I decided to get a Cali cell. Better yet,
I convinced T-Mobile to give me a Sidekick for $20.

I write from the wireless ether.

Pretty strange to be thousands and thousands of miles away from the original homestead. (OK, nearby the original, since the original is yet marked by an appropriate plaque noting my residency and is filled with strangers with the price of admission and appropriate Purchase and Sales agreements.)

I miss everyone, but not necessarily the family ritual of holidays. It’s a bit less stressful when you don’t gots to be anywhere, and it’s unlikely you’ll be picking a fight over 40+years of injustice and misunderstanding and betrayal and just good, old-fashioned sibling rivalry.

Besides, having the dinner at my house meant I could get my whole control freak on and Martha Steward the fuck out of the meal. I insisted on an almost entirely home-made feast, scoffing at M.’s suggestions to just buy pie and bread and all. Philistine.

My fresh-baked and hand-made crust apple scored two-to-one against his store-bought pumpkin cheesecake. My crust ain’t pretty, but it’s mighty tasty.

Jesus, what a lucky man that M. is.

And, here’s the Norman Rockwell scene. Only it has Asians. (M. insisted the bird be on the table so he could, man of the house style, make with the sharp implements right under the guests’ noses.)

As I told my brother on the phone last night to announce my non-arrival home for the holidays, “Yeah, the East Coast, you people, you’re dead to me.” (Maybe not so much dead as far away.)

To celebrate the transformation I have a hole in my Massachusetts driver’s license voiding it in some mystic states’ rights ritual to be replaced by a new card in the mail at some undisclosed point in time. And, the bumper of the vee-dub that brought me here is no longer sporting the tag that survived the Saturn SC coupe or its sister yellow New Bug. Gone forever is this:

Perhaps the last vestige of my New England self. (Well, that and my sarcasm and ice cold emotional distance.)

Goodbye old me.

(In related news, I pointed out to M. that in many a Lifetime original made-for-women movie the ever-present abusive dude starts by separating his victim from her nearest and dearest. It starts with distance, continues with an emotional severing (um, holidays, am I right ladies?) and ends with crippling emotional attachment.

The sun, moon and stars to me, the man o’ mine who invited me to live 3,000 miles from my family and friends. (OK, if you were to quibble, maybe 1K or so, if you think of my Western dwelling sister, and, if pushed, a few miles, but with a bay and peninsula in the way, of my oldest and among my best friends. But, the vast majority of the crowd are far.) Anyway, my cohabitation buddy, he thanked me for the tips, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he tunes into Lifetime more often.)

My weekend was partially spent in not-so-subtle, psychological warfare. In either vindication of my lovely sense of humor or painful proof of my unsuitableness as a partner the target of my warfare was the generally lovely, but sometimes not, M. In retaliation for grumpy fighting I mixed up some Streisand, you don’t bring me flowers, boohoohooofuckinghooboohoo, mens are means iPod goodness for driving around town.

By the fucking way, by drive around town, you must picture my sky blue convertible all topless and shit. Yeah, we still got some sun here in sunny San Jose.

The damnednest thing about trying to torture M. with love duets and broken hearted down and out sappiness is his always frighteningly revealing true life adventure “how I spent the 80s.” The man knows, like intimately, the song book of the Bee Gees. Sure, it got him mad Malaysian ass in his tender high school years, but still and all, I gets nervous about “the past.”

Right when I pulled out all stops with the Karen Carpenter medley, he revelled in the teenage joy of “For all we know.”

Meanwhile, we’re gearing up for a little home for the holidays. I started a little flour flinging of home-made white bread and pie crust to be refrigerated until the big day. Checking in with the brothers back home, it looks like I’m not invited to a couple of different dinners. (By not invited, that’s the story I”m sticking to as far as why I’m not holiday-ing in New England. Yeah, I would have come home if only I was invited, poor me, miles away and forgotten.)

Interesting conversation with the biggest bro about the home for the holidays, not, paradigm I look to be rocking in my new Cali world. I’m sure it’s the fodder for thoughts and pondering on family and what constitutes “home.” But, come on, I’m just fucking too lazy to make all the arrangements to get there.

