The GGA Project -- Day #126 "The Setup"

Coming soon.

Well, pretty soon anyway.


Days later...One week and four days later to be exact...


Well.  It would seem I've been sitting on this post for quite some time.  I'd been almost religious in my devotion to getting blogs written within a day of the new activity's occurrence, but this one eluded me. It wasn't that I didn't have the time to write about the activity; I just wasn't sure what/how much I wanted to say.


Maybe I'm still not.


See, originally I'd had it all planned out that I'd write about checking out the dueling piano action at Los Gatos Brewing Company in downtown San Jose.  But as it turned out I wasn't even inside that restaurant long enough to say anything of substance about the experience.  So I was left with the option to write about what the real subject at hand was after all, which I'd been somewhat opposed to doing.


Today's New Activity: Being Sent (Brought) on a Blind Date


For probably two months now, my friend Kelsi, on behalf of her and my friend Jeff--her husband--has been telling me about a friend of theirs they wanted to set me up with.  They think they are somehow qualified to do this just because the last couple they set up got married last year.


Whatever.


At first I resisted on principle alone: I've never been set up with anybody and didn't think I liked the idea of it.


Then I resisted on more specific grounds.  I don't feel ready to start dating, and heavens-to-Betsy, though I've been separated for 10 months, my divorce is not final and that made this seem like a less-than-optimal time to start dating.


Then I resisted out of sheer nervousness at the idea of getting back out there, and doubt about the viability of this particular match.   The guy they wanted to set me up with was a few years younger than me, never married, and already dating a couple of women...not likely itching to embark on the kind of journey that dating me--at this moment in my life-- would be.  How to open this introduction?  "So, I hear you've got a not-quite-divorced, single Mom fetish.  Well buddy, you're in luck." (finishing with a wink).  Yeah.


Finally, I agreed to meet with Kelsi, Jeff, and the man-boy in question together for a night out, if mostly just to satisfy a curiosity: what kind of guy did they think was perfect for me?  They kept saying our senses of humor were good matches, and Kelsi assured me he was nerdy cute.  That's not a lot to go on, but a good start.  I like jokes.  I like nerdy cute.


The biggest downside to the whole prospect was that both parties knew our friends were attempting to set us up.  There was no way to casually pull this meeting off as a casual meeting.  It was a meeting with a very specific, pretty high-pressure purpose, and it was bound to affect the interaction all the way around.


Enter my try-new-things project.  It was time to suck it up.


Jeff and Kelsi did a fantastic job of ensuring the hangout went about as awkwardly as it could have gone while also attempting to mitigate that awkwardness as well they could.  We met at the restaurant where the dueling pianos were in full swing.  And we could have probably stayed there a while and eased into the night by mutually taking in this show of sorts.  But instead we went outside to the near-empty patio, where there was nothing to be done but to fill the space with the sounds of our own voices.  There was no buffer zone.


So Kelsi, always one to foster group conversation, took the first pregnant pause in conversation to say, "So, is this awkward enough for everybody?"  That was actually fine.  No problem stating the obvious.  It's a good idea.


But then, she took the next extended silence as her opportunity to say, "So ________, _______ is working on a project that she's blogging about.  Why don't you tell us about it, _______?"


Whoah.  Deer in the headlights.  What could I do but lean over, sideways hug her, and tell her how much I love her for her efforts.  It's tough to share personal information with a stranger on a prompt.


Jeff wasn't much better.  It happens that the date and I work for the same company.  So Jeff said, "Hey _______, ________ also works for _________."  In Jeff's defense, he definitely said this tongue-in-cheek, but it was still goofy.  "REAlly?!" I exclaimed.  "This is the very first I've heard of this."


At least we could laugh at the situation.  More opportunities arose when Jeff asked his buddy, "So _______, how old do you think _______ is?"  And then asked me, "So _________, how much do you think ________ weighs?"  You'd think all this pointing out of the awkward would have made the situation less so.


It didn't.


Eye contact was difficult to establish (from my end, it felt like too much pressure...too hard to speak directly to him when I knew K and J were watching and hoping to see sparks).  Also, we didn't seem able to land on a topic we could all connect on...not in this first meeting anyway.  There just ended up being a number of little side conversations.


