Know how you can tell if someone is a tourist in San Francisco?

They wear shorts in June.

Yes, for those of you not native (or at least not currently living in) the City by the Bay, you would assume that it follows the rules of most seasons or, another common misconception, that it’s warm ALL of the time being that it is in California.

Wrong. SO Wrong.

You see, the warmest season (aka, "summer") here begins about August and lasts through October. This is the time when the temps heat up and sundresses, et. al are considered nearly mandatory. (And yes, for those of you who still wear SHORTS, those are kosher as well.) However, until August, though we may get some lovely (low-70’s) sort of days (think San Diego with a strong breeze), the warmth of the days does some random stuff to some air current or something and the fog rolls in. (It’s actually beautiful – it looks like white tentacled-clouds are descending upon the city little by little.) Once aforementioned fog takes the hilly city hostage, you’re inundated with wet, cold mist, a freezing breeze, and if you don’t have on at LEAST a sweater and a fleece, you’re in some deep trouble.  Of course, some neighborhoods fall under this more than others, but for the sake of argument, just go with me here.

Due to this VERY temperate climate, apartment buildings don’t have air conditioning. They don’t need it! If you’re hot, open a window! Easy, free, saves electricity: EVERYONE is happy. EVERYONE, of course, except for me.

You see, like the rest of the nation, we’re ALSO undergoing a heat wave. It’s 80+ degrees in the city, and though today was absolutely glorious and lovely and beautiful and provided me with a day of working from home (but actually working from the park), my apartment is anything but. I live on the ground level, have windows without screens, so the only way to even TRY and cool my apartment is to have a fan (check) and put in those little temporary screens (check check) when I’m here. Which, as we all know, is quite rarely, so in my (perpetual) absence, the apartment turns into a sauna-grade hot zone. Not the best of situations with a menagerie.

So, as I ponder the quandary of an air conditioner (I’d have to put it in and out each time I left since it’s super easy to break in with that as well), think good thoughts for me in my land o’ hotness. Home Sweet Home it ain’t…more like Home SWEAT home.

I’ve been using the word "snarky" a lot lately, especially to describe certain emails that I was sending and receiving. "Snarktastic" has also been used, but mainly, snarky. You know what I mean – thinly-veiled tension-filled "conversations" wherein a smiley face is used to make the prior inappropriate statement seem lighthearted. I shouldn’t be surprised by this since my world exists in a perpetual state of passive-aggressiveness, and this is that incarnate.

I really wish that people just came out and said what they wanted to. A world where a spade was called a a spade would be so much easier than calling a spade a small hand trowel used to dig holes (and then calling it a jackass behind its back.) I’d love to be a kinder, gentler Aubrey but today, I’m just snarky.

If you’ve been a reader on my site for any amount of time, you know that I’ve had a sundry of dates, many of which should really be blogged about repeatedly lest you forget that in a one week’s time I dated a gay anorexic (who had a list on his fridge with his weight two times a day and only kept water at home), a cat abuser and a guy who told me I could be a plus-sized model.

IN. ONE. WEEK.

There’s, of course, a multitude of others that are seriously so atrocious that I didn’t think that they deserved my time nor energy to even relate them here, but take my word for it: I’d win an award for a handful of them.

(Ok, Ok…just one here to humor you…there once was the blind date that leaned in for the kiss, opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue STICK STRAIGHT, shoved it in my mouth and then turned his head side to side in an effort to french kiss me. He had rigor mortis of the tongue and Tourettes of the head, I swear. ICK – get the shivers just thinking about that. Moving on.)

So suffice it to say that the girl who has been dumped via both email and IM (still waiting on that post-it) would have a few dating stories in the bag should she be prompted to spill the beans. I’ve long thought about starting an anonymous blog posting about the ridiculousity of my life but really, I don’t think anyone would believe me. Still, it’s been a temptation for quite some time, even if just to recount the tales of dating gone bad — WAY bad. Novel idea, right?

So I thought. Looks like I’m too late – A friend of a friend has already blogged about it on his site  "The Sport of Dating" (52dates.blogspot.com). I can’t wait to meet this guy in person this
weekend to swap a few stories because really, the very existence of the site has made this a ‘been there, shoulda done that’ sort of post.

Shame, actually. I know you would have loved the one about the identical twin…

In case I haven’t presented enough evidence to prove without a doubt that I may just be the most Type-A person you’ve ever met (cleverly disguised in the body of a partygirl), I thought you’d like to see JUST HOW BAD IT REALLY  IS.

