So far every weekend I’ve been looking for festivals in the local events listing. I loves me a good collection of booths, trinkets, exhibits and street food.

Last weekends was perhaps the lamest, but it was high in kitsch value. The Vacaville, CA Middle Earth Festival. I was very disappointed that there were not hobbit-costumed midgets everywhere.

My theory on the event is that in some chamber of commerce meeting they were brainstorming on ways to get folks to shop at the many fine stores in Vacaville, which is essentially in Nowhere’s-ville between SF and Sacramento. Being out in a bumfuck area, getting some commerce probably ain’t no small feat. So, the Tolkien dork in town and member of the chamber pipes up with “Let’s all get in costumes and have a festival. All of my LARP buddies are looking for something to do on weekends.”

And, thus a small suburban town of folks walking around in costumes is born.

Today might be the more mainstream Cherry Blossom Fest in SF’s Japantown.

If you ever move some place, getting a bike is key. Not just to make one feel less geriatric and pasty white Northerner, but because it’s the correct speed to simultaneously cover some ground and take a look around.

With a bike, it was easier to see that just block away or so from my front door was a clear view of the Santa Cruz mountains. (I think it’s them anyway. With my sense of direction it could be the fucking Pyrenees and I wouldn’t know.)

And I could take a closer look at the one of the two ice cream men I hear wandering the ‘hood every single fucking day. I’ve actually spotted at least three separate ice cream operations on my street, including your basic ice cream truck, and two street vendors wheeling little refrigerated carts. (It’s hella quaint like I ain’t never seen Back East to see a grown man pushing around a multi-colored, throwback to the ’30s wooden cart every damn day.)

I think the thick concentration of frozen confection vending is due to the proximity of a local park down the street. But what do I know, maybe everywhere here there’s platoons of ice cream men. (You know, instead of the Spanish fantasy of the Golden West with gold in the streets, it could be the shangri-la of creamy treats on every block. It’s all different from Boston here, afterall.)

The two I hear every day cause me to alert like a dog but not in a Pavlovian ice cream lust way. Nope. It’s because one of them has a tinkling little bell (I can hear right now) that sounds exactly like I remember from the reading of the Gospels 10-second warning in a Catholic mass. (For you heathens, they ring bells to signify the importance of the Holy Word, or some such bullshit.)

The other guy, his cart plays the little tune from some kids song that goes like:
Does your hair hang low?
Does it waggle to and fro?
Can you tie it in a knot? BLAH BLAH

You know the one? Every single time that ice cream guy comes by I free associate on Dennis Hopper, morphing him in my head through different psychos, starting with the hippie in “Easy Rider,” who played around to that tune, through to the nitrous oxide mask in “Blue Velvet.” Scary ice cream.

Besides, with a bike I zipped right in and out of the jammed up Post Office parking lot full of folks like me, dragging their heels in handing over some cabbage to the government. But, fuck it, the tons o’ dough I owed the U.S. of A. is en route, and I hope I can just make some more.

I’m pushing hard to remain upbeat about the likelihood of my getting some sort of gainful employment. Today was a mixed day of rejection and hope. I heard from one part-time office manager job I didn’t get. The woman was tres cool about the whole thing as far as letting me down easy goes. Apparently, I was a rocking, hardcore, right up in there, contending #2.

Either this #2 status was completely genuine, and I only did just miss out because of a lack of industry X experience (which I’m choosing to believe). Or, the chick hiring was the best pep-talking liar in the world. Either way, you just got to keep going.

(I’m a tinge regretful, because she seemed just the right kind of low key for me to put behind the last fireball of stress such was my last gig. A key moment that sticks out in our interview because of it’s striking contrast to the “best and the brightest” bullshit I survived in the hallowed ivy halls was one remark.

She said, in regard to my letting her know I was looking for something not overly mentally taxing, because I had my own writing junk to energize, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I drove a bus through graduate school.” And we talked about balance and not burning out with total submersion or spending 70 hour weeks.

I only wish the assholes I’ve worked with in the past could have heard that, you know what, there are people with advanced degrees and intellectual acumen who don’t buy into the ball-busting, shark-swimming bullshit.)

Speaking of past work, a recruiter has been casting my resume on the waters. And, he says, there have been murmurs of “impressive.” Right now, he’s working on something at a company run by an alumni of the very place from which I fled west.

Small fucking world.

