This guy recently wrote about his need for sweat. I’ve been getting physical my own bad self, even though I hate gyms with the passion and vigor I generally reserve for inconsiderate houseguests.

But, out here in the Left, there’s just not all the same opportunities for strolling as there were near my Cambridge condo. And the lifestyle change back to a cushy office job has made cushy an apt term for my ass and gut. A Lot more dee-rob to love and all, but too squishy for me to stand.

Unlike the weblog post linked to above, I think I might stick to the gym for a bit simply because of sheer access. Each evening, in order to get my car out of the parking garage in my swanky workplace, I have to walk directly by the on-site, up-to-date, almost always empty and absolutely free gym. No money and no effort getting there removes a couple of key rationalizing obstacles.

The real downside is M. and I are becoming such a cutesy, cliched couple, I drool a little vomit down my front whenever we pass a reflective surface. He’s been training for a half-marathon in the fall, and I’ve started on my little fitness regimen, so we regroup in sweats after work, looking all action Barbie and Ken. (A homeless guy even told us we were a good looking couple.)

The other downside is I had to face my New England reserve and sense of hierarchy, here in the Wild West where those rules apparently don’t apply. I ended up in the women’s locker room trying to adopt a stance, body language and facial expression appropriate to a casual chat with the shirtless VP. (By the way, the ivory towers of East Coast academe seem so fucking oppressive and ridiculous in their absolute love of hierarchy and keeping your place. You never no how much you’re being fucked with until the fucking stops.)

Apart from chatting with a semi-clad executive, this place continues to seem unlike a real office and more like a TV show office. The other day, I walked into the president’s office with a letter that needed signing. I was greeted warmly as he showed me his computer screen and asked me if I ever read The Onion, as he had been doing at just that moment.

Since I shut of all access to my site from my work IP, I’ve posted through gmail. But, as of late, it’s added some %20 characters and other non-human reading garbage, so I’m trying to post right now through Apple Mail. Sadly, I alone will be unable to see the results and proof them as necessary.

Today I’m smiling to myself, wondering if it is the day that Karl Rove will finally implode. Probably not, since that man is more weaselly than, I don’t know, a weasel, with Teflon-coated skin to boot. I can’t really envision a world where he’s out of the picture. GW isn’t a real boy yet, so he can’t exactly fire Gepetto yanking his strings and all. I think Laura Bush’s mentioning that they are all good friends is just a plot point to remind the audience that even if Iago is fired, he’s still gonna be around…

What fucking kills me about the discussion of Rove as a victim of partisan attacks, a la this quote from the NY Times:

“He wasn’t talking at all about her identity,” said Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the committee and a protege of Mr. Rove’s, accusing Democrats of playing an unseemly game in criticizing the chief strategist of Mr. Bush’s victory last year.

is kind of two-fold. First, there’s the kind of “What the Fuck?” incredulity. Karl Rove, the man who said liberals were all pussies for not going along with Bush’s war last month, is complaining about partisan attacks? Please, Karl, you might be many things, but you ain’t no victim.

The other interesting thing is how the logic seems to closely parallel the kind of wordsmithing for which Clinton was positively CRUCIFIED, during the Lewinski investigation. It depends on how you define “leak” or “sex” or you say tomato, I say tomato. And, apparently mentioning Wilson’s wife isn’t really identifying Plame, because, I guess, he must have several secret wives, right?

In the grand scheme, I sure as fucking hell hope history records this past decade accurately. Clinton got a little head, was less than forthcoming on facts and no lives were lost.

Bush, on the other hand, out and out lied (unless he alone is still looking for the phantom WMDs, kind of like OJ and the real killers) and possibly aided and abetted an act of treason, what with the whole protection for covert intelligence and all (during wartime no less). He is doing it all for love of country and god and all sorts of happy horseshit without the simple logic of Clinton getting his dick sucked, and people have died and more casualties will come.

Talking Points Memo and its cafe area have my paranoia on full alert. It’s now hard to imagine there isn’t some kind of Watergate cover-up and good, old-fashioned Nixonian smears and tricks ruling the Whitehouse right now. Even Nixon didn’t manipulate us directly into war.

As for the journalistic integrity thing and protecting sources, this column reminded me completely of the lessons learned in journalism school.

We were taught, back in the distant and innocent past of the 1980s, that you just didn’t go around promising to protect a source that wasn’t a whistleblower or at some kind of risk, and only if there was no other way. Even when you look at the relatively romantic notion of a “Deep Throat,” the professors taught us that background sources might provide a lead, like “follow the money,” but good reporting required getting other sources, checking and rechecking and getting shit on the record. (Not to mention checking out the motives as to why the leak might be leaking.)

Most of all, we young students of the reported word were cautioned, there’s a whole big, bad world of hard-ball playing sources, who would be playing you any way they can if you let them. Giving up the confidential source card to them in the game is about as smart as shouting out “Damn, look at all these aces,” whilst playing poker. Journalists like Time magazine’s Matt Cooper should be required to watch the movie Absence of Malice, while punching themselves on the forehead and repeating “Karl Rove used me.”

So weblogging is in the news a brand new way.

