiny one-bedroom and concentrated on paying down debt.

By July 2010, we'd gone to Mt. Lassen — our first long family vacation since our RV trip to Shenandoah Valley in 2006. Four of our credit card lenders imposed giant APR hikes on our balances, requiring us to “opt out” and close the cards. We threw Benny's first real birthday party since he turned one and moved (finally) to a two-bedroom apartment that is walking distance to Benny's school. And July 2010 was a great month for us, even though Benny didn't like his summer daycare: we visited the Charles Shulz "Peanuts" museum, I joined a geology hiking group, and Benny and I went to Muir Woods.

Now here we are at July 2011. In the past year we bought a car (!)and I flew to Alabama with Benny to see Greg's graduation. We still miss Ron's dad, who passed away in November. In February we traveled to Death Valley and paid off most of our debt, thanks to an sum of money from Ron's dad. Benny joined spring Little League baseball and I wrote another NaNoWriMo novel. (You're supposed to write it all in November; it took me until April.) I visited Greg in Fort Hood, Texas, before he left for Afghanistan, and saw Cindy, Scott and Andy too. Then we topped it all off with a cross-country drive by way of South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.

Yes, I'd say we've come pretty far.

Home Again

The trip starts here.

Sunny day

Here's Callisto looking out our apartment window on a sunny day last week.

Torture at the Voting Booth

Despite a hectic day yesterday, I managed to scurry out of work at 2:30 p.m. to vote. I took a bus to my voting precinct, which in my case was a tiny garage down the street from my apartment building. Four voting booths and a single table were crammed among hanging tools and bicycles. Kind of dangerous, actually, since a frustrated voter might conceivably snatch a wrench hanging from the wall and go on a rampage. I personally considered it, anyway.

For I was trapped behind a woman who was obviously The Dumbest Voter in San Francisco. I knew we were all in trouble the minute she approached the table and opened her mouth.

DVSF: My name's Nelson, ___ Nelson, but you won't find it on your list.
ELECTION WORKER: You're not on the list.
DVSF: Why not? I voted here last year!
EW: You're not on the list ... let me ...
DVSF: I've lived in this neighborhood for four years. I can't believe I'm not on the list!
EW: Let me give you a provisional ballot. Fred, where are the provisional ballots? Provisional ballots! The ones in the red folder. Provisional ...
(He leaves table. Line behind me lengthens.)
DVSF: I've lived in this neighborhood for four years.
EW: (returns) Now here is a provisional ballot. This is what you fill in, then ...
DVSF: I know what a provisional ballot is. I used one when I voted here last year.
(Crowd groans.)
EW: That doesn't mean this is your precinct. You can vote by provisional ballot anywhere in the city.
DVSF: I looked it up. The computer told me that I'm supposed to vote here.
EW: May I ask your address?

Then (this really happened) the Dumbest Voter in San Francisco's husband turns up.

DVSF: You're here!
EW: Name?
DVSF husband: ____ Nelson.
DVSF: You won't find his name on the list. We're not on the list, can you believe it? We've lived in this neighborhood for four years.
EW: May I ask your address?
DVSF husband: _____ Clayton.
EW: This precinct only goes to 1000 Clayton. You might be in another precinct.
DVSF: But the computer said 265 Fake Street Name.
(crowd groans)
EW: This is 147 Fake Street Name.
DVSF: Oh. I was walking down the street and this was the first polling place I saw. Does this mean I can't vote here?

Oh, we should have been so lucky. Instead she and her husband took copious time filling out a provisional ballot while I went into a booth and wrestled with a 10-page ballot with a zillion propositions.

Maybe next year I'll adopt her strategy: Leave my apartment on election day and walk down the street until I find a polling place. Then, when my name isn't on the list, shout, "But I've been in this neighborhood for two years!"

Hiking California: Angel Island

As with most parents, it's obvious that I Need to Get Out More. Just meeting up with our friend Doug at a tapas bar Friday night took two weeks and numerous emails to arrange, plus a very good friend offering to take Benny for a few hours.

The tapas bar was, of course, worth all the trouble. I found myself surrounded by teeny plates of meatballs, tomatoes on bread, corn and mushrooms, and a pile of chard and it was all amazing. San Francisco will not stop trying to make me a foodie. (Ten years from now I'll be debating sauces with waiters. Shudder.)

