On the heels of my previous $100 "donation" to the city of San Francisco, I will shortly be making another $40 donation in the form of a street sweeping ticket. This one was totally my fault, as I just forgot to move my car. Maybe if I make enough donations, I'll get a shiny yellow boot for my car.

Uploaded to Flickr on 28th January, 2008.

The hardest thing is that I can't explain to him that I'm trying to help him.

I will shortly be making a $100 donation to the city of San Francisco in the form of a parking ticket I got last night for parking on the sidewalk. There are two driveway spots in front of our apartment building that we can park in, and when I can, I park across them, but when there's no parking, I'll park in them, perpendicular to the sidewalk, but not blocking the sidewalk. I thought that parking on the sidewalk was only illegal if there wasn't enough room for a wheelchair to pass (there was), but according to vehicle code 22500(f), it's apparently illegal to park on any part of the sidewalk. Even so, I don't really think it was in the spirit of the law for me to get the ticket.

I spent the day in the South Bay today because Enzo had a grooming appointment. I had lunch with Peter and Crystal at Sushi Tomi, then Babs joined us for some climbing at Planet Granite in Sunnyvale. Even though I'm a weak baby (I'm climbing a full grade lower than I was at my peak), I had a lot of fun. Hopefully after work dies down, I'll be able to resume my regular climbing schedule. I did, however, notice that my harness was a wee bit tighter than it used to be... I should really get back to running.

I've been watching Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. It's amazing to me that as advanced as the terminator robots are, they still haven't mastered crossing the street without getting hit by cars.

Finally, as I type I'm watching Underworld: Evolution and it's terrible.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the awkward turtle is a hand gesture used to signal an awkward moment in a conversation or interaction with someone. The hope is that its use will cause a twitter of laughter throughout the group, therefore diffusing the awkwardness and restarting the conversation. It can also be used as a silent signal of awkwardness, unseen to the origin of the awkwardness. Someone has been kind enough to demonstrate the awkward turtle on YouTube:

Peter introduced me to the awkward turtle about a month ago, but its use really took off during the ski trip this past weekend, where the awkward turtle made several appearances after I explained its use to some of my friends. Over the weekend I also came up with a variation called the awkward whale. In situations where the degree of awkwardness is so overwhelming that the awkward turtle is insufficient, it can be escalated to the awkward whale, which basically involves windmilling your arms forward in a scaled-up, full-body version of the awkward turtle.

(Incidentally, I cannot for the life of me find any information about the true origin of the awkward turtle. If you have any insight, please comment here.)

Edit: It was explained to me by Yar, Jan, and Peter that the turtle is meant to be flailing around on his back, hence the awkwardness. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused over the weekend by saying that it was a sea turtle swimming around. Which, as Yar pointed out, is not very awkward.

Anyway, the ski trip was super fun this year, and I think I even somehow improved at snowboarding, which is pretty remarkable considering it's been a year since I last went. We also played a lot of Rock Band, where I got through a few songs on the Hard difficulty. It was the most accomplished weekend ever, basically.

Good Thing: Enzo is smart enough to wake me up if he has to go outside during the night.

Bad Thing: The reason he had to go outside was that he had explosive diarrhea. 5 times.

At least I have a backyard...

I had an epiphany on Saturday during a marathon dual bar/bat mitzvah, which lasted (admittedly with breaks) from 10am - 10pm. It was pretty intense. I think I may have accidentally converted to Judaism at some point during the day.

Anyway, between all the talk of importance of family and education, an explanation of why you should give monetary gifts in multiples of 18 (chai, meaning life, has the value of 18), and capped off with frenzied dancing, singing, and lifting the honorees of the night up on chairs and parading them around the room, I came to a realization: Jews are unrepressed Chinese people.

Think about it.

Because I can, in bullet form:

• Dear San Francisco: I like you, but why must you be so...San Francisco? For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, please examine Measure C. Get a job, you hippies.
• I have been working a lot. Consequently, I have been exercising...not at all. This would probably be a good time to put into effect some New Years resolutions.
• I should probably stop flipping off people who tailgate me, but on the other hand, they should probably stop tailgating me.
• It's definitely time for a musical spring cleaning -- I've been listening to my iPod on shuffle during my commute, and only recognize about 40% of the songs.
• Said commute would be much better if people would stop crashing their cars into things on the highway.

Credit goes to PRP for the hairstyle.

Uploaded to Flickr on 5th January, 2008.

For those of you not in the Bay Area, we're currently being hit

...while I was typing that sentence, we had a fire alarm go off, and had to go outside.

Anyway, we're currently being hit by one of the biggest, if not the biggest storm I can remember since coming to the Bay Area nine years (omgit'sbeennineyears) ago. There have been power outages, flooding, and road closures all over, but as of this morning, my neighborhood was relatively okay, although Enzo was pretty unhappy on his walk.

A belated Happy 2008 to everyone! I had a great break filled with food, friends, and family (as all good vacations are), and hope you did, too.