Claire On The Move

Packing

2009-11-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

These days are mostly completely occupied with packing.

I'm packing a bunch of my stuff that was still in Pittsburgh up to my mom's house in Canada, using a rental PT Cruiser that they gave me instead of an "economy" size. My mother pointed out, "Does anyone ever get the size car they reserved?"

I am researching freight forwarding so I can figure out how to get my crap to Australia. I also have to investigate how much crap I want to bring to Australia and whether or not I feel like just taking a backpack's worth of stuff and then buying everything else when I get there. So far, freight forwarding one bag of luggage (as opposed to multiple pallets of shrink wrapped cheap dolls that were made in Hong Kong by limbless children, eg) would run me about $450 door to door. USPS Ground is $327.

I could also take bags with me on the plane to Bangkok, leave them in left luggage for two weeks and then haul them with me to Perth. It costs 100BH a day to store them in the Suvarnabhumi Airport (which is approximately $3 at the current exchange rate), although I can't, according to Korean airlines, have bags that exceed 62" in total diameter (L+W+H) or 70 lbs each, which is somewhat limiting in terms of stuff.

However...what stuff do I really need? I was thinking it would be nice to have a fair amount of my clothes, and maybe some books and artwork and stuff, but I'm prepared to keep all that in storage if my other option is to pay hundreds of dollars for some twee shipping company to provide "valet service" for my one goddamned bag.

Remember, Remember

2009-11-05T12:06:00.000-08:00

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November,

Gunpowder, treason, and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

- trad.

So here it is November already and so much has happened in the measly two weeks since the last time I wrote. All right, two weeks is a long fracking time in this world of blog updates and other fun jazz, but here is a small sampling of the things I have done, will be doing, or am currently in the process of doing since October 24...

Become involved with the funky production company EpicMegaPro to work on sending a fancy rock opera, created by iconic Swedish band Brainpool, on Swedish tour sometime in the next few years. I've been visiting with Swedish consuls, hanging out at Swedish mixers, and writing letters in Swedish, which is particularly engaging because I DON'T SPEAK SWEDISH. Thank you, Google Translator! They're probably all wondering, "Wow, this sure is an interesting idea, but why do all the letters sound like they were written by a five year old?" So far, no-one has pinged me as being little more than Eliza, and most Swedish people speak English anyway, or so they tell me. Our boss is going to Stockholm in January to have business meetings. As much as I would like to go to Sweden, STOCKHOLM...in January. Can I get a "Hell, no"? I'm sure the Northern Lights are very pretty, but I don't like freezing cold places with dark, gloomy daytimes.
Received my Australian student visa ten hours after applying for it. You know, when I first saw the application process necessary for visa application, and the warning that it could take up to 3 months to get it after you applied, I started to panic. Proof of medical health? Four passport sized pictures? Proof of financial security? Gosh! Then I checked the online form, which didn't seem to have places to attach or append any of that information. Weird, I thought. Maybe they ask you to send it later. I filled out the online form, signed it digitally (basically typed my name under the place where it said "You better be you if you type your name here") and bit my fingernails. The NEXT DAY, at 7am my time, after I'd sent the application at 10:30pm, I received a blythe little notice that said, basically "Thank you for using our weed-out-the-truly-interested form! Because you applied online, we've ALREADY GIVEN YOU YOUR VISA. Here it is. It's good from right now. Yep, until March 2011. It's a party in Australia, and you're totally invited!" Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing, but it took LESS THAN TEN HOURS to get a visa for an entirely different country, which says I am allowed to study and work there for a long time. Um...sweet!
Bought my plane ticket to Perth, via two weeks in Thailand. You know, I've never been to Southeast Asia. I'm totally into Southeast Asia. And so when I received the go-ahead from the Rotary travel agency that they couldn't find a ticket to Perth for less than $1200, I leapt into action and quickly investigated the sales I had just seen on STA Travel. Sure enough, there was a ticket to Perth for $986, including tax. But...hmm. What if I went somewhere else first? Let's look at other places I could go...Hawaii? Ooh, almost $2000. Solomon Islands? Fascinating, but tiny airport, and therefore expensive. How about Bangkok? Turns out that a one-way ticket from LAX to Bangkok (via Seoul) and then from Bangkok to Perth (via Kuala Lumpur) costs only $200 more than a ticket that flies directly to Perth. So who's going to Southeast Asia? Me! Got any suggestions for places I should contract intestinal parasites? I hear everyone does it. So far, according to my research, it's not really a matter of whether you contract diarrhea and vomiting in Thailand so much as when you contract diarrhea and vomiting. My hope? Not on a long ferry trip to Laos.
Started writing for NaNoWriMo. I've done this a few times before -- the most recent time, I started writing TWO NaNo Novels simultaneously, one a YA novel (which I cannot locate on my hard drive, but I'm sure it must be somewhere) and one an erotic novel (hey, why not?) and then dumped them both in disinterest and languour only a couple of days in. The first time I did it, I blazed through, wrote the whole thing, and then got me a literary agent using that there NaNo Novel. I mean, she may be an agent who hasn't returned my phone calls in over a year, but she's still a god damn agent. So this time I'm writing a murder mystery, set at Burning Man. Why not? One of my favorite reads is a book called Murder At The War, written by Mary Monica Pulver, and it's a murder mystery set at Pennsic. I seem to recall someone wrote a mystery set at Burning Man several years ago, but *I* haven't, and darnit, now's my chance. So far, I'm wrestling with making sure I'm not just stringing together thinly veiled anecdotal vignettes, and actually creating a cohesive, interesting and FICTIONAL story, despite my amusing myself by putting people I know into it all over the place. If you can't directly describe your friends and acquaintances in a NaNoNovel, where can you describe them?

So that's what I've been up to. How about you?

Waves Above Chapter Three

2009-10-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say two things:

First, I just bought my plane ticket to Australia a few days ago, via two weeks in Thailand and Laos. Well, I fly into and out of Bangkok (that's LAX-> Bangkok and then Bangkok -> Perth) visa Seoul on the way there and Kuala Lumpur on the way back. Sweet! I am excited to have 11 hour layovers at each of my partway airports, actually, because I'm hoping that means I can leave the airport which means I get the BEST souvenirs of all time: passport stamps for funky countries.

Second, here's the third chapter for The Waves Above.

My favorite thing

2009-10-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

My favorite thing in the entire world, ever, to do is walk down the street at night looking in people's windows. Some people watch reality television, but I like the simple storyline-less act of just stopping to have a look when someone's lights are on, catching a glimpse of a dog's snout, or Finding Nemo on the television, or a bare foot scratching another.

My second favorite thing is listening to someone playing an instrument at night, from the street. You hardly ever hear this anymore; people don't play music at home, or they practice at rehearsal spaces or in the agonizing light of mid-afternoon, after they've stumbled out of bed from another late night at the jazz club (apparently, my favorite thing happens in the 1920s). But I can't imagine a greater pleasure than standing on the sidewalk outside someone's cozily-lit house, on a cool fall's evening that's still warm and delicious, the air smelling of sage and sounding of crickets, and listening to the piano spill out from those buttery windows.

It reminds me of one of Madeleine L'Engle's rules for a happy family, the theme that spread from the Austins to the Murrys and their children: singing and music in the home. I've always wondered, marveled at her families who gather together and sing in the evenings, or play instruments together; not like the Allman Brothers Band, but just like a fun way to pass the time in the evening, instead of watching television. Of course, I don't watch television usually either, preferring instead to engage in singularly repetitive evening behaviors, regardless of the day: I work, I read, sometimes I have sex. I sleep, before midnight. And I wonder, amazed and reverent, at the people who play music, because they remind me of a comforting, cozy world, where people can talk to dolphins.

