Month: February 2005

The FAA Knew.

I have some notes sitting around for a blog entry I was planning on posting on March 11, three and a half years after 9/11, but today’s news is upsetting enough that I’ll blog about the topic now instead.

Here’s the notes I’d started on:

Sitting in a room in the library on campus, looking out a glass window at the hills of San Francisco, and listening to some Sara McLaughlin sharply brought to mind a moment from the last vacation I took before 9/11; a few days at a ritzy spa in Arizona with my mother & sister. The moment I am thinking of was towards the end of the trip. I had had a massage and was sitting in the quiet room of the spa, enjoying some tea and looking out another glass wall at a storm coming in over the mountains. I was relaxed, and at peace. And I’m feeling pretty good today, but it occurred to me as I sit here that in a very real way, I have never felt that good ever since 9/11. With three and a half years passed since that terrible day, I am starting to wonder if I ever will feel the same way again.

I’m not as bad as I was the first few months afterwards. The horror, the pain, the feeling that my world was ripped out by the roots — they do not grip me the way they did. I’ve had to work to get to that point. As with other subjects that I know will depress and upset me, I go out of my way to not awaken the pain. It’s a reasonably successful technique – whole days can go by without me thinking of that morning. And then I do, and the pain and fear and sorrow come back.

I’m unsure whether trying not to think about things that upset me is the best possible coping tactic, frankly. But it does get me through the days and allows me to function as a reasonably normal person, most of the time.

Today was one of those days when my coping skills failed me. The thought that maybe there really was enough information out there, that there was enough to warn people; that maybe, just maybe, this madness could have been averted makes me feel like hell.

Friday Cat Blogging

It’s been several weeks since I catblogged on a Friday. Gimli is about 10 months old now and has grown into the biggest cat in the house. Here he is, hanging out in the kitchen.

He’s still a very active kitten most of the time, but can also be very affectionate. His habit of grooming both people and other cats has not gone away and is very endearing. He has, thankfully, grown out of his former habit of chewing on my nose to wake me up.

Franken For Senate?

Is Al Franken going to run for the soon to be vacated Senate seat of Mark Dayton? I really hope not.

I have nothing against Franken. I enjoy his work and generally agree with his politics. But for him to seriously run for office would not be a good idea. I’m not up to speed on who might be an appropriate candidate (although the idea that David Wellstone might run sounded intriguing), but I’d definitely like to see someone less likely to be turned into fodder for a thousand fundrasing drives by the Right.

I could be wrong, of course. We shall see.

UPDATE: He’s not running.

Work / Life Update

I am settling more into a regular routine now, three weeks into school. Classes four days a week, work the other three. Which means I don’t really have any days off, but some days are lighter than others.

And some are more stressful. I’ve been at Starbucks three months now. I’m pretty comfortable doing the job most of the time, but the stress level has not significantly abated and I don’t think it’s going to. The store is quite high-volume – we can get as many as 100 customers an hour – and there’s the usual mix of personalities and staff drama to cope with. It can get hectic but it’s really not all that bad.

No, the real stress comes from being located in a less than pristine part of town (Market Street, not too far from the Tenderloin). On a daily if not hourly basis, we have to deal with people who come in and try to steal anything they can lay their hands on — from our tip jar to bags of whole coffee beans — to drunks who fall asleep in the cafe and piss all over themselves and our chairs, to my personal least-favorite: junkies who shoot up in the bathroom and leave blood splatters all over the place. Sometimes they’ll leave a used syringe as a parting gift. This last is particularly unpleasant, because since you don’t know what kind of diseases the junkie might have, we have to lock down the bathroom until we can do a major disinfecting scrubdown.

I’m a lifelong city-dweller, so being annoyed by homeless people is hardly new to me, but I have to say that the homeless we have to deal with here do seem to be more distressing than the ones I dealt with in New York. Granted I never worked in a Starbucks when I was in New York, so maybe I was just oblivious to it there. I don’t know. But as much as I enjoy slinging coffee, I would definitely be happier if I could do it someplace where I did not have to deal with junkies, people who piss themselves, and petty thieves all the time.

Plus I have a quiz tomorrow and I hope I’m going to do well on it. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had to study for this kind of test and I hope I’m retaining the right information from the readings assigned.