All got more mellow and went more smoothly after Kelsi and Jeff left on account of needing to get their boys back from the babysitter, but that was a brief period because I had to get home in time for when my own baby would surely wake up in the middle of the night.


This about it felt good: it felt good to be able to say that to him, that I needed to get home to my baby, without any hesitation about how that truth would affect the outcome of the date...good to be comfortable in my own skin and in the skin of my life.


It also felt good to be able to walk away from that date and not give a lot of thought about how it went, what he thought of me, whether or not I'd be hearing from him.  I used to care too much about those things.  And not only can I not afford to anymore because I've got tinier fish to fry, I feel much more inclined to focus on the question of whether or not I liked him, if I focus on any part of it at all.


Still, it was a fun night and I am thankful to Kelsi and Jeff for dragging me out.  It made me feel alive to be out on a Saturday night with a young, single person, in downtown San Jose, which was teeming with Sharks fans just out of a game.


The reason I was so hesitant to write about the night was that I have never, in my 9 (!) years of blogging, written about my romantic life (apart from announcing my wedding, when it happened) and I don't plan to start now.  That is one part of my life I don't like to share.  I've never been a kiss-and-teller (maybe years later, but not in the thick of it!), and I would not want any aspect of my dating life to be affected by the idea that I may or may not write about it later.  So writing about this night was a first and a last.  It seemed a first blind date was pretty worth telling a bit about for the purpose of this project, and it's out of my system.


Happy lovin' to y'all :)

The GGA Project -- Day #67 "Latte and Some Help Writing my Last Will and Testament, Please"

My last year in college was probably the busiest year ever in my life.  I took 6 & 7 classes in the fall and spring semesters, respectively, worked all week as a tutor in the school's writing center, (wo)manned the desk in the Philosophy Department on Friday mornings, and then worked all weekend at Starbucks.  On top of those obligatory dibs on my time, I also had homework to do (tons of reading as an English major, of course), food to find and consume, and then the more fun task of carving time out to relax or take in a poetry reading here and there.  I write that now and think I must have been on coke!  Or Red Bull at least.  But honestly, it was just naturally exhilarating to have that much going on.  I can say it was one of the fullest and best years I've experienced.

Still, why in the world, in the midst of all that, would I elect to also join the Ethics Bowl, a debate team of sorts that met weekly to prepare for a regional and national tournament, in which we would debate opposing positions on current, highly controversial topics, using philosophical arguments?  Why would I do that?

Basically, I would do that because Ramon Jimenez (now Esquire) persuaded me to, and he's a persuasive individual--which is why he's likely to make an excellent lawyer.  Technically he already is a lawyer, but he hasn't yet spent much time in front of a judge, or any time at all in front of a jury.  And maybe he won't ever.  Not all lawyers get their "You can't handle the truth!" on (just think how many thousands of them are out there carefully crafting the licensing agreements you'll scroll over and agree to without so much as skimming).  For now, he's working part time doing the unglamorous work of collecting debts on behalf of a lumber company, and moonlighting as San Francisco's own in(coffee)-house counsel.

Today's New Activity: An Evening at the Offices of Cafe Lawyer

I reconnected with Ramon a few months back and caught up on what's gone on since we got our asses handed to us at the tournament in North Carolina, since one of our fellow team members (Jeff) happened to marry my best friend Kelsi, and since another of them went to law school and then promptly went back to his MMA, cage fighting ways (as The Hungarian Nightmare).

Turns out Ramon got his law degree from Santa Clara University, passed the Bar Exam last year, and has for the past few months been setting up shop in San Francisco area coffee shops, offering legal advice at the bargain price of $1 per minute.  $1 per minute!

I wish my own lawyer were so generous.

Ramon admits the Cafe Lawyer gig is gimicky.  He knows some people probably think he's a lunatic.  But the idea of offering legal services to the population at large--in a casual setting, and at an unbelievably good rate--was borne in a practical hour.  He has student loan debt after all, and attorneys find their clients almost purely through word of mouth (unless they are paying for spots advertising the chasing of ambulances during episodes of Judge Judy and Cheaters...not exactly appealing).  He hopes to do some good work for people, get repeat and referral business, and ideally be offered full-time employment as in-house counsel for a start up or other small business.  I'd say that in these days of rampant unemployment (especially high among recent law school graduates), it's a pretty sound business plan.

