903.7.

That's a 19.3-mile ride this morning (plus about 8 miles on Saturday with Terrie out'n'back on the bike path). 6:40 to 8:20, averaging roughly 13 mph (when I look down at the speedometer, I'm usually doing something like 13.7 mph).

I think I shaved the mile off by (a) staying on Sebastopol Road after the bike path and (b) taking Sierra Avenue instead of Railroad over to Cotati. Kind of disappointing to not get the whole 20 though...

Not much doubt now that I will pass 1000 before the wedding, or at least well before a year of owning the bike. It's actually very satisfying to be chunking these larger-mileage days. Better than the old 8 miles per day, and I can miss a day or three and still feel like I've gotten reasonable exercise for the week in total.

Still below freezing when I start out these days (31'F on the clock in Sebastopol as I was waiting at the stoplight at the corner of 12). Difficult, during the spring and fall, to dress for the morning cold and bring clothes for the afternoon warmth as well as my work clothes. Maybe I should get the panniers and all -- or just get a trailer like that one guy here at work (not). I look forward to those upcoming summery days when I can get a little bit of tan along with my exercise -- but that gets old too, without the natural coolant of frosty air.

Still kinda casting about for things to do around the house (besides e.g. drinking and smoking). Reading quite a bit, and sleeping what seems like too much (but maybe I needed it). That kind of sleeping is what I've done in the past when overcoming addictions (such as the aforementioned Blow), and/or being very depressed. Not sure what to do about it, other than to keep getting plenty of exercise between... Really wanting to drink some nights, and then pretty happy I didn't, later. It's a roller coaster, and I suppose it'll resolve itself over time, but meanwhile kinda antsy much of the time. Think I'll just start going to more movies - seems to take up enough of the evening that I get past that what-to-do stage. On the one hand, don't think I'll ever go back to the every-other-night drinking I was prone to, say, a year ago. On the other hand, not really seeing enough benefit to non-drinking on the weekends - and indeed, haven't drank on a school night since before christmas, and for what it's worth, we've only drank five or six times since then, even on weekends. Seems like pretty successful moderation to me.

50-hour weeks have not so far materialized at work - really hasn't been necessary so far. I stand ready to work 14-hour days as necessary, but so far they're really not. Still, there's enough to do to fill up a 9- or 10-hour day. Speaking of which...

876.2.

Rode to SSU after work and caught the bus home from there. Nice that the busses have bike racks -- but if there are more than two bikes there's gonna be trouble (and there are only two busses going from SSU to Sebastopol morning and evening, so you can't just wait for another).

Blow (2001): "Blew" almost twenty dollars on this and popcorn last night. Pretty great cast populates a story that had me wondering why they bothered to make a movie. The original book, evidently, is an attempt by a convicted coke dealer to somehow redeem himself. But I couldn't muster much (any) sympathy for the character. I couldn't muster much hatred for him either. What is this movie trying to tell me? That cocaine is a huge waste of time and money and it ruins your life? Wow - see "Pink Pearl" reference from yesterday's blog. (BTW, Pink Pearls are those erasers you used in elementary school.) I had exactly the same experience through the 80s -- sans Pee-Wee Herman and millions of dollars -- and I admit I've written about it, but it's such a common story, I never dreamed anyone would bother to write an entire book, sell it as a screenplay, and get top-name actors to grace it with their presence! But I guess in jail you have time for making impossible dreams come true. Most disturbing to me was a scene where they have literally so much money they've filled the house and have no place to put it, with Depp's voiceover - "If you were buying coke in America in the early 80s, we had some of your money."

But Johnny Depp is always a treat. Ray Liotta and Rachel Griffiths as the father and mother were great. If nothing else, it was entertaining through the first hour or so. Five stars out of ten.

It's great to have a theatre within walking distance. Look forward to more current movie reviews here once we hit our stride on catching the $4.50 matinees.

Maybe 911 is a joke, and maybe it isn't, but I know for certain that the phone company's DSL service is a BIG joke.

871.2.

Had to try the straight-down-116 route; chopping five miles off was just too tempting. Sometimes, too, what you see from the car, bike-safety- and shoulder-wise, is different from what you might experience on the actual bicycle and shoulder. At any rate, it makes the ride manageable at 14.4 miles, but one of those miles is pretty scary.

I think I'm going to have to sleep with someone at CalTrans to try and get a bike path installed over that one hill, because otherwise it's a perfectly lovely ride, and somehow much better than all those extra miles on Smoggy Point Road (this morning, only about half a mile on S.P.).

Reading random blogs, and reflecting on a guy at work... of course, nobody thinks their thoughts aren't deep, or that their ideas are not fresh and significant. But man, most people's insights are about as penetrating as a Pink Pearl.

This guy at work, one of those people who, for whatever reason -- maybe NO reason, I instantly dislike. I can prove the existence of love at first sight, because there are people about whom, at first sight, I am entirely apathetic. If the opposite exists, and the middle exists, so must the balancing factor.

