I went up to the City tonight to visit with Elina, have dinner, see her place, pet Mr. Kitty, talk about website designs and the like. I had intended to head up last week, but was thwarted first by work, then by a migraine. This week, today, however, I was successful in my journey. I, of course, took the train up. I'm starting to really, really like taking the train up. Talk about concentrated time to relax, accomplish tasks, and just mediate on nothing, watching the scenery out the window.

Instead of my usual hop-off-the-train and hustle-down-the-Embarcadero route, however, I hopped into a taxi (good lord, will I ever be rid of the need to use taxis - maybe I should start comparing taxis in various cities, most from a novice taxi rider's perspective, at least until I become an old hand at these taxi things), and rode a $7.60 ride to her place.

Her place is an incredibly adorable little one bedroom, with lots of late afternoon light, high ceilings, and cute nooks and closet spaces. It is, of course, also nicely decorated, as is the way of Elina. I suspect that, if she wants it, we could use her as the fourth lady flipping in our little band of adventurers. I'll have to check with Mom and Heather first.

After the little tour, and lots of Mr. Kitty snuggling, we dashed off to Flippers, a gourmet burger joint which also happened to have a fantastic array of vegetarian items available. My eggplant wrap? Can you say bigger than any burrito I've ever had? Yeah, I can say that, too.

I enjoy listening to Elina's stories, expecially the ones where she states the obvious stupidity of those around her. Most of our taxi ride over and the parts of dinner where I wasn't talking about ultimate or the client meeting this morning, was taken up by the story of Black Love Calendar. Oh, to have had a voice recorder for that conversation: I'd have a humourous post instead of a no-one-cares-what-you-had-for-dinner post.

Eh.

We were intending to take a taxi back to her place after dinner, but we became so engrossed with our conversation, and the brisk walk, that we forgot to stop and wave down a taxi. Which suited me just fine: I like the walking and the reminder that this city just isn't as big as some people think it is.

The walk back did, however, take time that we had intended to use discussing website designs, so upon arrival I just jumped into the discussion. I think it went really well, and I'm very excited to see what she designs. She commented on feeling nervous about designing a website, but I'm in the least bit nervous. All of the school projects she's shown me have been fabulous. Since I'll be translating it from design / image / PDF (<sarcasm>oh, joy, my favorite task, theming</sarcasm>) into HTML, any bad HTML will be totally my fault.

Which works for me.

I wasn't sure about the travel time back to the Caltrain station, so I left around 9:05 to catch a taxi back, nervous about being able to catch one quickly. Elina accompanied me downstairs and outside, then walked to the street and tapped on the taxi waiting at a light right in front of her place. What was I worried about again? I don't know, I made the train with ten minutes to spare.

Her taxi luck is just like that.

Megan, Mirabelle, Meter and I (oooooo, you could say the four lady M's!) went to Ikea today for lunch, because Ikea is just where you go for lunch with a 2 year old and a 2 month old. It's true. You knew that, right?

Mirabelle surprised me several times on the trip by asking me full questions complete with the proper intonations. Imagine a fifty year old woman projecting the question, "How are you, Kitt?" through a two year old girl's vocal cords, and you might get a hint of how wigged out I was at her questions.

It's neat watching her, though, seeing her develop a personality, much like watching Liza go from a toddler to this amazing little person. Not that I'd call her little to her face - she's practically to my shoulder already! Don't I feel short.

At one point during our Ikea adventure, Mirabelle and I decided to "run this way!" and off we went. Megan called after me a few moments later, "Hey, Kitt, do you have one of my kids?" I'm not sure how sheepishly I had to answer, "Yes, but she started it!"

I just received an email with the subject, "Register by Tomorrow and Get Reduced Admission to Content Delivery Economics (Apr. 22, NYC)."

The first paragraph read:

As worldwide media providers build out new digital services targeted
at the global entertainment marketplace, they are increasingly coming
to grips with the cost of digital media distribution. Are you in touch
with all the trends and important technology developments? Do you know
what's coming next?