I went for a walk through the cool night, watching people's lives out here at the sprawling complex in Camarillo that is my home until October 19, and passed life after life that could have been mine. People stay home out here; the young ones don't want to drive very far, or they invite their friends over on a Friday night...one house I passed had rouged lacy curtains, laughter, and the smell of pot. Most of the others have families and kids and garages and Finding Nemo on DVD and that's another kind of satiety.

I look in the windows and try on different lives, when my own is, quite frankly, a little disconcerting. I wander and wander, leaving a trail of good friends, and I miss and I want and I work but I don't have a job. My life promises to be opening out more and more, but if you open too far, holes can happen and things can slip through.

So I look in the windows and listen at the doors, wondering if there's some secret everyone else has to how to be happy in their sweet, beautiful suburban homes, and I smell the hedgerows of sage, drying against the desert air.

Staying right here at home

2009-10-06T12:35:00.001-07:00

Since I've been a bit busy what with going to Europe and San Diego and also what with being a lazy bum whom spends all her time lounging in bed with small dogs, eating bonbons and clapping for my servants, I haven't gotten around to posting the second chapter of The Waves Above.

As a housekeeping thing, I've added a cumulative section in the sidebar of this blog, where all the chapters will go as I post them...it's down there under my archive lists. You can also click on this link right here --> link and it will take you to chapter two, which is disappointingly short for those of you who like to be able to read more about what's going on in a chapter. Sorry, that's just where the chapter wanted to end. But I'll be much better about posting following chapters from now on, so there won't be too long to wait in your frantic late night reading sessions, as you wait up, biting your fingernails, cursing me when another chapter fails to manifest itself. That's okay. I know you love me.

Although I'm not traveling anywhere particularly exotic over the next little while, I will be housesitting for some friends in Camarillo, which is lovely and deliciously remote from all the part of Los Angeles that I hate: namely, the city itself. So I get to go wallow in their house and do my laundry in their washing machine and vegetate on their couch watching movies on their TV and roll around in their bed and, most importantly, play with their cats. Have fun in Australia, Colleen and Peter! I'll just be over here MAKING YOUR CATS LOVE ME MORE THAN THEY LOVE YOU.

Back in the US...SR

2009-09-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

My plane from Europe landed yesterday at LAX around 3 pm, and Justin picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at home, then immediately had to leave for a business meeting. Judging by the time difference, I'd actually been awake since 10:30pm PST on Monday night, since I didn't sleep on the plane (although I did watch a hilarious British film called French Film, as well as The Proposal, I Love You Man, and...geez, what else did I watch? I also started a Bollywood movie that has Shakrukh Khan in it, but they turned off our individual seat TVs before it got to the part of the movie where he takes off his nerdy glasses and shaves his moustache).

So needless to say, I was a little loopy. But it was just starting to cool off, and I'd been sitting down for essentially an entire day, so I walked over to the bike repair shop and picked up my bike, which is actually Justin's old orange-spray-painted Playa beater, and rode through the calm night over to my PO Box to get my mail. As I rode, it cooled, degree by degree, and I passed a house where someone was practicing the drums, which made me smile.

In Belgium, all the open French doors has calm classical music blasting out of them. Ray and I took a long meandering walk through the back alleys of Brussels, and passed window after window with warm light and curtains and violins and piano, such that we'd stop and listen to see if someone was playing themselves. Then we walked again.

Yesterday, riding my bike through the Los Angeles twilight, I felt so indescribably happy, and not just happy but CONTENT with my lot in life and where I was, that it was almost too much. But then some jerk in a car honked at me for obeying the road rules, and it shattered my contemplation. :)

In a few hours, I drive to San Diego to go to a psychology conference (exciting!) and stay with friends Jack and Charity (also exciting!). Justin is coming too, so I have a little family outing. I wrote in my journal (yes, my actual paper and pen -- although in my case, paper and Crayola marker -- journal) that I love my friends, how much they keep me going, and how I cherish them so much that I keep them around for ridiculously long amounts of time. I have friends I've known for 26 years, for 21 years, for 16 years. It's kind of awesome. It bodes well for staying in touch with everyone while I'm in Australia.

O England

2009-09-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

There is only one full day left of my European odyssey, after having spent a whirlwind day-and-eight-hours in Brussels because we had some time to kill and couldn't figure out where else to go and we wanted to go SOMEWHERE. But since we decided that Brussels is actually the San Luis Obispo of Europe -- sunny, warm, pleasant, and you can't quite put your finger on why it's boring -- it was a very pleasant short trip. Now we're back in London, preparing to fly out the day after tomorrow.

There are so many things I'd like to see in Europe: back to Italy, for example, the land of loud men's clothing and flamboyant hand gestures. Eastern Europe and the majestic spirals of Praha. But I find myself missing the individual money -- all those deutschmarks and francs and lire and pesetas (not to mention drachmas) that are currently gone forever. Instead, we have bland old Euros, except in England. And Switzerland, which has apparently not joined the EU.

Mostly this trip has made me nostalgic, although my friend Raf and I were discussing how strange it is when parents get nostalgic for the past of their children...like when you wish your toddler was still an infant. Sometimes I get nostalgic for Europe, even though I'm actually in Europe, because I'm really getting nostalgic for what it was ten years ago, when I came here and you could get a hotel room in Spain for the equivalent of $8. I miss having everything be gritty and new and different, and the language polyglot, and smacking people by turning around with my backpack.

Ten years later, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it's still a complicated, immense continent, more like a place to live than a place you'd want to visit. And, conveniently enough, most of my trip here was spent "living"...staying in people's houses, visiting their families, learning their routines. No hostels, this time. No hostiles, either.

It's a different place, for all that there's a church down the street that's 600 years old. But I'm a different person. Thank god.

PS We went to Cyberdog today on the way back to Chalk Farm. Everything in there a) is very cool, b) would look fantastic on me, and c) costs immense quantities of pounds. A pity. So much cuteness for raver culture!

Gewürtztraminer

2009-09-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

We were invited to go to a wedding while in France; it was Laurent's friend Laurent (no, not the Laurent whose house we were hanging out at, the OTHER Laurent) who was getting married, and our Laurent was best man. So we ate chevre melted on toast and drank wine, and abjured Catholicism, which states that you can't have a big fancy church wedding if it's your second time around, even if your BRIDE has never been married before, and might potentially want to wear a floofy white dress. I told Ray, "Time to switch to Protestantism," if only for the veil and gown.

Apparently French weddings are half wedding, half roast. We found this out when the bride's family, her tiny little mother and father and her cute younger sister and her younger sister's Madagascar-ian boyfriend all came out to sing a song about the bride, who apparently played the clarinet in her youth. It was very sweet and harmonic, and the chorus was a beautiful repetition of "Clarinete, clarinete," except that they were pointing out such things as "When your sister was born, you hated her and would happily have pushed her down the stairs," and "Gosh, you sure like beer a lot." It finished with "If you liked this song, we#re happy to repeat it, and if you don#t, stick it in your ass." I translated for Ray.

Then the groom's eleven year old daughter stood up and sang a song, accompanied by a younger boy on dramatic re-enactment, about how much her new stepmother liked beer, and how now she was allowed to drink beer, and it made everyone fall down and act silly. The bride did not seem to be that much of a lush -- she actually seemed very lovely and nice -- but it was pretty funny. I guess lots of things rhyme with "biere".

Then we went to Paris, wherein fall seems to have come all of a sudden. The streets are cold and grey, and full of people in monochrome, looking far better than anyone else, and knowing it. I saw a motorcycle with a bumper sticker that said "I {heart} nothing...I'm Parisien" which kind of sums it up, although I pointed out that most big-city residents like to go on about how nihilistic and jaded they are...like New Yorkers. We rode the Metro a lot. We ate a lot of food. We stayed in a French hotel that had a shower and toilet IN THE ROOM, which you may not understand the miracle of if you've never been to France before. Suffice to say, I would have fallen to my knees in dramatic appreciation, if there had been room in the room to get down on my knees. Hotel rooms are SMALL.

