Signs of Chaos, Signs of Chance, Signs of Structure

Not that I tend to believe in signs of the apocalypse as more than fodder for the thus-named section of Sports Illustrated--a weekly one-shot example of something outrageous, generally connected to sports--but the last several days have offered up several incidents that are just plain weird, crazy, eerie, however you want to describe them.

1) Thursday night, I'm walking from O'Farrell Street down Powell to take BART out to the Mission to Marina's apartment, when I notice a long line of cable cars in holding pattern, waiting to proceed into the final corridor for the cable car turnaround in the big plaza on Market Street. At first, I figure it has to do with a high demand for available cable cars for tourists fresh from the authentic San Francisco experience of shopping in the Westfield Centre, complete with a fancy European spelling of 'mall', not to mention a Nordstroms.

But no. As I cross Ellis Street and get into the pedestrian plaza which allows no traffic save the cable cars, I see a perimeter of police caution tape surrounding two cable cars, throngs of camera-toting rubberneckers, and, as I reach a certain angle, the taxi cab that somehow managed to turn into this corridor and crash into two stopped cable cars.

I don't care if your passengers were in a hurry to get to the airport, as my friends heard later; if you drive a taxi in this city, you really ought to be aware of where the cable cars are going to be, especially in such a well-known setting. How do you NOT know to not make that turn?

2) Friday afternoon after lunch with Marina, I walk her to her car and then take a leisurely stroll around the block, which takes me up the hill behind the UCSF Laurel Heights campus. At the top, looking east towards downtown and Cathedral Hill, I see an ash-grey plume of smoke towering into the sky, which is rarely a positive thing. As I head back to work, I see the engine from Station 10 tearing away, siren blaring.

I find out later there has been an underground explosion of unknown origin at O'Farrell and Polk, and an exclusion zone of a few blocks in diameter is maintained for much of the afternoon. It's comforting to think that there is a possibility of the city's infrastructure just suddenly exploding under your feet.

3) Saturday afternoon, after we learned to play croquet (for which our anti-colonialist Filipino friend chided us while wearing a Ralph Lauren polo shirt), we drove to Berkeley for lunch on the patio at Jupiter, surrounded by trellises of climbing flowers, Marina's sister and mom and nephew, and Nephew Boden's latest gaggle of charmed female fans. Leaving them to the shopping at Urban Outfitters, I wend my way back to the BART Station, where, while waiting for the train to take me back to the city to watch the U.S.-Honduras World Cup Qualifier, I hear a sudden, sharp bang, followed by a subtle vibration. An earthquake delays everything for ten to fifteen minutes while they monitor for aftershocks.

It is tempting to link the these three events together into a narrative of doom, but really, the latter is just typical geological activity, and the first two just ordinary examples of the failings of human beings and/or our technology.

4) And on the more cheerful side, on our walk back from the Sunday Streets festivities today, we passed a street sign indicating the end of Lucky Street, a rather down-trodden alley, from what we could see. We turned the corner, and I promptly spied a lucky penny. Take that for what it is worth. One cent, in this case, unless you choose to be more metaphysical about it.

Rolling The Coins of One's Life, Or Frugality In The Modern Era

Tonight, after running a space heater for a bit, which naturally caused my CD player to start detecting CDs successfully again, I sipped some wine and gathered up three rolls worth of dimes and one roll of nickels, preparatory to depositing them to my account tomorrow. All in all, it took maybe forty minutes, maybe an hour, because I was a bit tipsy. I spent several minutes with my fingers trapped inside the coin rollers, as if they were Chinese finger cuffs. Totally the wine's fault, that: it's not that I'm naturally uncoordinated or anything.

Really.

Even so, you would have to say that accumulating $17 while drinking wine is a pretty good hourly wage.

We'll ignore the fact that this change was mine to begin with, so I wasn't technically earning new money.

We'll also ignore the fact that earlier tonight, in the space of about ten minutes, I spent ten dollars on wine, cookies, and a lottery ticket, and also made an inquiry into a special order at a wine and liquor store that could cost $38 plus taxes.

Those details do not further the story, so shall be omitted.

How many people actually do anything with spare change? Oh, there are the change counters at some banks and at some stores. But how many people just let their change sit there doing nothing? No wonder pennies have been rumored to be on their way out for years. If currency isn't being spent, does it have any value?

I've mentioned before the interesting manifestations I have witnessed of humanity's version of frugality: selling junk food to strangers on a bus, swiping used food off a restaurant's deserted table, etc. What are some of the new details you pay attention to in calculating a budget these days? I've cancelled a subscription to a magazine I never finish reading anyway; I've preemptively cancelled my Amazon Prime membership so it won't renew this fall--shop locally, spend less, I say--Amazon makes it too easy to spend.

I've even gone through my bookshelves to see if there are books that, if I'm honest with myself, I won't ever read again, and that I might be able to trade in to a used book store for credit for other used books (I've found three so far; if you knew my pack rat tendencies when it comes to books, you would be shocked, believe me).

On the flip side, I also spent $18 on the new Green Day CD at a local record store, when I could have bought it for $10 through Amazon, so how frugal am I being? Do I get frugal spirit points for shopping locally? Or at least good karma?

But back to my original point, or my question to my readers, rather: are there any interesting, subtle ways that you have found to be more efficient in your spending these days?