My first thought about what's coming next was, "I'll stop being shocked that there's a conference for this," as I think there may be a conference for EVERYTHING if you look hard enough.

Okay, so, this obsessive, nearly OCD, urge to keep my tires rolling has gotten the better of me. I admit it. I finally admit it. Fine, I'm dumb.

On the way home from Santa Cruz, I was slowed and stopped by an accident on 17. Traffic wasn't exactly progressing at Kitt speeds to begin with, so when it slowed to five miles an hour at the summit coming over 17, I wasn't exactly a happy camper.

Not that I was upset. Not at all. I was too busy working on "relaxing" and "enjoying the drive" and "not stressing" to be upset with the drive. The stop and go traffic for two miles, however, did a number on my right hamstring, though, so my patience. I fired up the navigation system, entered Home as my destination, and told the route calculator to "avoid route from here for 2 miles... go!"

It found me a route at the next exit, Black Creek Road, up the mountain, along 35 and down into Los Gatos. Eh, how bad could that trip be? I wasn't sure where the accident was, however. At the rate I was going, I wouldn't be home until 5:13 PM, surely the other route would be faster, right?

So, just before the Black Creek Road exit, I bullied my way from the left lane to the exit lane, and exited. Unfortunately, I had turned off my navigation system during the intermediate stop and go traffic. By the time I had exited the road, I was unable to use the "avoid route from here" feature, and every route I took told me to turn around and get back on 17.

So, I went by memory.

I drove up Black Creek Road, zoom zoom zoom. A black Honda was following me remarkably closely, so I drove a little faster than I wanted to go to lose the car.

Until I caught up to the BMW in front of me slowed by the Cadillac in front of it. How the heck did that happen? When the Caddy pulled over for the three of us, and we all took off, I started looking for another place to pull over for the Honda. If I'm going miles out of my way to avoid a traffic accident, I'm going to enjoy the ride.

Which I did, until I turned onto 35 off Black Creek Road.

Have you driven along 35 off Black Creek Road? It's a windy one lane road that doesn't deserve the State Road designation. Sure, it's had lovely scenery alongside the road, but, goodness, there are a lot of scary blind turns on that road.

Along I went for a couple miles, not quite relaxing on the drive, not quite nerverous but not quite enjoying the drive. Somewhere along the drive, I heard on the talk radio traffic every eight minutes, that the accident had been cleared. Yay! Except I was on the wrong road at this point.

I continued along 35, stopping at a sign at Gist Road, wondering if this was the right hand turn I recalled from my view of the route. It didn't look like it, so I kept going straight.

The turn at the next stop sign looked promising. S.R. 35 turned into a two lane road in front of me, with a sign that read San Francisco ahead, Los Gatos to the right. I recalled the map said turn right to head into Los Gatos, to I turned right, and started heading down the mountain.

Right back to Black Creek Road.

Turns out, there are TWO Black Creek Roads, if you don't realize that one is Bear Creek Road and one is Black Road, and you've just mixed up the two, combining them in your mind. Tragically, they form the two legs of a triangle with 35 forming the third leg of the triangle, a very scary, windy third leg of the triangle. I had just driven 45 minutes, hopping out of the car to pee along the side of the road because the drive was taking too long, to end up getting back on 17 at the same place I had exited 15 miles before.

Sure, traffic was moving now. I should have stayed on 17 and not exited in the first place.

My arrival time back home after my little adventure? 5:12PM.

On my way home from the train station yesterday, I walked my usual route down Evelyn, but turned left at Charles. Not always the way I go, but eh, it worked. I noticed as I was walking, a man walking a ways in front of me. He was walking his dog, which appeared to be a chihuahua, or some other equally pocket sized dog. I was impressed with how well the tiny little dog kept up with man, though he wasn't walking particularly fast.