Then we hopped on a TGV and ICE combination and made our way to Germany, land of hilarious words like Eisenbahngesellschaft and Gefahrt and Geschmacht. I don't reallz know more than a basic smattering of German, and Ray knows none, so it's fortunate therefore that we are staying with my old high school friend and his delightful family, who speak English, what with him being from Canada and her being an accomplished filk-singer who's toured in the States. The baby doesn't speak anything yet, but she sure is cute.

And here we remain until we go to Belgium, although I'm tempted to go back to France and see if we can make it to Chamonix. It's so freaking cold right now, though, my only long sleeved shirt is getting a layering workout. I can't imagine what it's like in the Alps. Yikes.

To should

2009-09-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I like French so much is because there is a verb that, roughly translated means "to should" (devoir). Coincidentally, homework is called les devoirs ("the shoulds"), and so is the things that nuns do in the mornings and evenings, which we call "devotions." It lends a whole aura of indebtedness to the situation.

So I'm in France.

I'm in Nantes (pronounced NAHNT), specifically, which is in the Northwest of France, about two hours from Paris and an hour from the coast; Nantes is apparently most famous for having been destroyed in World War Two by Allied bombs attempting to knock out the German occupants, and not, unfortunately, for the GIANT ROBOTIC ELEPHANT that WALKS UP AND DOWN WITH PEOPLE ON ITS BACK every day after 2 pm. But that's cool; it only blinks and yawns and sprays people with water. Oh, and they have a giant animatronic spider, but that's in China. Or maybe Japan. Somewhere Asian.

Why did I never hear of this before? Or of the ride called "Star Wars" that Ray and I walked past while investigating a tiny outdoor street fair in the flat cobblestoned spot near the castle of Anne de Bretagne, which not only spins you around in cylindrical holders, but also then loosely rotates you while up in the air (the ride, not the castle)? I know why I'd never heard of that, namely because just thinking about it makes me feel like I'm going to vomit, and watching left both of us nauseated. The signs said "Nouveaute!" which means "New thing!" but I think they meant the ride and not the nausea.

We are staying with Ray's old work friend Laurent and his family, in their gorgeous house in Nantes, which has a lap pool INDOORS and a whole airy spare bedroom with the most comfortable bed in the world, which I could not, unfortunately, fit into my bag. I also could not fit the rounded old 50s refrigerator or the squat 40s red stove at Laurent's friend Laurent's house, nor can I fit the attractive push-drawer kitchen in brushed steel, into my bag. I suppose I could have fit the huge quantities of delicious beef and oysters that everyone (except me, at least oyster-wise) is eating into my bag, but they fit much better in my stomach.

I have discovered that, while I understand about 85% of what everyone says, even when they're speaking quickly and using slang, my own spoken French has taken a giant leap back in terms of vocabulary and grammatical consistency. I can express simple ideas, but more complex concepts, like "unfortunately" and "your mom" and "towel" are beyond me. While having a conversation with a dashing Parisien named Fred, I pointed out that his news sales job skills would be useful "nowhere", instead of "everywhere", as I'd intended. He corrected, fortunately, and was undeterred.

I also make bizarre and untranslatable errors, such as when I asked about an apple tree in someone's back yard. I meant to say "Do you eat the apples?" but instead said "Vouz mangeons les pommes?" which is the second person plural pronoun with the first person plural verb conjugation, and therefore actually means nothing. Oops.

But since all the French people keep telling me I have very good French, I just grit my teeth and hope they don't mind when I mangle their beautiful language.

My mom (YOUR MOM!)

2009-09-06T09:47:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's true...MY MOM is here visiting me. As a matter of fact, MY MOM is a pretty welcome visitor, in that she is very tidy and compliant, although she certainly does like shopping. And aside from the super cool aspect of having MY MOM visiting, because she is fun, there is the added benefit of it a) distracting me during Burning Man so I don't spend a lot of time pining away about how I wish I was there getting all dusty and blinky, b) letting me listen fondly to a semi-Canadian accent so it feels like I'm home again, and c) she lets us engage her in unusual behaviors.

For example, the other day, it was about 8 pm and we were at a loss. Should we be entertaining? Should we call it a night? Instead, I turned to Justin and said, "You know, the firing range is open until 10." And my mom said, "I'd love to go shooting!" So we rented her a .357 Magnum and she shot the heck out of the target in such a fashion that makes me concerned for anyone who tries to mug her under the assumption that she is a docile old lady. TAKE THAT, PUNK!

I'm so amused by the mixed reactions to people using guns; among other Popular Things to Hate, like fur. Justin has a fur coat. It is cute. I have absolutely no bias whatsoever towards people wearing fur; just as I do not attempt to push my "agenda" of eating meat on other people, so too do I believe that everyone should be allowed to wear and do and say what they want to wear and do and say, unless it hurts another PERSON. Do I think a person is worth more than a bunny? Hell, yes, I do. Does this mean that I have a round-the-clock bunny-torture pit in my basement, or that I nightly bathe in the blood of innocent animals and virgins? Nope.

And yet, just by mentioning his coat in passing, an acquaintance of ours got all up in arms about the fur. It was all That's bad and People who wear fur are evil and when I was flipping through the Gun World magazine in the bathroom at the firing range, after washing the lead off my hands, I noticed an anti-PETA article, calling them all crackpots. That article was wrong too. I just don't see any point in believing that other people should do something the way YOU want them to enough to hurt them, kill them, offend them, or slander them. Live and let live, you know?

So when Justin and I have mentioned that we've gone gun shooting, or when we take my mom, I've had some unusual responses along the lines of and Oh my god, you touched one of those things?The people who go there are all crazy right-wing redneck freaks. To which I say: my shooting a gun at a range is not going to hurt anyone. It definitely won't hurt anyone because I don't have very good aim. What will hurt someone? Calling them a crazy right-wing redneck freak.

Like MY MOM.

Two things

2009-08-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

Two things:

1. I'm a featured writer in the USAirways inflight magazine for the month of September. I'm in the front, in a section called "The Gist", and I'm apparently considered an expert on Cyberculture. They found me because I wrote a Vagablogging article about Twitter and how people seem to assume it's factual without checking sources, and how that might be a bad thing. The article started a debate over on Vagablogging, although I don't know if you can call it a debate if there's only two people and they're arguing back and forth. But anyway, the article's in there, and so's my name! In the table of contents!

2. I'm trying this new thing. Which is that, as some of you may know, I write a lot. I've written probably about eight novels, and articles, and poetry, and even won some awards. But unfortunately, my literary agent has come to a standstill (along with the publishing industry) on my represented novel, and I wrote another one a while ago that I actually love and I can't really shop it around anywhere until we figure out something to do with the first one.

So I thought about what John Scalzi did, and decided that if you like this one chapter, you can have the rest of them, if you tell me you want them. So here's the first chapter of the novel I quite like, which is a sort of urban fantasy novel about a woman who finds out some interesting facts about her family background and it sort of wanders around on the East Coast of Canada and has some interesting facts about mythology and sexy people and shouting and witchcraft and weird alternative universes. It's called The Waves Above. Tentative working title. If you like it, tell other people and see if they like it too. I'd love feedback, too. But only if you like it.

LA Story

2009-08-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

It's your standard Los Angeles story; every year, the area catches fire and imperils dozens of expensive homes, forcing evacuations and painting the night sky reddish orange. But this is the first year I've been here to see it, and they're saying the Station Fire is actually much larger and spreading much faster than some of its other compatriots.

