In The Beginning ( Our First Date 3 of 4 )

Prismacolor & Ink on 5 x 8 1/4 Moleskin sketch page

This is a sequence of scenes from my diary about us going for a drink after the blues dance class.   We walked down Harrison from 9th Street talking about everything from who we were to delusions of grandeur.  We made our way to Howard and New Montgomery.  As we walked a short bit down New Montgomery I pointed to a set of window on the fourth floor of the Hallmark building.  That my office up there where.  We turned down Minna and stopped off for a drink to warm us up from our walk in San Francisco's winter night air.   Time was the farthest from our minds as we delved into personal categories as topics of conversation.  When we did check the time we realized she had missed the last BART train home.  That was a problem, I was at the time being couch hopping and sleeping in the backseat of my car till I found a place to rent in the San Francisco, so I didn't have a place for us to go.  Is was getting late so we made our way to the only place I did have, work.   

In The Beginning ( Our First Date 1 of 4 )

Prismacolor & Ink on 5 x 8 1/4 Moleskin sketch page

This is a sequence of scenes from my diary about how Heather and I met, our interactions up to our first date and our first date.  It all started at 149 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco on the 4th floor offices of Perpetual Entertainment.  I was on a break perusing Match.com's vast database of single women in San Francisco when I came across this amazing looking woman in a teal dress, hair seductively covering half her face and playing a guitar.  I immediately took to reading the bio of this woman who calls herself lyric541.  WOW! Beautiful, artistic and smart.  I winked at her and she winked back.  I wasted no time and e-mailed her.  I crossed my fingers that she would respond with a hint to pursue.  Hours later there was an email in my inbox.  I read and two lines in I had to standup because I couldn't believe what I just read.  She said, "I have this inkling that we have very little in common....  You know those little graphs on the side....  we have like 15 matches.... that might be the lowest I've ever seen it go, and I never put much weight into it before, but...."  She did save it by asking if I dance.  Who was this woman that would take a dating website so serious.  I cooled down and responded with the words that she admitted hooked her, "Inkling Shminkling.  I do dance."

My civic responsibility

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This is a series of scenes from my diary about our experience and excitement voting during the 2008 election.  The morning started as every work morning, behind schedule.  We received a a phone call from Chelsey that she was on her way over to car pool into work with us.  I told her Heather was getting ready and that we wanted to vote before going into work. She asked if I or Heather would call their dad and tell him that they would be late because of voting.  I called him and told him we were going to vote.  While waiting for Heather to finish getting ready and for Chelsey to get there, I pulled out the laptop to look at the 12 California initiatives on the ballet and make a cheat sheet so voting would go quickly.  Heather finish getting ready and we rushed out to the car and I called Chelsey to see where she was.  It turns out she went back home because she didn't want to wait for us.  So we waited in the car till she got there.  We went to a grade school.  There were these kind volunteers that helped us.  It ends up that we had gone to the wrong voting place because when they checked for our names they didn't have us on their list.  We filled out a paper our paperwork to vote there and all three of us were off voting in our own personal booth.  We shared the cheat sheet by passing it to each other as each of us finished with it.  On our way out we stuffed our ballets into our packet and deposited it into a box.  We each received a voter sticker that we proudly placed on our chest like a boy-scout (and in this case a girl-scout) brandishing a newly awarded merit badge.  As we walked out of the voting room the sun illuminated the scene of the three superheroes who had just done their civic duty.  When I was in my office that morning, Stan my office land lord poked his head into my studio and asked, "Did you do your legal duty this morning?"  I was proud to say, "why yes I did and I have the sticker to prove it." 

Missed Meeting

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This is a sequence of scenes from my diary about us commuting to Emeryville after work in the worst downtown traffic ever.  Heather had an appointment to meet with a music marketer which she never made it to even though she gave us a 2 hour buffer.  Below are all the reasons why we didn't make, but #1 is the main reason.

1. I left my office 30-min late from my work even after she had IM'd a reminder.

2. I had to improvise a new route from my office to her work because my usual rout involves using Folsom St., a major road to the Bay Bridge that was backed up.

3. It took us 1 hour to get from her work to the Bay Bridge.

Separate (Blue Rabbit t-shirt design)

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This is a design I drew from an idea Heather had for t-shirts to sell at her band, Blue Rabbit, CD release show on Nov. 16th at Hotel Utah in San Francisco. 