As I type this, I'm overhearing Ramon speak with a client who arranged to meet with him after coming across his website.  I'd feel bad about eavesdropping as these seemingly confidential concerns about photograph copyright are expressed, but hey, it's a freakin' coffee shop!  Obviously this client is okay with the idea of his business being out there in the public air, mixed in with the sounds of milk foaming, the Nas album playing overhead, and the click click clicking of the laptop keys of every single patron in this largish space.

Ramon tells me the couple who he was working with when I arrived this evening were discussing a very personal, highly sensitive matter, right there in the middle of the coffee shop.  I thought this very strange until he reminded me that people talk about such things with friends in the middle of coffee shops all the time.  In fact, I'm sure this approach is very appealing to people who are intimidated by the idea of retaining a lawyer and then having to spend time staring at the bad art on the walls of their offices (or maybe that's just my lawyer...I don't blame her...the senior attorney there picks it out).  And perhaps there's a bit of the idea that near-beggars can't be choosers at work there as well.

I think Ramon's idea is genius.  And I think San Francisco is the best possible place to pull it off.  The approach has a certain community-minded feel to it, as so much of what goes on in The City does.  Really, a LOT of people find themselves in need of legal advice, and my word is it expensive!  This way, he can keep his overheads ridiculously low (needing do no more than purchase a cup of coffee during any given session), learns about all different kinds of legal issues (since obviously he has to take what comes and research the issues in order to really help people), and meets interesting people along the way.  I'd personally much rather work in a coffee shop than pretty much anywhere else I can think of.

On my drive up to San Francisco tonight, I was talking on the phone to Kelsi, who just got her license as a Marriage and Family Therapist.  She asked if Ramon had ever heard of a Cafe Therapist.  We agree there is a market for this service as well.  Just as I've had *quick* legal question I thought could be answered without all the pomp and circumstance of hiring a permanent lawyer, I've also had a concern about my personal life that I'd love to run by a stranger in the interest of gaining new perspective.  I know there are professionals (likely long-established ones) in either of these fields who would be insulted by this approach, thinking it trivializes their work, but I think there's room, as well as a viable market, for all the approaches, and probably plenty of others, too.

Nothing says we have to keep doing things in the same (budget-braking) way, just because that's the way they've always been done.  And I love that so much of the business that comes Ramon's way comes via traffic on his website and Twitter feeds, Foursquare and Facebook check-ins.  These new social media means are helping with the important work of launching revolutions and toppling authoritarian regimes, but they're also helping a hard-working young man get a bite to eat.  I say kudos all the way around.

Hey, here's the Cafe Lawyer now!

If you see him at a coffee shop near you and decide to employ him, be sure to tell him the Cafe Blogger sent you.  Who knows?  You may even get a discount ;)

The GGA Project -- Day #27 "Three for One"

Good day for the new, apparently.

Today's (1st) New Activity: Lunch at Chutney

I love Indian/Pakistani food.  But due to some very, very strong associations I was heretofore not ready to deal with, I have been away from one of my favorite cuisines for some 6 months now!  Today, however, I was finally able to take that little jump and go in for the spice.  I chose a restaurant in Fremont that one of my coworkers is always raving about.

Chutney had a pretty ridiculously large menu, which sometimes make me leery.  How can a place do that many items well?  It doesn't really matter that they do them ALL well, though--just that they do whatever I ordered well.  Which they did.

First of all, there's nothing like a tub of fresh onion and tomato food accessories to welcome you in.  I love this about the Indian/Pakistani restaurants in Fremont: they have all sorts of self-serve fixins for patrons to just go to town on:

Isn't that beautiful?  Anyway, the Karahi Paneer special (Indian cheese in spicy masala with red bell peppers and serrano chilis) was great.  Sitting there, I couldn't help but feel sorry for all the non-spicy food that's been sustaining me while I waited out my Indo/Pak food association woes.  How sad and unworthy that food must have felt.  It's like the friend the wingman targets, who's just there to ensure things don't get too fun or interesting.

Yummmmmmmmyyyy...