Yes. That’s EXACTLY what it looks like – my daily to-do list complete with cute little as-symmetrical-as-I-can-make-them tick boxes so I can easily check off what I’ve already done. I sometimes include a bit o’ highlighter action to call my attention to the most important things on the list, but alas, on this day, everything is a bit important so no need for highlighter (much to my organizational-obsessed dismay.) While I embrace technology to an extent that most of my friends don’t have a clue of what I’m talking about when I bring up Zooomr or Dodgeball or the like, there’s nothing like a tangible, hand-written to-do list to keep me in check.

Except it hasn’t been working lately.  I usually go through the list and accomplish as much as I can, then on a future day I’ll re-write the new list (omitting those I’ve already completed) and this is my Aubrey 1.0 completely anal way of managing my life.

Except, as I just said, it’s not working. I’m paralyzed.

I think it’s probably because I have so much that I have to do, so much that will have to be taken care of in the next few weeks and months (which I’ll get into later when I make a more formal annoucement of some BIG CHANGES that are happening to yours truly) that I’m literally paralyzed with the overwhelming nature of it all. I can’t seem to get anything done because I don’t know where to start.

So today, I’m starting at the top. Looks like I need to go and schedule myself a massage (or three!)

Well, it’s official – I’m a geek.

I don’t hear any collective gasps of shock on this, so apparently, this is not news to you.

Anyway, just WHAT makes me a geek, besides the obvious?

I’m now blogging for work.  Yes, you heard that right, your sassy lil’ Aubs is writing about the wonderful world of analytics. Hot, I know.

So go click on the pic above to check-check-check-check-check it out (with all due respect to Beastie Boys) so I’ll officially be (too) legit. To quit.

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Valleyschwag Hoedown, originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

Listen up, cowboys…if y’all weren’t at the Valleyschwag hoedown this past Friday, you missed out. Drinks were a-flowin’, it was webcast to people all over the world, there was the world’s largest rocking horse and they even had a schwag fashion show. In my Yahoo! hat (yes, I know how blasphemous that is), I got to model not only a Moveable Type shirt but also improvised to sport some Valleyschwag Schwag. I was a proud lil’ cowgirl, I’ll tell ya that much.

Missed it? Live vicariously through us by scrolling through the photo evidence.

(Thanks to Scott Beale [Laughing Squid] for the awesome photo.)

Whereas Jason posits that the thirties are like the teenage years rehashed, I suggest a clarification.

Your thirties are like High School.

Your late twenties, however, are more liken to your days in Middle School.

IM has replaced note-passing, insecurity (guised with cockiness) is at an all-time high, and our emotions are a-flutter. We’re smack-dab in those years before we hit our third-life crisis, and, in preparation, we drink too much. We make stupid decisions. We’re pushing our boundaries because, for us single late-twenty-doms, we can. We’re finally making enough money to enjoy ourselves a little (no longer house-poor with Lean Cuisines, the mid-20’s equivalent of Ramen and Easy Mac), and we’re having a HELL of a time of it.

We have crushes. No, not one, nor two; more like ten. They could be younger (and usually are), could even be older, could be our co-workers or our friends (add "with benefits" for an easy transition) or friends of our friends…it doesn’t matter. We find ourselves giddy with the excitement of a new interest (or, as is often the case, interests squared), something seemingly foreign after years of long-term relationships that left us wondering if "IT" was ever going to happen…now, "IT" seems far, far away in the distance and for the first time in a long time, who cares! We’re having fun!

I laugh as I write this, laugh about the freedom that comes when you realize that life is too short. Jason mentions this in his post as well, that you want to "soak up every ounce of life that you’ve been given", and I agree. Oh, how I agree.

Sadly, Crushster.com was already taken; a shame, since I think there’s one hell of a market for it, if only to try and keep track of all our crushes.

Sigh. Adolescence 2.0 is hard.

I wasn’t complaining; really,  I wasn’t. I was IMing with my guy friend about my grouchiness earlier this morning, and I was just making a statement about guys (or one in particular) and did that thing that we all do, that over-generalizing thing. You know what I’m talking about (you do it too!) – that thing whereas if John has done X, Y, and Z, then ALL guys have ALSO done X, Y, and Z. (Where X=jerk action #1, Y=asshole remark #2 and Z=total lack of understanding why X & Y would anger us gals.)

I know, I know, I need to stop.

All guys AREN’T the same.

I remember, years back, when I was able to acknowledge that girls were attracted to assholes instead of the nice guy. I was able to hypothesize why this was so, and yet still found myself again and again choosing the wrong one. I even QUOTE one that, in retrospect, epitomizes so much that I’ve come to hate that I am embarrassed to even link to the article (except, of course, to continue with my point.)