You can read some quasi-psycho ramblings of a suspected child rapist and former fugitive here. (Well, you can check it out there until Google pulls the plug. Then you can read it on this guy’s space.)

Apart from the total tragedy of what the Groene family is going through, for which this guy might turn out to be responsible, it causes me pause about weblogs in general.

Selfishly and self-centeredly, I can’t help but note that this here rambling, pseudo-psychotic site, dee-rob.com, had it’s own accusers. But, fucking shit, apart from my not being even a smidge violent, I think my writing is clearly not crazy crazy. It makes me kind of glad my readership is shit, comprised of like three people, who also tolerate me live and in person. No daily surveillance or thousands of comments.

Of course, the flip side is I fucking hate the shit I went through even more. Some sick asshole tried to mark me in league with a guy blogging under a messianic handle about personal demons that really are evil.

I am overstating the compares and contrasts here. But, what started as a writing exercise, evolved into a way to keep in touch in a long-distance relationship and now provides a newsletter to the folks back home in Beantown is part of a web-based world with all of the nasty shit of the worst of real life.

I guess as in the real world, it’s hard to sort out happiness and tragedy, both of which are generally always around.

Yeah, the house is quiet and all is right with the world. The house-guest has flown back to London.

Here’s how I know the man is crazy, and it’s not just me. Early in the day yesterday, when they still hadn’t counted the dead in London, I emailed M. that maybe his bud shouldn’t leave quite yet. Sure I wanted him gone, but not in a killed by terrorists sort of way or cavity searched by hyper-vigilant security.

M.’s response was “Naaah, forget about it. If he ain’t going to London, he still ain’t staying here.” (Well, not that exactly, since M. isn’t from Brooklyn or a 1940s movie script.)

So, we come home last night, and I say to the house-guest something like, “Shit, what are you going to do?” He replied that the trip to London (so he could hop on over to France to see some bike racing) was still on. Since I had been listening to the BBC on the ride home in my car, I, in turn, replied something like “Yeah, well, they just said on the radio that the trains are running again.”

I mean, it’s pretty fucking huge when London shuts down all of its transit.

His rejoinder was “Oh, yeah, well they were running again on Tuesday, so I’m going into the city first.” The shithead thought I was talking about San Francisco’s subway system, because earlier in the week the union for the BART system was threatening a strike. In truth, the trains had never stopped running in SF, since there were late night negotiations and agreements, and no strike was called.

In the end, he said he didn’t think London would be a problem, because they’d “have it all cleaned up in a couple days,” and it would be a whole other day by the time he arrived.

Dude, fucking London, during high security G8/Live8, went BOOM. Knock yourself out on the maintaining your tourist agenda, but maybe a little perspective. It may very well be something of a deal when you get there.

Maybe some of your traveling on credit card debt fantasy adventure should include a cruise by the British Medical Association building. They probably haven’t hosed all the blood off yet.

In the end, I’m not surprised that during his visit he bragged to one of our friends that “He never wastes his time with television news or newspapers or anything, because it’s all just slanted and made up. You can get enough news by reading it on the Internet.” Or something like that.

The grand stupidity of that statement is twofold — (1) Does he really think he’s avoiding big media when he reads Google or Yahoo news, like he said? Where’s he think those stories come from and since odd news bits run side by side with conventional stories, how is it less slanted, more informative and less cartoonish than CNN? And, (2) fucking stay aware of everything and sort out your personal values. Don’t ignore shit that’s out there and say news is irrelevant, because it doesn’t affect you and is just lies. Last time I checked, lies can affect you too.

Arghh. But, it’s quiet and I am free.

Drove into work to the news of the London subway exploding. My first thoughts were to three new
co-workers who I knew were all in the neighborhood. They’ve called in and all are fine. (The down
side of the interesting world of working in global policy circles is that global thing.= )

My second, horribly selfish thought, was "Oh no, does this mean our annoying house guest
shouldn’t fly to London tomorrow?" Fucking, fucking terrorists.

There are actually two modes of conversation for the now wishing he were gone already house-guest: Extreme know-it-all and competition you in which didn’t know you were participating.

The know-it-all-ism is over a broad range of topics from the mundane to the grandiose. Examples thus far include, how to store lemons, why my obviously souvenir quality utility knife imprinted “Grand Canyon” is inadequate, how to shoot weapons and disarm the guy who recently brought us out shooting, what the potential BART transit strikers needed to do, all manner of world affairs (’cause, like, you know, he’s been traveling) and my personal fave, since he’s not without a little softness in the middle and it’s based purely on theory, how M. must train for the half-marathon he’s entered.

The competition thang is just about everything you do or say being one-upped. His faster, smaller computer, better bike (he had once, I guess), superior computer skills, while I made lemon bread with our lemon glut, he would have made meringue pie, he’s logged more countries seen, has more knowledge on everything (see above), cracks about everything he knows that M. doesn’t, cracks about things he thinks M. doesn’t know, even how his life has been harder. It’s relentless, constant.

My favorite was last night, though. I mentioned not needing to bring water or any other beverage to work, since it’s provided. He asked me how many drinks I drank in a day and then went on to enumerate how many he would drink if it were free. Apparently my free-soda drinking is strictly amateur.

