I have no fucking idea what day it is, but it I’d not far from dawn. I performed not at all, but could have gone naked. I did see two shows, though. One was great–Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds. (Gotta check the spelling and providea link I the morning.) {Fixed}

I’ve eaten enough fries for three coronary bypasses since I’ve been here. My California weakened body kept in celebration to have had something green and fresh.

Sleep, that’ a why else I be needing.

After sleeping well into the Scottish afternoon, I’m feeling so much less like a zombie.

Been taking photos, and we finally saw a couple of shows. Also got to tag along our way into a couple of private parties for the artists.

I quietly snoozed a bit in my chair for the shows, which is a bit of a shame, since I was digging the performers. It wasn’t numbed boredom, it was totally the old body giving out.

I’ve now seen two women vomiting in real time. There’s also evidence of others having done in the same littering the streets. It’s like a Mardi Gras thang, without out the constant hot tits and including an accent that is tough to handle.

I finally have loaded some photos up, but I haven’t sorted through and deleted the shit. If you want, have a look.

Made it to the U.K. in one piece. OJ-Simpsoned across the concourses of Atlanta’s airport to barely just make my connection because of a flight delay from San Francisco. (That’s OJ Simpson, like the old Hertz car rental ad with the yardage-gaining sports here. I didn’t stab anyone.)

Sadly, while I made it from Terminal A to Terminal T in Atlanta and sweating and out of breath jumped as the last (or possibly second to last) person on the plane, fate decided my luggage needed a soujourn below the Mason-Dixon line. A polite, Scottish accented courier dispatcher says my bag will be here where I sit between now and 12 p.m., maybe 1 p.m.

As a consequence, I spent a jetlagged, smelly bit of dazed and confused yesterday in search of pants. I learned that apparently Scottish babes must embrace the camel toe like nobody’s business. A dozen pair of pants were tried, hundreds examined and for fuck’s sake they all had that hoochie 1- to 2-inch zipper that barely covers a chick’s pudenda.

On top of that, I’m apparently approaching plus sizes on this side of the pond, or I just couldn’t work it the fuck out what size I was. And, a lot of the knees and thighs were tight. Until yesterday I never worried about the relative obesity of my knees.

Moments before taking a straight razor to my jugular in over-tired despair, I found a mildly frumpy, outdoorsy store with plain, normally genetalia covering, black trousers.

For fuck’s sake.

Apart from that adventure, it was an uneventful-ish day of sleep deprivation.

Here’s the basic rundown of the past 24 hours, where I may have slept two hours on the plane max.

9:45 a.m. leave my home (and start missing M.)
11:05 a.m. get all settled into a completely full plane
12:30? p.m. plane finally takes the fuck off an hour or so late
7:50 p.m. finally get off the plane from San Francisco vaulting through hurdles of shitheads who completely and selfishly ignored the request to let people with connections off first (Oh, how I hate watching morons struggle and block the aisles slowly getting their carryon shit together.)
8:05 p.m. after running from about gate A30 down to A1, taking a turn down a long corridor and vaulting down a series of escalators to get on some kind of mono-rail train contraption to be transported to Terminal T (14 letters down the alphabet) got on the goddamn plane
8:06 p.m. mini seat dance when I realized I was alone in my seat block
9:05 a.m. landed in Edinburgh (and watched the luggage carousel gradually empty before filing the inevitable lost luggage report)

From there, which was with the 8-hour time difference already a 16-hour adventure, it all got fuzzy as I met up with my old friends, walked the streets, shopped, drank tea, called home, tagged along to the performance venues, saw their shows, drank some beer, ate some chips with curry and had what they think is a fruit smoothie but was warm juice, threw myself on stage for a short set of tired and rusty (but funny) shit, drank some water and ended in a comically bad haunted walking tour let by a foppish goth boy and highlighted by a woman in the tour group upchucking in an agent vault below the city.

One day, and I’m already exhausted.

I want to write, but worrying incessantly and making my self crazy is much more convenient.

Work has been a fucking bear and a half. Not the kind of bear of which my sweet boy-o has suddenly become enamored. Well, it ain’t bears per se, it’s nature shows on 47 inches of high definition broadcast.

He don’t need to go to Alaska, he can see more details on the television box.

