Random Bits

There's not much going on. Football season started so there's a lot of TV watching and yet with 2 weeks in, significantly little bad decision making happening. Yeah, I dunno who I am either. (Or I'm maturing?)

I'm also working really really hard on this whole full fledged grown up thing as I avoid way too many creditors calls a day. (Don't go to law school, kids!)

So those are all my lame excuses for not posting lately. But I have a few bits and pieces so here they are. In the you should be used to it by now list form:



1. Are you reading Dog Shaming? Please tell me you're reading Dog Shaming. It makes me laugh so hard. And now every time either of my dogs do something I debate the ability to submit whatever they did to the site. I don't find them hysterical or shame worthy enough yet. Dance, little doggies, dance!

2. I lost my driver's license. Most likely at the Stanford game as I had put it in my pocket. My guess is it's either in the eucalyptus grove where we were parked or in the port-a-potty I used before driving home. Alas, it is gone. (By the by, if someone did happen upon it, common courtesy would dictate throwing it in the mail as it has an address on it, right? I guess that didn't happen though. Oh well.)

So I had to make an appointment to get a new one at the DMV. Apparently the idea of DMV having appointments is a novel concept. My Louisiana friends were all, "Wuuut?" My reply was: with an economy the size of France and 30 million people in this state, we better fucking have an online appointment system. Which sort of favors (rich, white) people with computers, huh? Whatevs. I took full advantage of it. And even then, the earliest appointment I could get was 12 days from my initial request for the office in Daly City, close to my house but not the miserable in the city office. (To find out what happens when you don't make a DMV appointment, read Beth's recent accounting here.)

If you make an appointment, you get to skip the stupid absurd line at 10:30 on a Friday morning. Instead of standing in the line that stretched all the way into the parking lot, I walked to the "has an appointment" line and waited no more than 5 minutes for the lady to get through the five people in front of me. Which was awesome because there was only one lady working the initial check-in, hand you a number counter and she takes the appointment people before even looking at the no appointment people. It's like flying first class. The no appointment line wasn't even moving when I was there. Which makes sense because all the plastic seats where you wait for your number to be called were filled too. There was nowhere to put anymore people. Guess it's a good thing the In N Out burger is right across the street. Counter lady handed me the form to fill out, I did, I waited another roughly ten minutes, my number got called, different lady took the info, I paid the $25, got to keep my picture from when I was 21 and thin, signed some forms, got a temporary DL, and was out of there in about a half an hour. Way better than the all day I'm sure everyone else in Daly City was gonna be stuck with if they didn't have an appointment. So, lesson: make an appointment!

Additional tip: In California at least, if you have a AAA membership, which if you have a car you should, a lot of the vehicle registration DMV issues can be taken care of easily at one of their full service offices, which is worth the $35-ish a year for the basic member fees.

3. Every month my family plays the "new restaurant of the month" game. Once per month, the assigned person, as it rotates through the family, has to pick a place that we've never been to try. This has run the gamut from really fancy (Perbacco) to super casual (we've done street carts in the past). Usually we're pretty happy with the picks and enjoy our time at the place but also because we do this every month, we don't often get the opportunity, or the desire, to visit the place again. "Oh yeah, that was great, something to consider but..."  Last night we went to Gilbreth's Rotisserie on 3rd St. at 22nd. It was really really good. Like go back there good. The sort of place I would definitely make a standard. It's Mexican in sort of a vague, probably more authentic way. Like they don't have guacamole but they had wild boar empanadas which were SO delicious. I had the chorizo and lamb burger entree which was really good and came with the most excellent and well made fries with spicy mayo dipping sauce. And they had really good sangria. So. If you're looking to try a new place in SF, there is my unsolicited endorsement.

4. My parents OnDemand rented Snow White and the Huntsman the other night, leaving me an opportunity to watch it as well. It was a really enjoyable film. I went into it with zero expectations, I have no particular feels about Kristen Stewart one way or the other and am not an acolyte of the sparkle vamp empire. I don't have any hate from the whole sleeping with the married director thing. (In fact, I actually kind of empathize but that's a different story for another time.) It had really well done cinematography, or at least CGI of it. It was filmed mostly in Scotland and I want to go there and Ireland so so so so bad. Or as much as a really broke person can aspire to such far fetched dreams of foreign travel. Anyway, if you're looking to kill a couple hours, you could do worse than this movie which was one of the more consistent on story of all the many action movies I have watched of late. Also: is Ian McShane ever bad in anything? Even as a dwarf he kills. (Which I'm still perplexed at how they did the whole dwarf thing. Someone will have to explain it to me someday.) Even in really bad things, he's good. Of which this is not one. Go watch Charlize Theron lose her shit and the Thor guy play a Thor like guy that isn't Thor! And Kristen Stewart not screw up a role too much by not talking through most of it! (Oh though her battle cry speech...watch it and tell me if it was even sensical. Because...I'm not really sure.) My usual snark aside: I watched it twice and am considering using my stored up Amazon gift cards to buy it because that's how I am. And by how I am, I mean I'm apparently a 15 year old girl.

5. We're not gonna have an NHL season. At least for now. I have a lot of feels about this but nothing coherent and there are waaaay better sports writers covering the topic than I could do here but I do have to say: what really pisses me off about the lockout, and about the owners lack of desire to actually negotiate (as it appears), is that a lockout doesn't just hurt the players. This isn't a strictly owners/players thing. It's a staff thing. And stadium worker thing. And hockey equipment manufacturers thing. And travel and tourism and all sorts of loss that's not just salary and owner revenue. TV losses and advertising losses and things that ripple well beyond the rink and the players. In fact, that's the reason there was no way the US government was gonna allow a lockout to happen in the NFL and where it hurts that the NHL is the fourth major sport. And to, as an owner, cry poor but also be willing to lose all of that income for a whole season because it won't hurt you, is infuriating to watch unfold. I get it from the player perspective. When the owners are asking you to cut 24% of your salary, in a career that is incredibly finite and where you may not be the Parise or Ovi of the team making $100 mil over ten years, that's untenable. And the end of an NHL season doesn't, as many have pointed out, mean the end of hockey. But it does mean the end of the most elite hockey. Seeing the best compete against the best. I have an opinion as a fan on that loss. But I also feel for every concession worker and hotel worker and people that aren't just player personnel who will feel an economic impact from the lack of an NHL season that I'm really not sure a single owner has considered the far reaching implications and that elected officials might be worth reminding them of their responsibility to the community as stewards of the game.

I think that's all I got for now. I reserve the right to add more later as the inner workings of my brain marinate on other topics.

Also: A request for topics. I'm feeling a bit depleted lately so some jump starter suggestions are welcome. Any recipes you want to see? (Are you even reading those?) Topics you want covered? Let me know. I'm happy to oblige/too boring to come up with ideas on my own.

Headed out to the LSU bar tomorrow to watch the game since the only other way to see it is pay-per-view/crappy illegal feed. Maybe that will provide some fodder...