We first noticed the fire this early afternoon, when Justin had a doctor's appointment in Montrose, which is several miles east of us in the Valley; driving over there, we saw volcanic clouds of smoke, tinged with pinks and oranges.

As we drove closer, we saw the occasional tiny flame gouting upwards, and the fine sifting of ash drifting past the office doors.

As the day progressed, more flare-ups. The fire started to trickle down the hills towards the San Fernando Valley, closer to Pasadena and Glendale than most people would be comfortable with. We watched the bright orange flames spurt upwards, and the constantly circling firefighting airplanes return again and again to drop payload after payload of fire retardant water. The payloads seemed so small compared to the riotous size of the blaze, which is cresting this hills, dipping down towards the houses.

Occasionally there is a brighter-than-usual flare, with deep orange flames and darker smoke; that is a house, or something that's not brush, catching and burning. The temperatures today were about 106 degrees, and the firefighters are wearing full protective gear; they have to, because the fire is so hot. I suggested bringing marshmallows up to the firefighters, and Justin suggested they be shaped like priceless heirlooms.

As night fell, we watched the sky glow in so many places, edging the hills with red and orange, and the creeping bright yellow flames dipping down towards the edges of Pasadena. The smoke is everywhere.

I wonder what will happen tomorrow.

Traveling new places

2009-08-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

I have been through a great many things with a great many people: divorce, the death of relatives, losing a child, unexpectedly gaining a child... There's a lot of trauma and stress that goes along with getting older (although damned if I know when we're supposed to start calling ourselves "grownups"), and one of those things is starting to know people with health problems, sometimes chronic, sometimes dangerous health problems.

Justin is not one of those.

Justin has an infected abscess in his abdomen, behind his navel. Basically, his bellybutton is infected; it's happened before, when hairs that grow INSIDE his belly button turn and grow inwards, and he gets what are essentially ingrown hairs inside his body. This time, it didn't go away though, and after a systemic infection that didn't respond to three increasingly aggressive rounds of antibiotics, he finally got his surgeon on the phone and they said, "Oh, we're a bit concerned over the severity of this thing and you're going to have surgery on Monday. With general anesthetic."

On the bright side, his deductible is $3500 and his insurance said they'd cover 100% of everything else, so once he hits the deductible, he has free health care for the rest of the year. I told him to get a physical, have his blood tested for thyroid disease, go see a therapist, and, what the heck, get a full battery of STD testing. Why not? Any suggestions for other medical things he can take advantage of? Maybe he needs a colonoscopy?

On the down side, he has to have surgery. The pre-operative stuff is kind of scary; it's all blood draws and "who's your next of kin" and "what do you want us to do with your corpse" and the internet, which tells me that sometimes people with infected, bleeding belly buttons have DIRECT OPENINGS INTO THEIR URETHRAS or possibly DOZENS OF TUMOURS TRYING TO PUSH THEIR WAY OUT. It has nothing to do with his bellybutton piercing, which is what 95% of the postings online are about, so those aren't too helpful. We were kind of hoping briefly that they would sew his bellybutton closed, which they apparently won't do in case he needs laparoscopic surgery later.

Basically, it's interesting because it reminds me of the four months I didn't have any health insurance and everyone liked to tell me fun stories about cracking their kneecap in half or getting beat up in a bar fight and fracturing a skull and needing physical rehab for a month and falling off a skateboard and having all your ligaments rip so your foot faces the opposite direction. People are so sweet to tell me medical stories, but mostly what it means is: getting older, in some ways, means breaking down. I'll have to keep an eye out for funny-shaped skin moles, and poke around my insides, and just...be careful. All of you, be careful. I'd rather pick you up after general anesthetic from a minor hilarious surgery than have to hold your hand when you hear a diagnosis.

The Personals Critic Edition

2009-08-17T17:52:00.001-07:00

I started reading Datewrecks some time ago, which led me to the mysterious Vermont craigslist postings of the Personals Critic. Since I'm not going anywhere except San Diego anytime soon (hi, Jack and Charity!), I thought I would travel in my mind instead, and do a little impromptu Personals Critic-ing of my own. Craigslist has provided me with hours of mindless fun (usually while working at the library), so it's only natural that I red-pen a little, giving back to the Craigslist community.

Starting with:

Tired of dumb women - 24 (Long Beach)

This is an important point when you look at his very first sentence, which is:

Looking for a coo black girl that's smart but also likes to party.

"Coo"? Can I go on record as saying that I really hate people who try to spell in dialect? I hated Irvine Walsh, too.

Can't be into this weird new way of dressing.

This is SO INTRIGUING. What weird new way of dressing? Wearing your pants hanging down around your kneecaps? Wearing socks on your ears?

Must have a pretty face and a fat ass

Only if Baby Got Back should you be looking for this playa. And make sure that your bee-hind is covered with some good ol' fashioned pants instead of this weird new way of dressing, where you swath yourself with cuttlefish.

Next up (this one is too long to reproduce in entirety, so it will be only highlights):

Seeking a white woman - 39 (Glendora)

You know, Khafif plays a song called Makedonsko Devojce, which translates as Macedonian Woman, and has a line in it about how nowhere in the whole wide world will you find anyone as beautiful as a Macedonian woman. Except it literally translates as "whole WHITE world." Everyone is racist!

Hello, I am Mexican American decent born and raised here is So Cal.I stand about 5'8 Ht and have a Teddy Bear Husky build

Well, it's good he's a Mexican American "decent", because I'd HATE a Mexican American IN-decent. And I can't help but wonder what Teddy Bear Husky is; it makes me think of that creepy talking doll, Teddy Ruxpin. Remember that? It rolled its eyes. Really, if you want a talking doll, you should get a Butthole Bear from my friend Boris (PS That link is the cutest video of Justin I have ever seen).

As far as my personnel interests, I am a "Huge" sports guy.

"Thank you for coming to the interview today, Mr. Green. Our personnel department has several interests: whether or not you can effectively use Excel, what your availability is, and sports. "Huge" sports."

What I am seeking in a real woman?? good question so I will do my best to answer it for you.I want someone who is "REAL" not a game player.Someone who is looking for a long term committed ..I "DO NOT PLAY GAMES!!!!! and I want someone who will appreciate me for who I am and I will do the same and more.If you like what you hear get back to me.I hope to hear from you soon, and thanks for taking time to read my add.Please no "LIERS or people that are "FAKE or FLAKES".I want someone who is "REAL" and knows the true meaning of the word.

You know how when you use a word over and over it doesn't sound like a real (oops) word anymore? So how can you figure out what the true meaning of the word is when you've forgotten what it's supposed to mean? And he clearly doesn't actually want someone real, because he keeps putting it in quotation marks. So he wants someone "real", aka fake.

Freckles are attractive but love women who are girly girl and polish there "Toes" (big plus)

In the first place, are these things related? I mean why does liking freckles garner a BUT for girly girls? I mean, it's sort of like saying "Coffee is good but love bicycle racing." Also, since it's clear he doesn't actually mean TOES, what do you think he might mean instead? What else could you polish, that you might refer to as toes, if you were feeling silly? Doorknobs? Skin tags? "Can you come out with us tonight, Irwin?" "No, I have to stay home and "polish my toes", if you know what I mean."

And finally, captured in its entirety, Captain Pretention:

Older Women Are So Alluring and Enticing - m4w - 27 (Sherman Oaks)

It is mysterious, the attraction we feel for that certain age group that is different from ours. For some, it is for someone older; for others, younger is the attraction. You find 20-something men sexy in the same way that I find 40-something women inherently enticing. Why is that? What is it about that age differential - for you, the man who is a decade (give or take) younger than you; for me, the woman who is a decade (give or take) older than I - that fuels our respective attractions? I have no idea! Nor do I care, I simply enjoy it for what it is :)

I am dark haired, light brown eyes and attractive. I am not attached. You are not seeking a husband and I am not seeking a wife. We are both seeking lovers. Fun lovers.