There's a hole in that logic somewhere... If dislike-at-first-sight exists, does that really prove its opposite? Black exists, ergo white? Not a universally provable law, and certainly not provable in terms of human interaction. But apathy exists as does its opposite love, so maybe apathy-at-first-sight proves love-at-first-sight. Yeah, I have all KINDS of time for THIS question.

Anyway. This guy, I treat with civility when I must speak to him, but I try to ignore him otherwise. Yesterday, he was at the door heading out when I was heading out for my coffee, and I sorta mumbled 'tsup as I do (having come from TSUP - Technical Support - at SBT), and he had this monumentally witty and humorous reply: "the sky." He's already demonstrated a fullness of 'jokes' like that...

And there are a million billion trillion possible replies ("<coff!> you'd better dust that off before you pull it out and use it again."), but none very polite and none that don't show that I think the guy is a complete and utter buffoon (what I'm thinking is something along the lines of "I could not have thought of a stupider reply unless a plane had been passing directly overhead with Resident Bush in it"). So I just don't say anything and continue on my merry way (probably showing still, by the way, that I think he is a complete and utter buffoon).

But I still have to work in the same building and interact with the guy. So I have to ask myself - why did I dislike the guy so, immediately on sight, with no particular provocation - and how did I know (what turned out to be true), right away, just by looking at him, that his personality just doesn't meet mine?

You know, I used to have an answer to that same "what's up" question: "The direction from which things fall." Haha. I used it maybe three or four times and retired it. So you can perhaps understand my non-plussedness at his "the sky."

I imagine he thinks his comments are very very witty, and that he is a wit among wits when delivering his "the sky" repartee on a moment's notice.

I imagine he has delivered this snappy comeback a hundred times or more in his lifetime, and he's not done yet.

I imagine that, for him, jokes don't wear thin, develop age-spots, grow wrinkly and flabby and die.

I imagine that, to him, I'm just some null character who appears before him, desperately needing his day-brightening line, delivered with sterling timing, sharp as a friggin tack, no moss growing on HIM nope! And he walks on whistling a merry tune, having dumped the dusty, putrid, soft-centered, half-fermented fruit of his intellect on said unsuspecting non-entity.

I try to imagine BEING him, so I can understand how to interact. Do you think he makes any kind of reciprocal attempt?

Sigh.

856.8.

Long, at times agonizing ride home, but I made it. I swear I almost fainted when delicious onion-ring smell wafted over me in Sebastopol passing the Powerhouse Brewery, and I'd have killed for half a gram of salt. This ride is not generally as good scenery-wise as my old 3.5-, 6-, and 12-mile rides -- lots of traffic most of the way, the whizzing-by kind AND the turning-in-front-of-you kind. But there are a few nice stretches - the 5-mile path out of Sebastopol, southern Smoggy Point (between groups of cars), and Railroad Ave. Leg muscles quite sore last night, but not that bad today. May ride it again tomorrow and feel like I've accomplished something this week. Noted that 116 SE from Sebastopol to Smoggy Point is 7 miles - 5 less than taking the path due east and Smoggy Point due south. Not quit ethe calculation Pythagorus would've arrived at, but they didn't have bicycles back then.

If I could take route 116 and all of Smoggy Point on the bike (i.e. if the county/state/US would construct reasonable shoulders and/or bike paths), I could get to work slightly under 14 miles. But I can't and they don't, so it's a 40-mile day. Took a slightly different route home last night; which appears to have shaved off almost a mile, but goes through more suburban streets, strip malls, soccer moms, etc. Will check into the bus service - can take a bus from right near the house to SSU - from there only about 6 miles (on hawk-heavy Petaluma Hill Road) to work.

MUST get another water bottle on the bike before hot summer days. I don't drink enough water when stationary; and I need to start making myself remember to stop and drink while riding and while not riding.

At any rate, though it was tough riding yesterday, it was doable, and if I continue to do it often enough, it'll get easier. Feels good.

Day 4 of the computer crisis. So stupid. They're not even going to be putting my stuff on the new machine, not even putting the old perfectly-good hard drive in, so what's taking so friggin' long?!? First estimate was "friday night or monday morning." It's now uh Wednesday morning?

AT&T @home would not forward email and deleted our old email accounts like IMMEDIATELY, and then Yahoo complained because mlevel@home.com is bouncing email. Now I'm out of several of my groups because I converted steve@born-today.com to be the new main account. The other groups on which steve@b-t was not previously a member, just disappeared. Oh well, I was getting tired of those other four or five groups anyhow (NOT). The only one really missing is the private 'steve&terrie' list, though there's no traffic there. We'll get that straightened out.

Getting used to this machine, left by an ex-coworker, but can't install software I need... So am not entirely wasting time here, but am working about 50% slower than usual.

837.0.

