I'm BAaack

So, obviously I've been on a little hiatus here. As summer rapidly drew to a close (happy Autumn everyone!) I had other things to do. Like a Labor Day trip to Kansas City*. And the weather has turned nicer, so the outdoors needed enjoying. And last weekend was Paul's wedding - which I was in as an "usher" but which really meant I was one of the groomsmen so I got to wear a tux.

The highlight of the past week, by the way, was being mobbed by the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. I was walking home on Sunday after returning my tux, and veered towards a little park on the edge of downtown where I heard the familiar cacophony of the flock. There was a woman with sunflower seeds who offered some to me, and before I knew it there were parrots on my shoulders, arms, and hanging off my hands. They were raucous and rambunctious, curious and cautiously friendly, and I feel like I've ticked another uniquely San Franciscan item off my list.

Anyhoodle, I'll try to get back on task with more regular postings.


* "Kansas City?" you may ask. "Why?" Well, a few years ago I finally joined the ranks of the Labor Day Gang - a few folks and extended friends from college who have gotten together every Labor Day weekend for the past 8-ish years. They've been meeting in random places we might not ordinarily go (Memphis, Austin, etc.) to experience someplace new. Remind me to tell you sometime about the Spirit of Texas. But anyway, KC was great - barbeque, baseball, fried chicken, rotating lounges... who'd'a thunk?

Old news

For the record, it's actually the 23th of September, but this back-dated post was sitting half-finished from several weeks ago, so I felt obligated to pick up where I left off.

Finally, a weekend that struck the perfect balance between busy fun and abject lethargy. It began Friday night with a "bachelor" party for my friend Paul - a former coworker with whom I applied for The Amazing Race. I use quotes only because there were as many women there as guys. And it was at a karaoke bar, which held about as much appeal for me as lap dances at a strip joint. Which is to say, none.

The main focus of the evening, since the singing kept Paul occupied, was trying to determine if one of his cute friends is gay or straight. You'd think shouldn't be a tough challenge, but even with some of the best evil minds working on it, it remains a mystery. Dumb faulty gaydar anyhow.

Saturday, I did absolutely nothing save nurse my headache, but made up for it by getting up before sunrise on Sunday, walking up Telegraph Hill to the base of Coit Tower, and waiting to meet my friends Nichole and Lea for a photo-taking date. They were late, but it was foggy anyway, so sunrise was a bust. Plus, a Pepsi commercial was being filmed there, which caught me by surprise as I walked around from the peaceful south side right into the middle of the shoot on the north side. I came around the sidewalk into the glare of lights, bustle of equipment, and all these faces looking right at me. A guy on a megaphone was saying, "Can you hear me at the top of the stairs?" and, frozen at the top of the stairs as I was, I thought for a moment he was talking to me until he said, annoyed, "No, sir, not you." At which point I ran down the steps and out of the shot they were setting up. Awkward!

So from there, we went to the Presidio to take photos in the fog, and then made our way through Dim Sum brunch to the Legion Of Honor for the Monet exhibit. But there was a huge line to get in, so we gave up. I then went to the Giants/Reds game with another friend and porked out on garlic fries and bratwurst.

And finally, back home to help the roommate load up their car with 8 tons of crap for their week at Burning Man. (Hooray! I have the apartment to myself for a few days!) Overall, a very satisfying weekend, don't you think?

Like floating questions, why?

I ended up walking home by myself this evening, and was mostly lost in thought and the music coming from my ipod. But as I turned up Columbus at the base of the Transamerica Pyramid, where the dark canyons of the Financial District suddenly give way to the open sky and building height restrictions of North Beach, I was faced with a most amazing sight.

It was marvelous. The sun had mostly set already, leaving the sky something to behold. First, there was a thin layer of gauzy cirrus in the upper atmosphere, still lit up by the sun, shimmering and pale. Much nearer to earth was a 2nd layer of clouds, rippled in long undulating pink strands across the heavens, like choppy seas of unraveled cotton candy. Below that, rolling over Russian hill was the fog, breaking up in swift-moving puffs of grey lavender. Adding to the drama, all three layers were moving at different speeds and in slightly different directions across the darkening sky to dizzying effect.