Where to begin? With the pseudo-philosophical expressions he uses? "It is mysterious"? "That certain age group that is different from ours"? Did you write the Celestine Prophecies? He sounds like a guy I used to know in high school, who, under his graduating yearbook photo, wrote that his nickname was Shadow, which it wasn't, because he was always walking alone at night. It's so "I've just finished reading bad poetry."

And who says "inherently enticing"?

Finally, "we are both seeking lovers. Fun lovers." I can't tell if he's restating the noun and clarifying it, or if he's making it a whole new noun, like "funlovers", as in "people who like to have fun". So does he wants someone to bone him, who is fun, or someone who just likes to have fun? And is enticingly older than he is?

And how does he know what I'm seeking?

BritBrit and Jenny (and Sadie)

2009-08-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

Are so cute they deserve their own post.

Britni gets attacked a lot. We have lots of pictures of her being smacked on the head.

But she sure is ADORABLE.

It's actually a good thing Jenny isn't here all the time, or she would make me feel inferior.

Justin is wearing his "sleep shorts", which he claims he brought so as to have something to wear while sleeping, but are actually, as I pointed out, far more obscene than him wearing nothing. Sadie, on the other hand, always has the audacity to wear fur coats, no matter what the outdoor temperature.

Clear Lake

2009-08-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

This is me driving a boat.

I'm at Clear Lake, as I pointed out before. It is full of ridiculously attractive people, unfortunately, and all of them are in our cabin. I didn't have space in this post for a picture of Britni or Jenny, so they will be in a shortly following post. But these are who I have been spending my days with, although there are no pictures of Justin's betrothed, Sadie McWaggle, at least until we get the photobooth pictures.

This is Adam. He has numerous facial expressions, but tends to lean heavily on "sardonic."

Boris has very deep dimples. This is what he looks like when he's happy. Boris took me out on the WaveBlaster yesterday and we were actually approximately four feet above the water on several occasions. He went wakeboarding yesterday too, and is now wandering around like an old lady; he just sat down next to me moaning "Ow...why does it hurting?"

This is what he looks like after half a bottle of Jagermeister while I wax his back. Still pretty happy.

And then, of course, the master of it all:

Miami Vice.

Lake Clarity

2009-08-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, we never had a "lake house" that we went to every summer for a month, like all the kids in the young adult stories, where I got brown and wore flip-flops and ate ice cream with other brown, tan, be-flip-flopped kids. The closest we had was my grandfather's cottage in Massachusetts, which is on a lake, but since he technically lived in a completely different country from me (to wit: the United States), we didn't really go there for very long. I have pictures of me jumping in the lake with some other kids, and my grandfather swears he remembers me playing cowboys with my cousin Isak, but I don't really have lake-related memories.

Justin, on the other hand, is rife with lake-related memories, because he grew up going to The Lake, aka Clear Lake, aka the Murkiest Lake I Have Ever Seen. It looks remarkably like Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, what with the lazily brown mountains and sort of haphazard trees and speedboats zipping all over the place, but it differs in several major senses: a) it is not in Guatemala, b) everyone who lives here is richer by approximately 47 times than everyone who lives on Lake Atitlan, where you can purchase a vacation home for the equivalent of $300 US (yes, there is not a missing set of three zeroes from that number), and c) people go SCUBA diving in Lake Atitlan. If they went in Clear Lake, they would see nothing, until someone riding a WaveBlaster tore their heads off. Then they really wouldn't see anything.

So we got here yesterday and have been spending the days doing what most people do at the lake, apparently, which is snack and lounge, sometimes both simultaneously, sometimes on a boat. We are frequently on a boat, which means we are all incessantly singing about being on a boat. I drove the boat, both yesterday and today. And I ate a lot of snacks, both yesterday and today. I would nap more, but the beds are very uncomfortable.

I also rode a WaveBlaster today, which is the kind of water device that people like to complain make too much noise and go too fast. I can vouch that they do, in fact, do both. Despite us making some truly impressive sharp turns across the wakes of larger boats, and becoming totally airborne on several occasions, Justin pointed out some valuable reassurance. 'It's pretty hard to hurt yourself on one of these," he said. "We've tried."

I think it's more likely I'll hurt myself with eating too much, until my stomach falls off, which is what I'm doing right now.

"You, Ernie?"

2009-07-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

They say you can't go home again.

Actually, nobody says that, probably because it's so blisteringly obvious that it's true. It's one of those things that people bring out when they're trying to sound deep, like "Water is wet" or "Tomorrow never comes." It's like saying "How about those Mets?" It fills space when you don't know what else to say, because of course you can't go home again -- wherever it was that you consider your home, as soon as you stop living there, it's not your home anymore. Your parents' house, your first apartment, even your first car. You have these wonderful ideals of going nostalgically back to see the lilac trees you used to chase guinea pigs under and the front porch where you once got snowed in, only to discover that, as in my case, your most beloved childhood home is now a real estate office.

So while you can't go home again, you can return to places you have lived and people you knew there, which is what I did this past week when I went back to Pittsburgh to give a Rotary speech and get rained on. The Rotary speech was planned; the rain was not. I'd almost forgotten that it was possible to have days that weren't nice, days where--dare I say it--you could not just wake up in the morning and decide to walk somewhere instead of driving, because you might actually be crushed by a tree felled by lightning. I forgot that everywhere outside Southern California has weather, which actually stuns me in how quickly I got used to the constant Sesame Street theme song that is my life ("Sunny days...").

I don't think of Pittsburgh as my home either, really (I'm leaning more towards Canada in that sense...oh, Canada, and your land of pine trees and giant Muskoka mosquitos, and free health care, and Aero bars), but I sure do like all the people I know there, despite their having all had babies.

I like babies. I think they are adorable, with their little chubby cheeks and great big eyes and their obvious bid for survival via such a cute defense mechanism: You don't want to leave me for the wolves; look how cute I am when I'm sleeping! It's the only thiing that stops you from hurling them out the window at 2am; well, that, and the nagging feeling that if you did that, all that time you spent growing them inside your body would have been wasted, when you might have been able to spend it getting drunk and smoking crack.

But it seems like the first thing everyone I know decided to do after I left Pittsburgh was get themself some babies. It's like my friends all shouted, "Hey, honey, can you stop at the store for some duct tape, and while you're at it, could you maybe pick me up a couple of babies? But only if they're fresh!" The nice thing about this is that I get to be strange Auntie Claire, who arrives from unknown lands, probably wearing something strange, bearing gifts and kissing cheeks and staying in your spare bedroom, which you think is cool until you get to high school and realize this just means Auntie Claire is a bum. Then you get to college and realize Auntie Claire had it right, and it's really the corporate hegemony that had it wrong.

So there's all these babies, which is fun for me, because then I chew on their soft little ears without actually owning one myself...although, as I told my friend Amy while we wallowed on the beach today, I would be tempted to have a kid just so I could let it run around naked without those cute-but-pointless little leather shoes that people cram poor little baby toes into. Babies don't need shoes. They can't walk. They don't really need clothes either, unless it is cold out. Then you can keep them warm by placing them inside a wolf. At least, that is the traditional manner of dealing with kids in the winter, especially if they have a harelip.

