“There Are Those People Who Really Touch Your Life”

or the alternative title, “Saying Good-Bye Sucks So I Refuse To Do It”

When I walked into work yesterday morning, I had no idea that I was going to have to say good-bye to someone about whom I care so much. You see, one of the partners I worked with for the past seven plus years (I’ll call him “K”) announced that yesterday was going to be his last day. We had known that he was going to be leaving because of . . . well, let’s just say we knew that he was leaving and it wasn’t under ideal circumstances. But it still was a shock and one of the saddest days I’ve had here at work.

K was always more than just a partner that I worked for – he was always a true friend. We went through some of the craziest times and the craziest cases during the last seven years. Through all of the frustration and stress, and yes, sometimes anger, we still managed to eventually smile and laugh again. Ultimately, it made us closer and it made us better friends. All of that made yesterday so much more difficult.

I have no intention of letting K slip out of my life, and I’m thrilled to know that he’s excited about his next move. I also try to take comfort in knowing that our paths will always be intertwined as we go on with our lives and careers. But the pain and sadness still creep in like a fog. That’s inevitable. For now I’m going to take a stance and say that I’m not really willing to say ‘good-bye.’ I am, however, willing to say ‘see you later’ because I guarantee that we will always be friends.

Thank you K, for touching my life. I’m a better person for having the opportunity to know you and your family. I’ll see you later.

“Picture Yourself as a Steamed Lobster . . . Now Be a Steamed Lobster”

or the alternative title “You Want Me To Bend What and Put What Where How?!?”

My dear friend and co-worker somehow convinced me that taking a Bikram yoga class with her would be a good thing. And for those of you unfamiliar with Bikram, the word translates to “hot” or “fire”, and it’s yoga that’s done in a 110 degree room with at least 40% humidity with a whole bunch of other sweating people. Who comes up with this messed up stuff?!? Oh, some guy in L.A. in the early 1970s (thanks Wikipedia!). Well, let me tell you that when you’re big boned like me, you’re just not going to be as flexible as other folks. But that’s okay because I was willing to give it my all on a cold April night in Berkeley.

My journey of a thousand sweat beads began when I walked into the front door of the business on Shattuck in Berkeley and immediately looked through the glass window where the earlier class was still going on. It was then that I noticed that each and every person in the room was sweating like a pig in a bacon factory. They were absolutely dripping and all I could think was GROSS!!!

My friend arrived soon thereafter and after putting our stuff away, we walked to the sweatlodge of a room. Before opening the door, my friend simply said “brace yourself for this”. Well, I failed to truly understand that warning until I stepped in and the heat of a thousand suns hit me in the face and the sweat of a thousand armpits burned my olfactory receptors. In his book, Dante described nine circles of hell, but had Bikram yoga existed during Dante’s lifetime, he would have included a tenth circle.

But I dug in and decided to try my best. My goal was to make it through the class without giving up or passing out. In my head, both would be considered a failure.

So, I listened to the tiny little woman barking out fast, authoritative orders as I tried to bend in ways that weren’t possible. The best still had to be when we were all on our stomachs with our hands out to the side on the floor. She barked out to LIFT your chest off the floor and to LIFT your abdomen off the floor. And as she further barked at us to keep our heads up and look forward and HOLD, HOLD, HOLD, I looked down and thought to myself ‘how the hell am I suppose to lift my abdomen off the floor when I can’t even get my boobs off the floor?!?’

Despite all of the unspoken protests that went through my head, and despite not being able to do most of the moves, I made it through the whole 90 minutes. The most important thing is that I tried, and I survived. And as I was driving home that night, still sweating like the aforementioned pig, I realized that I actually enjoyed the whole thing. Sure, I’m not very bendy. Sure the idea of having to lay on the mat near a floor that's riddled with tens of thousands of fallen sweat beads is one of the grossest things I can think of (and I can think of a lot of gross things). And sure I was sore for a full week after that 90 minutes of tropical torture. But I felt great, both physically and mentally. I survived the class without quitting, and I got an incredible workout.

