I'm Sorry. I Hate Me Too. I'm Sorry.

I have started three entirely different recap posts of The Conference, and none of them are making me happy. So they can wait.

Also, I am going to try to blog EVERY DAY for a month! Let's see how THAT goes, huh?



Right now I am sitting in the lobby of my building. There is no wifi here, so I'm writing this in a text editor. I don't know why I think you care about either of those things, but whatever. This is what happens when your blogging mojo gets rusty.

Anyway, I should re-phrase. There IS wifi in the lobby, except all of the connections are password protected. There's like 12 of them, and none of them are from our apartment. I don't know why this is. One of the connections is from the apartment above ours, where the assohole/douchebag lives, so I did totally try to use his account. Unfortunately, none of his passwords are DOUCHE, douchebag, douchebaggery, ISUCK or duuuuuuche. I feel good for making the effort to try those, though.

At this point, you might be wondering why I'm sitting on my laptop in the lobby of my building, what with my apartment being two flights away, and that would not be an unreasonable thing to wonder. The truth of the matter is, Ish and I made the leap of all dual-income-no-kids, urbanite, god-we're-getting-old leaps: we hired a cleaning service.

Now might also be a good time to mention that I am very very not good at having service people come to my residence. When someone comes to my door -- repairman, exterminator, landlord, UPS, super -- I find myself wishing I was six years old so I could hide in my room until the scary stranger leaves my house. I don't know why this is, exactly, except that my natural tendency when someone comes to my place is to want to entertain them. Like I should be a good hostess.

Do you know how piano tuners react when you offer them a cocktail? That's right. They think YOU ARE CRAZY. I'M SORRY, DID YOU SAY YOU LIVE WITH FOUR CATS?

And while I have never offered to make dinner for any repairman, that is simply because I am afraid I wouldn't do a good enough job.

Beeteedubs, Douche just walked by wearing sunglasses, because apparently there is a glare inside our building I was unaware of. See how cool he is?

The point is, I feel terribly awkward about having anyone over to my home to do anything. (Well, anything other than eat and drink and maybe play American Idol Karaoke on the Wii. Her name is Rio and she dances in the saaaaaaand...) Paying people to come to my home to clean? Oh, how the awkward is compounded.

Please know that I am fully aware that this makes me the worst human being in the entire world. Woe is me, complaining about how having cleaning people makes me feel too awkward to be in my own home. Feel free to hate. Just know that it is true.

And is why I am sitting in the lobby of my own building.

Because -- right -- when I got home from work, I walked to my apartment door and heard them still inside and so I did the only reasonable thing I could think of: I fled, full speed, back down the hall again so that they wouldn't see me.

I don't know what I think they would do if they DID see me, but it goes something along the lines of being perfectly kind and polite while secretly hating my spoiled ways and disapproving of all my dust and cat hair and unopened mail. It makes perfect sense to me that I should hide.

Well, and but now things have changed yet again. (Aren't you grateful for running commentary? La la la...) After 20 minutes of sitting on the industrial concrete lobby "bench," I decided I wanted a chair and also maybe wine. There is only one cafe within comfortable walking distance of my building, though, so I had to debate whether to go there or wait out the cleaning people. Ultimately, my desire for creature comforts (chair, table, wifi, wine, warmth) won, and I decided to make the trek.

Again, the distance isn't long, but my neighborhood is...how do you say..."unsavory"?

Yeah, "unsavory" works. Also "colorful." Or, if I want to be totally SF about it, I'd call it "up and coming." In all cases the translation is SO MANY CRACKHEADS OHMYGOD.

I don't usually come here for lots of reasons, all of which I have been reminded of since I staked out my place in the corner.

For one, the place is very window-y, which would be nice except they are always open, along with the door, and I don't know if you know this, but July in San Francisco is basically winter. The fog is blowing through and it's got to be 49 degrees outside. I do not have my coat with me (my coat is is busy laughing at me while it hangs in my warm, clean apartment). So yes. It is cold and windy INSIDE the cafe.

Also, the clientele here is so overly hip I feel like Lois Griffin at a KISS concert. I don't know the music. I don't understand anyone's t-shirt. I thought the counterperson was a boy. (She isn't.)

I was able to access the free wifi, but it took me like four really involved tries.

But the worst, worst was that I ordered wine. No one orders wine here, but I did because if I order beer -- which I love, seriously -- I have to pee more than I already always do, and so it's just not a feasible proposition. So I ordered my favorite summer wine (pinot grigio) and sat down and wrestled with logins and got up and running, goosebumps and all, and held my non-hip-head high, and took a sip of the wine and almost spit it out.

It had turned.

On principle, I was going to have to bring it back to the counter. Not because I had paid a whopping three dollars for it (happy hour), but because it was, quite literally, undrinkable. And, well, I wanted wine. I really, really didn't want to be the girl it was going to make me, though: the tragically unhip, white, chubby yuppie hiding in the cafe from her cleaning people who shouldn't have ordered a glass of wine in the first place but who did and then had to return it because it wasn't good enough.

Oh good lord. Now the acoustic band has arrived.

Ultimately, I did what I had to do. I waited until everyone else in line had placed and gotten their orders before quietly going up to the now-that-you-mention-it-kinda-cute counter girl and began apologizing for having bad wine. She graciously opened a new bottle and told me it wasn't my fault, but I know the truth. Of course it's my fault.

Next thing you know, I'll be wearing sunglasses in my lobby.


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Addendum: this actually was written in real time. I'm sorry. Also, Ish just texted me that he'll be here in 8 minutes to pick me up (YAY! SO COLD!) but when I went to reply to him, I hit the wrong buttons. I meant to write "I am in THE window" but accidentally started punching "I am in RHE..." at which point my phone auto-completed the word. It thought I was trying to text the word "RHETORIC."

Um?

Seriously, I love language as much as the next English major, but does anyone out there really use the word "rhetoric" in TEXTS? Like, enough to warrant it being an auto-complete word? What sort of secret literary texting is going on out there, anyway?