This post, however, is not about food (sorry) but about the geology hiking group I joined. I'm not one of those people who happily dives into new things, especially if said things are full of total strangers. But San Francisco's geology is really interesting and yes, I Need to Get Out More.

Now I've taken those online personality tests and they keep giving me labels like "Lively Center of Attention", but that doesn't mean I can march up to a group of 20 total strangers and start jamming about rocks -- even metamorphosed Franciscan rocks. So I was a little nervous, which either makes me very quiet or neurotically chatty. Fortunately for the group I chose the former and ended up near the back of the pack, scribbling in my notebook and trying not to look winded on the steeper slopes.

Angel Island rocks are kind of neat. They're Franciscan rocks, like most of the rest of the Bay Area. The Franciscan complex is a group of basalts, granites and serpentine along with cherts, sandstones and shales. The whole bunch is cracked up with faults and looks pretty much like a mess.

Angel Island's Franciscan rocks are different because they're metamorphosed. That means they've been exposed to enough heat and pressure to change their chemical makeup. So they look different, and in some sandstones the dark spots that are usually round are elongated.

The reason Angel Island's rocks were metamorphosed is because they ended up in what's called a subduction zone. In a subduction zone, one plate of the earth's crust is shoved under another plate. After Angel Island's rocks were pushed down and cooked up, another crack in the earth arrived. Called a thrust fault, it shoved the metamorphosed rocks over a big sandstone block called the Alcatraz Terrane. So at Angel Island, you can see the old, weird, metamorphosed rocks on top of the boring sandstone.

And there you have it. So off I went on a week ago Sunday, carrying my lunch and my notebook in a backpack. It was, of course, Fleet Week, which meant the Blue Angels were scheduled to loop-de-loop over the Bay that afternoon.

I took the ferry to the island and met the group. We trudged over to the first stop, which promised metamorphosed sandstone with flattened pebbles in it. Here it is. Yeah, it looked that exciting in person, too.



Our leader passed around little lenses, but we couldn't find any of the fabled flattened pebbles. Oh well. We hiked down to the beach, looking for pillow basalts, but the tide was too high and we found ourselves squabbling about whether a few wet, black, suspiciously round boulders were in fact pillow basalts or just wet sandstone.

Now pillow basalt is one of my favorite rocks. These basalts are formed at a crack in the seafloor when new seafloor is spurting out. Once the molten rock hits the icy seawater, it forms blobby, shiny shells like the chocolate shells on Junior Mints. Blobs pile on blobs until the whole thing looks like a bunch of black pillows. Then the molten rock inside slowly cools. So when you're looking at a pile of pillow basalts, you're looking at rocks from the ocean floor, frozen as they formed. Love that. There are places where you can see pillow basalts far away from any water and it's mind-bending to consider how they got there.

Since the rocks weren't that riveting, I shot a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in fog:




But the real show happened on the ferry ride back to San Francisco. The Blue Angels started cork-screwing all over the Bay. They even buzzed the ferry with an ear-splitting boom.







Here is one of my favorite pictures ever with Alcatraz, a Blue Angel and a masted ship:



And here are some more Blue Angels:






All in all, I consider my hike a success. This Sunday I'm meeting the group to hike Ring Mountain in Tiburon. I'm told we'll see much more dramatic examples of metamorphic rocks associated with subduction zones. But sadly, no acrobatic jet planes are planned.

Transit First San Francisco, Part 2

Last month I ran a series of dull errands using my car. I left my apartment at 12:55 on a Friday afternoon and returned at 3:25.

I couldn't help but wonder: How long would it have taken me to do those identical errands using Muni and my own two feet? Lo and behold, on a recent Friday afternoon, I had a list of nearly the exact same errands to do: go to the drug store, drop off dry cleaning, mail bills, get quarters for laundry, visit a bookstore, use the ATM and visit a West Portal business.

So I decided to use public transit rather than drive and leave at the same time, 12:55 p.m. Because San Francisco is, after all, a transit-first city. At least that's what the politicians say when asked why our parking meter rates are some of the highest in the nation.