It seemed as if no one else bothered to look up or take notice, like I was enjoying my own private private show on a grand scale. The rest of the walk home I barely watched where I was going as I was staring skyward, smiling the whole way.

The Cookie Divine

Every afternoon around between about 2:30 and 4 at the office, I'll start to crash. Sometimes I'm truly tired. Sometimes I just get the munchies. Sometimes I zone out from the tedium. Sometimes I'll be in the post-lunch food-coma phase. But pretty inevitably if I'm sitting at my desk working (as opposed to running around the office flailing my arms, or sitting in a meeting. Although sometimes even sitting in a meeting...), my eyes will start to lose focus, my eyelids droop, my fingers start typing half words. And every once in a great while, my brain will helplessly slip into that limbo la-la land where it can't tell the difference between responding to an e-mail and rolling through a field of poseys while covered in peanut butter and being chased by cows mooing in cockney accents.

I'm sure you could probably argue that this is caused from too much sugar in my diet already, but on the worst of days, I find the only solution (since actual power naps are frowned upon in the office) is to get up from my desk, walk the 3 blocks to Specialty's bakery, and buy myself a warm chunk of gooey chocolatey chippy heaven. Partially this is about getting the blood flowing with a brisk walk in the fresh air. But mostly it's about the dense blood-sugar-spiking buttery heart-stoppingly delicious cookie. Seriously, the things are like crack. You can smell the bakery a block away and be rendered helpless to resist.

Specialty's, I praise and curse you.

These pages must show

Not that I claim to know his original state of mind, but David Copperfield has clearly gone insane:

Copperfield Says He Owns 'Fountain of Youth'

Can't have that upstart media-hog David Blaine stealing all the spotlight.

On the other hand, he does look like he's been around an unnaturally long time..

To the place I belong

Somewhere in my dad's basement sits a disorganized collection of slides and negatives, amongst which are pictures of my sister and me sitting on a log. Taken every August save a few, they're not terribly thrilling separately, I suppose, but when viewed in chronological order they're like a time lapse of the two of us growing up from the time we were toddlers to the time she had a toddler of her own. The photos also chronicle the changes to the place: trees growing, trees cut down, the disappearance of our fallen log (chainsawed for firewood), etc.

For as long as I can remember, my family has been visiting the same campsite up in the Snowy Range of southeast Wyoming, along the Medicine Bow River where it flows out of the woods and into a large meadow called Stillwater Park. But surprisingly, perhaps, for all the added wear and tear from countless other campers, the place remains largely as I remember it. I hadn't actually been there in 5 or 6 years, so I was glad it worked out to join the family there again. I could still practically navigate my way around in the dark, from the bowed Douglas fir at the edge of the slope towards the water to the patch of wild huckleberries near the old 4-wheeler trail, from the sentinel tree in the meadow through the knee-deep grass to the wild strawberries by the willow thicket, from the fish-cleaning rocks in the stream to the Black Forest around the first bend upstream, from the rough entrance off the road through the old clear-cut area to Little Creek. In some ways, it feels more like home than anywhere else.

Time has certainly had its way with the family, though, and the nuclear unit has sort of detonated all over the place. But despite the potential for conflama, the weekend went smoothly with my dad and his wife in their trailer tucked away amongst the trees, Mom and her boyfriend in a tent nestled behind the pop-up trailer housing my sister and her family nearer the water. Across the small dusty clearing a gaggle of cousins on my father's side had also set up camp - none of whom I had seen since Grandma's funeral 4 1/2 years ago. And I borrowed a tent from Dad which I set up in the middle distance.

So even though my tennies didn't hold up so well in the wet grass with all the rain Saturday, it was a lovely weekend. I didn't want to leave. If I could figure out how to live up there, I'd totally do it.

Oh dammit, we forgot to take another photo of Nikole and me.