And, coup de fucking grace on my laziness and all, a big old storm is being predicted to slam the east coast by the big day. I ain’t fucking dreaming of no white Thanksgiving, I tell you what.

Speaking of a white Thanksgiving (and trust me, that is a kickass segue for this paragraph), my racist core has been giggling for days at the Thanksgiving I refused this weekend. Here’s an excerpt from the Ranch 99 local market.

Yeah, whatever, M. You can force me into your psychedelic, hippie, West Coast, multi-culti, Bay Area, melting pot, peace, love and happiness nirvana. You can oppress me with words like caring and family and love. Whatever.

But, I ain’t eating no pork fried rice as part of my Thanksgiving feast.

Man, I’m pretty beat from a day of ping pong. Ok, shit, yeah, you caught me, not really ping pong just metaphoric.

Here’s some shit that made the day sweet —

– Surprise Thanksgiving bonus (I knew about the special brunch, but didn’t know about the envelopes handed out)
– Brunch and brunch food (which I extended to all day long by checking out the leftovers)
– Persimmons (yeah, man, still loves me the exotic fruit selection available at the office)
– Airline prices for Asia look like they may be dropping (better figure out our Chinese New Year plans soon)
– Life’s little bowl of irony, I’m becoming a weblog/website/Internet source at the new office (HAHAHA. M. said it best, “Don’t you wish you could just call up some people from your old job?”)
– No one else showed up for Mandarin class (much needed tutelage)
– The man o’ mine got a little further in his home-grown business

Here’s the shit that made the day, I guess, shit (or at least exhausting):

An obsession since moving west has been my growing awareness of earthquake preparedness kits.

I half-assedly started putting a few things together (mostly just a dynamo-powered, crank radio and similarly powered flashlight). But, on my outstanding list of shit I gotta do it was on a growing list (as it turns out a list that included “pay my fucking overdue mortgage already.”)

The other day, though, the boy-o of my dreams calls from lunch, because he spied with his little eyes something I would LUV, love, LUV. Working out in front of Oracle HQ were these folks. These lovely folks who have now become (second only to my sweet patootie) my entreprenurial heros.

A check of the website and a phone call later, we figure out they were basically having a survivalist yard sale. Whoo hoo. Thankfully, in many ways, I forgot my camera. Otherwise I would have committed an act of high douchery, photographing dad and sons stuffing away boxes and stacks and ziplog baggies of disaster-surviving wonder in nylon travel bags. I would have made Ansel Adams like coolness with the dramatic lines of a trim suburban lawn, driveway and garage neatly arrayed with bunker supplies enough for Armaggedon.

Here’s what we walked away with in a fetching emergency red knapsack:

What you got there is your US Coastguard and Red Cross approved water and “food” rations for two adults over three days. We got the “Double Deluxe” portions, rather than the leaner just plain double (non-deluxe) kit. I plan on swilling the water orgiastically, while either mounting a game of warfare with M., in which I seek to ration his intake into delirium, or just making him feel guilty and strong to my needy and weak. Either way it’s a win-win for me. The only downside is what with all the marathon running, his carcass will likely be heavy on the stringy and lean when I’m forced to consume his flesh or die.

My favorite aspect of the kit for the moment is the single maxi-pad. The water and food is for three days, but let’s hope Aunt Flo doesn’t visit the day the big one strikes.

It’s probably nutty and unnecessary or at least overkill to arm the barricades, as it were. But as long as GWB keeps fucking the country, I’m thinking these kits would make sweet XMas gifts for the whole family. Sure, they won’t be slammed by an earthquake (well my sister’s pretty damn close to the tectonic activity of Old Faithful, a zillion hotspots and a once-active volcano.) As M. pointed out, probably a few folks in New Orleans wouldn’t have minded such a kit by their doors.

It is very wrong, however, that as of today, I’m kind of hoping for a little danger so we can play with our rations, whistles, light sticks and radios. The kit comes with a notepad and paper. I’m thinking my first note will say “Thanks, M., for inviting me to Cali.”

Maybe this will be the post that gets me sent back to an occupational psych consultant. At least, it has overtones of perversion and skin-crawling creepy.

