Spring.

Once again, sorry I haven’t written in a while.  I guess I haven’t had a lot on my mind lately.  Maybe I should buy a hat...I said maybe I should buy a hat!  Am I right?

Now that we have that knee-slapper out of the way, not too much is new around here, but I’m back and feeling refreshed after taking a few days off while my family visited.  We were able to explore a bit of San Francisco and I showed them around Oakland and my apartment.  We also went to Muir Woods and Stinson beach, which were both lovely.  The place we rented had a hot tub and I was reminded why people work real jobs--big props to my pops who does not volunteer his time.

It’s hard to believe how much of this year has passed, but it’s been great to get some nice spring weather in the bay area in recent weeks.  I’m starting to get excited about the year coming to an end, but I’m also a little nervous, as I don’t have a job lined up.  Like most of this year, not making any real money to speak of, it’s been a challenge to live in the present moment and trust that good things are ahead.  But I’ve tried for so long, why stop now?

Along the same lines, maybe it’s just my imagination, or merely a couple isolated incidents, but I feel like people in Oakland have been a little pricklier than normal.  And by “pricklier,” I mean that they’ve been giving me the middle finger and cursing at me lately.  My personal theory is that all of the talk in the media about the recession and unemployment puts people in a foul mood.  Whether that’s true I’m not sure, but it’s the theory that allows me to take it less personally.

The past two times I’ve taken a mid-day stroll to Starbucks I’ve had people ask me for money.  I politely declined both times.  The first time I was with two other people walking past Taco Bell and we told the man we didn’t have any money but that he should check out the free dining room at St. Vincent de Paul.  That only served to infuriate the man and he started shouting obscenities at us as we walked away.  Though, I guess I can understand--sometimes you really need a Chalupa and nothing else will do.  The other time I was walking back from Starbucks another man asked if I had any money and I said I didn’t, but this time the man didn’t even pause to let me tell him about the SVdP dining room before he launched into a mini-diatribe laced with a few choice racial slurs.

Also, a few weeks ago as I pulled off the highway and was stopped at a red light on Jackson St. when a man pulled up beside me, and decided to flip me the bird, apparently I hadn’t given him the proper amount of room to maneuver past me and make a right turn.  Oh wait, I did give him the proper amount of room, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to pull beside me and flip me the bird.

I won’t attempt to weave these stories into some sort of metaphor about social justice or any commentary on the state of Oakland.  I will only say that the next time you have the urge to curse at someone who won’t buy you a taco, or maybe another frustrating situation of greater significance, you should take a deep breath or two and maybe the world will be a better place.

Now for some SVdP news, I’d like to give a big blog shout out to my fellow volunteer, miss Lorelei Alvarez, who recently received funding for her graduate studies in social work at UC Berkeley.  Also, I’d like to say congrats on her two-year anniversary with her boyfriend Carlos--I give him two thumbs up.  What’s that I hear?  Oh yeah, the distinct sound of wedding bells!