I'll be what I am

So, anyhoodle. I actually had a good trip I think. I mean, despite the chaos. I could have fared much worse. I mean, I made it where I needed to go, eventually my luggage did too, there was plenty of room on my flights so I could choose window or aisle depending on my mood and even angle across 'em all to prevent my knees from being crushed by the reclining seat backs in front of me. And, weirdly, I think I'm getting past my landing anxiety.

(Landing never used to bother me, having grown up flying around in a little single-engine Cessna piloted by my Dad and all, but I never really used to think about it either. That changed on a puddle-jumper flight from DC to New Haven while I was in college. I swear the pilots forgot where they were going, because I was looking out the window thinking, "hey, that's campus clear down there... shouldn't we be...?" when suddenly the bottom dropped out from under us as we began to plummet out of the sky. Seriously, I could see Tweed Airport out my window not actually going anywhere, just getting larger and larger as we dove straight down. That was the first time I was ever terrified in an airplane. I honestly didn't think we were going to be able to pull out of the dive in time to not leave a smoking crater at the foot of the runway.)

Anyway, now it's more the people that scare me than the flight. A true sign of my burgeoning curmudgeonhood, perhaps. It began at 4:15 in the dark and cold morning when SuperShuttle picked me up. The next to get on was a wet-haired sorority sister just past her prime and looking a little worse for the wear. She smelled of stale beer, cigarettes and shampoo, and wheezed out a throaty "sure is early" to my nod of acknowledgement. I couldn't think of a single thing to say for fear of striking up an actual conversation.

Next, standing in the ridiculously long security line, drinking my bottled water so it wouldn't go to waste and surrounded by people frantically rummaging through their carry-on, was a pleasant older gentleman with a woolly cardigan and nothing but a leather satchel. Of course everyone was feeling chummy because of the unusual circumstances so he struck up a conversation, and because it's hard for me to be completely rude, I learned all about his early days with punch-card computers and the cutting edge of engineering computing technology at Stanford during the 50's-80's. Yes he was perfectly nice and harmless, but I find it difficult to waste energy connecting with strangers I'll never see again. Which is probably pathological, given the magic of being human and blah blah blah, but still, it was 6 in the fucking morning, I had just parted with my Chapstick, and all I wanted was some personal space.

Also, the beautiful broad-faced brunette woman in line behind me on the jetway, as we were waiting to have our carry-ons searched again: she couldn't stop talking about how much she needed to pee since she, too, had downed all her water before security so it wouldn't go to waste. Ok, so she built up to that revelation with some giddy chitchat about trying to decide if she should throw out her favorite Aveda/BodyShop/Sephora products or miss the flight, but hello? TMI.

I certainly can't leave out the obnoxious blond tween twins and their brute brother in front of me on one leg. I feel sure this was their first airplane experience given their level excitement and ignorance, but sadly their enthusiasm was mostly exhibited by pummeling each other, arguing loudly in ogre-speak, and slamming their seats back into my kneecaps. Also, who takes off their shoes while the plane is still at the gate and places them in the overhead compartment? Who?! It took me at least 20 minutes to adjust the overhead air properly to keep from gagging at the smell of seriously sour feet the whole flight.

Most alarmingly, though, was the big-armed guy who sat next to me en route back to Phoenix. He still had hospital tags on his wrist, and some amber iodine stains beneath his well-formed (but soul-patch adorned) chin and streaking across his clean-shaven jawline and veiny neck. I couldn't see any actual surgical signs, though he still had gauze taped on the back of his smooth hand and in the crook of his arm. He didn't actually speak to me, or show any signs he knew I existed, which was just was well - the last thing I wanted was to become Patient One, because Patient Zero had breathed on me. But he kept falling asleep with his leg in the aisle, so the flight attendant kept asking me to poke him so she could get her drink cart through. I was not thrilled at this. For all I knew, he had just escaped from the psych ward and was on the lam. I mean, who gets on a plane directly from the hospital without even taking off the wrist tags? I did relax a little later when he pulled out a paper with the header "Post-Procedure Discharge Instructions," though he could have snagged that from the nurse he strangled.

So yeah. Maybe I need a car. I like driving. By myself.