A few minutes later, I had caught up to where I saw the man and his dog, with his dog still there. As I approached, I realized the dog wasn't a chihuahua, it was a tiny puppy, about the size of my hand. As I stepped closer, it came bounding up to me. I was its new best friend.

The dog itself wasn't particularly cute as far as dogs go. It was, however, tiny. And therefore tiny-cute. And, of course, I had forgotten my camera.

The guy I saw with the dog, however, wasn't anywhere around. There was a bike standing in the middle of the sidewalk, looking like someone had dropped the kickstand and stepped away, intending on returning in a minute or so, but no actual person around.

Since this tiny little doggie was just as likely to go bounding into the street as it was to follow me, I stopped to pet it for a while, sitting on the sidewalk with this little bundle of love trying to climb up. The whole time I had three thoughts running through my head: "I wonder where her owner is," and "I shouldn't be playing with this dog, because I'm sure not to like the owner," and "Dog, don't pee on me."

Eventually, I realized I needed to get moving, since I had a client call in less than an hour and a forty-five minute walk that would be an hour walk if I didn't start moving now, and stood up. I knocked at the door of the house where I had just met the puppy, careful not to tread on the Harley Davidson door mat on the porch, only to be greated by the loud barking of a Doberman.

Great. This puppy is actually escaped dog food. Ugh.

The dog's person came to the door, opening it puzzled. "Yes?"

"Is this your puppy?" I asked, pointing down to the puppy trying to climb the porch step that was twice as tall as she was.

"What? No. I don't know whose it is," he answered. Before I could ask him if he had a suggestion for which direction I should start walking to knock on doors, another guy called out from the back room, "Is she asking about the puppy?"

The voice's owner came into the living room, over to the door, and explained the door belonged to the neighbors to the east of them, don't know how the dog got out. I had to wonder myself, as the first guy bent over and scooped up the puppy. What kind of life was this tiny creature in for, who had so innocently approached me looking for love, affection, maybe a few scratches behind the ears right there, no, over, over, ooooohhhhhhhhver, ah, yeah, right there. Her owner clearly couldn't keep a puppy inside, letting it wander. Was that good or bad? Was letting it go into the house with the Doberman growling at me from the couch going to be better than letting it wander into the street?

Too late to take it back and "accidently" walk home with it.

I left. I couldn't help but consider the parallels between that dog, and the woman I saw on Monday in the parking lot during lunch. I had gone to Fresh Choice for lunch (surprisingly, choosing to use my own dressing instead of the high-fructose-corn-syrup-flavored dressings normally there) and was walking into the restaurant when I saw a woman walking out to her car, carrying bags from the local crap store.

I had gone into the crap store a year or so ago once to see what it was, as it appeared to be a small chain of stores. I lasted all of maybe five minutes in there, realizing that the only merchandise they had was crap discounted from crap some other discount, left-overs store couldn't sell. I wish I were exaggerating when I say that, but some of the crap had sale stickers from other stores on them.

So, this woman was carrying bags full of crap from this crap store. Yeah, I was probably projecting, but I couldn't help but think, "Gah, I should help this woman. She's clearly down on her luck. Does she really think that stuff is any good?" I nearly said something, but didn't, choosing to stick my hands in my pockets and look away. I remembered the time when I went to Target to buy silverware after Guy and I had broken up, and I was moving back out on my own. I think that was one of the last times I've been bone deep lonely. I'm usually just fine by myself. I wasn't then. I projected that sense of loneliness onto this woman, deserved or not, from the purchases from the crap store and the beatup car she loaded her new crap into.

I could have gone up to her and said hello.

I chose to turn and walk away.

Walking away from the puppy felt much the same as doing nothing. This being approaching me, intentionally or not, looking for acceptance, comfort, love. How easy would it be to reach out to everyone and everything who needed help? How easy would it be to be lost in that sea of need, not being able to say no? Too easy. Way too easy.

I walked away.