Road Rash rides again! 20.7 miles from the new place to work - NOT a ride I'm likely to be doing daily anytime soon, but not a bad one overall. Thing is the second half - getting home tonight, totalling to a 42-mile day, so ask me again at 8 tonight about how great it is! Not a single hill as large as the old one on Fair/Bailey - never lower than about the 2-5 gear - mostly between 2-6 and 3-8. Mostly flat and with decent shoulders -- the first five miles on a bike/walking path with no cars. Averaging around 12mph, an hour and a half ride. Still, a new chapter in Road Rash, and I'm glad to find I can make it to work on my bike, and can even double or triple my previous weekly mileage by simply riding in twice or thrice a week - maybe this additional riding will finally create slimness on my pathetic body. The route follows highway 12 on the parallel bike path out of Sebastopol, to Stony Point Road, then south on Stony Point to Railroad Avenue. East on RR to Redwood Highway, thence to work. I avoid almost all narrow/non-shoulder areas, and there are a couple of variations I can try later. This route avoids the treacherous-looking (but diagonal, and thus probably substantially shorter) Rte 116 out of Sebastopol; I'll measure the miles by car from Sebastopol to Stony Point on 116 - it's 12 miles via bike path and Stony Point.

I think I need bearings repacked around the front crank.
Also ate breakfast today, having resolved to live a healthier life... Maybe next time I ride the bike I won't smoke till after the ride. It's somewhat easier to avoid that first cig if you're not in the standard routine of coffee & shower -- the coffee water takes just a cig's time to boil, and otherwise you're standing there watching it...

Again watched Sarah Vaughan documentary "The Divine One" last night. What a cool woman, and great singer. Unsung (heh) as one of the great independent women of the early- mid-20th century, Sarah evidently got by without heroin -- and to a large extent without men -- controlling her life, and made some of the most amazing, beautiful music of her time. Plus, she was a total babe, early on... I'm happy to have made Sassy's acquaintance through numerous records and CDs, and especially now through this video, which I can take out and watch every now and then. It's also cool to see the likes of Billy Eckstine and Roy Haynes reminiscing about her...

Still no new machine, but promised for later today. Also, should get DSL activated at home today - but will believe when I see both. Everything on the web - email, schedule, etc., I'd need three browser windows running to do what I normally have with outlook etc. A Pain.

Oy. They replaced my drive Friday into a machine that locked up 7 times during the course of the day, sometimes without me even doing anything. Disabled screensaver and other startup crap, still locking up (four times or more today -- obsessive-compulsive though I am, I've lost count), and currently it sits with a blue screen. They are building me a new computer. Which "won't be ready till this evening or tomorrow." Version control system is inaccessible at the moment, so can't get the stuff I checked in. So much for the paperless office.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones last night. Awesome. At the risk of crying wolf superlative-wise, Victor Wooten is simply the best bass player I've ever seen or heard. He gets his own solo spot in the first half of the show - about 30 minutes of solo bass - and fills it up admirably, detuning the bass, coaxing an incredible array of sounds from an almost-clean-amped bass (he did have an autowah/ring-modulator kind of effect on it [lady behind us: "Is that the whammy bar?" {for the uninitiated, there are few if any basses with 'whammy bars'}]), often playing two or more different melodies/rhythm patterns simultaneously.

Everybody in the band is an exceptional musician, though, and nobody is really the "star."

Fleck plays acoustic and electric banjoes, and for one number, a funny-looking guitar. As is often the case with banjo music, you don't always hear how good it actually is from among the flurries of high-speed fingerpicking. But when Fleck sits alone on stage with an acoustic banjo and manages the Vince Guaraldi "Peanuts" theme, alone on a banjo, it's impressive.

"Futureman" plays his homemade drum/sample machine like a guitar, with half a drum kit beside him that he occasionally plays on one-handed. The "drum solo," opening the second half, is much more than that, incorporating percussion, found sounds, sampled instrumental noises, and phenomenal polyrhythmic polyphony. (christ, now I'm in rock-critic-land...)

It's the gimmickry that wins most of the crowd, though. When the bassoon player (an excellent player with a clean bassoon), does an extended solo through a synthesizer, making his instrument deliver saxophone, guitar, and other sounds, the crowd went wild (though it requires virtually no extra effort on his part to switch the synth to deliver any other instrument that's in its banks of samples...)

Nobody in this band follows the main beat; everyone's riffing on it, flirting with it. Typical tunes start with a relatively simple melody, each player taking a solo expounding on that, taking it farther and farther afield, eventually coming back "home" to it - SOP for improvisational jazz, but this is nominally a bluegrass group. They are fearless in their choices of music to attempt - classical, jazz, country, rock - no genre is safe from the Flecktones!

Each player brings amazing feats of musicianship, moments of humor, and a nice (rare) humility to the stage.