Maybe they've already won

Well, that was something. Lessons learned from my latest travels:

1. Don't fly on days that terrorist plots are thwarted causing the TSA to raise threat levels to orange;
2. Don't check baggage because it may get lost... twice;
3. Just plan on buying all new gels and liquids when reaching my destination since I can't carry it on and it'll get lost anyway if I check it;
4. When the ticket stub says "US Airways by AmericaWest for Mesa Airlines" you're asking for trouble;
5. Perhaps it's worth the extra money to fly direct;
6. Phoenix is fucking hot and anyone who chooses to live there is clearly not right in the head.

Should I be worried?

Huh. So this morning, long before I needed to be up, I started to emerge from dreamland in the quiet of the predawn morning, when my bed shuddered and the apartment rattled and I felt another earthquake. I looked at my clock and it was 5:57. This one was dinky (a mere 2.9 acccording to the USGS), but eerily reminiscent of the last one.

I'm a little alarmed for several reasons. First of all, I find it a little strange that I should have awakened a few minutes immediately prior to both of them. Not that I'm claiming psychic abilities or anything, though that would be useful. It's just disconcerting is all. Second, after going several years without feeling any earthquakes, it seems there's been a slight uptick in their frequency. And lastly, this one was directly under Berkeley, along a stretch of the Hayward fault that has been quiet for long enough that the seismologists are worried. Was this the first sign that the Hayward is going to slip? I shudder at the thought. And think I'll get to creating that little earthquake kit for the office.

Yeah yeah yeah

I was going gangbusters there for a bit, at least retroactively, but y'all's gonna hafta wait a bit longer for sumpin new. It's not that I don't have schtuff to say, because I do (how's about a Happy Birthday leonid roar out to my mom, sister, and nephew Caden, for example). But you see, things have been busy. I've been busy. And I took up reading again -- which was nice while it lasted -- so when I wasn't busy I was still occupied. And now, dear ones, I'm off for a weekend in the Wyoming woods. I'll write when I get back.

Time it was and what a time it was

The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, for we have no word to speak about it.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

A moment ago, it seems, that I set out on my grand adventure into the unknown, waving goodbye to one life as we turned the aptly-named Explorer towards the new one ahead.

It had been a disorienting summer for me. After having the metaphorical rug pulled out from under me with much pomp and circumstance, I found it difficult to regain my balance at home. Where once I would have found bedrock, there was little solidity for me to grasp onto that might help me feel my way through the impenetrable fog of my looming future. My time back home was necessarily temporary.

Mom already had an apartment at the time, though she was still living at the house as she and Dad worked through the divorce settlement. With me there, it was too easy for all of us to fall into old habits, which is exactly what it no longer was. Dad & Mom were both struggling to pick their own separate paths forward and I felt like my presence -- the last vestige of normalcy, the life that was -- was holding them back in a way, too.

And so it was that they both came home at lunchtime that Wednesday afternoon to see me off. I had spent the previous two days madly sorting through my belongings, picking what to keep, what to discard, what to take, what to leave behind, with Bryan patiently idling by. But finally our stuff was stowed in the U-Haul, Dad had some last-minute trailer advice, and I hugged my teary goodbyes on the edge of the gravel drive. I suspect my parents wanted to stop me as much as I wanted them to, but my future was now officially in my own hands. Not only was I headed down an unknown road, but we all were, and my leaving this time somehow underscored the big change in all our lives; nothing would ever be the same.

These thoughts and more accompanied me on the first leg of the journey that led me here as we traversed the lonely hills and distant mountains, the enormous sky broken by solitary thunderclouds with sheets of rain trailing beneath. Bryan and I switched drivers at each gas stop, the passenger reading aloud from On The Road, as the miles and hours blurred by... Casper. Sheridan. Billings. Bozeman.

...Ten years ago, today.