So, my fellow Bikram yogaers, make room for Christy, because her quest for inner peace and complete bendiness has only just begun.

"I Just Got Passed By the Fat Chick!"

or "Just Because I’m Fat Doesn’t Mean I’m Out of Shape"

I love hiking. It calms me. It makes me feel free and relaxed. It makes me forget my stress. It helps me do some deep thinking while getting some exercise. Now, if I could only figure out how to make everyone else disappear.

I’m not a small woman by any means and with 50 extra pounds on me, I think people are surprised that I can walk the 2.7 mile path that has a fair number of hilly parts. I usually walk it not once, but twice. Maybe it’s just me, but on several occasions I’ve passed someone and within 50 feet, they started to jog until they passed me. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that they can jog. I miss jogging and if I could finally get motivated to lose another 20 pounds, my knees would tolerate jogging again. But that’s a different post for a different time. The problem is that they jog by me and then stop jogging about 20 feet in front of me. Once again I have to pass them. And they never jog on the uphill; they always jog past me on the downhill so I end up passing them . . . again . . . on the uphill. It messes up my pace.

It doesn’t help that I’m secretly competitive. I certainly get a sense of satisfaction from kicking their ass again. But why do people have to be that way? I walk that path a couple of times a week. And usually I do two laps. I also hike more rural paths a couple of times a week in the hills in the county. So I’m not in horrible shape.

Rather than letting it really get to me, I'm trying to see the silver lining in things as I have a tendency to bitch and moan about a lot of things that I see. So maybe I can just say that this is one of those times when I shouldn’t care what people are thinking (or doing) and think about the extra strenuous workout I just had because of those people and how beneficial that is to my health. At the same time, I can still secretly hate them and laugh at them in my head when I pass them for the second, third and fourth time. Ha ha ha. You got passed by the fat chick, and now you have to watch my jiggly butt.

Enjoy the view.

"Where The Hell Am I?!"

or, the alternative title "One Salamander...Two Salamander...Three Salamander...DEAD!"

My Pony and I took a hike this weekend on Mt. Tam that we've never taken before. It was the Cataract Trail to the High Marsh Trail to the...oh, who cares. Either way, it was 1 mile of beautiful scenery and 6.5 miles of boring, and slightly scary woods.

You see, as many of my co-workers will gladly confirm, I'm notorious for not reading everything fully before moving ahead. Many an email has been responded to with the wrong response because I got bored after the first sentence or two and didn't read the whole thing. Apparently the same thing happens when I get a new book about local trails and I start trekking about before reading all of the details. Had I fully read the trail description in my book, I would have read the paragraph describing this as one of most wild and underutilized trails on Mt. Tam and it would have helped explain why I didn't see another soul for roughly 2 hours except three salamanders (four salamanders if you count the dead one in the middle of the trail). In fact, at one point I literally said out loud "where the f--k am I?!" Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the physical aspect of it, and the challenge of some pretty steep and rocky parts of the trail. And of course, had I completely read everything instead of just relying on the oversimplified map, I wouldn't have taken the unintentional "shortcut" that somehow managed to add about a mile onto the trip.

I also think My Pony enjoyed the hike. She insisted on posing at the only two pretty spots on the trail, but these pictures are not really indicative of the kind of trail this was. It was almost entirely woods and a little creepy to the point where I started thinking of the Blair Witch. We've come to the consensus, however, that on a scale of one to five dead salamanders, with five dead salamanders being the coolest hike ever, that this warranted two and a half dead salamanders.

I do, however, try to find the upside of things, and this hike was another one of those times where I reached the end and came to three conclusions. First, I don't think being a salamander is very fun, but it's not like they really know that because...well...they're salamanders. Two, if you like to hike because it's relaxing and helps de-stress, then read your trail book completely. Otherwise, you may end up more stressed out after the hike than when you started. And three, you sometimes have to take bad hikes to really appreciate the good ones. I can't wait for this weekend's hike!

