I fancy trendsetting. Certainly\nnot in fashion but in just being ahead of the curve, unafraid to try new things\nor new ways of doing something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Way back when we all got our\nmovies from Blockbuster I thought it was outrageous that you had to get a new\nBlockbuster card for every city. My partner and I have lived many places and I\ncan still visualize my stack of Blockbuster cards.  In 1997 we moved to North Carolina and I went\nto get yet another Blockbuster card. Problem was we had no landline which\nevidently one needed for the damn Blockbuster card. I told the guy then that\nvery soon no one was going to have landlines anymore and he made me feel like I\nwas from Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at my previous blog\nposts and you will see I called the demise of Facebook so long ago that by\ntoday\u2019s standards it is ancient history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there was the time I\ninvented the little doohickey that keeps the pizza cheese from sticking to the\ntop of the box or the time I invented the Chinese take-out cartons without the\nstupid metal handle that could not go in the microwave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe I dilly-dallied around\nabout getting down to the Patent Office but I dreamed them up first I am sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I come by this naturally. My bio father who I really did not know, I only met him a few times but one time in the mid 70\u2019s I went to his house and he had a piece of a 2 x 4 , a little block of wood with a toggle switch on it with a wire running to the TV and every time a commercial came on, he toggled it which muted the TV.\u00a0 Hooray for remote control! In the end of his life he was called Ole Doc Clock because he loved classic cars and had figured out a way to put quartz clock movements in the old cars that still looked original on the face for those guys who are meticulous about their restorations. He was quite famous in that small circle of classic car purists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His father owned a Studebaker\ndealership and the building was a Frank Lloyd Wright that still stands in Mena,\nAR as Studebaker museum. Double trendy for that guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then my maternal Grandpa from\nOklahoma drove an Indian Chief motorcycle all the way to CA and back in the\nlate 1920\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the real topper is my 3rd\nGreat Grandmother. Like many people I became fascinated with genealogy and\ntracing my family history. I was extremely lucky in that a stamp collector\nbought a batch of letters from my family that were from the Civil War times and\nhe tracked me down to give them to me. The letters are fascinating for sure but\nthe fun part for me was that my 3rd Great Grandmother was writing from Kansas\nto her family in MA and in all the letters she referred to my 3rd Great Grandfather\nas simply Pike, his last name.  I have\nseen letters from that period and women often called their husbands MR.  or sometimes by their first name but she\ncalled him Pike and they were growing grapes for wine. How cool is that?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With my trendsetting persona firmly\nentrenched in my mind (or imagination), I recently moved into a young person\u2019s PERF\nheaven. Let me explain.  My partner has a\njob that requires us to be in San Diego for 2 years. I lived in San Diego from\n1979 to 1989. I was the original runaway bride before Julia Roberts made the\nmovie.  I was just out of college and had\n$350 saved. I told my Dad I was going to Dallas (about 3 hours away) to see a\nfriend and I got to Dallas and just kept driving, I drove until the road ran\nout and that was San Diego. When I first arrived, I rented a room in downtown\nSan Diego. It was then called an SRO (single residence occupancy). My little\nroom with the bath down the hall was $35 a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a heady time for me\nfilled with the best of times as I discovered myself and reveled in the city\nlife, having grown up in the Midwest in a town of about 5000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we knew we would be\nliving in San Diego I thought let\u2019s go big and live downtown which is the\nhappening place now. But when I lived downtown in the early 80\u2019s it was when\nthe suburbs were the place to be and big city downtowns were for the derelicts\nor near poverty people. That trend completely reversed itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here we are, 2018, we\nmoved to East Village, Idea 1, a brand new place. 600 sq. ft for $2300 a month.\nLong way from my $140 a month in 1979. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lofts and apartments are\nbilled as live\/work space. Apartments are built in a U shape or 2 L\u2019s and the interior\ncourtyard is called the Hub. It is a large collaborative space to create and\nconnect. There is a coffee shop as well as extra cool gourmet taco shop that anchor\nour building, they also are open to the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is almost always something\ngoing on here, a very wide variety of events are scheduled. Overall, the\nfeeling is one of excitement and creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It probably would have been\nheaven for me to have been surrounded by such forward thinkers when I was\nyounger and had no direction, felt adrift.  Of course, I would never have been able to\nafford it even if I could do the math and figure what this place would have\ncost in 1979\u2019s economy.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At any rate, I often feel out\nof place because I am surely the oldest person living here at 61.  But once a trendsetter always a trendsetter\nso I found a little trick to make myself relevant. We have key cards for the\nelevator and people are always digging around in pockets and in bags to find\nthem. I put mine on the back of my phone with a phone case covering it so when\nI get in the elevator I just put my phone up to the sensor and bingo! I have\nhad no less than 7 people in the elevator questioningly exclaim \u2018there\u2019s an app\nfor that?\u201d.   Then I say nope, it is just\nbetween the phone and case.  No matter,\nthey now think I am a pretty cool old broad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was about to turn 60\nand my 24 year old nephew called me a hipster. It was maybe the best compliment\nI have ever received although I was not exactly sure what it was.  Many months later I brought it up with my\nniece who said it means someone who is an old hippie who shops at thrift\nstores. There went my vison of a beatnik poet from the 60\u2019s with John Lennon\nglasses but my sweet sisters all jumped in to assure me that nephew meant the\nfirst description. Back on track, LOL<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, how many 61 year\nolds have a side hustle with Turo?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fancy trendsetting. Certainly not in fashion but in just being ahead of the curve, unafraid to try new things or new ways of doing something. Way back when we all got our movies from Blockbuster I thought it was outrageous that you had to get a new Blockbuster card for every city. My partner … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.globalgrl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}