When as a child I laughed and wept, Time crept.
When as a youth I waxed more bold, Time strolled.
When I became a full-grown man, Time RAN.
When older still I daily grew, Time FLEW.
Soon I shall find, in passing on, Time gone.
O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then?
Amen.
- Henry Twells (1823-1900)

Were closer now than light years to go

Oh Amazon. We go way back, you and me, and I cherish the time we've spent together. I remember when we first met, almost ten years ago now, and how taken I was with the idea of you. You were shiny and new and smart and well-read and even in your youth before you moved beyond books, you covered a vast amount of territory, were quick and revolutionary in your own way, a fusion of what was with what would be. You were my first, you know. Yes, and after that first online purchase, there was no turning back.

But lately I've been a bit worried. I suppose it's natural to lose focus a little with age, and while I appreciate your offers of fulfilling my every need, whether they be intellectual pursuits or kitchen appliances and groceries, I'm not sure this is working for me anymore. I'll admit, it's kind of cute that you think I pursue ophthalmic microsurgery as a causal hobby, but really. It's almost like you don't know me at all. You've seemed a bit muddled and confused of late; you're all over the map and have been leaping to conclusions -- often wrong ones -- with scanty evidence. I think maybe it's best if we take a brief break from each other for a little while. Just a little while. I need some time to think and maybe test the waters out there, and perhaps you can use the time too. Take a look at yourself, sort out what's important, upgrade your recommendation algorithms...

*--*--*--*--*

Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We've noticed that customers who like A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle also purchased books by Marian Macsai. For this reason, you might like to know that Marian Macsai's Ophthalmic Microsurgical Suturing Techniques will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy by following the link below.

---

Ophthalmic Microsurgical Suturing Techniques Marian Macsai (Editor) Price: $139.00 (August 2006)

Book Description
Microsurgical Suturing Techniques is a reference text for both the novice and the accomplished ophthalmic surgeon. In 15 richly illustrated chapters this book imparts basic information on tissue tactics and knot tying and demonstrates the applicability of these techniques to various microsurgical situations, in both the anterior and the posterior segment of the eye.

*--*--*--*--*

*sigh*

An Inconvenient Twix

Welp, the heat wave has broken and temps have returned to the comfort levels I love. But lest we forget how hot it's been, let me share with you this little anecdote:

I'm all out of food at my desk, so to satisfy my mid-afternoon snack attack I just ran to the vending machine in the breakroom and retrieved a Twix bar. I love Twix with their chocolate and caramel coated cookie goodness. But these Twix had been standing upright in the vending machine for who-knows-how-many days -- certainly at least over the weekend while the building's air conditioning was off. So when I unwrapped my candy bar, guess what I found?

The caramel had melted and drained out! The top 2/3 of the candy bar was nothing but cookie and collapsed, sunken-in chocolate, while the bottom third was bloated and puffy, with caramel burst out and pooled in a sticky mess that fused the bars together and made them impossible to delicately disengage from the wrapper now that everything was solidified again.

If this is what we have to look forward to in a globally warmed future, then I want no part of it. Plant trees, save my Twix!

And the sun has come to Earth

Even though I still felt like crap yesterday, I couldn't bear another afternoon of laying around trying not to stick to things. So I went to the beach to escape the heat.

Now, I knew everyone else probably had the same idea, so I specifically chose a beach in the Marin Headlands that I had easy bus access to but is far enough away from population centers that I hoped would keep it relatively quiet. All I can say is, if that was relatively quiet, I'd hate to have been at any other beach. I was completely unprepared for the gaudy beach-umbrella bazaar of wet sandy tennis-ball-chasing canine bliss, wave chasing screamy toddlerhood and writhing mass of sunscreen slickened humanity that met me oceanside. It was something I've only seen in photos of vacation destinations, and it was difficult to stake a claim on my own personal stretch of strand without violating some of my personal space rules.

But I did and I spent four glorious hours in salt sprayed coolness. I read, I pocketed a few pebbles, I lost feeling in my feet wading in the freezing surf, I turned every 15 minutes like a pig on a spit, and... I fell asleep. A dangerous, nonflipping sleep. I have no idea how long I was asleep, and it was only last night that I learned the extent of the consequences of that nap, when I awoke to the extreme discomfort of sunburn.