Perhaps because I'm tired, or because I'm old, I get fidgety in the last half-hour or so before the encores. When everybody's burning it up at once, there's nothing to hang your hat on sonically or visually, and it tends to blend into a big mass of sound and activity (for me), and you might get a little bored. And when the guy behind you keeps yelling high-pitched wolf-calls at all the wrong times, you might get a little annoyed, especially when his noise interferes with your ability to hear a particular stretch of music...

Still, that Wooten! 8 stars out of ten - check it out!

Rain. Came in to work early-ish to find that the power switch on my computer appears to have gone south. So can't turn on the PC, can't get email, etc.

Hopefully they'll be quick in moving the drives to another machine (and I won't lose the data I haven't saved to the version control systems).

Hopefully I can get to work soon...

Yeah, the new place...

While watching the cats for signs of adjustment, I've ignored my own.

It seems to be taking more adjustment for me than usual after a move, even the one I did after 12 years in Fairfax, but I was pretty firmly entrenched in this latest place, the first actual house I've rented - I had assumed more "ownership" than in previous duplexes/apartments/share rentals.

Plus, we've uprooted ourselves from a number of things, and there have been a lot of little changes in the last year. Reduced- to non-drinking. Healthier eating. No smoking indoors. No TV/internet/email access at home. Driving to work again. Working a later schedule.

In the middle of the night, not knowing where to put your feet when you walk around.

And last night, the young cat would not stop roaming the house yowling, and the older cat would almost settle down on the bed when some particularly plaintive call from the young one would set him off and they'd fight in the hallway. And the heater making noises. I probably didn't get to sleep till 1:30; woke at my old accustomed 5:30 or so but managed to go back to sleep till 7.

New video store, walking distance, is good. $5, 5 movies, 5 days. Nice music section, from which I rented four including "What's Up Matador" (not in IMDB, but the CD is in CDNOW). Pretty amusing collection of videos from that indie label, including Pavement "Cut Your Hair" and Liz Phair "Jealousy." Also liked Yo La Tengo, Railroad Jerk, and Helium vids, and the silly in-between segments, saved by various members of the bands and the Matador organization describing how to form a band, record a demo, make an album, shoot a video, etc. Also re-watched "Gimme Shelter." Have a lot of disjointed thoughts about it, which I won't bother sharing at the moment...

There's a point you reach in a job where you realize that you know it.

I realized this first in a tech support job, when for the first time a caller told me the program was doing something, and I knew the program was NOT doing what he described, that either he had modified it, or he was doing something horribly wrong.

Prior to this, I had to work either from memorized data about the product or from testing what the caller was saying -- I had to believe the user was innocent until proven guilty. I'd get at least one or two calls a day that just came out of left field, that completely shook my confidence in my knowledge of the material. Of course Users Lie, that's a given in technical support, but I still had to treat them as though they were telling the truth until I could prove otherwise.

It's not like the job was all downhill from that point - things change, and new items of interest can surface on a daily basis - but I realized that I had gained an intuitive understanding of the underlying features of the product I was supporting. I could make certain leaps of logic with complete assurance.

This job, I've been here ten months. I'm not at that point yet, but I can feel it getting closer. At least I usually understand the programmers' jokes now.

And finally, FINALLY, I'm busy. I have enough information about at least some areas in the new product that I can write documentation that may be 100% accurate (but even if it's 60% wrong, hey, it's 40% complete!). In these times of failing dot-coms, it's important to look busy -- better yet to BE busy.

Nothing but moving for a week straight, and now we're in, albeit only semi-organized.

I've lived in Bolinas, and in Fairfax, both well-known as the Places Hippies Go to Die. Now I live in Sebastopol: the Town that Time Forgot (Well, not really). If Northern California as a whole is considered ditzy by the rest of the US/world at large, these towns are the capitals.

W/Holistic. Tie-Dye. Hemp. Organic. Herbal. These are all bywords in these kinds of places, where old men with bald pates and ponytails sit in the sun laughing together about past acid trips. Where timid-looking needle-thin women peer anxiously at fake cheeses made from rice at the Whole Foods store.

I didn't say I didn't LIKE it! I was a hippie once; though maybe five years too young to experience the full force of hippiedom, I've sat cross-legged in a circle and chanted with others. I've eaten grain-heavy breakfasts with nary egg nor meat nor milk nor refined sugar. I've gone to more than two Grateful Dead shows in a week. And I took all the same drugs they took, back in the day. If I'm not "100% Natural" today, it doesn't mean I lack the credentials.

And the thing is, if history repeats itself, this is the crest of the North American wave - this is where the United States civilization has reached its peak, in a way. Where the populace has become so civilized, they're ripe for decline and the influx of barbarians. Sitting in the sunny square on a Monday afternoon, watching the well-meaning souls go in and out of the grocery, listening to the completely un-self-conscious squawks of someone learning to play the saxophone in public, knowing that at any moment I'm probably within earshot of somebody self-named "Rainbow" or "Sunshine," I can't help but feel sad that this might be it. This could be the best we did. Not that it isn't great and good, but that always, ALWAYS, it could've gone (as the Merry Pranksters's bus once said) 'furthur.'

