Things that are awesome about cities, downtowns, and public transport
Today was a totally mundanely awesome day of humans. I met Camellia and her brand new son Asa for Tartine breakfast at 9 and we had a nice walk around dolores park. I went down to Stanford on the caltrain to study at Green and hang out with Pat and Davie before Pat is off to Boston. On the train platform, I ran into Scott Klemmer and chatted a brief bit. Then Kenneth spotted me and came to join me in the bike car and I got to catch up. (Previous two times I saw Kenneth were at Coffee Bar and Ritual. Neighborhoodiness seems to be our new m.o.) I then hit green library with my UC reciprocal lending library card and had a really productive 4 hours of journaling, lit reviewing, and thinking about the india design methods research. (Well, I was supposed to be reading stuff for this weekend's STS workshop so nothing is ever perfect in prodcutivityland for me.) Green Library was quiet, ridiculously posh with those desks that have built in power and good chairs (omg private school I didn't realize the poshness until public school), and a tree and blue sky were just out the window. Pat and I then walked to Fraiche and I took in the numerous anti-skateboarder traffic management "improvements" that had happened since I graduated. Davie joined us as we had frozen yogurt. Pat told me that Old Union now serves chicken fingers. This made me greatly excited and I looked forward to eating those as I'd had breakfast at 9 and was starving by 4, obviously. I ended up thwarted as Old Union was closed so Davie and I went to Zao for dinner. Afterwards, we ended up meeting a very very talkative man who insisted on telling us about the wireless mice we were investigating at the Apple Store. He wouldn't stop, sort of in that not-picking-up-on-cues-like-"I really want a wired mouse" way. Then, Davie and I went to the cowboy fry's which is ALWAYS epic even if nothing happens. There, Davie was looking for a laser pointer. The employee who showed us the laser pointer responded to a crack I made about finding a pointer that would put people's eyes out by telling me that pepper spray would be more effective and that he'd bought his girlfriend pepper spray because her previous boyfriend had raped her. (WHAT?!?!!? Yes, he said that.) Davie commented that my anthropological ways seem to attract a lot of randomass conversations. Today, SOMETHING was attracting random convos. Maybe women wandering circuits always attracts comment. Eventually, I made it back to the Caltrain for an uneventful ride of reading those STS workshop PDFs. At the end of the ride, I stood in the northernmost car staring at the tracks speeding under the train lit by train lights when one of the conductors came and had a chat, opening with the observation that my black ballet flats were not typical cycling shoes. (I was looking beauty queen with my helmet on.) I was weirded out thinking he was hitting on me but it turns out he grew up in Long Beach where I'm moving next year and he'd been into anthro as an undergrad. We had a nice chat and didn't exchange names.

Things I didn't get to do tonight: Flashdance in honor of MJ, Ambidextrous launch party, seeing Shawn S