Spare me the lecture, lovelies -- I'm totally paranoid of the sun as a general rule, wearing a hat and slathering the sunscreen on my face, ears and neck whenever I'm outside for more than 20 minutes. And I was wearing a thin long-sleeved shirt to protect my arms. But sunscreen and hairy legs generally don't mix too well, plus my legs usually aren't in a position to be getting direct sun anyway. ...Unless I snooze on my back at the beach with my feet splayed. So now exactly half of each leg is bright red, from my achilles and calf around the inside to my shin. The outside half, still the same white. It's seriously like someone drew a line down my shinbone and spray painted me on one side of that line.

Also, because my arms were behind my head, I have an inch-wide strip of sunburn below my bellybutton where my shirt slid up.

I'm a dumbass. And I'll be purchasing some spray-on sunscreen before I next venture out into the UV.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

Something has gone awry. We've already had one of our biannual hot spells in the City, and the next one isn't scheduled until October. Is this what we have to look forward to?

So I'm still sick enough that I feel I'm floating about 6 inches outside my body about half the time what with the congestion and fuzzy brain medicine head. All fine and well if it's cold and grey and miserable outside and I can curl up on the couch with some chick flicks. But instead of the normal cool July temps, San Francisco has turned into a blistering parking lot, and I'm the dog left in the car. All I can do is lay around and moan.

It's 97 degrees out according to weatherunderground, which means it's probably well over 100 inside my apartment, where all the heat from the building collects on the top floor while the blazing sun radiates right through the uninsulated roof and walls and windows. Our only choice is to open every window and hope that some sort of cross wind blows through. Though on a day like today there's no hint of a breeze off the bay. It's so hot, even the air can't move.

Yes, it could be worse. There are places inland that have been over 110 now for days in a row. But come on. This is why I live here. It's not supposed to do this. Seriously, we've shattered our previous record by 8 degrees! That's 26 degrees above normal!

It's too hot to type. It's too hot to think. I'm going to go back to moaning for a while.

U2 Bush?

This is the very reason I love the internet. And you know, it's nice to see that the wonders of modern technology can be put to such creative and good use by someone who clearly has time on his/her hands...

Summer Colds Suck Big Donkey Dick

Much as I fantasize about calling in sick on beautiful summer Mondays and skipping work, I've never actually done it. The guilt of sitting at the beach or riding my bike on Angel Island while everyone else is slaving away is usually enough to prevent me from doing so. Or perhaps it's just the fear of getting caught (me on cell phone: "Yeah, Boss, thanks for checking in, I'm *cough*cough* feeling a little better. What's that? Oh, that's just the sound of my, um, relaxation CD, uh, called 'Soothing Ocean Sounds'... Yeah, those seagulls sound realistic don't they. What? Uh, yeah, so does that Coast Guard helicoptor...")

Today, however, on just such a glorious Monday, I'm neither at the office nor on the beach. No, I have not left my apartment at all despite the fact that it's well over 80 degrees inside and I'm miserable. Because, yes, I'm actually sick. I was doing so well there for a while. I had successfully avoided falling down in the last several circuits of Ring-Around-the-Office, had survived unscathed through the last two roommate scourges, and blam. Completely out of nowhere, my sinuses have been running as if someone turned on a faucet, my lungs ache, my throat hurts. It tingles and prickles behind my face like I just snorted swimming pool water up my nose, and it won't go away. I had no idea that it was humanly possible to produce so much mucus.

Gross. I know. If you need me, I'll be on the couch playing Guitar Hero on the Playstation.

It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing

I try to pay attention to what's going on around me and consider myself a reasonably observant person... usually... at least about some things. A notable exception being when I was waiting to board the airport bus from the BART station in Oakland, on my way to Boston a couple months ago. It was only after the police came up that I realized the commotion was not just other travelers jostling for position, but that the well-dressed man a few people in front of me had just had his wallet stolen at knife point. So I was sort of dangerously oblivious there.

I also have pretty good peripheral vision, which is handy when you're trying to pay attention to your surroundings. And I don't turn my iPod up so loud that I can't hear what's going on too (I just pretend I can't hear the panhandlers).