Any minute now, I’m also looking to crank up the old comedy calendar again. Yup, I’ve finally gotten off my ass and lined up some performance dates. California, here I fucking am.

All I gotta say today, after working on both mine and M.’s, taxes pretty much fucking suck.

I understand them and their purpose and all, but paying cash to big brother always feels in the emotional realm of overall blowing chunks.

Besides regretting the self-inflicted pain by pretending I’m in shape enough to just ride endlessly, I might regret the little kid-like need to buy a bike anyway.

Tonight, when I’m working on my taxes and remembering I don’t (YET) have a job, a little mature buyer’s remorse might happen.

But, screw it. Sunshine and play, that’s why I moved west.

I am akin to marshmallow, but I’ve moved to an area in which I feel I ought to be physically fit enough to enjoy the outdoors. (Per Wikipedia, and some hype real estate sites, “…San Jose experiences over 300 days a year of full or significant sunshine.” That’s about a hundred more than this site claims for Boston.)

So, delusionally, since I keep forgetting I’m over 40 and have never been athletic, I did go buy a new bike. (Instead of just fantasizing about a Schwinn OC Chopper.)

I didn’t buy something ridiculous and cool looking. I bought something practical and cool looking. It looks something like this:

Fucking sweet!

Got home (after test riding it in an interview suit), yanked it out of my car and realized I’d forgotten part of the lock I bought. Naturally, I figured I’d pedal right back and get it.

Damn, that was a long, long, long three miles up and three miles back.

I blame the wind whipping down the street not my squishy, weak self.

I went into the big city of San Francisco all by myself. And I didn’t get lost or mugged or accosted or nothing.

Actually, I took the BART train in from San Bruno, so I kind of got a little teeny bit lost since I was aiming for South San Francisco. As I was taking the train in, I realized that I now live further out of the swinging metropolitan area than when I lived at Pat’s in Braintree.

M. really has made me a suburbanite. I might have to make him suffer for that crime.

Although, cruising down 280 or north on the 101 in a convertible sure as fucking hell makes the bitter, suburban pill a tad tastier. At least it’s not a Boston suburb with the prospect of a job north of where I live with a commute of slush and snow.

I’m feeling a bit better about the job thang. I went to a recruiter today, and I decided to be nothing but honest and straightforward on my hope for a slackerish gig. Once I was talking and realizing that in my old job I never, ever, ever worked a mere 40 hours a week (too often it was 60+), it sounded quite normal that I wouldn’t want that again.

He seemed pretty hip to the notion of a 40-hour gig (or less in my fantasy) in a comfortable environment without brain and body-cracking stress.

Man, when I think of my last job, I just bum out with the realization that the director was some kind of manipulator in a freakish, bad boyfriend, mental torture kind of way. Out here again in the real world, I remember kick ass writing skills and fucking aptitude for computers out my ass are saleable quantities. She wasn’t doing me a favor keeping me employed like she played.

Argh. I’m having an interview today with a recruitment company that called me right back after I responded to a Craig’s list ad.

I’m nervous, since I haven’t interviewed in a long while. And, I have not fucking idea what to wear.

I suppose there are worse problems to have, but I’m spending the next little while wallowing in my own.

In regard to my Brady Bunch problem, a story illustrative of my mother’s humor and cruelty:

As an adult, I was visiting Pat and was in a separate room from her, no doubt toiling at some task she had waiting for me. From the living room she excitedly called, “Denise, there’s a Brady Bunch reunion special or something on…”

I came into the room to join her, and as I crossed the threshold, ZAP, the television was turned off via her remote.

Gleefully, Pat informed me she had been waiting to do that for decades. She hated that show, hated that I needed to always watch it and had harbored a 20+ year, anti-Brady grudge unquenched until that moment.

She killed herself laughing at me, while refusing to turn the TV back on.

In regard to job searching:

A couple of things have come up and a couple of interviews will be happening this week. I face them with mixed fucking feelings. If only I had been born dripping with gold and silver rather than cotton and tinfoil.

In regard to job fields:

A logical place to get a job might be biotech, which would be hip to some of my administrative skills but have the cash on hand that non-profits do not. However, I inwardly clench every time I consider working with scientists again.

One story that keeps sticking in my mind is the day the Division Chief happily told me that my name had come up in a lunchtime conversation. Apparently the institute’s power elite were bemoaning their lack of interested, interesting administrative support and found themselves evaluating whether there were any “intellectuals” among the administrative staff.

