in berkeley all lanes, are the bike lane. proceed with caution.

so it's christmas day and serious caffeine addictions like mine don't take holidays off. so out of sheer necessity, i have to drive into berkeley. becuase if nothing else, you can get coffee 24x7x365 in berkeley. so even though it's a car-hostile place (has anyone else seen that pack of wild bikes that takes up the whole street going 5 miles an hour... and you know they're just trying to piss you off because the one in the back has a camera, just waiting to catch you in a youtube worthy moment road rage...) anyhow, so despite the risks of driving in berkeley, i brave it, because i need coffee.

so i'm out driving, and this old school vw van (is there a new school one?) cuts me off.

and i'm about to honk...and i'm not really a honker, but this was ridiculous..the guy swerved AND slowed down. doesn't he know? cut-off and commit. don't cut off and hesitate. you did it, so follow thru. no-one likes a passive-aggressive driver.

so, i'm already annoyed that the scooby doo crime van almost hit me...but then i notice, he swerved to avoid hitting a biker. ah such a hippie. he made the berkeley choice (bikers over drivers - at all costs). so now that i've sized up the situation and decided it's a worthy infraction, i'm prepared to honk. this warrants a honk. not that the honk will do anything. but who cares. i want to honk...just to remind him that he had so many other choices....you can see the bike from half a block away... so change lanes earlier. or stop and wait for the lane to be clear...or just stay out of the bike lane (well nevermind that one, this is berkeley, so they're ALL the de-facto bike lane). but before i can honk, i need to complete my hippie profiling of this guy, so i check his bumper to see if he's a hybrid, electric or bio-diesel kind of hippie.

and that's when i see the bumper sticker.

honk if you're elvis!

ahh that hippie fucker. he cuts me off, then slows down, and i can't even honk at him without proclaiming that i in fact, am elvis.

so i didn't honk. i laughed. but i still try to avoid driving in berkeley. between the bikes, the non stop pedestrians jumping out like it's a drivers ed video and the meter maids on constant patrol, it's just too dangerous

cougar in training

so, i still get carded. all of the time. and not in that cute, i know you're on the dark side of your 20's so let me flatter you way...but in that, there is NO way you're old enough to drink, and i think this id is fake, kind of way....

so, i'm used to people thinking i'm forever 21...but this was a little ridiculous.

so i'm at peets having a late morning coffee date with this guy who's about 33. and his friend comes up and is like, hey, is this your niece? and i just kinda looked at him like, "huh? niece?"

and my friend was like, no she's not my niece...

so then the other guy looks at my friend all suspicious, looks at me, then looks at my friend and says "oh you better not!" like he was about to report him to "to catch a predator"

and i was like "WTF?" that was weird.

so then i saw the guy in peets the next day and he was like, so how old are you? and i was like, dude, i'm 27...closin in on the big three oh. ...don't be fooled by the wide eyes and innocent smile... he was like, no way...i thought you were 16.

and i was like really, 16? nice, that means i've got at least another 15 years before i'm the old woman in the club...and even better, since my face is frozen in time and stuck at 17, i'm going to make one hell of a cougar!

what's my secret?

grey goose and cynicism.

and also a drunkard

85%DRUNKARD


actually, the triva questions are pretty easy...it's not about how often you drink, but obvious stuff like potatoes can be made into what kind of liquor...

in case you didn't know...

I am 70% geek.

70% Geek
the question that really drove it home for me was..."have you ever solved a complex computing problem in the shower?"

for me, it's actually worse...i solved a resizing problem in flash in my sleep last nite. no i'm not saying it was so easy i could do it in my sleep...i mean, i wasted a perfectly good dream on Flash problems. the answer came to me in a dream.

and it was very dramatic. like some secret thing was being revealed to me from on high...and no, i didn't consider it a umm..."good" dream (u know what i mean here). I'm not *that* geeky.