Dancing And Eating ( Cow Head Lie 2 of ? )

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Sunlight streams through the tall, professionally-cleaned windows into the freshly maid-scoured kitchen. Somebody sure had a sappy rehearsal dinner mix, I think, because all sorts of feel-good couply stuff comes on until we find ourselves having to do a little dance. In between the stovetop and the coffee maker counter we are pressed together in classic form – woman’s right hand up in his, her left arm over his shoulder - and we’re be-bopping away to really, the worst thing - what’s it called? - every boy around the world…something something...Dancing in the Streets? I’m just about to think horrible thoughts about this song when suddenly, twirling around in his arms through the buttery bacon mist and sunlit coffee steam, I feel instead like the song is brilliant. Every boy around the world SHOULD grab a girl, I’m thinking. Yes! No wonder everyone loves this song, it’s true! Our t-shirted hearts are pressing, and we are moving in a simple two-step circle. And even though I’m in clumsy clogs, my sweatpants are slipping off, and I trip on the floor mat that gets twisted up between our feet, I keep following his lead and I even rest my head on his shoulder for a second. I relish how I feel in his arms, how he feels like a man when he holds me. Not like a boy, not like a liar.

Text by Heather Anderson

Music To Cook By ( Cow Head Lie 1 of ? )

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We’ve got their Ipod player piping beautifully out of its $500 Bose speaker set, a play list we found called “Chris’ Rehearsal Dinner”. That could mean my sister’s recent ex-husband Chris, or Jennifer’s son, my pseudo-stepbrother Chris. After the third pop country song comes on, I decide it’s the latter. Danny keeps reaching his finger up to the Ipod controls on top of the fridge to skip us through any of the less-than-desirable numbers, like the pop country, apparently. I only just start to recognize Faith Hill or Tim McGraw’s voice and then – skip - he reaches up and gives them the finger. I’m glad when he flips through the beginnings of a bunch of crap songs and then stops on a track I love. The tension of wondering when he’ll stop feels like watching a roulette wheel click to a halt, and I catch myself being gratefully thrilled for the tiniest indications of shared taste, thinking thoughts like “Oh thank god, he stopped on REM’s ‘Night Swimming’.” This is what happens, I guess, when you spend two months getting to know someone and the third month unlearning what you thought you knew.

Text by Heather Anderson

Delivery Drive ( People At Our Door 1 of 3 )

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This is a scene from my diary about us being out of food in the house and too lazy to go anywhere.  We ordered food from a local restaurant using takeout-taxi.  The driver knocked on our door and I opened it and there stood this out of breath, tall and thin 80 year-old man standing there with two large insulated containers that he lugged up the flight of stairs to our door.  I instantly lost my apatite assuming that this man had to work at this job and at his age to probably just to get by.  My girlfriend yelled as she walked down the hallway, "I have the tip."  When she was in view of our food deliver I could tell by the look on her face she felt the same way.  She faced me and said, "I'm going to find more cash for a tip."  After finishing our business with the delivery driver we shut the door and both agreed, that was very depressing.

Sad Salesman ( People At Our Door 3 of 3 )

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This is a scene from my diary about a window salesman that came to our apartment to give us a free estimate for replacing 3 windows and a sliding door.  He measured our window and then showed us the differences between the cheap product and his product.   We pointed out that our neighbor had just installed windows himself and had paid $600.00 for all 3 total.  He took a look out our front window and said, "those are the cheap windows, my product is going to run you a lot more."  He then begun to price out how much it was going to cost us.  The total came to $13,000.00, but after our mouths hit the floor and we explained our situation he gave us what he called, "you would have to be family to get this discount."  After he calculated the discount we were looking at a $8,000.00 total.  We told him we would have to think about it and helped him grab his things.  He told us it's hard times for everyone and added a few of his own depressing times stories as we he made he way out the door.  After we shut the door we looked at each and agreed that it seemed like everyone that comes to our door seemed to have a sad story.

Bass-Playing Plumber ( People At Our Door 2 of 3 )

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This is a series of scenes from my diary about a plumber that came to fix our tub.  He was very high energy, chatty and a bass player for a band that had a Myspace page that he had never seen before until I visited it and showed him on my computer.  He had the most dirtiest hands in the world, but I didn't really notice them till he had them all over my pristine US Fender P-Bass.