12:55 p,m.
I leave the apartment sporting a backpack, a bag of dry cleaning, a bag of wire hangers and an iPod loaded with three episodes of "NPR: Marketplace." I give my shiny Honda Fit a wistful look, but walk by to the 37 bus stop. At least I didn't have to haggle with a construction guy to let my car out this time.

1:02 p.m.
I miss the 37 bus by seconds. (I know that driver saw me!) The next one isn't for 17 minutes, so I walk down to Cole Valley.

1:24
I arrive at Walgreens, dodging a car backing out of the parking lot. On the day I took the Fit, I was at Walgreens at 1:07. I'm already 17 minutes behind, red-faced and out of breath. I buy an envelope to mail a program from my brother's flight school graduation (It's on its way, Mom!) and a Milky Way Dark.

1:34
I'm waiting at the bus stop outside Walgreens, watching three UCSF shuttle buses roar past in a row. Since Muni is so unreliable, UCSF has a big fleet of buses for its personnel. Transit first, San Francisco!

1:45
I arrive at the dry cleaners and gratefully surrender my bags. Ron's suit is ready, but I can't pick it up because I don't have a car with me. I am now a half-hour behind.

2:17
Like my day with the Fit, I did some walking around: walked to the post office to mail bills, walked to a laundromat to get $10 worth of quarters from the change machine. I check out my favorite used bookstore and buy a biography of Queen Mary I of England, otherwise known as Bloody Mary.

On my day with the Fit, I had 10 minutes left on the parking meter. So I sat in the car, eating my Milky Way and reading.

Today, I'm sitting on a filthy concrete island in the middle of a high-traffic, exhaust-spewing street. N Trains rush by, rattling and squealing their way downtown. I check my phone to see when the next outbound N trains will arrive: 13 minutes, 14 minutes and 16 minutes.

2:38
A packed N train arrives, with an empty one right behind it. I board the second train, then transfer to a 28 bus.

2:51
I arrive at my credit union. I'm now 41 minutes behind.

3:07
The 28 bus dropped me off at 19th St. and Taraval and I'm waiting for an L train to take me to West Portal. The street is pretty dirty and noisy. One of the challenges of taking public transit in San Francisco is that the streets are often dirty and there are few places to sit. So if you're tired (and by now I've taken three buses and a train so I'm starting to flag), the only place to sit on a litter-strewn curb.

3:27
I arrive at West Portal. On my day with the Fit, I was here at 2:34. Last time I had an appointment at a salon; I decide to get a pizza instead. My salon appointment took 23 minutes, so that's how long I have to eat a pizza. Which is good, because I'm kinda cranky now and need a beer.

3:50
I leave the West Portal pizza place and hop on an L train.

4:05
I arrive at Church and Market. Another exciting -- but dirty -- traffic island, but a 37 comes in 2 minutes.

4:25
I'm home

So basically, running these errands took an extra hour. And let me tell you, there are other things I'd rather have done with that extra hour than sit around on dirty traffic islands as cars, buses and trains race by. Plus, on the day I used the Fit, I returned full of energy and ready to tackle some household jobs.

Today, I was wiped out, even with the brief pizza interlude in West Portal and ended up playing Civilization for 40 minutes before I could drag myself off the couch and pick up Benny from school.

As I've said before, my little Fit doesn't use much gas, so my daily decisions whether to drive are based on two criteria: amount of time and level of aggravation.

My judgment, therefore, is:
CAR 1, BUS 0.

This result illustrates Muni's biggest obstacles to increased ridership. Muni isn't going to get more riders from the working poor -- they already have no other choice. The system can't get more riders from the destitute, who can't pay anyway. Muni can't get more riders from San Francisco truly affluent; they wouldn't ride a bus if it had gold-plated hand rails and butt-warmers on every seat.

So the only demographic they can target is mine -- people with cars who are willing to take Muni if it's convenient, reasonably priced and somewhat stress-free.

I don't mean it has to be perfect -- a bus will be occasionally late and a driver will sometimes growl. I mean free of the soul-sapping, blood pressure-raising, white hot rage-inducing screwups and delays that riders routinely tolerate.

Transit first, San Francisco? Right now, I don't think so.

