Friday Morning and Saturday Night in the Adelaide

So basically, as if I haven't impressed it upon you enough, I live in a tv show. Not only are there the cubbies and the curtains, but oh, there are the characters. We play off each other in all our eccentric glory so well that sometimes I look around suspiciously wondering if this isn't, in fact, some carefully devised Truman show-esque plot-line...

Someday with the proper materials I hope that a cartoon series and/or chapter book can be spin out of this experience... but for now, all I have is a basic webcam and boundaries to respect. Much as I would love to have the handheld out when a fight breaks out in the kitchen, or weed brownies are in circulation, or someone is walking around the hostel clothed in only a sheet because all their belongings got stolen, or to document the infinite other absurd scenarios that are transpiring on a constant basis, I have to keep it confined to close acquaintances and quarters. So here you go!

Friday Morning:

Saturday Night:

Typical. Is all I have to say about that.

At the Office

Open for Business

A seasonal stint at Juicy Couture left me with a gigantic pair of red sparkly lips from their window display after working a late-night post-Christmas shift.

"Typical," everyone said when I came in with them.

I hung them outside my bunk, much to Luke's dismay. The more festive my bunk becomes, the more things there are for him to hit his head on. Or get entangled in. Or burned by. Or hit on the head with. Our canoodling sessions have become increasingly absurd, noisy, and complicated as we try to navigate around and within the streamers, computer and telephone charging cords, Christmas lights, stuffed animals, posters, perfume and wine bottles littering my shelf, and, of course, the various casitas and toys and balloons from Wells Fargo. We'll emerge from behind the curtains along with a wayward pony or two and a loud crashing sound as some decoration plummets onto the floor; it's more perfectly staged than any tv show.

As you can imagine, the neighbors are pretty unenthusiastic about the evolving aesthetic of Boppity Bear Enterprises, especially when it's 3 am and the only sound is the loud crash of Luke being taken out by some ornamental tin. And now there are thumps outside my bunk in the middle of the night, when someone collides with the lips on the way to the bathroom. All in all, there are a few parties who I can safely say will not be sorry to see me leave for my sublet in February.

As for Josh and Carl, my brotherly compatriots on either side, they fully support the huge lips hanging outside the bunk. Especially in conjunction with the pink lights turned on on the inside.

"Open for business, Liz?" They ask as they walk by. Sure am.

Golden Gate 8

Pony Thieves (Part Three)

While housekeeping, I found an abandoned pony on a bed, and that's how I got Tillie. Now I have three stuffed ponies and a flamingo, and I could not be more proud.

More Muir Woods

And of course, there was many a bear! : )

Pony Thieves (Part Two)

One day Luke came across a pony lying on the sofa, near Liz Lively’s computer, and he made the assumption that she had gotten another one from the bank to replace Nillie. The obvious course of action to take was to steal this one as well. Luke shoved the pony in the corner of the living room and set about making a ransom note. Unfortunately, the pony turned out not to belong to Liz Lively, but to a very sweet young man from France. The sweet young man from France had been down on his luck since living at the Adelaide. First he had gotten hit by a car. Then his pony had gotten stolen. He wrote a plaintive note (“Has anyone seen my peony?”) and hung it on the wall, where it was shortly covered by Luke’s caustic reply (“Your pony is gone for good this time! Mwahahaha....”)

One would think that Luke's course of action once he discovered his mistake would be to return the pony to its rightful owner. The sweet young man from France had bandages on his face. He was on crutches! He obviously needed the pony to help him through this time of distress. But Luke showed absolutely no signs of sound moral character or remorse; he not only kept the pony hostage over the next two weeks, but when he finally did, quite unceremoniously, return it, he did so while grumbling about the injustice of the whole situation.

"Liz Lively had a pony," he said. "The French kid gets one, and so does the girl from New Hampshire. What does the kid from Long Island get? Nothin'!"

And so on Saturday after I got my ballet paycheck I headed over to Wells Fargo to get him one. I had to open two new accounts to do so, thus splitting what meager savings I had four ways. But it was all worth it. Because that's the day I met Jessica, my version of Liz Lively's Daniel.

Jessica was very patient with me, explaining all the different options of the accounts I could open in order to get my stuffed pony, and drawing diagrams when I didn't understand how the money would be transferred, and repeating herself when my eyes glazed over, and sooner or later we had decided on a type of account and my pony was on the way and that's when we could get to the fun part, which was me telling her the stories of pony thievery, and the general hostel goings-on, and Boppity Bear Enterprises, and her giggling and saying that she'd never had so much fun opening an account, and could she bring me extra toys from the back room, and me saying yes PLEASE, and don't forget the PONY, and soon in front of me I had a Wells Fargo laundry bag and Wells Fargo electric guitar keychain and Wells Fargo balloons and a Wells Fargo pony, and she had Boppity Bear business cards, and we had one last giggle as we nicknamed my four accounts: Boppity Bear Savings, Boppity Bear Checking, Stuffed Pony Savings, and Stuffed Pony Checking.

I had to resist the urge to throw my arms around her in embrace before I left.

So that's how I got my own version of Liz Lively's Daniel the banker, and that's also how I got Frillie.

Muir Woods

Mamma Oehlschlaeger came to visit over Christmas, and we had a wonderful day gallavanting through the enchantment that is Muir Woods. I would love to go back sometime when there aren't throngs of tourist parents yelling at their children to LOOK at the BIG TREES...