We haven’t quite licked the signal coming into our house (and the promised visit by the cable guy(s)), but M.’s new TV is up and running.

My M., my boy-o, my striving, huddled mass yearning to breathe free man is turning into his company’s employee of the year. They had a contest and when they announced the prize was a 47-inch flat screen, high def, state of the art, all up in the modern times television set.

He’s a winner. No joke here. Just the truth.

I’m back in town, and I’m fucking tired. Almost too tired to rejoice at Rove’s retirement from his role as evil demon of the Whitehouse. Or wait, I guess they call it political adviser.

Karl Fucking Rove is no more. (Until, of course, someone like Giuliani hires him to hypnotize the country into not minding the ex-wives, abortion rhetoric and dressing in drag and keeping his campaign alive.)

I just kind of wish there was a grave on which I could dance.

Work is at a peak level of wearying the fuck out of me. Long days, intense retreating, editing, more editing, reformatting, group dynamics, all of the swirl of shit that makes workplaces not fun places. Sadly, I would blog the fuck out of everything if I wasn’t all like edumicated on why blogging the fuck out of work stuff is a bad, bad idea.

Just imagine serious global issues, educated people and long days into the night. Also imagine me being the one keeping the logistical ball rolling. I hate keeping that shit together. Good at it, but it stresses me out. Nothing cramps a meal than knowing you’re the one who’ll have to shag after the caterers if the rolls run out.

And, if the coming election, the resignation of Rove and hard, hard work weren’t enough to keep me busy, I got my fear and neuroses on the path to Edinburgh to face.

No lie, I’m intimidated as hell that I’m flying out to Edinburgh for the Fringe Fest. I think it will be cool. It will be interesting. And, hell, some of my favorite comedy friends are waiting or will be waiing on the other side of the pond. Hell yeah, some funny people who I ain’t never run out of things (or a desire) to talk about and hang out and all.

BUT, I’m leaving M. behind, and that kind of sucks. (At the same time as I realize it would definitely be one of his circles of hell to have wall to wall entertainers, artists and comics. He’d probably have to get all Muy Thai on someone’s ass just for being too, too, too artsy.)

My biggest fear, irrational and not really a fear as much as an anxiety, is the whole lodging arrangements. The thing is normal folk rent out their spare rooms all over the city for festival time. Looks like Dot and I will be bunking with Christine and Debbie. (M. is mildly convinced “Christine and Debbie” are fronts for “Bob” and “Ted,” who enjoy luring strangers into their lair.

We shall see. We’ll only be crashing between and among shows and likely handed out flyers and talking and meeting and performing and all that kind of circus swirl. So, it’s just a bed, not a getaway we be needing. Should be fine.

It occurs to me that when I lived in London, I was the lodger in the bedsit who agreed to au pair three little girls for a reduction in the room. I was the stranger in the family’s upper bedroom.

It seems so foreign now. It’s antithetical to my current suburban Silicon Valley, picking the right wine with dinner, living with my sweet boy-o, and maybe heading out for the weekend at a fireplaced, Jacuzzi ridden room running in the triple digits. Sleeping on a stranger’s pullout.

I’m sure I’ll be fine. But, I’d be lying if the prospect of travel, foreign lands and, I hope, performing during the world’s biggest arts fest wasn’t giving me Agita. Or maybe a stroke.

Now there is the siege.

I’m at a wonderful, scenic spot with good food and campfires hard by the Pacific Coast Highway and then, right by that road, the actual fucking Pacific. The scenic coast. The place so beautiful that someone like Magellan got fucked up and thought it was peaceful.

And, then there’s the wine. A lovely glass of a lovely Syrah, right hear seated by my left hand.

But, I, where am I? I am in a conference room looking at folks looking an LCD projector and group editing a document. Another word for my geographical location might be Hell.

I like the folks. The work ain’t always bad, and it’s honorable and shit. But holy fucking Jesus on a popsicle stick. I am not a 12-hour a day worker. I’m good for about two, two and a half. Tops.

I woke up today with an edgy, jumpy feeling of dread. Of course, I am sure it stems from a lizard corner of my brain dealing with overactive stress (and imagination) with a little bit more andrenaline and nerve juice in the blood stream.

Sometimes, you just get a bit overwhelmed and start thinking, “hey, I should remember to fucking breathe.”

Given that I ain’t never really stopped breathing or hyperventilated from pure worry, this too shall pass no doubt, like most of my irrational emotions (and the rational ones). But, for the moment the darkening, clouded sky is one of them there metaphors.