So what with babies, and the Rotarians (who do not resemble babies), and the greatly, deeply enjoyable visiting with my dear, dear friends, there was almost enough sweetness and light in my life to deal with the DMV. I say "almost" because, as everyone knows, there is no good mood that cannot be destroyed by the DMV. It could be your wedding day, to the most wonderful person in the world, who loves you deeply, and has flown you to the DMV on his/her private Learjet and is waiting, naked, with your favorite coconut curry in a fancy electric car, and you could walk into the DMV and all the joy in your life would be drained out of you until you were too depressed to lift your hand to slice your wrists and sink into a lifeless stupor.

People were getting so excited when they saw the numbers flip over. "Awright," exclaimed one gentleman, who was holding a slip of paper that said D05, as the monitor number flipped over and said 95. "It's almost me."

"It's on the B's," I said. "Sorry." I showed him my ticket, which said C00, and he looked so dejected that I almost wished I hadn't said anything.

Even thinking about babies didn't help. So instead I went off my "no sugar" diet, and ate a Hostess cupcake. That didn't help either, but at least it felt like I was getting something done.

Traveling in my MIND

2009-07-16T21:42:00.000-07:00

I have, fortunately, not left Los Angeles since last Saturday. I was starting to feel like I was leaving every day and going somewhere far away and even for me, that would be a lot of traveling. As soon as someone invents a transporter, I am so there, even if it's one of the preliminary models that, 6 out of 10 times, leaves you spliced with someone else's DNA and growing a small but attractive third arm in your sacrum. It would be a small price to pay if it meant being able to zip over to see friends in other states for an evening, and then zipping home. I would alter my pants. And, frankly, I am not rich enough for this jetset lifestyle.

Even though it doesn't take a lot of money to fly around anymore, it still chips away at your savings bit by bit: a hundred dollars here, two hundred there, the infuriating taxes that make a $700 ticket cost $2000 and don't even get me started on baggage checking fees, which are exorbitant, just so you can have someone break your stuff. So is it better to save it all up and go on one big splurging trip that lasts several months and leaves you wrung out like a dirty washcloth? Or is it better to take lots of little trips here and there?

I don't have much choice about it, actually. It seems like I keep HAVING to take smaller trips: I have to speak at a Rotary club, or get a medical checkup, or visit someone. I guess I don't HAVE to visit people. I could just stay home. But they're my peeps! I love them! And also Southwest gives you free peanuts! And doesn't break your stuff, like United!

So I've been speculating about this whole "one big trip" idea postulating that it's actually a little bit better for your soul. One of the downsides of "living" somewhere and then traveling away from it every weekend is that you're in a constant state of change: it's like moving house every week, except instead of taking everything you own, you're only taking a few things, and no liquids bigger than 3oz. So you're on a shoestring of stuff, which is good because it teaches you to love minimalism and reject capitalism and The Man and all that hippie bullshit, but you also don't have anything you need when you need it (god, I missed my cute summer tank tops when I was in Europe, unexpectedly longer than I thought I would be) and then you end up buying things to replace the things you already have at home.

That's a lot of "things", but it all boils down to: they say one of the most stressful things in life is CHANGE. Actually, they say moving, or divorce, or death are the most stressful for younger adults, but especially as we get older, what stresses us the most, physically and emotionally is change. Things being different. If you're on a longer trip, things started different from back home, and they stay that way; you adjust, get used to being on the road, and the shirts you have, and slap a little more duct tape on your sneakers. If you keep going on shorter trips, your body freaks out and gives you a cold.

So the moral of the story is: go big, or go home. Literally.

Day Off

2009-07-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I just can't handle the city. There's too much concrete and too many lights, and too much NOISE: people shouting and cars and the constant badgering blink of advertisements several stories high, reminding you that acne scars are temporary and McDonald's is having a sale on cheese fries (by the way, does anyone remember back when McDonald's had tiny individual pizzas? I had a craving for one the other day).

So today I wanted a day off. I wanted to go camping and smell something other than exhaust and maybe see the stars. It didn't help that a very good friend of mine is roaming the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest, and I just couldn't make it happen to get up there for one weekend to go camping with him. So I knew he was surrounded by trees and empty air and robust bugs, and I'd be damned if I wasn't going to get the hell out of Dodge.

I originally considered going to Joshua Tree, and then Slab City (again). Then I ruled them out on the theory that it was possible I would completely vaporize, leaving behind only a whiff of gasoline and a single black hair, floating gently to earth, where it too would immediately sizzle to a crisp. It's hot, and Joshua Tree and Slab City are in the DESERT. Camping in the desert is fine for approximately 6-12 hours, and those hours are at night, and since it is summer, that would be closer to 6 hours than 12.

Also I live near the fucking ocean and I never go there, so I decided to go beach camping. I don't know anything about camping around here, but I mostly just wanted to get the hell out, so that's what I did: loaded a bunch of odds and ends into the car and drove up highway 101 towards Santa Barbara, passing the mysterious isolated palm-tree island that bemused me when Justin and I drove up this same route for Colleen and Peter's wedding. What IS that little island? It's joined to the mainland by a long gated-off road. Is it someone's private islet? is it a BDSM fantasy resort? A fancy restaurant? A game preserve that is only a mile across?

Then I sat on the beach for hours. I didn't have a bathing suit; I just sat, and listened. There is nothing that is more the antithesis of the city than the ocean. While I sat, I remembered being in Utila, bobbing on the dock at the end of the day, hair stiff with salt, everything tasting of cheap coconut sunscreen. There, the sound of the ocean followed you, mixed with the taste of sweat and a slight seedy undercurrent of pollution. I remember how every scrape and scratch softened and refused to heal, but I also remember the smell of salt everywhere, and the infernal calm in everyone's eyes. Divers are young, tanned, beautiful, fit, and devastatingly remote from normal society; there is no other group so much like mercenaries, in that they live outside standard social rules and do things for you if you offer them enough money. It was in Utila that I paid for my diving certification in lempira, so I could take out thousands of them from the ATM and hurl them up over my head, while Colleen and I turned our faces up to the bills.

Here, on the beach near Solvang, CA, I sought absence from a group, where in Utila I wanted to fit in; I felt too old, much of the time I traveled, too different from the bright-eyed teenagers. I wasn't enough of a diver to be accepted, and I wasn't enough of a traveler to be accepted for that either. But today, on the beach, I wanted to hear the sound of no voices. Only waves. I lay on the brightly colored beach towel and read a book about the wild Sierra Madres cover to cover, until I looked up in the evening sunlight and forgot where I was, for just a minute. Wait...I'm in Mexico? At one point, I read of the marijuana trade that is the backbone of capitalism there, and at that exact second, smelled the couple thirty feet away lighting a joint. Sensurround.

The pelicans fall out of the sky like stones, like wingless beasts who only just realized they don't know how to fly. They bob in contented groups and I mistake them for the heads of children. And then, walking back along the beach towards the car, I saw a pod of dolphins. Their sharp fins sliced the water over and over, they leapt out, twisted, played, and my face hurt from smiling.

Later, I found the RV overnight parking area off the 101, near the turnoff for 33 and Ojai. I pulled in, determined to spend the night by the water, but was deterred by the numerous signs that very clearly say "If You Camp On This Beach And Are Not In An RV And Didn't Pay $25 And Are Not Where You're Supposed To Be, Big Big Fines Await You." I flipped the hatch of the truck open and lay down in a curl of sleeping bag anyway, feeling the salt dust my lips and hands, and staring out at the sky. Then fear got the better of me, and I sat up, intending to move on; again, not a part of the in-crowd. No RV, no parkie. And I sat humped in the truck bed, listening to the waves and the absence of city noise, while a dozen tiny campfires burned along the beach, from the legitimate RV owners, and I saw a shooting star, like a silver hair, there and then lost.

There were ships on the water, brightly lit, and I wondered what we on land look like to people who don't come onshore. We create arbitrary divisions, but that's one that's as old as it can be, and as divisive: land vs sea, the soup of creation vs where we can survive. And then I closed the hatch, and turned the wheel towards home.

People are everywhere! Everywhere! People!

2009-07-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

So, as the summer begins to hammer away at Los Angeles with, I'm told, its usual ferocity reminiscent of motivated illegal Mexican immigrants under threat of deportation, people start dressing kinda funny. I can understand how the heat might do strange things to your brain, causing you to imagine that pulling your socks up all the way, despite wearing them with sandals, is a good idea. Plus, there are tourists, who are notorious for sock-related badness.

But, really, girl crossing the street...was it really a good idea to wear a front-clasp black bra, short shorts, and flip flops in public? Also, middle aged man on a skateboard, despite your "busting" some funky "moves", you are not a teenager anymore. Also shave your moustache.

I saved up my grocery shopping until 10pm last night, and was rewarded by seeing Lindsay Lohan stalk irately into the Ralph's and loiter sullenly in the imported cheese section, shouting into her cell phone. She was drawing attention to herself not because she was Lindsay Lohan, but because she was shouting. In the cheese section. This is not to say that shouting in any other section would have gone over better, only that I don't really think Ralph's is the place for shouting.

This is the same Ralph's that I think I saw Sandra Bullock at the other day, and just as an aside, I think Sandra Bullock is probably actually quite fun to hang out with. I think she swears a lot.

And also, malls here are different. Back on the east coast, malls have Forever 21 in them, or Claire's, or Orange Julius. Sometimes they have a Hot Topic. Here, they have 7 For All Mankind, and Diesel. Same mall smell. Same crappy made-in-Chinese-sweatshops-by-gang-raped-fourteen-year-olds merchandise. Higher prices. Los Angeles is like the East Coast, only with a thin gloss of "expensive" over everything.

Explosions

2009-07-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday started as a great day. I woke up at 10, opening my eyes to the standard California blue sunny sky, and went and checked my email and then was just making quinoa with chicken apple sausage and broccoli and tomatoes when Justin staggered from the undergrowth and collapsed on the couch. He's been sick over the last few days; he got it from me.

I fed him lunch, and then we retired to bed, where I read him about seventeen chapters of "Practical Demonkeeping" and we ordered food delivered from the local food delivery place and they brought it to the gate and I went out and got it in my pajamas. And then I had to go to dance rehearsal.

I'm dancing with several different projects here in town, and none of them are bellydance related, which is kind of fun for me. The bellydance community here is pretty tightly knit, and there aren't a lot of troupes; twosomes and threesomes, yes, but no troupes. It's on my own or nothing, and I am uninspired to fight tooth and nail to claw my way into the public eye when I'm leaving in six months anyway.

So I went to dance rehearsal and was slightly hurt by a misunderstanding but still chipper, and on my drive home, I stopped at the 7-11 to pick up soda for Justin and realized I didn't have my wallet. "I must have left it at home," I mused. So I got home. Not there. Called the people who might still have been at rehearsal. Not there. But by the time they called me back, I realized I'd left it on the roof of my car after getting gas before rehearsal, and drove away.

I panicked. My credit card, my ATM card, my health insurance card, my driver's license, my irreplaceable student ID card, and, painfully, my Social Security card, which you're not supposed to carry around with you...all in the wallet. I called to cancel the credit card at about 7:45 to find that someone else had already called to report it lost at 7:15. Maybe that means I'll get it back, I hoped. But then realized I had to act like I wouldn't, so I had to replace everything anyway, and do all the things that you're supposed to do in case of identity theft, like notify the credit bureaus and all that jazz. The worst part really, is that I'm leaving in six months. The wallet could have held out another damn six months, and then I wouldn't have needed the cards in it anyway.

Then (thank you, PMS) I got painfully miserably angry with Justin for never washing the dishes. Which he doesn't. But I was pissed about it.

The downside of traveling is never feeling like you're at home anywhere. Although I've come to a rest here in California, it doesn't feel like my home; I feel like a temporary resident, which is why I don't have a California driver's license (well that, and I don't need one). This is my current mailing address, here in North Hollywood, but it's not where I live in my head, mostly also because I don't want to stay here.

The major problem, of course, is that the government does not look favorably on those who migrate, or even people who spend six months in one state and six months in another...where do we mail your checks? Where do you replace your driver's license? Where is your residence, your address, your home? Do you want where I'm living, or where my mail goes to? It's a series of questions, and life is not easy for a nomad, at least not here.

(On the other hand, I do live in an industrialized nation. I have loads of friends. My life is hardly difficult. But trying to figure out where you belong is more of an emotional hardship than a real, physical one. Trust me. I know. When RAID performed at the Echoplex on July 4th, in the two hours beforehand, I walked around Echo Park listening to the illegal fireworks go off everywhere and smelling the cordite floating in the air, and thinking how lucky we are in this country that it doesn't smell like this for more sinister reasons.)

Back in the saddle, naturally

2009-06-24T18:54:00.001-07:00

So, it turns out, San Francisco is the best possible city to be going to if you are going to have some kind of car accident and rip the tires off your truck. Hypothetically speaking.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, much earlier than I was hoping to, I called AAA and they delivered to my door a flatbed tow truck driver who could have come from Central Casting if you requested a "sturdy, friendly young man who could star in a production of Oklahoma!" As it was, he held the door of his truck cab open for me, and we happily regaled each other with political discussion on the two block drive to the mechanic, who, since they were attached to a Shell station, I knew would be ass-raping me on the prices, but they were the only ones open. When we arrived, I unthinkingly hopped down from the cab to see driver Jaime standing there, arms akimbo.

"Oh, sorry," I said, and climbed back into the cab and shut the door, which he then promptly re-opened, and helped me down out of, using his hand as a stepping block. Then he manfully maneuvered the truck into place, tipped his hat and said, "No problem, little lady," and got on a horse and rode away. Not really, but that's what it felt like. Although, since it was San Francisco, he was more likely to have been starring in a revival of Brokeback Mountain, not Oklahoma!

Then Darcy and I went into the city to take Jill Parker's class, which, as it turned out, Jill Parker wasn't teaching. She was in the hospital. Then we took the BART back to Oakland, with my friend and local shit-disturber Burstein, and dropped Darcy at her Crucible classes, where she learned how to put out someone who has caught on fire ("Tip number 42: Spray them with water. Just a thought, really.").

Then we engaged in some tomfoolery of the Stuff White People Like variety; namely, we participated in a giant Oakland-wide game of tag/capture-the-flag/Red Rover. It was called Journey To The End Of The Night, although by the next day, everyone was calling it Journey To The End Of My Feet, because everyone had dislocated something or tripped on something or fallen into a rosebush or gotten blisters. As one friend pointed out, "My blisters have toes." Fortunately Darcy almost passed out from dehydration and famine before we'd gone too far, so we were spared the indignity of passing out, or being chased in front of a car, or tiptoeing through someone's backyard.

Instead, we ate Chinese food, and watched people flee by our window, to the consternation of uninvolved passers-by. Turns out, the truck was basically uninjured; except for needing new tires, which was an aforementioned ass-rape, it was completely driveable, so I picked it up (with Burstein), and then we completely left it in the wrong part of town during JTTEOTN and had to walk back it dragging poor gimpy Darcy, who hurt her leg, and in the company of some guy Burstein knew from Noisebridge. We looked drunk, but were actually just deeply, deeply amused, which probably amounts to the same thing. Then we went to Dorkbot's 7th anniversary party, where I realized just how jaded I am, when Darcy asked what a Tesla coil was, and I said, "They shoot like 50,000 volts of electricity and make lightning. But these probably won't be as cool as the ones I saw at Flipside, which actually played music and the Doctor Who theme song." When Tesla coils are boring, you've been going to Burning Man too long. Ditto snail shaped art car that shoots fire from antennae.

Sunday, we gave our souls to Five and Diamond in the Mission, and I realized why all SF belly dancers look the same: because Five and Diamond's stuff is really fracking cool. I escaped only having spent several hundred dollars. Then on Monday, I drove home, where I was instantly assaulted by having Lots Of Things To Do. And also with Being Poor.

The moral of the story is: do good deeds, and God will reward you by making sure you don't die when you drive off the side of the road, and you get to talk on your cellphone the entire drive home without a headset and not get caught by the very same CHP officers who were nice enough to let you sit in their (collective) patrol cars.

A day.

2009-06-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

To begin with, I am fine.

Today, I was driving to Oakland to meet Darcy; Darcy has never been to California before. Not only that, she's never been this far West in the United States before, and I have been planning for months to drive up and meet her and hang around with her in Oakland, while she goes to fire eating classes. I've done this drive a zillion times; it's a straight shot up highway 5.

So I put an ad on Craigslist for a rideshare and picked her up after volunteering at the Center this morning, around 11:45, and we hit the road. She was a sweet girl with a head wrap and sunglasses, who said, "That's so crazy," every five minutes and spoke in detail about where she lived in San Francisco. Like, for hours. So it was sunny and the sky was blue and we were going through the really boring part of California, and it was just starting to get interesting again, about fifteen miles before the exit for 580, when I was like, "You know, that's weird, the car is kind of juddering."

I'd noticed some liquid leaking from under the car (which was not my car, but Justin's truck) before and wondered if it was leaking oil. I checked the oil. Not leaking oil. I checked the radiator, and then smelled whatever was leaking and realized it was water, probably from the air conditioner. I checked the tire pressure on all four tires, and put a little more air in each one (they were all low).

This was in Patterson, CA. Then we started driving abck on the highway again and I said, "That's funny, you feel that little catch in the car? It had that before, that's why we were shaking." And my rideshare said, "Yeah, that's weird."

And I thought We'll keep an eye on it, at least until about six minutes later when we blew a rear tire going 75 on highway 5.

I was in the right lane, and there was a car behind me, and a large truck coming up in the right hand lane, all a fair ways back, and a damn good thing they were too. I heard a loud noise and turned my head a little bit to go What the fuck? and suddenly the car started to fishtail. It skidded across the highway, weaving wildly across lanes, and I saw it heading for the center median and had a chance to think Holy fuck when I tried to steer into the spin the way they teach you to do in Canada if you're on ice and we spun in a wide circle across the highway, hit the side lip at a slight angle, spun backwards, rolled backwards down the hill, and came to a rest parallel to the highway, down a very steep embankment, near some attractive apricot trees.

We were both uninjured.

As I sat there trying to process what had happened, the first thing I did was make sure my rideshare was okay. She was. I was. I looked up and saw that two cars had stopped. There was a bearded man on the phone, shouting "Is everyone okay?" I nodded, dazed. A woman walked towards us, holding up two fingers. "What?" I said. "Only two passengers?" she shouted. "Yes!" I shouted back. "We're not hurt."

She drove away and the other guy stayed with us. He'd called California Highway Patrol, who had been, interestingly, chasing a motorcycle that was going 140 and weaving in and out; the same bearded guy was ON THE PHONE with CHP when he saw my tire blow and watched me hit the ditch. He must have just pressed 2 when it said "Do you want to report another incident?"

So the CHP officer showed up, and the nice bearded man took my rideshare to Berkeley. I waited in her patrol car, as she remarked, "I'm almost out of gas." The tow truck showed up. He didn't take AAA. We called another tow truck. He took 45 minutes to get there, in which time I switched officers. Then eventually that officer left me with ANOTHER officer, and we got a flatbed truck for the car, since the first AAA guy got my car up the embankment, but couldn't load it onto the dolly.

While I was sitting in third CHP officer's patrol car, he got a call to look out for a blue Mustang that had run someone off the road. We were waiting and waiting, and then suddenly I said, "Hey that's a blue car. And it's a Mustang!" and before we could tell the tow truck driver where we were going, we pulled out and hit the lights and pulled the blue Mustang over. It turned out to be a seventeen year old girl, who may or may not have been drunk. I watched the CHP officer give her a very stern talking to while I sat outside the McDonald's and wished I hadn't left my purse with the tow truck driver, because my stomach was starting to consume itself. I think I used every calorie in my body in panic.

Eventually, the truck showed up, I bought a hamburger, and they used my 100 mile AAA membership to haul me to Oakland, where they deposited me on Morley's doorstep, since no mechanics were open. The tow truck driver was super nice, and pointed out the remains of a brushfire on our drive up 580, and I remembered that the bearded guy had remarked "It's a good thing your catalytic converter didn't start the brush on fire!" as we stood on the side of the highway staring at the aftermath and I thought That was an option????

It could have been so much worse. If we'd hit the lip of the highway at a slightly different angle, we would have rolled the truck going over the side. As it was, we almost rolled when we slid down the embankment, but didn't. The truck has no body damage, although the rear driver's side tire, the one that blew, is dramatically untreaded, and it apparently popped the front passenger side wheel and did something to the front suspension, what with going over the edge of the highway. We didn't get hit by the semi behind us on the highway. We didn't hit anyone else while the car was out of control. Not only were we not killed, but we were not even injured in the slightest; not even whiplash.

The worst that happened to me was spending three hours sitting on the side of the road with CHP, waiting to tow my car. I got to Oakland about four hours later than I expected to. I have a place to stay and public transportation to get me around. I have friends who took care of me and texted me jokes and tried to help me in any way they could.

It could have been so much worse. I am so lucky.

As we were coming to a rocking, juddering landing in the ditch, the split second thought went through my head, "Of course we're okay." It never crossed my mind that we were going to die. Not once. And we didn't, through some miracle. Some people might think we were about to die, but the whole time I thought, "This is very bad, but how could we possibly die?" Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I'm overly optimistic. But I thought we weren't going to die, and we didn't. Not a scratch.

It was only when I heard the fear in everyone else's voice that I realized this could have been a much bigger deal. We could have needed an ambulance. This post could have been made by Justin, and said something very different. You could have read about it in the papers.

But you didn't. You read about it here. Written by me. And now I'm going to sleep.

The sort of thing we do out here

2009-06-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

The party I was at on Monday was the premiere party for a TV show my friend SuperKate is involved with. In no particular order, there were: a bouncy pirate ship, a guy on stilts, a fire eater/sword swallower, completely naked girls painted to look like they had tiny outfits on serving food, midgets painted exactly the same way doing the same thing, a Mexican guy with a monkey that was wearing a little mariachi outfit, a balloon twister who was making dirty balloons like strippers on poles and penises, a magician, a bellydancer (that we knew, naturally) with three snakes, a rollerskating chicken, karaoke, a roller rink, hot chicks giving out vodka, hot guys giving out water, blinky bracelets, and probably some famous people. There was also a head-on collision directly out front with fire trucks, police cars, and staggering people, which was PROBABLY not due to the party. I hope.

Also, this is very important: Justin Winokur's new album, "Leaving" is out on iTunes and CDBaby, for digital download only. It is good. Very very good. It sounds sort of like what would happen if you let Brian Wilson and Elliott Smith have a summertime pool party with a bunch of kindergarteners, as directed by Baz Luhrmann. It's poppy and rocky and zippy and sad and happy and introspective. He asked a bunch of his friends and family what songs they would want played at their funerals, and then wrote his own music based on the answers he got. It also has one of my favorite versions of "Don't Fence Me In" that I've ever heard, and the title song of the album, which he wrote for his friend Adam's mother, is so soft and sad and sweet that it always makes me tear up a little.

It's only ten bucks. If you like good music, and I'm sure that you do, please go buy it.