I always disliked those kinds of people who displayed a certain precious "Look how cute I am" persona, people SO secure in belief in their attractiveness, they don't even think about it.

There are cute people, and there are people who think they are cute, and the two sets don't intersect at ALL for me.

Now in the case of actors in movies, you never really know if that kind of persona is actually good acting or if it's just typecasting.

In the case of Charlie's Angels (2000), I'm inclined to think it's the latter. This is one of the most excruciatingly annoying movies I think I've ever watched. Cameron Diaz, good enough in There's Something About Mary, makes me cringe every time I see her in this DOG of a movie. How Bill Murray, usually pretty good about choosing jobs, allowed himself to get involved in this one is entirely beyond me. Even the visual effects and action sequence were B-O-R-I-N-G; that warmed-over "Matrix"-style stop-action fighting is already looking older than a pie in a face. Drew Barrymore... well, no need to even mention THAT proof of de-evolution.

It doesn't work as parody because it's not funny. It doesn't work as action because it's painfully obvious that none of the action is real. It works as fluff because it's fluff.

And yeah, I knew when I rented it, it wouldn't be good, but I had at least hoped it would put me to sleep. Shouldn't've had those two Pepsis with dinner.

Carloads 16, 17, and 18 went up last night, and we're pretty close to being done with this.

Other than that, not much new. Between work and moving, my days are full. But figure 9 loads times 40 miles round-trip, and I have lots of time to think.

Not gonna overload Blogger today (maybe later), but inordinately happy to see its return...

14, going on 15, carloads taken from old place (all but one taken to new place). Also one truckload of musical equipment. I don't mind saying this is getting old, but there's a great satisfaction in seeing the task ever nearer to completion -- a task that looked damn near impossible at the onset.

One nice side-effect of moving is that we get to eat dinner out every night. Semi-exhausted and somewhat punchy (really, an underrated state, that!), we sit at the various tables and talk over what to do next, or just talk. (For a later blog, remind me to again bemoan the sorry state of professional services of any kind...)

Johnny Garlic's is a chain-ish restaurant in Petaluma. I don't know how to describe the tone of the place, maybe 'faux-yuppie-trendo-amateur.' Like, they have cute names for the foods (and you can 'intensify' each entree with additional crap on your plate for like 3 more dollars), and the main dining area is decorated in a vain attempt to emulate the inside of a volcano. One time we were there, they were hosting one of those mystery things, where a group of people has to figure out who killed some member of the staff.

Anyway, while eating there the other night, the waitress approaching another table somehow reminded me of Godzilla, and I'm off on a weird tangent:

Godzilla is working his way through a community college web-design course by moonlighting as a waiter at Johnny Garlic's. (He didn't have much experience, but his innate expertise at flambe dishes makes him a very desirable employee.)

When they host a mystery, his coworkers are all 1950s Japanese actors, and Godzilla is the victim:
"Raaaah! Would you like some pepper on that?"
"Much excuse, but mutant monster not arrowed to dispense seasoning! Mirabito is your honorable peppah dispensah!"
"Raaah! But I was already right here, and I had the grinder!"

<scuffle ensues among wait staff and Godzilla; a shot rings out. Much confusion, as some poor customer's flaming entree continues to burn and smoke fills the room. When the smoke clears, the giant reptile is missing.>

<Later...>

Participant: "Mistah Mirabito, you not hide body that easiry! Note Godzilla tail appear fwum behind potted prant!"
Mirabito (waving pepper grinder): "I not kill him! Simpry wanting to dispense pepper!"

<Participant walks over to body...>

Participant: "Ah ha! Note pepper-grinder shaped indentation on Godzilla forehead!"

Etc. (oh well, it seemed funny at the time).

The wedding thing is quite the experience. Though we've managed to keep it pretty simple, I've caught glimpses here and there of what a traditional wedding entails.

It's always been considered a major Life Event and rite of passage. But it's also something else.

Men, typically, don't seriously think out the cause and effect of social/emotional things. So a marriage proposal may be, to them, the product of momentary intense feeling and/or an investment in the promise of a reward (getting laid) five or ten minutes hence.

But from the word "yes," the young male finds himself in a steadily-accelerating maelstrom of new experiences.

There is a dictionary's worth of etiquette one must learn to survive a standard "dearly-beloved" wedding and garter-tossing reception. And the guest lists, and the "help," and the order in which things must occur, and the negotiations, and the bachelor and bachelorette parties.