Transit First San Francisco: Part I

Now that we have a car, I have a choice when I leave the apartment for any reason -- do I walk, drive, or take the bus? I'm glad to live in a place where I have different transportation options but it means I must walk that fine line between conserving resources and wasting time, between efficiency and outright laziness.

Our need to conserve resources vs. our need to pick up our kid on time is an issue many Americans are grappling with, and often the pocketbook has the last word. Whenever gas prices spike, people watch their driving habits more closely and sometimes that amounts to a permanent change in habits.

My little Fit doesn't use much gas, so my daily decisions whether to walk, ride or drive is based on two criteria: amount of time and level of aggravation. If I can do something quickly and calmly on foot or by bus, I'll probably do so.

Or will I? Am I just being lazy? To help answer that question, I'm conducting an experiment.

A few weeks ago I ran a series of errands on a Friday afternoon. I left the apartment at 12:55 p.m. to do the following things: go to the drug store, drop off dry cleaning, mail bills, get quarters for laundry, visit a bookstore, use the ATM and get my eyebrows waxed (ouch). So I climbed into my new car and sped away.

Well, not really. I couldn't, because there was a big old pickup truck blocking my driveway. I had to cross the street and shout to the guys piling wood into a rusted-out dumpster: "Is that your truck?" No, it wasn't, but they knew who it was, and a man in his sixties with a shock of white hair came dashing out to move it. Actually, he didn't move it right away, he came up to me instead.

MAN: I can move the truck really quickly. You just tell me when you want to get out, and I'll come right over.

ME: Well, I'd rather you didn't block my driveway. I come in and out a lot. (Actually I'm at work most of the time, but I wasn't telling him that.)

MAN: It's no trouble -- I don't mind moving it. So I'll park it here, all right? It's just while we're doing the work. (He points to the scaffolding on the house across the street.)

ME: How long will the work take?

MAN: Two months.

At that point I started chuckling, then saw he was really serious. "No," I said, glaring. "Please don't block my driveway."

The man went off in a huff. Apparently this is what it's like to own a car in San Francisco. Hmmm.

So it's 1:05 before I even back out of the garage, but I'm soon on my way and the Walgreens in Cole Valley has a parking lot. I pick up batteries and saline solution and add a Milky Way Dark to reward myself for not screaming at the Truck Man. I had to drive the car in reverse out of the Walgreens lot and back out into the street, but that was okay.

1:16: I pull into a meter spot right outside my dry cleaners in our former Inner Sunset neighborhood. Even though we've moved, we remain faithful customers. The meter already has 7 minutes on it! Yay! I add enough change to bring it up to 40 minutes. The dry cleaners are devastated that I didn't bring my son — they often make balloon animals for him.

Then I did a little walking: walked half a block to the post office to mail bills, walked another two blocks to a laundromat to get $10 worth of quarters from the change machine. Then I use the quarters to do laundry in my apartment building. The laundromat at 9th and Irving are surprisingly nice about this; they ask only for an extra quarter. Nobody is there; the staff booth is shuttered and locked, so I slide two quarters under the locked office door.

Across the street is my favorite used bookstore, Overland, where I buy another book from the lady who wrote "The Three-Martini Playdate." My kind of person. When I get back, the meter still has 10 minutes left, so I eat my Milky Way in the car and start my book. I pull out of the spot at 1:57.

I need cash and I'm too cheap to use another bank's ATM, so I drive to a Patelco branch in the neighborhood. I've never been to this branch and my scrawled directions are woefully inadequate, so I pull into a empty spot (plenty of parking in this area) and call my husband at work. While he's explaining the location, I see the branch across the street. Oops.

By 2:34 p.m., I've found a meter spot in West Portal, only four blocks from the salon. A man sees me feeding the meter and asks me about the Fit. He just bought his wife a Scion. We jammed happily about small compact cars with wussy engines and then I walked to the salon.

I was pretty early for my 3 p.m. appointment, but they took me anyway. I'm back at the meter spot by 2:57. It's a little bit of a drive from West Portal to our apartment, but I finally pull into my truck-free driveway at 3:25.

All in all, I think it went pretty well. At 12:55 today I will leave the apartment to run the same errands, but I'll walk and ride instead of drive. Let's see how I do.