Anyway, work has sucked me dry with worry and the cliched “cat herding.” I bailed for a vacation just in time to miss chapter two of finalizing a strategic plan. I guess the flattering thing to my hand-wringing overwork is three different folks are each covering a part of what I’ve been up to and a whole other chunk is waiting until I get back.

I’m a workhorse, I am. Slow, plodding and a bit dim but steady or something.

I haven’t wanted a vacation quite so much in quite some time. I’m looking forward to the 13 or 14 hours or so it will take me to get to Scottish shores. Mostly, I’m looking forward to the utter anonymity, the aloneness, the journey in which not one single soul will know me or need speak to me for hour after blissful hour.

I’ll have reading, writing and an array of iPod assisted sound, music, podcast, audiobooks and videos to keep me going.

Stop the world, I’ll be freely circling it. Quietly.

‘Course, I’ll miss M. and be sending pictures home to him and looking at his visage courtesy of the iPhone photo gallery.

Looks like the Edinburgh adventure will be thoroughly weblogged. I, as fucking always, will have my trusty MacBook under my arm and Dot apparently got her laptop working over the last day or so.

Stay tuned. Sleep I must now.

And, I must muse about the fact that I never imagined myself in one of them there relationships where I can head out on vaca and come back to a home. Maybe part of the journey is the return.

Or something else so fucking corny I want to stab myself and lap up the treacle released with my life spirit.

Congrats to Jenna Bush. I think marriage is how the Bushes stop drinking. Or maybe it’s marriage and Jesus.

In one week, I’ve heard about two heart attacks (one fatal) less than one degree of separation from either M. or me. At the same time, a family member is collecting for a American Heart Association walkathon. Damn, I best not be eating no pork for the rest of the week.

The grocery-store sitting homeless guy gave me the chuckle of the day. (There’s like a total of three or four dudes in the streets of this part of town, and a couple seem to take turns at the store parking lot.) He cracked on M., teasing him that he sees him running around all the time but didn’t seem to be losing weight.

I don’t know what I love more, a street person fucking with M. or that M. is apparently so charismatic and shit that even the homeless dudes recognize him when they see him.

Looks like we found a flat with a spare room in Edinburgh. Between our friends already there and the spare room, neither Dot nor I will be turning tricks or rolling with the Scottish homeless. That’s cool.

On the downstroke, though, one of the emails we were exchanging with Debbie and Christine referenced a birthday this week for one of them. 23 tender years’ young. As M. would say, ripping off Nancy Grace, “Oh Lord.” Me and young womanhood, ahhh, imagine me shaking a cranky, old-lady finger and tsking.

Man, oh, fucking, man. Tired, that’s what I am.

And, anxious, and guilt-ridden, and all sorts of worrying. Why? Don’t know, other than I’m a maroon.

Yesterday’s angst was cutting edge and teenagery. There was a neighborhood “block party” on the main drag. Live music, some kinds of street fair food and booths for the local merchants. Even better, it was a celebration of the town being “green.” We got a free energy-saving light bulb. Whoopee.

Here’s the thing, we strolled around our well-heeled suburban village. We laughed at our well-heeled suburban village. I took the free Hoodsie-style ice cream from the AAA insurance guy. I enjoyed it.

Then, our officer appeared on his police bicycle.

The local constabulatory came right out to the apartment when my own damn bike was stolen shortly after we moved here. A young man with a name like Officer Jason or Justin or something youthful sounding came on by and took notes and took the sliced bit of cable as evidence.

We’ve run into Officer J. a couple of times since then, and he recognizes us as criminal victims and newcomers to town. He’s quite friendly and lovely and all. And, last night he was on a tricked out mountain bike and even played the siren when I asked if a tricked out cop-carrying mountain bike has a siren.

I only wish his bicycle helmet had a red cherry flasher.

The thing is, though, when the fuck did I become a cheery complacent surburbanite chatting up and palling around with the police. That’s the man, and I know he’s keeping me down, so when did I start being friendly about that.

I have exactly zero anti-establishment edge at this point in my life. I am a squishy, soft, contented bovine-like animal. Or, wait, that might be ovine. Fucking BAAAHHH.

Today as I rocked out to de-stress the stress fest at work, it all came to a crystal clear head of irony. Punk rock on a iPhone.

I’m keeping my ownself down.

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.