An Entire Post About Lauren


Caffe Greco
So last night I was ambushed by my buddies saying that I had been consciously excluding Lauren from various written things. So here, as was requested by the bunch of hooligans, is An Entire Post About Lauren.

This photo in particular rubbed people the wrong way- why was she excluded from it??? (she is the one behind the post) Steiner Pedestrian Bridge And in the post, Kathy was mentioned far more than Lauren. OK here is a simple name count of occurrences in the text.

Stairway Walk #16 Post: I mention her in the top line, then obliquely with “someone” witnessed my free cable car rides (Lauren) – OK my bad. OK another “our” meaning Lauren (who knows Japanese) and me (knowing Chinese) being able to interpret Post Street in Japanese kanji… Ok 2nd bad. But she gets parentheical credit with being the taskmaster… and, more than that, I actually link to an article Lauren has written! That should be worth about 10 references, I mean, linking, come on. Then a long bit about Kathy ordering in Spanish- I mean Lauren was really feeble with the Spanish, and yet had the most complicated order… hmm… so total: Lauren 2 oblique references, 2 obvious references, and finally a LINK. Kathy: I stopped counting at 4, plus the photo. OK it was a bit biased.

Lauren, Lauren, Lauren. Kudos to Lauren for that neat link strategy. She’s my “early adopter” friend, in that she seems to glom onto new technology faster than I do- and has far more tiny personal gadgets too. At one party she whipped out what she just happened to have on her and it was like dipping into Phillip Torrone’s knapsack. She also gives me honest feedback on weird things going on with my WordPress stuff- perhaps because we were both new to WordPress, and yet attended WordCamp geekcamp of wordpress users… yes, there was a boy involved, though we became mired in scandal. One of my favorite feedback-comments from Lauren is “iMurder should have its own site. iMurder should have its own category…” along these lines for a while when I finally pointed out to her that it did, so early adopter, but not necessarily power-user!

We met at an author party for SF-Metblogs, which I admit to use as feeding grounds for interesting writer friends (Yo! Nancy!). We ended up going to Ghetto Gourmet— not Gourmet Ghetto, I was told churlishly by the guy who runs the show. Despite barely knowing me, Lauren was really tolerant and nice about my ability to get lost, and not recharge my cell phone (it’s always dead). I’m driving to Hunter’s Point despite not knowing where the damn event is, and that’s really great, you know, being lost in Hunter’s Point at dusk. So I’m calling her, going “Um, can you tell me where it is? Um, can you make it quick because my phone is dying.” On the cusp of flaking because I don’t know where I’m going! She was ever-tolerant and sweet about it, plus, she really made the evening great by carrying an insanely good bottle of Beringer merlot, and earning the introduction: “Hi X, this is Lauren, whose brother works for Beringer”. God, that was the really inexorably hot day in SF that we had, like around July. In our cute way we both blogged about it. (instead of fighting about who could blog about it, like Nancy and I do – remember: “white flight from South Africa”). Lauren’s version, Mine.

So in online stalking Lauren, I found that at least today, she is a C-list blogebrity. I think she used to be A-List, and Kathy was C-list. I have never, sadly, been on the list. Another great thing about Lauren is when I mention casually, ok, erm, brag, about being randomly recognized, she usually one-ups me. The other day, someone slowed down in their car and waved. OK, she wins. So I think this post has earned me a few months reprieve.