Indian and Pakistani people will tell you it's practically sacrilegious (for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc, alike) to eat BOTH rice and naan with your meal.  I will tell you they don't know what they're missing.


I'll be back to Chutney for sure.


Moving right along....


Today's the birthday of my best gal, Kelsi.  She wanted to go check out a band playing at a wine bar in Willow Glen.  Sooooo...




Today's (2nd) New Activity: A Visit to Grapevine Wine Bar


Grapevine wine bar, Grapevine wine bar.  Say it 10 times, fast.


Kelsi's dad Doug is in town for a visit, and it was great to go out with the two of them and Kelsi's husband Jeff, because all my memories of Doug's visits involve music.  There was the time we karaoke'd at 7 Bamboo, the time we went to hear a friend's band at Gordon Biersch, and the time we were visiting Doug out in Arizona and had the *best fun* at a dueling piano bar in Tempe.


Tonight Kelsi thought we were in for some mellow jazz or something (I mean, you know...wine bar and all), but we were surprised to walk in and hear a Dave Matthews Band cover.  This was great news for me, as I've been groovin' on old DMB tunes a lot lately, especially digging this song:

And this one:

The band, a little trio with guitar, bass, and drums, was pretty good, and we all got the chance to catch up as well.  Nice little birthday outing.  All three of them had been up since very early with the young kids in Kelsi's house, so they made and early night of it.  That was all good, because I'd made tentative plans to round out the full day with


Today's (3rd) New Activity:  Dancing at The Saddle Rack


The Saddle Rack, as you may have guessed, is a country western bar.


Except that it seems it's not that at all.  I decided to join my former coworkers, Denise and Christine, in checking this place out when I saw their post about going, via Facebook earlier in the night. I'd been wanting to visit The Saddle Rack for years, but I fully expected it to be a foray into a whiskey and line-dancing world of boots and belt buckles, and Wrangler jeans with the tobacco can-imprinted rear pockets.


It was only partially that.


First of all, it is just shocking to me that this place even exists, especially in the East Bay, an area of Northern California that, by demographic reputation, you would least expect to find cowboys in.  And its location makes it seem as though it was meant to be kept a secret.  Maybe the East Bay's downlow cowboys had hoped to keep the place under wraps.  To get there, you take a turn off a pretty major street onto a small industrial sidestreet.  Then you keep driving way further than you think you should, late at night.  Keep going.....keep going...And then, out of nowhere, there appears a huge parking lot with football stadium-like lighting and spaces large enough to accommodate gigantic pickups, toolboxes, gun racks and all.


The place was immense.  I think that when I first walked in, I might have heard a country song.  Maybe two.  But the rest of the night was soundtracked by a great, female-vocalisted cover band that performed everything from Katy Perry to Def Leppard to The New Kids on the Block, and my personal favorite: A Billie Jean/Whoomp! There It Is mashup.  Oh, they did sing Friends in Low Places (inviting about 50 people on stage to sing along), but that's so mainstream I hardly even think of it as country.  And not that there's anything wrong with country.  I just don't feel particularly inclined to dance to it.


Anyway, one thing I really liked about this club was that there was so much entertainment beyond the band and dance floor.  There was a mechanical bull, of course.  I cannot BELIEVE how quickly people get whipped off that thing and get right back up and walk away.  Of course, there's probably a lot of bravado behind that (who knows what they feel like the next morning?).  So that was fun to watch.


Then there was this little nook where people laid back in an old barber's chair while a woman just basically poured shots into their mouths for as many seconds as they could handle.  Well, that wasn't so entertaining, just different.


There was a cage for dancing in (definitely not something I expected to find in a country bar), and an area seemingly reserved especially for line dancing (which, by the way, I really just don't understand.  I mean, even if you manage to master and perfect a line dance, what is the point?  People who are line dancing never look like they're having fun.  They look like they're just relieved to be doing the moves right).


There was a huge adjoining room with pool tables, and something I now believe should be in EVERY club: a snack bar!  They sold hot dogs and popcorn and yes(!) nachos with jalapeños.  Brilliant.


