i managed how many weeks of this when I started usc?
I think I'm looking at relativism here; I am detecting situational ethics.
3 measly little miles.
Darin needed to take Nero (my Powerbook) on the road with him, so Friday night we copied all the stuff I will need onto his computer and all the stuff he will need on to mine. He had a bunch of things to do before attending MacHack (a conference for programming wonks), but he couldn't get any of them done because 3 clients of his last week said, independently of course, "We need such-and-so done by Friday." He got all the assignments done; he just didn't have any time left over to prepare his presentation, so he needed Nero. I waved bye-bye to my little laptop and prepared to use Darin's big ol' testerone G3 Mac. (You can't drag it in front of the TV; it's very annoying.)
Saturday morning we got up very early and headed out the door to LAX, where he got on a plane for Chicago and I got on a plane for San Francisco. His plane left a lot later than mine, so he came over to my terminal to wait with me, but he couldn't find me. Turns out he waited in the giant waiting area and I was in the tiny waiting area near the gate, down a hallway off of the giant waiting area. So we missed one another and ended up not giving each other a goodbye kiss.
I am, a few days later, still very upset about this. I insist on giving Darin a goodbye kiss when I go to the Ralph's to pick up some bread.
Last month, when Darin and I were in the Bay Area, my father mentioned to me that he was going to see the Giants play the Cubbies in June--on the 19th, in fact, when Darin was taking off for his week in Chicago and Ann Arbor, Michigan. And suddenly the idea of going to see a baseball game again sounded really, really good to me, and God knows I'm probably not going to drop by and see the Los Angeles Murdochs any time soon.
I said, "Mind if I come up and join you?" He said sure! although he might not have been as excited about it had he known how strict the Giants have gotten about exchanging tickets. Used to be the Giants were more than happy to exchange tickets, but those days are over. You'd think they'd already moved to (ick) PacBell Park.
One thing led to another and soon my sister Deirdre and her husband Greg were also coming out to the game, which was great, because I hadn't been at a game with Deirdre in a long time--Deirdre, Dad, and I used to go out to games together all the time. Deirdre and Greg picked me up at the airport and took me back to their house to pack some treats for the game.
Dad had gone out to Candlestick (I will never call it 3Com) to watch batting practice, because Sammy Sosa was in town. Turns out he wasn't the only one with that idea; he said the bleachers were full of kids waiting. And somebody cancelled batting practice, which blows.
It was a bee-yoo-ti-ful day out there. Sunny, mild temperature, and a typical 'Stick breeze. At 3:30 the wind kicked up a few notches, sending Deirdre and me into hysterics because that's just so typical. The game was also quite good, with the Giants winning (11-5), and more than enough wackiness on the field: the Giants walked 3 Cubbies home one inning, and the Cubbies repaid the favor with 1 or 2 Giants in another inning.
Something of the Angeleno spirit has seeped through, however: like any good attendee of a Dodger game, we left in the 8th inning, to beat traffic.
Deirdre went back to my parents' house with my Dad to pick up my Mom, and I helped Greg start to fix dinner. How Deirdre and I both managed to find guys who like to cook is beyond me. He made cordon bleu with broccoli and salad. We lightly fried (if there is such a thing) the cordon bleu pieces before baking them just to make sure they'd hold together, and this worked out very well: the chicken was still very moist when we sat down to dinner.
After dinner--which was completed by the chocolate hazelnut torte my Mom brought from Costco--Deirdre took Mom and Dad home while Greg and I took the BART (which is only a few blocks from their new house--nice!) downtown. We met up with Deirdre at the Starbucks at the Fifth and Mission garage to go to, yes, you guessed it, the Sony Metreon, which had just opened.
It's pretty cool. Clearly the center was an architect's dream assignment. It was also wall-to-wall people. We started at the top and peeked at the Where the Wild Things Are play area, where adults were shoving their kids out of the way to play with the Really Cool Stuff. The Way Things Work store was packed, as was the MicrosoftSF store (yes, I feel unclean for just having gone in, okay?), the Arcade, the movies... There are 15 movie theaters, plus an IMAX theater, in the Metreon.