Anyway, so this morning I'm walking to work and as I cross a street, looking both directions for traffic, I notice this tall beared black guy totally pimped out up ahead about to intersect my path. He's wearing a flawless brown bell-bottomed western-cut suit, a curled cowboy hat tilted at a jaunty angle, and shiny boots. I pass him without glancing over, but hear his footsteps and am aware out of the corner of my eye that he turned and is right beside/behind me.

Mind you, I hadn't seen anyone else on our side of the sidewalk, so it came as a total shock when, moments later, it was a white woman who passes me, wearing jeans and a cute brown camisole/jacket combo, her kitten heels matching the footfalls I was hearing. I was so startled, in fact, that I turned around to see what had happened to the guy in the suit. It was equally jarring that he was nowhere to be seen.

Now, it was quite impossible for him to have simply disappeared, yet it was equally impossible for him to have gone anywhere out of eyesite given his initial trajectory and the short space of time that had passed. But the fact remains that he was gone and this woman had appeared out of thin air in exactly the place all my senses and stream of continuity told me he should be.

This completely freaked me out. The whole way to work I was going over it in my head, all the possibilities equally disconcerting. Did I just hallucinate the pimped-out guy? Did I just not notice that he ducked into an alley while this woman was coming up behind me the whole time? If I could be that inattentive, how have I not been hit by a bus by now?

The conclusion I'm sticking to is that I just witnessed a momentary overlap between two of the infinite alternate universes, and that my continuity just happened to flow from one into another rather seamlessly. A wrinkle in the fabric of space-time? A slip in the timestream? A transparency in the multiverse? This is not as crazy as it may seem. Honest.

I'm convinced I've witnessed these things before. For example, back on the farm when I was briefly into making and firing model rockets, I had a little cardboard and balsa-wood rocket that, instead of blasting a parachute, simply blew out a side hole, starting the rocket on a turbulent drag-inducing spin that brought it back to the ground unharmed, whistling in the wind the whole way down. We even painted it day-glo orange the better to recover it. After several successful firings, the thing vanished. We could see it spiraling down, a tiny dot in the sky followed by a little trail of smoke and the faint whistle, and the next instant it was gone. The only logical explanation: it was whisked away in wrinkle between worlds. We scoured the ground for an hour and never found the bright orange rocket body. I think clothes dryers also tend to be vectors of plurality, what with all the missing socks and extra t-shirts.

Or maybe I should just start paying more attention.

Ephemera

Yaargh! I'm super annoyed right now. It's a minor thing really. But still.

Today was one of those rare bewitching evenings in the City when the fog rolls in low and streams between buildings whose tops are still in the blue sky above. The mist visibly flows around the skyscrapers downtown, making the air currents visible as it piles up on the windward side, pours around the edges, flows back up against the lee side.

If that weren't magical enough, because the fog layer is thin and low, the lengthening rays of the setting sun still strike the buildings which are weirdly simultaneously in the sunlight and obscured by fog. The light reflects off of the buildings' windows and bursts back out into the mist creating crazy reflections dancing through the clouds and golden rays radiating outward.

It's pretty indescribable, this fleeting phenomenon, requiring you to be in the right place at the right time to even be visible. And the only time of year when all the factors combine to make it possible, with the right angle of sunlight, the possibility of fog at just the right hour, is a few days in mid-July.

So I happened to be walking home from work between 7 and 8pm, just the right time to be in the midst of this downtown, staring up at the light show and trying to snap pictures. But the reason I'm pissed? My camera battery died!! I had just charged the thing and could only get a few crummy shots before it went kaput.

Sure sure, I could just get a new battery for my current little camera, but this frustrating evening is further impetus to buy a new damn camera instead. Yay, new toys!

Summer in the City

It was chillier than usual this morning; even with my sweater on I was shivering until I'd walked a few blocks. There aren't too many places where you see people walking to work wearing scarves and gloves on a lovely July morn. Ahhh, San Francisco summer, how I love thee.