Driving to the mailbox next door

OK, maybe it's not that bad, but I can't deny that I've been driving our new Fit around on the slightest excuse. Yes, I know it's more environmentally sensitive to walk down into Cole Valley to get Benny from school and then catch a 37 bus back home.

Oh, but that car ride is so insidiously ... predictable. Two minutes to get into the car, 10 minutes to drive down and park the car. Once we're back in the car, it's five minutes back to the apartment. Two minutes later, we're walking through the door.

If I walk, it is admittedly a nice 10-minute walk to the school (when it's not raining). Then I get Benny and we walk to the 37 stop. The bus might come in 2 minutes. It might come in 20 minutes. Or 30 minutes. 20-30 minutes is crucial chunk of time when you're on the dinner-homework-bedtime march.

Frankly I'd rather spend it at home than on a bus stop bench telling Benny "No, we are not buying madeleines while we wait. I know you're hungry. Listening to you is making me hungry. What did you do today? Nothing? You sat in total silence for eight hours? Hookay then. No, we are not buying madeleines while we ..." Finally, we lapse into sullen silence and I check my phone for the next bus. 17 minutes.

Whereas if I drive him home and get started doing something else, Benny becomes a fountain of information. He'll follow me around, scattering graham cracker crumbs, and tell me about his kickball games, his teacher and that weird 2nd grade girl who chases him.

If I sound a little guilty and defensive, well, maybe I am. But you can't change people's behavior with abstract expectations. You change people's behavior by offering a better alternative that suits their needs. Or maybe it's the Midwest girl in me; I simply feel more relaxed and comfortable behind the wheel.

For three years City CarShare has suited us well. If anyone asked us about it, we praised it to the skies. But neither Ron nor I fully appreciated how much mental work this system required. Every decision, every errand, had to be parsed out: "When should I reserve the car? Which car can I get? For how long? How much will it cost? Should I cancel the other reservation? Should I make it a Freedom Trip ($50 for 24 hours)?

Then, once you were out and about in the car, you had to make the most of it. Time was money. Yes, this reservation was for grocery shopping, but maybe I should swing by the dry cleaners, too. And take in the vacuum cleaner for repair. And pick up that new book by Robert Reich about how the middle class is doomed.

OK, maybe I'm a little defensive.

I Can't Wait to be Part of the Problem

I'm thinking of a magic number — can you guess what it is?

The number is 220. It's a very nice number, and not just because it's in my address. 220 is a common voltage in many countries. It's also divisible by the sum of its digits. The Goths invaded Asia Minor and the Balkans in the year 220. It also saw the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period in China.

But my affinity for the number 220 is not so historic. My magic number is actually 220 dollars, as in $220 a month. $220 is the most I'm willing to pay for a monthly bus pass for my family.

Right now, we pay $120 a month for our Muni fast passes, which allow us to ride any Muni bus or light rail in San Francisco as much as we want. We should be buying a youth pass for Benny as well ($15), but so far we've been able to sneak him on the bus for free. (Yes, apparently I am willing to compromise my morals for $15 a month. That's a whole other magic number.)

So the current cost of Muni transportation for a family of three (if they're not thieving cheats) is $135. Which would be completely reasonable, if San Francisco's public transportation system was a well-oiled machine, with consistently reliable, safe and pleasant service.

Ha ha.

Muni is well, pretty bad. The buses are dirty, the schedules are a joke and the drivers hate everybody. (These same drivers are guaranteed the second-best salaries in the country. Seriously, guaranteed. It's in the city charter.)

Still, we have made our peace with Muni, rarely venturing from the No. 6/N Judah cow path we take to work. I take other buses as little as possible, preferring to use City Car Share. Last night I took the 43, and a fellow rider pounded a rear window until it gave way, then leaned out and shouted at pedestrians.

This year, we plan to buy a car. Then we'll use Muni even less, probably only to commute to our jobs downtown.

Unless ... Muni hits the magic number.

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency is proposing cuts to every Muni bus line to close a $16.9 million budget gap. Just a month ago, the SFMTA made a ton of service cuts and raised the price of monthly passes from $55 to $60. The cuts will reduce frequencies on every Muni line and increase fares for historic streetcars, express buses and cable cars. They also want to increase the Youth monthly passes.