Truth is somewhere or another August just started getting a bit crazed. From possibly kind of sort of maybe I’m not sure vaguaries about the Fringe Fest in Scotland, I now have a ticket. And, at work the nebulous, theoretical “strategy plan” now has an in-sight due date and the retreat I planned starts tomorrow night.

As an aside, I fucking hate planning major expeditions at work. In this case, it’s an offsite retreat for almost the whole workweek with lodging and food and memos and shit for 12 to 15 co-workers. Now, I’m good at this shit, don’t get me wrong. (Although, realistically, I’m not cooking the food or making the beds, just hiring the caterers and whatnot. Rocket science or storming Omaha Beach it is not.)

But, being responsible for people just kicks my natural tendencies into senseless worry into high gear. It’s why I don’t typically love throwing parties. Like, suddenly, it’s on me if people have eaten, but what if, I dunno, all the stores suddenly close and there’s pestilence and rioting? That’d be my fault, right?

Jumping from spending the work money on a gathering and finding appropriate rooms to meet and sleep and gather and all to working on finding lodging at the Fringe Fest is kind of a busman’s holiday, though, you know. Not to mention, there’s a about 8 or 9 zeroes of decimal point’s difference to the work budget versus my own.

How much exactly can I afford for a week’s stay in Edinburgh? Surely, it won’t be the same business plan rates I handle at work.

Am I willing to sleep in a house with a dog and fuck my allergic self up in an overdrive of histamine production to save a few quid? (Probably “yes” when I was last in Scotland, circa 1984. Probably “no,” now that I’m a bit softer round the middle physically and emotionally.)

To battle the vague angsty feelings of the vague angsty, unformed worries, I’m regressing musically. I spent part of last night and this morning grabbing the tunes from the appropriate late-70s, early-80s period of optimal young adult confusion. I’m tearing it up in my head with the Buzzcocks, Mission of Burma, Dead Kennedys, but this time its on my pricey iPhone not my cheapo, knock off Walkman cassette player.

We even went into a music store last night, and I flipped through the clearance bins for old time’s sake. Even now, I fear the record-store (or I guess CD/DVD-store) employees and their judging eyes as they rang up my buys. I never was cool, and I ain’t likely to renaissance.

For both the retreat and the fest, I can probably grab my toothbrush and just show up. Shit will work itself out. But, I know the innermost dirty truth. I am just not that hip and spontaneous.

And, of course, it ain’t getting undone.

Dot and I both now have plane tickets. We are heading to Edinburgh at the end of the month. It will be MTV’s Real World. But, older and with show people. A veritable wall of comedy shows.

I am both excited and nauseously anxious.

Looks like I’ll be headed to some ancient isles and checking out the grave of Grey Friar’s Bobby once again. Back in 1984, I checked out Scotland. Looks like a couple of decades later, a few pounds heavier, a few pounds, or I guess Euros, richer and way, fucking older, I’ll be heading back.

In evidence that evolution passed me by, I’ll probably be backpacking and sleeping on floors just like then. You’d think I’d be all growed up by now.

Better yet, it looks like the intrepid Dot may be roped into joining me, as we cheer on and, I hope, participate in shows by some way funny folks. M., sadly, can’t get away.

Now, here’s an interesting realization about my life as it is. It has changed. I am en-partnered (almost wrote ensnared). It’s different. But, life rolling like it does and ideas always getting filtered through your own personal neurons, you have to pause every now and again and think a bit harder before you get it.

Sunday, I was musing about this possible jaunt, this junket, this comedy adventure to what some might consider the uber-festival of festivals for the things I like to do. Bear in mind, will you, you reader, that one of the shows at the fest that I have, let’s say, an intimate knowledge is called “The Naked Comedy Showcase.” I think that’s pretty clear as to what it’s all about. And also, mind, please do, that the majority of comedy folks are testosterone cursed and Y-chromosome possessing. Boys.

M. turns to me with a smile and says something like, “Let’s think about this. What if I told you I was going to Europe to meet up with my friends, and they’re all women. Oh, yeah, there will be nudity…”

Yes. I understand. Except it being my life and my non-messy intentions, I obviously consider myself loftily above reproach. I mean I’m practically a goddess, pedastled and righteous. It is not a pedastle from which a tumble would be worthwhile.

Enter Dot, itching to revisit the town she festivaled in last summer. My traveling companion. The woman to balance the crowd. The chaperone. She’s not old enough to be the the Emma Thompson to my Helen Bonham Carter. But, I do think we shall don petticoats.