I work in a modern “green” building. It’s design with skylights and huge open windows and huge open spaces, it’s cubicle space meant to give you the feeling of space and privacy, it’s warm woods and recycled fiber carpeting say “come on in, we all be getting comfy here and living a simple, plant-lush life.”

To maximize light and minimize hierarchical, clandestine power grabs all office space is enclosed by glass. (Perhaps a tactile representation of an organization whose values are poised gracefully on transparency). Even doors are glass. Privacy is a theoretical construct.

I sit in essentially the point of a V, facing down the lines to the transparent-walled offices of two of the people with whom I most work. My field of view is they who toil above me. I cannot easily look away.

So I watch. It’s kind of fascinating in the same vague way watching an aquarium is interesting. It’s not so much that the fish are doing anything worthy of your rapt attention, but the movement, the wall of separation, the otherness and the silent, unrevealing constancy of action constantly catch your eye.

I occasionally draw conclusions based on the actions or create scenarios in my head that match the actions in front of me. Or I imagine a wacky sitcom where I, the viewer, am entertained by a split screen view of alternate realities. As with fish, I will always be an arm’s length of knowing what really motivates the actions behind glass.

Although, I could ask.

Tonight I think I experienced the magical fantasy place that I envisioned in a corner of the skull when I said “I’m moving to California,” more especially the Bay Area.

In fact, I should say, every now and again the fact that I have moved escapes me. My life is obviously a continuum, not a sudden wake-up from a walking coma. Still and all, I saw something on my own web page in my stand-up comedy bio that mentioned Northern California, and it felt foreign, like stepping out of the person whose bio I was reading (let alone living).

So, with that “Huh, is this really me,” disorientation, I headed off to a storytelling, spoken word evening run by this vivacious and interesting and compelling chick.

It’s probably a testimony to my lack of civilized manners, but I let her know that meeting her the first time had creeped me out. But, at 72, as a writer, a painter, a scholar, and given her dimunitive pocket size, it’s impossible not to see an imperfect, funhouse reflection of the woman Pat might have been, had she lived (of course) and had she ultimately had the gumption to fulfill the long list of unfulfilled dreams.

But, back to that theoretical space that “coming to California” invoked in me. California is sprouts and lattes and hippie shit and “rapping” with the kids, ya dig. It’s sun and ocean and mountains and windy roads and canyons, wind in your hair, rugged western and independent. Only I live in the ‘burbs and it ain’t like that living every day.

Tonight, though, I drove north on a stretch of highway that’s about as good as it gets scenery wise. Rolling canyons and wide open, unblighted space and sky. Crackling across the usually pleasant Route 280 was wide-arcing and multi-colored bright lights of lightening, kicking out from dark rain skies. I, then, eased the Beetle onto the quintessential adventuring stretch called Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, the road that killed Jimmy Dean.

Yeah, so there I was easing to the beach and ultimately to a cafe/restaurant with a satisfying but sprout-ishly described list of homey, hippie sandwiches, where I entered to a couple of dudes on guitar. Free wine and, thank god, a non-strictly vegan, ham sandwich later I was easing to my seat and meet some of the others.

A cafe, a few like-minded folks, adequately diverse, wine, a nearby ocean and hippie sandwiches, and I was living that deja vu tripped by my own view of Cali.

I figured my storytelling, unpolished, unstudied as it is, would be out of sync among actual storytellers and authors, but I believe myself adequately acquitted.

The loose theme of the night in honor of tomorrow’s Veteran’s Day was “Battles you have won.” Guess which career-changing adventure in lawyers, knives, money and psych exams I thunk up?

It was the closest to home on “stage” I’ve felt here. It was Thursday night at the Walsh Brothers just kicking back and swapping tales.

I just perused the website of a co-worker who gave a lunchtime lecture on the world of weblogs. (Try as I might to not comment during the talk, it couldn’t be done. At least not with duct tape and the threat of a tazer. I’m fucking irrepressible.)

Checking this guys frank and open site, which I learned of in the workplace with no nefarious plot in sight, makes me in no particular order:
Glad I left Massachusetts, angry again at my situation’s absurdity and almost (stress on almost) comfortable in my new employer’s halls.