I was lauded, it seems, and had gained a reputation for what exactly I don’t know. Perhaps my mad reading comprehension skills and all that book learning?

I think the story was meant to flatter me, not piss me the fuck off at the audacious arrogance of the scientists I “served.”

In regard to feminism in this post-modern age:

Somebody out there might ask does Dee-Rob do laundry for menfolk?

The answer is “yes.”

However, she spends the fluff and fold time rationalizing the importance of partnership in a mutually giving and caring relationship and tells herself she is participating in that development. She also tells herself that actual employment will likely hault the laundry train, while M. and she then add to the local economy by hiring an immigrant to make their whites whiter.

Oh, and it’s a good day when you check the mail and there’s something from both of your favorite young men in Massachusetts.

While looking for a shot of the Brady House, I found this guy’s site.

Amusing, if not creepy, video.

San Jose is flat. It is quite flat, especially in comparison to the rolling hills and dales of most of the Bay Area. But, I’m learning what words like “valley” and “canyon” actually mean in a land where elevation is more than just the slightly over sea-level grade of much of New England.

It’s flatness is incredibly appealing to my slow, low-slung, non-athletic self, and I have been yearning to get a bike.

At the same time, I wander streets that have a disturbing familiarity to me. Disturbing, because they are a life-size reminder of my serious, fucking never missed an episode, “Brady Bunch” addiction. (Maybe not as disturbing as my friend Deb’s family, who collectively rule in B. Bunch trivia.)

At any rate, Friday nights when the streetlights came on, you would pedal home, ditch the bike on the driveway and make sure you had eaten, adequately washed and put on your PJs to settle in unmolested for the show of shows. (In my case, as the youngest of five, four of whom never succumbed to the Brady aura, in the days before multiple TVs in multiple rooms (and certainly not a large color version), the “unmolested” part was no mean feat.)

Just for an idea on the California ranch look I’m now dwelling within, here’s a screenshot of the Brady’s manse:
. (Note: They put on a fake front window to make the actual split-level ranch (i.e. single story) house look like two stories.)

Here’s my front door:

Not identical, but I think similar enough.

Anyway, so at any age from like 5-10 years old, when the Brady’s ruled Friday nights, I was at the Morrissey’s playing with the “little ones.” (The Morrissey’s ultimately had 12 kids (I think), but it might have been 11 or even 13.)

When there were 10 kids, they were spoken of in subsets with the younger cluster of girls all around my age (before Kerry, who was their “little one”). At various times, I was a member in good standing of the hen partyish evil of both little girl groups led by the slightly older Debbie and the slightly less mature but chronologically equal (or the same grade anyway) Chris. The Morrisseys were the real-life perfect family of patient and understanding non-dysfunction (or so I imagined) I envied beside the TV Bradys.

And, I envied their bikes.

(I should backtrack a bit to explain that the “little ones,” aka “the girls” were lithe and petite and were, in fact, the epitome of tiny, adorable girlness. In other words, they were gymnasts. At least once a week, they even took private gymnastic lessons, as did my big sister.

I, on the other hand, was a behemoth. Slow and massive. At 9 years old, I pretty much peaked at what would be my grown-up height of 5’3″. My weight has always been proportional, and it has never been slight.)

As a big girl, I had a big girl bike suitable to my massive (relatively speaking) girth. For a while, that meant a pink, three-speed Huffy ladies touring bike. It died prematurely left unwisely in a friend’s driveway and crunched by the family beachwagon.

Later I had a very reliable, forest green Raleigh.

Touring bikes, especially ones with speeds before mountain bikes were invented, were fine equipment. Cool and cute they were not, however.

The little girls, the cute tiny Barbie-collecting gymnast types, they had the wonderful cute bikes of the day, Stingrays. Stingrays with banana seats, swaying sissy bars and tassles flying in the breeze from the grips of their ape-grip handlebars.

The cool boys had the green, macho Stingrays. The cute girls, their future suburban wives perhaps, had the pink, glittery ones.

So, today, at 41, sadly, I imagine, I’ve been looking at these bikes:

No doubt, I will ultimately buy something with 27 speeds that is light and flexible enough for M. and me to throw on a rack and roll around Napa or over the Golden Gate or something.

But, for a little while at least, I’m waxing nostalgic for a bike I never owned.