Though I was having a great time, I felt the urge to leave relatively early just because the baby's been teething and waking in the night.  I wanted to get home before he did so.  Still, I stuck around long enough for the band to turn the reigns over to a DJ who brought back some awesome Latin dancing memories for me with her first spin:

She followed that with a Michael Jackson "The Way You Make me Feel" partial sing-along, and then moved along with a little Cotton-Eyed Joe:

That song is so fun to dance to.  I figured that was a good way to close out the night, and left on that  high note :)


I'm glad I finally made it to The Saddle Rack.  I was a little skeptical when I thought it would be all about the line dancing, but it turned out to be just full of people who wanted to get their groove on in all sorts of ways.  It was the release I've kinda been searching for for a few weeks now, and how great to know this place exists so close to where I live.


Consider yourselves officially on notice, all you local readers: I WILL drag you all there eventually!

The GGA Project -- Day #1 "Gnocchi & Max"

Last night was my company's Christmas dinner.  It took place at Maggiano's Little Italy, which is my favorite Italian restaurant, which was awesome.  Even better, the opposite of what usually happens at these kinds of banquet-style functions occurred, in that the vegetarians--who typically get the shaft and end up with salad and bread, maybe a bland steamed veggie plate--were treated to WHATEVER WE WANTED from the regular menu, plus all the appetizers everyone else was getting, plus a vegetarian angel hair pasta and dessert and all that.  What's more, our server brought out the chef to take our orders personally, and they served us *before* they served the rest of the table.  It was a very nice departure from the norm.


Now, I have to confess that has absolutely nothing to do with this post, except as back story in an overkill kind of way.  So when they first brought me and my veggie coworker (who happened to be sitting next to me) our menus, I was tempted to skip the opening of it altogether, as all I've ever ordered at Maggiano's was fettuccine alfredo, which is consistently excellent.


But something clicked over in my mind during that moment and I had a strong reaction against that idea: the idea of getting the same thing I always get because it's safe and comfortable.  For the past five years, I have been doing a whole lot of safe things, in a limited number of limited ways, and I have to say it hasn't led to much in the way of growth, expanded experience, or even simple joy.


Very suddenly, fettuccine alfredo was sounding incredibly unappealing.  "You know what?," I told my coworker, "I've always, always ordered fettuccine alfredo."  I then shared some of the thoughts I've been having about changing things up, opening myself to new experiences, etc.  "Forget it, I said.  I'm ordering the gnocchi."


We laughed at the limited capacity this living-on-the-edge new menu choice had to improve my life in any significant way.  But I honestly felt power in taking that tiny step to break one repetitive pattern in my life.  That's what this blog is all about, anyway.  "One thousand steps starts with one."  If I can change that pattern of behavior, why can't I change all the behaviors that have held me back?


I've decided to embark on an adventure of the trying new things variety.  I was going to wait until the new year to do this, to make a clean Jan 1st - Dec 31st package of it, but that seemed suspiciously like something I would have done before, of a way I would have behaved before The Great Gnocchi Awakening (hereafter referred to as The GGA).


They say it takes 21 days to break a habit, right?  If so, I figure 365 should be all the better.


Now of course, I'm not talking skydiving on a daily basis or anything.  I imagine these experiences will encompass the profound and the shallow, the big and the small.


And speaking of the small...Today's new activity:  Holding a Newborn.  I visited my dear friends Kelsi and Jeff and their son Max today. He's 3 days old, and a tiny smidge of a guy with dark dark hair and the longest baby toes on God's green earth.  Ok, so I've held a newborn before, of course.  But I never held *this* newborn before.  After all, he's brand new!  It was not only wonderful to meet him, but it was wonderful to be able to hold him with a confidence I didn't have when I first held Kelsi's older son, and with the absence of any fear (now, having successfully navigated through the first year of my own baby's life).  It was a purely pleasant, joyful experience, and I'm so thrilled for Mama & Papa, and for my own chance to watch another baby grow and learn.

Look at those!  Watch out, Max.  Your Auntie Nicole is gonna bite those off!  :)


I'm looking forward to seeing where this project/experiment takes me.  And I'm about as open as a person can get to any suggestions for new activities from any of the people reading this blog :)  Looking for somebody to bake a mincemeat pie with, pull your rickshaw, volunteer at the wherever with?  I'm your woman.


And for the record, the gnocchi was fantastic.