The emptying of the wallet is mere preparation, a removal of defenses, for the trial-by-fire. All keyed towards his domestication, housebreaking, if you will. IF a young man gets through the hundreds of little opportunities-to-offend, AND doesn't get snagged on any of a thousand potential bridal "petulant frenzies" (tm Frank Zappa), AND manages to comport himself reasonably well, AND hasn't run screaming to another state or country, THEN, finally, when it's all over, he is silently pronounced "fit for cohabitation" by all present. So, why do you think they call him a "groom"? He is "groomed" for presentability.

None of these little details ever occurred to him when he got down on his knee - and he wonders at some point if he will ever be allowed to stand again. "Etiquette" never occurs to a single man. A married man is practically an expert.

"A husband is what's left of a lover after the nerve has been extracted." - Helen Rowland (1876 - 1950), English/US writer. I never much liked or agreed with this quote, but I see its truth.

It's no particular person's "fault" that this transformation occurs. It's one of those subtle societal things that nudges him gently and repeatedly, perhaps when he least expects it, gradually enough that each new concession is small, inexorable enough that in the end, he may find himself realizing that he has been nudged down a long long road, and the way back is completely obscured.

I am SO thankful to Terrie that it hasn't been like this for me, AND that I have gotten a glimpse of it. And I am thankful to my "guardian angel" or "higher self" or whomever, that I didn't marry those others in the past who might have taken me down that road.

So much forgotten history in our daily lives (though that's all changing, with Blogger available!).

Going through old stuff, preparatory to moving. I haven't moved since 1995, and have not only accumulated a ton of stuff, but kept a lot of stuff that I never once looked at since the last move. It was these things that captured my attention the other day: performance reviews from jobs 15, 20 years ago; drawings and writings and weird office humor I once saw fit to collect and keep; the odd photograph, a younger me grinning out unknowning at the future me, bringing an entire hermetically-preserved world into focus in an instant.

Novato Unified School District, 1977? - 1979, I worked as a printer's apprentice, babysitting an ABDick 360 offset printer as it churned out administrative and class materials for local schools. I wrote on the typewriter through many dull moments, and that paper blog is mostly in a notebook. Awful poetry and scant humor. I was a real "litterary light"(weight) then.

Crocker Bank, 1979 - 1986: The printing trade petered out - the old Catch-22: couldn't get a job without being in the Union, and couldn't get in the Union without having a job. Got into a county job-placement program, and was groomed for a teller position at a major california bank. Rose from a mail-deliverer to computer-accounting entry person to a computer system trainer in that 7-year span. But in the same period, I was seeing the end of my first long-term relationship and introducing myself to cocaine (with which I'd have a long and fruitless friendship that ultimately lost me that job). Wrote in longhand while babysitting the big IBM band-printer that serviced the Computer Systems group, then in the text editor on the PDP-1170 and Vax minicomputers, until we got PCs and Multimate.

MicroPro, 1987 - 1991: Still on the coke train through the entire period, but rose inexorably from technical support drone to advisor to technical writer before basically getting fired (under the guise of being laid off). Joined the internet craze during this time, and started doing my writing in email and on Compuserve (and of course in the late and lamented WordStar). On at least two occasions, I got excellent an performance review within a month of a warning for attendance.

SBT, 1991 - 1996 and again 1997 - 2000: Still on the train, but finally debarked during that first stint, and after rising again to Technical Writer, crashed and burned in a flurry of non-activity. But I returned, yes I did, and saved the doc department there from ignominy (my boss) for those three years. Wrote in email, on Compuserve, on the web, in longhand, in WordStar, in Word, everywhere.

Writings and drawings from all of these times. Not a lot, but something here and something there catches my eye. Like today, I showed flashes of brilliance amid mounds of banality. Never knew that I wrote so poorly - that provides some insight into people I know now who don't write well. It's just time, learning the rules, practicing, that separates the young me (and those young writers) from the current me.

But it's amazing how much of it I'd completely forgotten... Must sit and go through that stuff one day, gently but in detail. Sometimes you may feel like you haven't moved an inch in twenty years, until you look up from your trudging and see, way off in the distance, the signposts you stuck in the ground twenty years ago.

816.1.

No bike this morning, powering up for taking a carload every evening this week.

Our new neighbor was playing very loud, I dunno, death-rap-metal-thrash, while working on his monster truck as we moved stuff in last night. Making a statement, I guess. His house is tiny, and I presume that the truck is his only source of music. Not a big deal to me so far - I like to make noise, so I tolerate the noise of others. Indeed, we lived across from the Portuguese Hall for six years, with the same throbbing bass line almost every saturday night for a large part of that time, interspersed with wedding receptions, livestock auctions, ice-cream socials, crab feeds, and every other dumb-ass kind of community thing. Cars parked up and down the street, kids screaming out front, and at night as everyone left, each pair of headlights in turn shining directly into our living room. We never complained about them, and they didn't complain when we were playing a Black Sabbath song during a funeral. "Live and Let Die," heh. I sense the gears turning in his little gear-head; he is registering his disapproval that someone should dare to live beside him in a home that has been empty for several months (perhaps previously inhabited by a complainer), and is basically performing a primal sonic spraying of the bushes, as he studiously ignores us. What he sees is a (to him) middle-aged couple moving into Sebastopol, home of the tie-dyed macrobiotic tree-hugger, next door to his little oasis of post-adolescent masculine crudity. The fool - I can remember being almost exactly like that, passive-agressive in my territorialilty about my sonic space. Why can I remember it? Because it's as recent as the last new neighbor at the old place; or the last time the Portuguese had a big "do" while I was drinking and jamming in our front room!

