Flaccid Penal System

My moods are inextricably linked to the weather, and I therefore have quite a difficult time knowing how I feel about my commute, my day, my week, or my whole life while I’m on the way to work.

For example, I left my apartment this morning and stepped into San Francisco’s typical summer-fog. It was probably 50 degrees. You couldn’t see more than a few blocks in any direction. The fog was so dense it felt like it was raining (it wasn’t).

I don’t mind the fog generally speaking, but it’s hard to be in great spirits on a Monday morning when it feels like you just stepped into what would make a perfect backdrop for a romantic movie’s he’s-gone-I’m-so-sad montage. I was pretty sure that everything in the world was miserable and awful.

And when I start to feel like everything’s miserable and awful, I try to counter the sentiment by concocting schemes that would, were they to come true, make everything in the world joyous and gay (however illogical or unlikely said schemes are).

This morning, I boarded the Ugly Bus* contemplating the job market in wine country, projecting how long it would take me to support myself by blogging** and/or when it is that MY friggin’ book will be available for sale in the UK***.

[Oh, AND? Speaking of books. I got an email today. I won’t get into all the details, but someone wrote me from a publishing company. To tell me that they have a new book coming out that I would probably like because my blog fits well with its theme, and hey, would I like a copy.

So of course I’m totally flattered and think that’s cool. Um. Well, except for the part where I realize the book is about chick lit writers who are similar to me but are not, actually, me. Sigh.]

Anyway, I totally busy myself concocting these schemes to offset the gloom and doom of Monday morning’s weather, until I’m a few miles south of the city. Whereupon I’m in an entirely new climate. Not three miles from the station it’s bright, warm, and gorgeous. It looks and feels and smells like summer. And so all of a sudden, I love the world and who cares that it’s Monday! Happy happy la la la.


*Criminy. My morning bus line is DAMN ugly****.

**Eighty million years.

***If at all, probably my book will not be available for sale until sometime after I have written it.

****Update: (and yes, I'm footnoting footnotes, shutup) the UGLY Bus commute last night took quite an UGLY turn, which I will tell you about soon.

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You know I love my pink phone. But do I love it enough...?

That is what I was forced to contemplate while on the shuttle this morning, somewhere between Gloom and La la la, because of the very chatty young woman sitting in front of me.

Apparently, Chatty got drunk over the weekend and left her phone at the restaurant/bar. And apparently, someone must have taken it because the restaurant doesn’t have it and it was a really cool phone so of course someone would want to steal it.

Which is very, VERY upsetting to Chatty, which I know because she spent the entire ride telling the guy next to her all the things she’d like to have happen to the person who took her phone.

If some woman took her phone, for example, Chatty hopes that the woman will get into a car accident. Oh, don't get her wrong. She wouldn't want the woman to DIE. She just wants the woman to end up with an ugly scar on her face.

Now, interestingly, Chatty feels differently if the woman who took her phone is hot. If some HOT woman took her phone, Chatty wishes that the hot woman will return home to discover her boyfriend in bed with another woman who is waaaaay hotter than she is.

And if it is some hot GUY who did the stealing, she hopes – and I swear I am not making this up, and that this is what Chatty was inadvertently announcing to the ENTIRE shuttle this morning before, I should add, 9 a.m. – that he has trouble getting it up for the rest of his life, and that he spends the rest of his days having severe issues with self-confidence.

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