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Howdy, this is my first attempt at a purely web page based form letter. For some reason I'm feeling more conscientious about boring people with my self-indulgent rotten-grammar stories. (I'm going to have to correct the boo-boos in the previous form letters if I ever work up the nerve reread them. Suggestions are appreciated.) I read a couple of modern styled novels recently which reminded me what a rotten writer I can be.
I've only taken one more camping trip and a drive to LA.
On the overnight hike I went with three friends: we saw a rattlesnake right off the trail and enjoyed the (Sykes) hot springs 10 miles into the wilderness near Big Sur.
Work is ... different. I haven't been looking for a real job for a little while, but I am beginning to get antsy. Yes I'm still temping with my ultimate slacker temp job. No accounting work for lawyers anymore (they did offer me a job since the woman I worked with is leaving, but the immediate boss could understand why I didn't want it.) Currently I get paid $17/hr to be a receptionist (which I really hate doing). Only 4 people are in the office and most of the time two of them are gone. I estimate I do about 3 hours of work a day. The rest of the time I email, read a couple of newspapers, work on my website (hence my HTML knowledge) and read news or sports stuff on the web. I should learn Javascript now.
With an annual salary that works out to be (after taxes) about $23,000/yr, a pittance for around here, I am actually paying my bills and then some. I'm out of my little credit card debt that moving here created. (I mention my earnings partially because I think people who get their money through work - as opposed to investments - should talk about their salaries. Workers should compare their salaries to know if they are truly being paid what the market will bear. Ignorance only benefits those with the wealth. Ok, end of polemic.)
Much of the savings is the teeny amount (again relative for around here) that I am paying for my rent. A measly $550/month gets me a place that overlooks Castro Avenue above a bar with the accompanying subwoofer's sounds from the bar, traffic noises including garbage trucks, car alarms, and people shouting in the middle of the night.) In fact the owner of the bar ("The Bar on Castro") was interviewed for an article in August 23rd's USA Today describing the influx of straight people in the Castro. Ok, I am feeling a little guilty. My housemates are great guys (and the is nice woman too).
Living in the Castro has been good. I enjoy being close to downtown and everything else. Playing the role as the token straight guy is not a problem. In fact I'm learning a lot. I've known that while in public areas my eyes might follow an attractive woman and now I know how it looks on the receiving end. It's fairly dumb and very obvious!
My present social life is not all that stellar, but it's fine. One of my housemates has digital cable so I've been watching some (too much) TV. I am reading a bit more. Whenever I read in my room I always had this nagging feeling that I'm missing something out in the rest of the social world, now I don't have that feeling. I can just look out my windows and see what seems to be a decent chunk of the world doing something. For some reason I can be quite comfortable reading.
A couple of weeks ago (August 13-15) I took a drive to LA to visit Anna (the friend from undergrad who traveled with me to DC in April) and do some of the things she wanted to do.
Namely - go to protests. To be honest I wasn't all that excited about protests, but meeting some of the people there and being involved did get me excited. Especially fun and interesting were the Billionaires for Bush (or Gore). They have a great website too. We went to a Green Party function (they don't know how to raise money: it cost $20 to get in, but add the costs of renting the location, the great food and throw in a free t-shirt and my guess is they lost money.)
Lots of different causes were represented, some I agree with and some I don't but it was a good time. The march on Saturday turned into a huge parade of people. I don't have much experience estimating crowd sizes but with streets filled with people I tried to get to the front unsuccessfully and still had to wait 20minutes for people to pass me by and I still didn't stick around for the end. Of course there was virtually no coverage in the national media save for the police crackdown (which Anna and I missed since we were getting something to eat.) The welts people showed us from rubber bullets that the police fired without warning (for at least one person we knew) looked pretty unpleasant.
My experience with Anna at the protests and the Shadow Convention was fine overall. (We started getting a melodrama together to perform, but we ran out of time and needed some other people to play some of the roles. Alas.) So I returned to San Francisco taking 101 (closer to the coast.) Stopped at Pismo Beach just because of the Bugs Bunny line used when he popped out of his hole in a cave (missed the turn at Albuquerque,) "Pismo Beach! And all the carrots we can ear!" Meanwhile though, things for Anna didn't go so well.
She told me she was going to borrow someone's bike and ride with critical mass after work. Here's the short version: riding with a police escort, the riders in an underpass were all arrested for blocking traffic and were kept in jail for 2 to 5 days. They were strip searched and humiliated. Now the bike Anna had borrowed has been impounded, a police record, and a cold from the rotten conditions in jail. For a better/more detailed account check out the page in my political section.
My next form letter will be about some exciting new job (I hope!)
Love and friendship,
James