A Cat By Any Other Name

      Still life with cats: the story of me

 

March 2, 2003

Not long enough

Friday night I pondered staying behind in San Francisco and joining a few of my coworkers for dinner, staying long enough so that when I finally left I’d avoid most of the traffic. But I was tired and although the thought of dinner was appealing, I just wanted to get home. My poor brain has […]

 

March 3, 2003

L is for Laughter

There is a woman I know who has practiced her laugh. Every time she hears or says something she considers funny, she opens her mouth, tilts her head back just a bit to the side, crinkles her nose, and gives a carefully rehearsed and feminine “ha ha ha”. I make the assumption that this laugh […]

 

March 4, 2003

H is for Hitchhiker

I have a confession to make. You have to understand that, for a (former but still sort of) computer nerd, this is a difficult thing to admit. But, well. I suppose it would have come out sooner or later.
Until recently, I had never read any books by Douglas Adams. Yes I know his series of […]

 

March 5, 2003

Socks and more sea critters

For some inexplicable reason, my socks have been slipping slowly down all day. We are not talking about the top of the sock just bunching up around the top of my shoe, like socks have a tendency to do when the elastic starts giving out. No, this was far more annoying. My socks kept creeping […]

 

March 6, 2003

E is for Elusive

One of the four managers here at Benthic Creatures is very much into Reiki. In fact, she is so in to Reiki that she has studied it intensely for nearly an entire decade, and has earned the title of Master Teacher.
Reiki, for those of you who are, like I was up until this week, wondering […]

 

March 7, 2003

F is for Flight

When I was very young, I was almost convinced that I could fly. There was a dream I would get occasionally that was so realistic that, when awake, I would stand at the top of the stairs, spread my arms, and try to talk myself into jumping, just because I was nearly sure I wouldn’t […]

 

March 8, 2003

C is for Caffeine

Finals week, freshman year in college. I am in the lounge with the others, draped across one of the ugly orange chairs that serve as dorm furniture. Like the rest of my young college cohorts I am bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and surrounded by untidy stacks of books and papers, interspersed with a rather […]

 

March 9, 2003

G is for Grace (or lack thereof)

I’ve always envied the women who could move with grace. They float across the room and you never hear *their* footsteps clumping on the floor. They never have bruises on their shins from stumbling into furniture. They don’t have to worry about tripping over invisible cracks in the sidewalk. Worse yet, they can even walk […]

 

March 10, 2003

San Francisco - the nights

Monday (last week): One of my coworkers desperately wanted to go to Bubba Gump’s, so after training was over and we’d all made it back to the hotel, we changed into walking shoes and all headed off down the street to Fisherman’s Wharf (the hotel is only a few blocks away).
It was chilly out; chilly […]

 

March 11, 2003

San Francisco - and the days

We arrived at the site at just after 7am each morning, piling into the van at the hotel and then making our slow way through traffic lights and too many cars until we reached the huge, ugly county offices for mollusks. By the time any of us had been there more than a day, we […]