DAMN, erika.

Thanks, Deb.

100 words abot maps (title not included):

The San Francisco Bay Trail is over 230 miles (plus unimproved sections) that encircles the bay. It takes six maps to cover it in useful detail. In one corner of one map is a tiny bit highlighted in green. That’s the part I’ve walked.

It’s funny, but all that unhighlighted trail is not filling me with despair. I don’t feel compelled to calculate how long it will take me, at my current rate, to complete even one map. I look at that miniscule green area and I feel like water dropping on stone, and I will carve out a valley.

Ooh, I like that one, -t.

So do I. And I know exactly which map you're talking about, too; Nic's very fond of it.

Under the wire....

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

It comes as an attachment to email: Hey Deb, here's the directions to the Garcia Amphitheatre. It's in McLaren Park. You're down as VIP. See you there!

With the map on Ripper's passenger seat, I take 101 south to Paul. Paul to Mansell. Up the hill to Mansell to Shelley Drive.

I park. I can hear music.

The map doesn't show the security barricade. It doesn't show the twisty trail, opening out into the small curving theatre. It doesn't show the steep path down to the band's dressing room.

All roads lead to my history, and maybe to my future.

Challenge #124 (maps) is now closed.

In honor of the divine Erika, the Phoenix board, and, well, me and all the other cool September babies, Challenge #125 is birthday celebrations .

Victor, some evidence that I've read your column
Bear in mind I'm not quite a poet, though.

For Victor...
I’m an asshole because when I look good in my leather jacket, I rarely think about the cows...it’s that special for the plain girl to feel hot.

I’m an asshole every time I flip past Olbermann for something dumb on Nick at Nite I’ve even seen before, and then I use my insomnia as an excuse: Think too much and I might never sleep again, I weakly apologize, than mainline laugh tracks like a buffoon.

I’m an asshole every time I make fun of the well-intentioned granola women I know, spirit names and all, especially since I’m respectful to their faces.(Their clean, no-makeup-wearing, 1970-hair-having faces)
I’m an asshole every time I look through my crowd for somebody “worse off” than I.

There are thousands of ways not to be a hero every day...these are mine.

Huh. For some reason, the birthday topic doesn't seem to be sparking.

I have one, but it's well beyond depressing, and since I am not, at this precise moment in time, particularly depressed, I don't want to remember what I did on someone else's birthday on 24 February, 1976.

I know. We could change it to cake.

People like cake, right?