It’s over three years later. And I’ve changed. That’s not to say that I still don’t find myself attracted, per se, to aforementioned assholes; it’s just that it doesn’t matter. That’s not who – or what – I want. Even in casual dating (or even flirting) I find the decisions I’m making today being VERY different than the ones I made three years ago. In short, asshole attraction is just no longer that attractive to me.

To counter my earlier  point (the over-generalizing one where I stated, and unfortunately I quote: "Whatever. He’s just a guy. Y’all are all the same."), Jason replied that this ISN’T the case, that there ARE some good guys out there. (He should know – he is one.) He linked me to this "Best of Craigslist" post, which, I am CERTAIN, three years ago I would have mocked. Today, I found myself nodding, because I’ve met those guys, I like those guys, I love those guys. I need those guys. I’ve depended upon them in nearly EVERY SINGLE SITUATION they mention, and you know what?

I AM THAT GIRL.

The one that finally, without seeing it happen, without knowing just exactly when, woke up to realize that what is good and kind is not mutually exclusive with attractive. That yes, one day that good guy WILL get his vindication, and I’d be elated to be the lucky gal on his arm.

In today’s electronic world where we’re offered so many ways to communicate, true, literal communication so rarely happens. We’re inundated with vehicles to support this "communication": Cell phones, Blackberries (and for many these aren’t one and the same unless you’re like me in sacrificing the size and reception for a bill paid by our companies), Desktops, Laptops, iPods…the list goes on ad finitum.

Then the applications for these devices are numerous as well: Email. IM. Blogs. Flickr. Dodgeball. MySpace (as for the latter, God, save us all.) The list increases by the day, and we’re existing in a world where we spend time updating our ‘profiles’ on these various mediums, uploading our little mini-avatars, deciding just how it is that we want to represent ourselves to the world.  We’re loathe to admit that we exist in a Match.com-ized world where
profiles take the place of presence, a clusterfuck of communication
preventing true human interaction. We’re putting ourselves out there for others to discover, spending our days creating this artificial version of ourselves, an idealized, often self-aggrandized facade of who we really are.

Oh, but that can be remedied by Tagging, you say, since others who "know" you online can thus "tag" you as how they interact with the "you" you’ve allowed them to "meet." Tags on sites like Consumating (a tongue-in-cheek free dating site for self-proclaimed geeks) have me listed as "Would-Be-Frickin-Awesome-To-Party-With", "SantasHelper",  "Google-Girls" and – most appropriately – "Likes-To-Put-Things-In-Cleavage".  So now, from my description of myself as well as some well-placed pictures, my persona grows.

I’m not innocent of this myself; in an email yesterday to a cute boy that I met out the other night, I replied to his suggestion of hanging out again with the following: 

Hang out? As in "live, unedited, in-person"? I had just planned to stalk you in
the electronic age via Dodgeball and Flickr and all of those other
advancements that make real human contact antiquated.

I was kidding, of course, (he’s super cute, after all, so in-person meetings are desired), but really, only half-so.  In the same time that it takes my Mom to remember how to "cut" and "paste" on her computer, I could have likely tracked down everything from his photos to his upcoming events, digitally stalking someone in a way that many find appropriate. Googling someone yields a ton of results, no longer just reporting on your crush’s college cross-country results; today, a simple query of "Aubrey" brings up my website as the 9th result IN THE WORLD (of 16 Million); for "Aubs", I’m most of the results on the page. These days, you seek, and OH HELL YEAH, you will find.

And it continues! I just signed up today for Vox, yet another "social networking" site (the term alone makes me vomit in my mouth just a little) from the fabulous creators of Typepad, now providing a one-stop-shop for you to publicize your "presence" on the web, if not your justification for your existence here on Earth. Your books! Your music! Your videos! Your neighborhood! "I’m here, world. Come and get me!"

That’s not to talk badly of it; if not for the Trotts and Six Apart, you, dear reader, wouldn’t have anything to read. It’s just that I’m confounded by all of these "me’s" on the web, wondering if there’s anything left that I haven’t yet given somewhere, wondering the need for yet another "me" to try and fill with interesting content out there. I can only make snide comments about ex-boyfriends on so many sites and then even I get sick of it.

Because sometiems, as a result of all the "communication" out there, I think that maybe we’ve said it all already, leaving me – for once – in person – without much to say.

At different times in our lives, we realize that we have to put ourselves first. That certain activities, people, actions aren’t healthy for us and that by continuing to include these things in our lives is, in essence, sacrificing what is in our best interest. These decisions don’t come lightly – they’re often times some of the hardest choices we ever have to make. And yet they’re needed, they’re a literal necessity, because should we continue down the current path we’ll never end up where we’re "supposed" to be, a path that I’ve already acknowledged is out of my hands to begin with. 

Call it defriending, call it breaking up, call it what you will, but I wasn’t kidding.