The poor unsuspecting redneck doesn't yet know that he's competing with a master -- we have five or six electric guitars and large amps easily capable of drowning out his pitiful Rob Zombie tape, about 2000 CDs, records, and tapes, and a reasonably kick-ass stereo. We actually have more noise-making equipment than would fit in his entire house! So, though we don't think much of his taste, we are happy that he likes noise. I was a bit concerned that we'd be asked (repeatedly, by prim & puckered, schoolmarmish, vaguely acting-like-they-mean-well persons for whom there is no such thing as "quiet enough") to turn it down here; I guess that won't be the case!

Someone stop me from breaking out the Damned the second I get the stereo set up...

812.3.

Beautiful morning. Stopped to get a picture of the peach sky over Skillman, where the road ahead had a strip of tule fog across it...

Only six carloads and one truckload moved over the weekend, but they were large loads. It rained on Saturday after two runs (one of them taking musical equipment to John's for safekeeping. We also set up and filled bookshelves at the new place, providing a set of boxes to bring back and refill. Doesn't seem like much, but the whole point of not having to move in one weekend is that you don't have to knock yourself out on it. And the new house is *just* starting to look less empty than the old one. I will be attempting to run a load up every day this week after work.

Too, those first few days of packing, you spend a lot of time sifting through the stuff.

Realtors who sold the old place sent us 'estoppel' forms to fill out - why should we accomodate their needs in ANY way shape or form? Threw them out, then retrieved and stored them, thinking they might involve some kind of attempt at absolution for the realtors/buyers, in which case we'll just keep 'em, unfilled. By the way, correction to brevious blog: the credit check was only $10 (vs. $40 at the Century 21/Bundesen realtor).

More Born Today work over the weekend; added the 9400th quote to the database AND passed the 10,000 mark on home page hits (since May 2000 - more than that since the page began over on sbt.com). Over 60 billion (bytes) served!

The people at Fox are high if they think I'd rather watch a Schwarzenegger movie (whose name doesn't begin with "TERM") than their standard, brilliant, Sunday night fare of Futurama, King of the Hill, Simpsons, and Malcolm in the Middle (I don't watch X-Files). I actually avoid renting one-night movies on Sundays because I know I'll get sucked into that channel 2 stuff. What a nasty trick to inflict Arnold on the discerning viewers expecting funny, relevant television! Gawd help us if he runs for (or, gasp, BECOMES) Governor of California, but I wouldn't put ANYthing beneath the voters of this state, after Reagan. Maybe Gary Coleman should run.

Eyes of Tammy Faye: The slipcover hype says it will change my mind about Tammy Faye Bakker. Truth be told, I don't want to change my mind about her (in fact, haven't much 'mind about her' to change, spending as I do very little time thinking about Tammy Faye), but it did do that. She's a more admirable person than she's generally credited for. Though I dozed off because I was dead tired, and while in that semi-dreaming state, can only remember the shrill voice of Tammy defending herself and Jim and the PTL, with images of her scruffy dog somehow merging with hers in my mind, such that it was not unlike the yapping of a hyperactive mutt over some trivial occurrence that I couln't quite grasp. Let's talk about degrees of greed, and the Bakkers vs. Jerry Falwell. Really, I've got other things to think about.

Have been waking at like 4am lately. It would really be helpful to change my work hours to like 9-6 or something, but I'm really pretty beat by 2pm, let alone 5 or 6. Nobody gets here until 9 or 10. Maybe after the move I'll try to change my schedule, but it's hard -- I've always been an earlybird, except for one summer in Michigan when I was routinely sleeping till 11...

Will post this here, just to record it....

Not that it matters, but for what it's worth, Bundesen really really sucked, at least for us.

We applied thru them for a place we really liked a couple of months ago, and it took more than three weeks to find out that we didn't get it. This might be attributable to the actual landlords, but... Of course for our $40 credit-check fee (we paid $20 for the same credit check at another realtor), they could resubmit our application to other places we liked.

I called them last Friday morning about one of their listings (half a mile from our current home), leaving a voice mail to ask that they put in an application (since they already had the previous one) and to call me ASAP, giving work and home numbers and the approximate time I leave work. We took it upon ourselves to check the place out Saturday, at least the outside, and stopped in at Bundesen (which is hello? closed on weekends!) and left a note for the agent, again requesting that they put in our application for the place and please call us. I called again Monday morning, again leaving a voice mail. She FINALLY called Monday evening at 6:30 -- at work -- to tell me there were (now) three applicants for the place and the landlord would be deciding this Friday (tomorrow), and would we like to come in and fill out an application? Grrr.