Nearby are all the things that were built on top of the Moscone Center: a carousel, an ice rink, a children's museum... I think what's likely to happen in the future is that Darin and I will take our kids down there and the kids and I will bid Darin adieu as he goes to play for a few hours. The whole area is fantastic--I am very envious that Deirdre and Greg live 3 or 4 BART stops away, so they don't even have to drive downtown in all that craziness.
By 10 o'clock the three of us were completely exhausted. Greg said, "Yeah, it's all that fresh air and sunshine," and I said, "That's why I prefer air conditioning and artificial light."
They drove me to my parents' house and I went up to my old bedroom, on the 3rd floor of the house. I thought a ton of memories would come flooding back to me about living in there, but nothing did. I called Darin in Chicago--he'd left a message telling me to call whenever I got in--and we talked for a while. We both decided being apart for a week was for the birds, but there's no way I'm ever attending MacHack with him, so he can just forget about that.
Sunday morning I overslept, which worked out just as well, because Deirdre called up and said Greg couldn't come to breakfast because he was feeling sick. None of the rest of us were feeling sick, so it probably wasn't dinner Saturday night.
I wasn't hungry anyhow, so Dad and I took a walk down to Fillmore Street. Fillmore Street used to be a rundown, funky area of town when we first moved to that house; it's now a very trendy, very Yuppie area of town, with every chain store and up-market retail establishment you can name. I wasn't sure if I was happy or sad about it. It was a beautiful day out--sunny, about 70 degrees--so I didn't think about it much.
After we came home I talked to my Mom for a while in the front parlor as she made a fire--the house is cold enough, even on a nice June day, to warrant a fire. Then we went out for a walk, looking at houses in the neighborhood. There are still a lot of single-family houses in Pacific Heights, but more and more of them are becoming condos or apartments.
There used to be a huge run-down Victorian next to my parents' house that had a whole house lot next to it as its yard. We used to call it the Psycho house because it was so large and forbidding, and the owner, an elderly Japanese man, never talked to anyone. I once saw just inside the front hall of the house and that was enough: stacks of newspapers, just like in the movies, dark, covered with dust. Mr. Seiko died a few years ago. Developers bought the double property--in the middle of San Francisco! Jesus!--and built two new condominium buildings. My parents had innumerable fights with the developers, but they were fated to lose.
The first condo building was having open houses this month, so when Deirdre arrived to take me to the airport she, Mom, and I went next door to look at the condos. Which are very nice: well-designed, excellent appointments, and the top condo has a incredible view from the Pacific to downtown.
I wonder if that view is going to be worth $850,000 to someone.
The bottom condo is going for $750,000.
The condos in the second building (built out of the framework of Mr. Seiko's house), which aren't done yet, are going to cost even more. The developers offered my parents the bottom condo in the second building for their entire house, and my mother said she laughed at them.
I've told my parents if they want to sell their house, come talk to me and Darin first. (Simply because I think we could raise the money a lot easier and a lot faster than Deirdre and Greg, who have their hands full with a new mortgage and a baby who's due to be born in the next two weeks.) What's ironic is, of course, that when my parents bought their Victorian the owners were practically giving it away; no one wanted such a monstrosity except a woman who's claustrophobic and needs space. Now, of course, her daughters have been completely spoiled and expect all of their residences to be so spacious.
I flew home--the plane was an hour late taking off; I hate San Francisco International--and came back to an empty house. I spent a few hours on the web. After all, I'd gone 36 hours without web access, which is practically an eternity, and I was jonesing pretty hard. Then I got into bed, read a book, and realized that even though I go to bed before Darin does a lot of the time, I was aware he wasn't coming to bed any time soon. I stayed awake a long time.
Got up, went running, and decided to get down to work. Only a few more days until Darin comes home.
People keep asking me what I'm going to do while Darin's gone. "Oh, all the stuff I can't do while he's here," I say...and then I stall for time as I try to imagine what it is I can't do when he's here. Go to (heroin) shooting galleries? Crack houses? Singles bars? Like I'm likely to do any of those things to begin with. Staying up all night? Eh, no. I thought of calling up Brent's wife to get her to take me to one of those clubs she likes to go to, but then she'd find out what a naive, sheltered waif I really am.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com