BAY, BREAKERS, BEER

Yesterday was a beautiful day filled with strange new things. Thousands of people took to the streets simultaneously doing exactly the same thing, thus proving what totally unique individuals they were.
No, it was not a New Year's party, or Saint Patrick's Day. Or even Halloween.
[All also festivals of uniqueity at which everybody proves their individuality en masse. ]


Yesterday was the Bay to Breakers Race.

It was a very educational day. I learned that Wonderwoman lives across the street from me. Along with her twin sister, who has chubby thighs. They arrived back home from their jaunt looking absolutely pooped. Hot and sweaty, legs still tensely quivering from running up Hayes Street hill and completing the long slog to Ocean Beach. Eight miles in the hot sun, (ninety plus Fahrenheit), in full hearty-party togs.
Even those chubby thighs looked nice and well-exercised. Slick and glowing.
Beer is not good for rehydrating, by the way.

Wonderwoman (and her twin sister) live above the frat-boys. Please do not rent to twenty-somethings, they are loud, they drink too much, they dress badly, and they lower the tone of the neighborhood. They throw beer cans from the roof at people waiting for the bus at night. Might I suggest that you rent to young Cantonese ladies instead? They are a much better quality of people.
And they do not drink beer.


What else did we learn?

ONE: Somewhere near Wonderwoman (and her twin sister with the chubby thighs) is a colony of WASPixicans - twenty something white men who wear tourist sombreros and holler loudly as they return from the race, drenched in beer. Ay-ay-yay, ole.

TWO: There are real people, and then there are 'party blondes'. Party blondes can be heard from over a block away. They sound like geese. Loud, vulgar, geese.

We also learned that there were some sailors in town. That is to say, robust young girlies wearing tight shorts, white fishnet stockings, fetching little navy tunics, and the just cutest little sailor caps. I wish I had seen them, but I never watch the race.

[A friend was still speaking admiringly of them several hours after the encounter.]


And finally, we learned that Savage Kitten is convinced that I am nuts. Which has nothing to do with the race. Or beer.
Or even objective reality.

I had inadvertently left a wad of cash on the kitchen counter. She asked about it, and I explained that I had segregated out the nice crisp bills, leaving only the tacky and limp bills in my wallet.
She rolled her eyes.
Indeed, I had sorted them limpest to crispest.
Sigh, eye-roll.
By denomination.
Deep breath, sigh, eye-roll. Sigh again.
Straightening the corners carefully and aligning them precisely.
Energetic blinking, eye-rolls, asthmatic sound effects.
And yes, in each denomination, whether limp or crisp, it goes from limpest to crispest in the order in which I intend to spend them.
Urrgh, oop aack, eye-rolling frenzy. Aaaah.

As if her eye-rolling didn't say so plainly enough, she clarified at this point that in her estimation, I had completely lost it, gone round the bend.

She then brought up the time when I had requested a larger paperbag at the bookstore for my purchase, removed the new book, rotated it ninety degrees, carefully re-inserted it into the bag while making sure it was precisely positioned along the bottom edge, had folded over the bag to get an inch-wide flap along the top, then evenly folded that over to keep it secure and to give my fingers purchase, and then creased the bag above the top ridge of the book to make sure it didn't shift. Very methodically.
As I'm sure you understand, bags are best folded a certain way, with clean angles and symmetry. This has the benefit of making the eventually emptied bags stackable, or useful for organizing receipts and yellow sticky notes. Clearly labeled, of course.

According to her, my posture settled visibly after I had finished folding the bag, and I grunted 'mmph' in a very satisfied toad-like way. She also says the bookstore clerk observed all of this with eyes agog, flabbergasted. It was an astoundingly absurd performance, why, the bookstore clerk had probably never seen any thing so unusual!

"Don't be ridiculous, dear, he must have seen me do it HUNDREDS of times by now."

In retrospect, that could not have been the right thing to say. She reacted with a veritable eye-ball symphony, plus several deep sighs and throat noises.
I guess she just doesn't understand these things. Yet.

Somewhat related thereto, I still have a nice stack of the red paper bags that the bookstore used until they switched to black eighteen years ago. The red bags are very nice. I should count them again, just to make sure they're all still there.
The larger bag which Savage Kitten remembers is among them.