Quirkee.com

There are different bars for different sorts: the metro bars, the dive bars, the frat bars, the wine bars. There are different neighborhoods: the gay district, the hipster ‘hood, the yuppie precinct. You can select a home in your zone of choice, frequent the most categorically predictable restaurants and bars on that same block, and for nearly all of your day, avoid those parts of humanity that make you feel uneasy or self-conscious or, simply, not quite cool enough. (For me, tattoos inspire all aforementioned emotions. They make me excited and envious and threatened, all at once.) You can stay within your tidy little box of human experience, no problem. Most of the time.

New cardiovascular challenges. San Francisco's city planners disregarded all topographical factors when they plopped this city down on more than 50 hills, and my roommates apparently disregarded my atrophied lungs and calf muscles when they selected what would become my abode upon moving here - on the sheer face of one such incline.

These aren't the only adjustments. I have entered a sustainable utopia, where compost bins are cheerfully dealt out, gratis, to each residence, where recycling doesn't just refer to my best friend's annual closet clean-out (thanks, Janette!), and where I'm pretty sure the grocery clerk at Safeway gave me the stink-eye last week for buying inorganic fruit. (I believe in the environment! But I am on a budget!)

This past Sunday, as they do every third Sunday in May here, my new city of San Francisco put on a citywide, errr, "run."

At least, that's how Bay to Breakers started. An approximately 7-mile run from one end of SF to the other, where the city meets the Pacific Ocean. It was a great event. Then somebody thought to bring a flask. This seemed like an even better event. And since then it has... evolved.

Just like any city-sponsored event, the roads were blockaded from traffic. Local law enforcement agents were stationed regularly along the route. Area newspapers and members of the media brought out the cameras and microphones.

My apologies.

And my excuse.

To Quirkee readers.

Who I'm sure have been frothing mad at the absence of this column for a heartwrenching three weeks.

Whose lives I have disrupted irreparably (I imagine a good number had to call in sick from work, maybe others took paid time-off to try and seek me out, see if anything was wrong), whose Thursdays I've demolished (of course you wait anxiously for the website to update, your newsletter to arrive, and to navigate your pointer fervently to my byline).

I have naturally curly hair. This is brilliant because, of course, the whole trick to curls is don't touch them. Shower, apply product, don't do a damn thing. I haven't touched a hair brush in years.

Being lazy, a glutton for the Snooze button, and currently in a job where I can sport the "drowned rat" look all morning long with no reprimand, I've never really strayed from the above routine.

Having grown up with dogs, but moved onto a disorganized life of slow buzzes and laughable lack of routine, I just can't have one of my own. I thought that my boss' request to dog-sit and house-sit for a week would be a perfect solution. Fill my pooch quota. Grant me a lovely vacation mansion (the master bathroom is larger than my entire apartment and has a much nicer television mounted in the corner). Earn me some fast cash.

I was foolish.

There are a lot of things that scare the shit out of me regarding bridal showers. The estrogen levels, for one. Growing up with just one older brother as sole companion, I've learned long ago to shun and denounce silly things like estrogen. Then, of course, bridal showers carry with them the implications of marriage, commitment, and til-death-or-my-lawyer-does-us-part. No thank you.

But those fears are to be expected. Still being relatively new at this wedding thing, I was unaware of a final kick in the bustier: finding a gift.

I worked for a long time as a waitress here in Austin. And the restaurant, along with a really wonderful, eclectic set of waitstaff, boasted a pretty respectable juke box.

This is a blessing and a curse. Because, see, I have to carefully regulate my music consumption. I have a thing about music. In a Pavlov's dog type of way, my brain seems almost directly linked to chord progressions and soulful - alright, fine, cheesy - lyrics. I swear, play something peppy like "Can't Hurry Love" and I'm a hamster on amphetamines. Play Norah Jones and you might as well call in sick for me, cause I sure as hell don't have the where-with-all to pick up that cold, wretched, unloving phone and explain to my boss that I can't get out of bed.

I talk a lot about my quest for Enlightenment. I mean, a lot. And frankly, I’m sick of it.

So, since it’s Valentine’s Day and there’s plenty of other material out there to nauseate the masses, I’m going to respectfully withdraw the Enlightenment chatter.

This week, I’ll talk not about my quest for serenity, but rather, about my quest for a moderately successful romantic holiday. Because, let’s not lie about it, if there’s one thing that can take the wind out of my personal Enlightenment sails, one thing that can really just knock me on my ass in the midst of budding inspiration, it’s this silly love stuff. Like most of our species, I am, simply, ill-equipped to deal with relationships.