Leina's Life (by Tony): March 2007

Monday, March 12, 2007

Painting the living room

For Xmas, Erica and Tony gave Leina a bucket of paint and a day's labor toward painting a room of her choice. This past Saturday, the gift was finally redeemed. Leina has been going back and forth between colors for several weeks. It was down between Brown Bread and Haze. She wanted it to be dark. Finally, with minimum cajoling from her accomplices, she chose Haze, the lighter of the two colors. She didn't take as long to decide which room to paint: her big dining/living room area.

They got up early on Saturday and did all the taping and washing and painted the ceiling, then painted part of the hall and then it was onto the big room. Leina spent most of the time on her knees painting the trim in her room, while Angie did the same in her room, leaving Erica and Tony with the rollers. Leina bought them lunch at Sub Station in West Portal, splitting a pastrami sub and drinking it in the backyard, where Leina looked jealously at her neighbor's deck and wished she had one herself.

Tony didn't do a great job painting, and they almost ran out of paint, but they finished in time for Leina to go and attend Auntie's Buddhist Church conference dinner in Oakland. Auntie wouldn't save her a seat, so Leina had to hurry.

She is pretty sure she wishes she had a darker shade, despite what everyone else said. But she was too nice to ask anyone to help her repaint.

Dinner Double Date

Charles was busy this weekend working so Leina didn't see a bunch of him. She decided to alleviate her loneliness by inviting over Erica and Tony for dinner. She served them leftover Japanese curry and leftover Vietnamese fried little eggroll type things and rice. Tony brought salad greens and some Chinese noodles he had been gifted that afternoon.

Unbeknownst to Leina, Angie had been making dinner plans of her own, inviting over a boy who she has been seeing a bit of lately. The roommates finally communicated that afternoon, and Angie was none too pleased to know that she would be sharing the kitchen and dinner table not only with this boy, but with her roommate and her brother! Angie pretended not to be too concerned, but Leina felt a little bad, as did Tony, for messing up Angie's game.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Didn't see Ricca

Leina came really close to flying down to L.A. last weekend to surprise Ricca on her birthday. Ricca had done the same for her, right?

Leina was initially going to drive, but she had a problem--she had promised Mr. Turner she would work for him on Saturday, so didn't feel right leaving town before 3:00 or so in the afternoon. Which meant that she would have to go in the late afternoon and not have a lot of time down there.

But Charles really didn't want her to drive down and back alone. He figured he could come along. But he had to work until 5:00. Which meant they wouldn't arrive in L.A. until after 10:00 on Saturday, have just a few hours of partying, and then a short day in L.A. before having to drive back north so they could get back to work on Monday.

She was hemming and hawing about whether to go so she decided to check plane ticket prices. She found tickets for less than $130 round trip, which plus a car made it only around $150 each. Though she is infamous for being cheap, this seemed reasonable. Until Charles pointed out that, if Leina wasn't driving, she didn't really need him to go down with her. Which brought the price of the car up, with a total price of something like $175. Which she still didn't mind paying, except for the fact that she was doing her research late on Friday night and realizing that if she bought this ticket then she would have to pack immediately and got to bed and then wake up and go to work and then leave straight from work and stay over Saturday and Sunday and then get up at 4:00 on Monday and return her rental car and then fly back to San Francisco and go straight to work, and it so exhausted her just thinking of it that she bagged the idea.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Organic Soul Food

Before the Indian restaurant was decided upon, Tony tossed around the idea of a meal at Farmer Brown's, a hip, new restaurant in the Tenderloin that serves 'organic soul food' (He was a bit mistaken; it is more accurately 'locally sourced soul food'). Hearing those three words made Leina blanch. She looked grossed out, and did not seem at all inspired to check out this restaurant, which has good reviews and half her dinner party was interestd in.

Leina has nothing at all against soul food. It is organic organic that she has a problem with. She has confused the terms 'organic' with 'whole-grain fat-free vegan,' or something along those lines. Or so is the speculation. Or at least the hope. Attempts to disabuse her of this were met with mixed results.

Taking out the Trash

On Friday evening, Tony called Leina to see if she wanted to have Indian food with him and Erica and Angie and their cousin, Marc, who was visiting, at some random Indian restaurant in SoMa that definitely caters mainly to the lunch crowd. She was game. He went and picked her up, and Leina got in the back of the car carrying a few plastic bags full of stuff. Tony, driving, made no comment, and Marc, the guest, certainly wasn't going to say anything.

Only later, when Erica got into the car, was Leina questioned about the contents of her bags. The bags were full of trash from her home. She was unwilling to explain why, with her only defense/explanation being, "I am notorious for this." She did not want to put them in her own trash container, which she keeps in her garage/basement.

Taking the liberty of speculation, Friday is her trash day, and perhaps this trash was generated on Friday, and was stinky and she didn't want it in her basement. Or she has OCD. She threw it into the dumpster behind Angie's office.