Friday, April 27, 2007

White Glove Smoking Man















Here’s me playing at the Blue Jay Café.

Last Friday night, Lisa C. and Ann (Tom’s mother) and I had dinner at Osha on Valencia (Thai food) and then to see Dan Hoyle’s wonderful one-man play Tings Dey Happen, about oil politics in Nigeria, based on his year as a Fulbright scholar there.

On Saturday I saw Fracture (in which Ryan Gosling plays a district attorney and Anthony Hopkins a would-be murderer), which I liked a lot, and later at home I saw two DVDs, movies I’d really wanted to see in the theater but missed: Dreamland, a coming-of-age tale set in a desert trailer park, and Opal Dream, about a young Australian girl whose two imaginary friends go missing.

I think Hammett and I are reaching a new level of mutual affection. He is championing my causes as his own, as when I saw him glaring out the window at someone who was smoking.

Last Sunday I made Two-Bean Chili with Bulgur, from 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains, and Split Pea and Rice Soup from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. The chili was really good; that cookbook is becoming my favorite. I also thawed some of the tomato sauce I made the previous week to try over pasta and it was wonderful. I liked the soup more than I liked the last split pea soup I made, but I guess my favorite recipe is in Laurel’s Kitchen.

While I was cooking, Hammett came gamboling into the kitchen with what turned out to be the corner of a picture that had been for years affixed to the wall with two push pins. I found one of the pins but could not find the other despite extensive efforts, including dumping out a bag of recycling and putting every single item back in piece by piece; I did this twice. I also moved the big chair away from the wall and looked underneath and behind it; ditto the bed. Nothing. Dr. Press said if my level of suspicion was high that Hammett had swallowed the pin, I should have him X-rayed.

Right before I went to sleep that night, I looked at Hammett for a time, trying to decide whether he looked like a cat who had a push pin inside him or not. Then I reached down to pick up my hand lotion and there was the pin.

The firm mattress is a major improvement over the gentle; not sure how I could have gotten this so wrong in the store, but I guess it’s not uncommon. I think we may finally have reached a satisfactory conclusion to the Bed Purchasing Travail. May you never have to buy a bed or any portion thereof, but if you do, I guess my advice is to go to Sleep Train and buy whichever Simmons seems most comfortable, as long as it’s not a pillow-top.

However, my hip and lower back still hurt after getting the firmer mattress, which I now realize is probably due to having fallen on my butt in the tub many months ago, so I decided it was time to seek a therapeutic massage person or something along those lines.

I gathered a few recommendations, including one from Mily, and this week went to see Jing Li, an acupuncturist who works in conjunction with a massage person. Apparently, the more virtuosic an acupuncturist is, the fewer needles she or he uses. For anyone who follows competitive acupuncture, she used precisely four needles, three of which were driven into my belly button. So she may be the supreme San Francisco acupuncture master. I didn’t feel a thing when she inserted them, but I also have natural anti-acupuncture padding in that area.

She told me to move around as much as possible while the needles were in, and afterward her associate came in and did fifteen minutes of massage in the area that hurts (my butt, in case you forgot; left side). I would say there was noticeable improvement after this. I have been able actually to feel a knot where the impact was, and it was smaller after this treatment.

This week my company held a green event in one of its buildings downtown, and I went over to staff a San Francisco Bicycle Coalition table. Afterwards, I agreed to be the Green Team site coordinator for my floor in my building, and I told the manager of the project that I have a particular interest in bike commuting as a company-wide initiative and was invited to work on that, which I will.

Then I went to the top floor of the building to see the view, which was very nice, and then to visit a friend who works on the 26th floor. Right across the street, far above the traffic, is what are apparently luxury condos, and as we watched, a man opened the door to his minuscule balcony to have a smoke. He was wearing a maroon and navy robe, and sporting a white glove on his right hand only. My friend says they see him all the time dressed exactly like that; they call him White Glove Smoking Man.

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