I would like to give pub­lic and sin­cere thanks to the City and County of San Fran­cisco for imple­ment­ing a Twit­ter ser­vice by which to report prob­lems found through­out the city. I have used this ser­vice three times already, and three times I have seen the prob­lems fixed within 48 hours. It’s amaz­ing to me. All of the issues I had were with road con­di­tions, small things com­pared to the over­all state of roads in the city, but they were men­ac­ing nonethe­less. The most recent of these was a small­ish pot­hole up against the curb of Lyon Street, just across from our new apart­ment. It was about two feet square, just big enough to roll one of your wheels in and not be able to get it back out. It looked like it had been there for a while because it was filled with all sorts of debris, includ­ing a banged up old orange street cone. One night, after park­ing just inches from it, I sent a direct mes­sage to @SF311, and within an hour, I had a direct reply with a case num­ber, and two days later, I woke up to the rum­ble of road equip­ment tear­ing up the street to fix the prob­lem, which looks a great deal worse than a sim­ple pot­hole. I should have taken pic­tures. In any case, it gives me a lit­tle bit of civic sat­is­fac­tion know­ing that I helped fix this irri­tat­ing prob­lem. I will be vig­i­lant and unafraid to tweet away any issues I see … within rea­son, of course. I mean, don’t even get me started on the Tenderloin …

In other news, I’m in a bit of quandary. Our new apart­ment is con­sid­er­ably smaller than Henry Street. I think I’ve men­tioned that. V made a sort of half-hearted rule about buy­ing new things, espe­cially when it comes to shoes. Yes, it was directed at me, and yes, I am ignor­ing him. His rule is that if we buy some­thing new, we should be pre­pared to get rid of some­thing old, in order to main­tain some ten­u­ous bal­ance that he thinks we’ve achieved. Ha, I say. I have 20-ish pairs of shoes, and they’re not at all orga­nized, and it’s messy, but what­ever. I wear them all. So, when I saw a sale at 6pm.com, for a pair of Keens that I don’t have yet, and for $30, I had to jump on that. They came in yes­ter­day, and I clev­erly wore black shoes to work so that when the new shoes came in (also black), I could swap them and wear them home with­out rais­ing too much sus­pi­cion. I don’t think he noticed them because for sure he would have said some­thing. But now I feel guilty for buy­ing them, or guilty for not telling him that I bought them. Like I need to come clean and admit an offense or some­thing. Like I’m doing some­thing wrong. Like his rule is ridicu­lous. He doesn’t read this, and no one else does, either, but I still feel like I need some abso­lu­tion. This is just as ridicu­lous as his rule.

One of my favorite songs ever, just for fun: