::asian freckles::

Sage advice overheard in an Apple store and a sage observation made on BART

Young boy, half-whining: But why can't I have a Macbook PRO?
Father, nonchalantly: Because you're not a pro.

*****

"When bread goes stale, it gets hard. When crackers go stale, they get soft."
"Like my penis!"
"Yes. Your penis has two-way stale mode."

I'm actually a whole lot happier up here than the last note makes it sound, and I'm not writing this just because I know TheNoah will be reading it

I'm in San Jose right now; we drove down because TheNoah had some meetings and then tonight we're catching an opening showing of "Harry Potter and the Whatsit Thinger". Although now that I think about it, I could have probably jockeyed to just stay behind in Oakland and then putzed around the City in the evening-- I have no interest in seeing this movie. I watched the first three in-theater and was mildly annoyed and moderately disappointed each time, then the fourth movie someone put on during a house party/get-together and I watched the first 15 minutes before getting pretty pissed off and spent the rest of the time trying not to throw things at the screen, and then the fifth one someone gave to me to watch and I put it on and walked out of the room and came back later in the day to turn off the television. To be fair, I put it on right after an unsuccessful attempt to watch "The Seeker"-- that movie is my Hulk trigger, without a doubt, and that movie's mere existence makes me so furious that I hope every major player who willingly participated in the making of that piece of shit goes bankrupt and then gets eaten by a whale-- so my tolerance was already crazy low, but then I've never felt a desire to go back and try to watch it again.

Anyway. TheNoah has always seen "Harry Potter" every opening night with one of his best friends, and this time wasn't about to be an exception, and he wanted me to come with. But apparently, it's also been tradition that he falls asleep during the movie every time.

We are basically the last two people on this planet who should be holding tickets to the midnight screening of this movie. 

Luckily it's been a really long time since I read the book, so the odds of my rage flaring up like a bad case of hemorrhoids should be vastly reduced. We'll find out, I guess.

But: San Jose. Bay area, really. I'm up here until I think the 26th or 27th, with a few days in Seattle for a conference, so my total absence from home will end up spanning nearly 2.5 weeks. It was not exactly a pleasant time, packing for this trip-- due to the absolute crap joke of a weather system that the Bay area employs on a year-round basis, I had to pack for temperatures ranging from 60-90 ºF, plus evening wear (unlikely chance I'd need it, but you never know), plus danceable attire, plus conference wear. And then shoes! It was like packing for a mini-move. I told TheNoah before I left for the airport that it felt like a dress rehearsal for moving day.

Moving day, by the way, is still TBD. Wasn't I supposed to move back in April? Yeah, but... well, a lot of "but"s. But once it was only me in my house, I realized just how much I really love living there and being in it. But it's always been hard for me to think of leaving Vegas, and it still is because my family and friends are there. But as much as I like visiting San Francisco, it's never really held any appeal to me as a place of residence, temporary or otherwise.

And so I've stalled. I dove passionately into apartment-hunting for about a week, then got discouraged, then got back into it half-heartedly for another two weeks, then gave up completely. TheNoah's been no help, all patience and sweetness and understanding, never giving me ultimatums about moving or starting arguments about why I'm being so difficult about this or accusing me of not caring enough about our relationship, that if I truly cared I'd have moved already. How am I supposed to get motivated when he keeps telling me that yes, it sucks not living in the same city together, but he doesn't want to rush me if I'm not ready to let go of Vegas? Clearly, someone needs to step up and be more of an asshole if this move is going to happen.

In this same vein of "huh" news, we went to Mendocino over the weekend, stopping in Healdsburg (wine tasting-- Artiste, Selby and F. Teldeschi) and Boonville (Anderson Valley Brewing Co.) and Hopland (Solar Living Center, really cool but we only had 20 minutes to poke around before it closed for the day) and staying overnight at the Pacific Mist Inn, which had this terrific rustic charm. There was a music festival in Mendocino on Sunday morning that also advertised a "Petting Zoo", and I guess the quotation marks should have tipped me off, but I just saw the word "zoo", which got me really excited, and then I saw "petting", which got me super excited, and I had visions of goats and lambs and maybe even some cows or deer or ponies, so TheNoah and I walked around town for like two hours, waiting for the petting zoo to happen-- only to return and see no petting zoo.

Dismayed, we wandered into one of the tents and listened to an orchestra perform its final number for the festival after the conductor gave his parting remarks and invited everyone to come onto the stage before they left to check out the instruments and talk to the musicians. The piece was nice and upbeat and I always love orchestra performances, but I was still in the throes of animal-petting hunger, so to assuage me, TheNoah approached some women who were working the food tent nearby and asked them if the petting zoo was still on the agenda.

Whereupon the women laughed and said, oh, well, no, it's not quite a petting zoo, that's just in reference to the children being able to go onstage after the concert and "pet" the musician's instruments.

See: quotation marks should have tipped me off.

It's already Day Four/Evening Five and I miss my little cats like crazy and have subsequently been throwing myself upon everyone else's pets with wild loving abandon. I spent some time in a bookstore this morning and fondled books for nearly a half-hour; I may need to find a rescue shelter to get these cat cravings out of my system. 

Two more weeks. Sigh.

The busy calm before the happy storm

So, things 'round here. I guess they've been good-- they've probably been great, and I just haven't consciously absorbed that fact yet-- I guess they've been busy. Stressful with work, but when I don't think too much about what I'm doing or how I'm doing or why I'm doing it, I'm rather happy with work. That is to say, I'm happy so long as I'm not trying to justify that happiness, because when I start thinking too much about things, I start to wonder if I shouldn't be happy, if my happiness is actually just a cover I've woven to distract myself from secret self-disappointments or regrets. If I've convinced myself that I'm happy. It's terrible, all these questions and doubts and needs to validate what simply, automatically is.

I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's books lately-- I don't know if "reading" is the right word, maybe something more akin to "devouring", albeit in intervals; the way a few people have expressed their sentiments about me by way of my writing, which I have never understood, is the way I feel about Malcom Gladwell, which I think a couple universes of people could understand. I read "Outliers" over a weekend  during the plane flights in and out of SFO, then did the same with "Blink", and I absorbed the two books so deeply that now I just think in terms of his chapters and anecdotes and I have trouble explaining my thoughts to people who have no idea who he is, because it would be so much easier if I could say, "Remember that part about the rope experiment and the three solutions?" and then the other person would nod, and I'd make an expressive and thoughtful face and one of those indicative gestures with my arms, and my point would be so clear.

Or, basically I just want hyperlinks in real life.

Also, I'm writing again (for work, though that maddening little creature in my head has started to nag me about picking up creative writing again), and one of the most fun parts about that is seeing what subtle ridiculousness I can sneak into articles. Seeing as how I'm the only person who reviews the articles before they get published, it's not exactly hard to put things in there, but I do have editorial taste and I don't want to get fired so I can't exactly throw whole paragraphs about dinosaurs in without concern. I did a guest post for a fairly respectable tech site and they took out my math reference (for good reason; it was cacophanous to the narrative flow but I wrote it anyway because I just wanted the stupid reference that badly) but didn't fix my coder quotes, and that was my crowning glory.

TheNoah is reading this right now and wondering why I haven't offered you links, especially given my statement up there professing such an attachment to hyperlinks that I wish they could exist in the real, offline world. The first answer to this is, I don't really know. The second answer is, I guess it's because I'm still not used to this idea of throwing myself into the public arena. For as long as this particular site has been in existence, it's pulled up as a search result for my full name (though hardly by my own accord; I just never remembered to find out how to disassociate the two)-- however, my last name is nowhere within any of these entries, my first name only occasionally (I didn't even include it on this current "About" page). In short, while my identity is hardly a secret, I don't go out of my way to make it readily known.

Which is, I know, ridiculous. Especially when I'm dating TheNoah, who lives on the far other end of the online-identity spectrum. Granted, everything I've written and published here, I've done so knowing that it would be submitted for the world at large to access and read, should they so choose. I just never really expected there to ever be a reason for my name to be queried by complete strangers, whereas now I have a domain of my name registered and redirecting to here. It's-- well-- um, it's different.

Anyway. Things 'round here, they're also currently quiet, which I'm trying to appreciate while it lasts. TheNoah flies into town in a matter of hours (well: nine or so), and then according to the list of names on recent correspondence, I'm hosting 10 people this weekend (starting today, Friday) for a dance event-- and then Saturday, two friends from L.A. are driving up and bringing their dog (Schroeder-dog! I love that dog! Though the resident felines of this household will undoubtedly not), and on the one hand I'm starting to panic because while I have more than enough space, I don't have nearly enough furniture to sleep 12 guests, but on the other hand, 10 of those 12 are dancers, and dancers will sleep damned near about anywhere. Dancers will sleep in the bathroom if need be; depending on how drunk they are, the bathroom may even be the slumbering quarters of choice. So I know, I shouldn't be stressing. As I told my mom (who was the first to start raising eyebrows over where everyone was going to sleep) the other day: I'm not a hotel. If people require hotel accomodations, they can go stay at a hotel. If anything, I offer free wi-fi. Can't sleep because someone's elbow is in your ear? Blog about it in real-time! Not that sleep is expected to be much of an issue this weekend: blues dancers don't seem to have much comprehension of the notion of it. They're a motley bunch, they are.

Nearly one a.m. Time to start cleaning. Have a good 4th!