"There's A Spring In My Step Today"

or the alternative title: "I Had A Great Night's Sleep - Thanks Noel Coward"


Something happens when you do something on a worknight that was enjoyable. Whether it was a good movie, a nice dinner with some friends, or whatever, there's something that happens when you have a great experience but still have to wake up early the next morning to get to work.

That's exactly what happened to me last night. Barbara (my retired neighbor who's like a second Mom to me) and I went to see our other neighbor, Michael, in High Spirits at the Eureka Theatre here in the City. It's the musical version of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and just plain funny in a wonderfully macabre way.

My dinner with Barbara was wonderful as usual (thanks again Orale Orale), and the show was fun and whimsical and completely enjoyable. I laughed the entire time.

Now, to be honest, I tend to be a little overcritical when I see shows, but this even surprised me. It's obviously an old theater complete with missing ceiling tiles and frayed carpets, but that didn't matter. And despite my usual pet peeve that I can't stand Americans trying to do British accents, they pulled it off pretty well. Michael truly had me believing for two and a half hours that he was a British straight man - Bravo! My only regret is that this was one of the show's last performances, and I would have loved to have brought my Mom to see it. She would have laughed out loud - which doesn't always happen.

The fact that I didn't get to sleep until midnight didn't really matter when my alarm went off at dark o'clock this morning because there's a certain contentment that carries over from a fun night the night before. I'm now at work, and I'm ready to do some legal stuff with energy and that sense of fun still lingering.

So, thank you to the cast and crew of High Spirits, and even though you're dead, thank you too Mr. Coward.

"My Pony, I'd Like You To Meet The Web. Web, This Is My Pony."

or the alternative title: "No, 'My Pony' Is Not A Euphemism You Sick, Sick Person"

Yep, I have a pony. My Pony is named...well, My Pony. She’s a bit cheeky and inappropriate at times, but she’s definitely the “I’ll do anything once” type of pony.

I got her when she was tossed into a discount bin at a Rite Aid in downtown L.A. I was there for an arbitration (I’m a paralegal) and there had been a long-standing joke that I was getting so much overtime from the case that I could buy myself a pony. Call it fate, destiny, or kismet, it was just one of those moments. I was standing in the checkout line and there she was. Sure, her mane wasn’t full and perfect anymore. Sure, her legs are a little bit wobbly. And sure, she may not be the young filly she once was, but neither am I at the ripe 'ol age of 37. At that moment, our fates were inexplicably merged. She knew it too.

Today, she watches over my office in a highrise building in San Francisco’s financial district. She sits on her bookshelf quietly with just a hint of a smile. My only hope is that we can share many interesting adventures together. Being from Los Angeles, San Francisco wasn’t that far of a journey, and now it's home. She’s also traveled to Seattle with a friend of mine where she ventured to the top of the Space Needle. She was also kidnapped and I had to pay a ransom of a plate of chocolate chip cookies. We'll try to remember the good times and put the bad times behind us.

So, My Pony, please say hello to the Web. Web, I’d like to introduce you to My Pony.

"My Tribute To The Big Guy"

No, the tribute isn't to God or any other higher being. The title of this blog is a tribute to my dearly departed Dad who we use to call the Big Guy. He's been gone for a little over four years, but I still miss him. And the one phrase that always reminds me of him is now the title of this blog.

Of course, he had a number of sayings that still make me laugh and are brought up at our family get-togethers, but "what do you want outta me?" was really the Big Guy's best known saying. Other sayings such as "not too nice now; not too nice" and the infamous "give her the sausage" are still heard every so often in my head.

So for now, with the Big Guy still in my mind and in my heart, that's the start of this blog. I miss him even if he was a little quirky.

Here's to you Big Guy.