This whole thing (and really the whole time since the current landlord died) has been a HUGE exercise in patience, and most of the real-estate types with whom we've interacted have provided negative experiences (the Century 21 lady selling our place actually left like three or four cigarette butts in the ashtray by my computer - what the *(&#$)(& was she doing sitting at MY desk for the length of time it takes to smoke four cigs?!?!? - and further (we heard second-hand), had to express her opinions to prospective buyers about "don't all those guitars make a lot of noise?" We never saw her (just as well), but you just KNOW she's some skanky ol' pasty fat-bottomed red-nosed ho' with like fifty Big Mac wrappers in the back-seat of the Buick (and an overflowing ashtray...), acting like she owns the county... Of course we probably could've nailed her ass on the smoking, but of course we're trying to make the most favorable impression possible on the buyers, hoping against hope that we can stay on at $900-1000 in a market where $1200 is pretty much rock-bottom.

Then, too, we're dealing with that market, and with landlords who specify "No pets," "No smoking," "No fun," and "Nobody need apply"...

- and others who *literally* remodeled with a staple-gun in order to call a place "2BR" and ask $1450/mo for it, and we KNOW we have to decide fast and for sure that we don't want it because SOMEone will rent it -- and quickly...

- and yet others who have dragged a single-wide house trailer into their front yard so we can pay $1500, $1600 a month towards their kids' college and the kids are spending the money on drugs and guns at the high school.

- and others still who use words like "cute" to mean "tiny," and "rustic" to mean "falling apart," and "country-style living" to mean "outdoor bathrooms," and "sweeping views" to mean you see the landlord with a broom on his front porch from your permanently-fused-open bathroom window...

and they generally waste our time when we make an appointment, spend 30 valuable minutes driving out there, and then have to peel out when we see the friggin guy from Deliverance standing in front of the place the Beverly Hillbillies vacated after striking oil...

And gas & electric & water prices going up up up and dot-coms losing money and going down down down.

And oh yeah, a wedding coming up Apr 29, where we've made six people travel to death valley and stay in the "cheapest" motel for 2 days, and a reception coming up May 19 where we're committing 80 people to spend an afternoon with us, many flying in from distant parts, and for all we know, we'll be living in a car by then!

So, you can take my opinion of Bundesen with a grain or two of salt -- or all of Utah. :-)

It's been a long time since I've felt so powerless (gee, was it December? The Supreme Court & presidential election? Maybe it HASN'T been that long!), and I hope it'll be a long time before it happens again.

But we're really happy about the new place, and the time we have for getting all our stuff over there, and the room in which to put it, and the lack of staple-guns in evidence.

808, roughly...

No bike today, bringing boxes home from work, etc.

Movies:

Remember the Titans: Actually, probably the best of a recent spate of football movies, including as it does an actual story that contains actual relevance to something other than football. Denzel Washington, determined to have a meaningful acting career, does a good job. Loved Ryan Hurst in this movie - as it happens, I've seen almost every previous movie he's been in, but didn't remember him from those. Hmm, 7 stars (out of 10).

Lost Souls: Winona Ryder, with long hair, has made a career of looking frightened, and has probably kept Maybelline alive with eyeliner sales. She's now inching towards my list of unwatchable movie stars. I slept well, so give it 3 stars.

804.8.

And we pass 800 miles, 15 bike-days after passing 700! (I think I'm averaging a little higher lately; have ridden almost every day, but for a couple of errand-days...)

Weird cloud of something blowing across the road on Skillman this a.m. Gnats? Dirt particles? Dunno. Red-Tail on the wires near Bailey. Stayed in at least 2-5 through the whole ride, except where stopping for traffic.

Analyzed possible routes from Sebastopol yesterday. It'll be about 20 miles, but may not be too bad hill- and traffic-wise, cutting through some backroads and neighborhoods. Will definitely give it a try.

Work: got a document outlining changes to the templates from one of the writers in that other town. He clearly hasn't read any of the earlier correspondence, thus went to great pains to create, for example, cross-references to elements we decided not to use. In cases like this, I try to take some time before responding along the lines of: "you ignorant slut!"

Home: We've locked in the Sebastopol house with yesterday's deposit! It's like a 60% increase in rent, but we were in a weird little low-rent pocket here for several years, and I basically think of it like we were paying $1200, because that's the absolute minimum rent we'd have been able to find for a comparable place today. By this (admittedly somewhat twisted) logic, the increase is less than 25%. And it's very close to 100% more space, counting the attic. Once we pay the first month's rent (tomorrow), we will have keys and can probably start moving stuff -- we also get THAT break, two weekends for moving, a real blessing.