When Ron and I arrived in San Francisco in 2007, the cost of a monthly pass was $45. Now it's $60. Obviously Muni is gunning for the passengers and the cost of the passes will keep rising. Quickly.

Hence the magic number. I figure that if adult monthly passes hit $90 each, and the youth pass is $30, the total cost is ... wait for it ... $220. The SFMTA is already talking about raising youth passes to $30.

So what will Ron and I do if monthly passes total $220? The answer is simple: Climb back into a car.

For $250-$300 a month, we can get a nice parking spot downtown near our jobs. Then we can ride into work every day in our car, dropping Benny off at school on the way. A nice, relaxing ride with the family twice a day. If Muni keeps raising its fares, while providing substandard service, why not drive?

Then we will be part of the problem, spewing carbon exhaust every day while adding to traffic congestion in this "Transit First" city.

Benny at the Park

Here's Benny on the swings at the park near our apartment, courtesy of Ron's iPhone.

Christine Takes It to the Streets

The blog "Muni Diaries" posted my experience on a Muni bus this week. Check it out here.

I am outraged that a transit operator would treat customers in this matter. Think of that woman passenger who initially complained. How is she going to feel riding Muni every day, knowing that a whole bus heard her called an awful name? How is she going to feel knowing that if she speaks up about anything or stands up to herself, she's asking for abuse or name calling? Is this what SFMTA wants for their passengers? Is this what San Franciscans want for their city? And worst of all, no other passengers stood up in her defense — in fact, another passenger called her an obscenity. Is this the city we all want?

By the way, the comments are fun, too. One reader is having trouble making the intuitive leap required to connect this example of Muni's unsafe, unreliable and uncivil service and Muni's plan to cut service and increase fares. Why would one driver's behavior lead me to oppose drastic service cuts? Because if Muni can't provide safe, reliable and civil service now, what will the system be like after new layoffs and service cuts?

San Francisco Photo Story

Here is a remarkable collection of pictures of San Francisco from photographers that love the city. Most of them were familiar to me: the redwood grove in Golden Gate Park, the hills of Twin Peaks, the beaches, the bridges, the buildings.

Beautiful pictures like these remind me why we're here and the how much I take for granted every day. This is especially good on days where the sky is gloomy, the car horns are blaring and the price of monthly bus passes are raised (again!).

See San Francisco

Don't Skip Breakfast

So this wasn't the greatest morning I ever had. I woke up late, which meant I couldn't work out or eat breakfast if I wanted to get to work on time. And what happened then?

Well, I had trouble with my contacts, trouble with my hair dryer, trouble with my peanut butter sandwich, trouble with my earrings and as a a final note, trouble with the !@#$% computer when I tried to load my iPod. As you may already guess, it was a computer that finally sent me into a string of expletives.

Which got me in trouble with Ron, since Benny was right there.

So there I am at the bus stop, steaming. A fine drizzle falls on my badly blow-dried hair. I blame my contacts, my sandwich, my new earrings and the !@#$% computer. But then I identify the real culprit: I skipped breakfast.

When oh when will I realize that a bowl of cereal or two waffles improves the quality of life for myself and anyone around me? Why does it take my poor husband dragging me away from a computer at 8 a.m. to remind me that being hungry and hurried is Bad Bad Bad?

It took three cereal bars and two Snapples consumed at my desk to put me in the proper frame of mind to edit stories and answer emails. By 10 a.m. I was able to field a phone call about our upcoming Most Pompous Executives publication (not its real name, but should be) with some poise. This lady calls every two days for information about Most Pompous Executives, and my repeated answers that I know zero details, my editor knows zero details and our publisher has made no decision about the breadth and scope of Most Pompous Executives fails to satisfy her. She's convinced that we're hiding vital Most Pompous Executive nomination guidelines from her. This lady works for an accounting firm, which is apparently lousy with pompous executives eager to be honored. Sigh.

Anyway, the moral of today's post is Eat Breakfast, especially if you expect a phone call from a rabid CPA marketer.. Maybe an All Powerful Cereal Bowl of Light (above) would help.