The Book of Liz -- Vangie's play (Renegade Theatre Experiment)

My friend Vangie is smart, creative and talented. She's a founding member of a theater company (Renegade Theatre Experiment) in San Jose, and is appearing in "The Book of Liz", a very funny play written by David & Amy Sedaris. Her opening night performance was a tour de force; here she is (still in stage makeup) accepting accolades & bouquets from her adoring fans:

We were lucky that on the opening week of her play, Pat was in town to pack up & move the contents of his (and Dawn's) apartment, and was able to attend along with me, Sarah & Joe:

fun!

Gratitude

I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful for every day I spend swimming through this beautiful atmosphere, a shell-thin layer of breathable gas wrapped around our fragile little planet. I am grateful for the feeling I get when I come out of a tunnel on my motorcycle and the temperature drops ten degrees, like plunging into a cool pool of water. I am grateful for my health and my friends, my family and my career; all of which I take much too much for granted. I am grateful for love and for beauty, and for the ability to recognize them both.

I don't know who I am grateful to for these things, but gratitude is what I feel.

One day they will be gone but I will have had them and the memory will be almost as good; someday the memory, too, will be gone; but then so will I. In the meantime I will try harder to remember this feeling.

It's official, my car is totalled

My insurance company (AAA) is cutting me a check for blue book value on my car; they pressed the auto body shop to find used parts for repair but they couldn't bring the price down below total value even with that. Here's a closer look at the worst damage:

Neither AAA nor the Palo Alto police are interested in finding out anything about the white van with blacked-out windows that did this, at least not without a license plate. Can't really say I blame them too much. At least this is a non-fault payment, so my insurance rates won't go up (but I still lost $500 to the deductible, oh well).

For the past three years I've been meaning to get this bullet damage fixed:
...but now, of course, the wisdom of procrastination is made clear. And, given that the last time my car was shot before this was about twenty years ago, it looks like I have a good seventeen years before I get shot again. I'll be ready this time!

Don't park your car on Palo Alto Avenue

Sometime between 8AM and 10AM this morning this happened to my car:

Of course, the good news is that nobody was hurt, but this is never a fun thing to have happen. I'm guessing even money on totaling it out...blue book is around $10K, so I think they'll fix it. I guess I'm okay with that as long as it is fixed properly.

There were a couple of guys out front of my building when it happened, but all they could say was that it was an old beater white van (maybe a Ford); nobody got a plate number. And, without that, the police aren't even interested in showing up. Same with the insurance company.

Hey, at least I'll get the bullet in the door fixed now...