Missing from all of my griping is the kernel of a fun weekend. M., as always, made sure I got to do the thing over which I would surely obsess. In this case, fireworks.

We saw fireworks at the Marin County Fair, pictures of which will be posted tonight, when I can fully access my site. The highlight of the fair for me was watching the gleam of excitement in M.’s eyes as he bore witness to the Hambone Express pig races. The excitement, the pageantry, the breathless anticipation of watching the porcine competitive spirit is unparalleled in the racing world.

The other cool thing about heading to Marin County is experiencing the weather. For anyone not familiar with Northern California climate, it’s pretty funky. San Francisco is pretty much always freezing compared to the surrounding areas, and unlike Back East, temperatures shift suddenly within say only a 50-mile radius.

When we left in the convertible, it was a pleasant 70-80 degrees or so and sunny, perfect top-down and T-shirt weather. As we got closer to SF, we put on windbreakers and the thermometer in my car registered an easy 10 degree drop. Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, there was a thick, cool mist, the thermometer read 63 degrees and we had the heat going.

Maybe 15 minutes later with the bridge behind us, passing by Sausolito on the other side, the jackets were off and the thermometer numbers were climbing like a timer. Parking our car in Marin, the thermometer had hit 83, and the sun was beating down relentlessly.

In less than one half hour and 20 miles, there was a shift from the low 60s to the 80s. It’s tough to know what clothes to wear.

But the fireworks were pretty good. And, last night it was a cookout at a friend’s place, who just happens to live across the street from where the city of Santa Clara shoots off it’s display. The scene was completely reminiscent of the annual Braintree fireworks extravaganza with b
ooths and family fun, but not as lily white as Braintree. And the finale was awesome (so bright from so many fireworks at once, that my camera couldn’t handle it).

Life in the California suburbs with M. is becoming my sitcom.

So, I’ve been posting up a bitch storm, which has led me to a place of calm. No quarrels at work and the quarrel at home should be packing it’s bag and leaving on Friday.

I figure the positives to take away from the clueless house guest are two-fold. One, my boyo is sweet and has put me first. And second, he must have some kind of pheremone surrounding him that attracts nerds who ot
herwise would be friendless. But, he has a ton of cool normal friends, too, so maybe he’s just a friendly guy.

I finally did take assertive bitch action, of which I am not proud.

My rationalization is I was tired, it was around midnight, and the constant commenting had worn down my last nerve. Yes, we should have had a can opener for your crappy Dinty Moore stew, but since you’ve been bragging on your intrepid world-traveling skills, I would have thought opening cans would be in your repetoire of survival. Did you really have to stand over me as I searched for my Swiss Army knife (especially as I was in my bedroom not a public area)?

Location and handing over my knife (which I had already said was a souvenir from the Grand Canyon not a proper tool) was met with more comments, specifically on its inadequacy and minimal improvement over what he already
had.

I replied, "The words you are looking for are ‘Thank You,’" and walked away as he mumbled something I didn’t hear, because I had already shut the bedroom door.

It was both liberating and anxiety producing. So what if he and I never become friends, right? Or he thinks me on par with Eva Braun?

Still and all, if someone’s a guest in my house, I really do strive to be vaguely gracious.

As discussed when my sister was visiting, I might not be the best host as far as house-guests go. I’m a bit uptight, I fear, no matter how hip and cool I presume to pose.

But, in truth, I’m becoming downright crotchety this fine long weekend. I’ve become an old woman who cannot live without a nod to Emily Post and Miss Manners. M.’s buddy and old roommate has been here for a week, and it appears will be here another week. Not once in that time has he uttered the phrase “Thank you.” Not once, seriously. I’m not just being a ball-busting, girlfriend diva.

Not when he ate our food, not when he watched our TV, not when he slept in our bed, not when he borrowed some software (and then complained about how the programmers should have handled mapping and GPS, because as noted earlier, he knows everything).

I want to fucking hear it. Actually, I just want to be acknowledged in some fashion, as in it’s my house along with M. I’m not another visitor living off of M.’s largess. I fucking live here. Acknowledge it. And, for Christ’s fucking Sake, please STOP telling me what M. is like and what it’s like living with him. You haven’t been around for two years, and I’m sleeping with the guy. Do the goddamn math.

Previously, I had witnessed sort of an unwritten guy code among my guy friends and brothers, in which you kind of defer to the chick in her own house. You know, like not sacking out in the living room, hogging the TV, drinking a Big Gulp with your shirtless gut hanging out in remembrance of some imagined fratboy camaraderie. Or jumping on my computer without asking. Or basically assuming anything at all about how the house is run and things work.

(Right now I have a serious panty knot of twisted knickers from his not bothering to ask about recycling, despite there obviously being two bins and his previous having resided in the green, hippie, recycling Bay Area. Today, he used the recycling bin for his un-rinsed, sticky, multiple Big Gulp cups, complete with the trash-worthy straws and tops. I so enjoy picking up after big boy men.)

But, even if all of the above happened, I, and many in my chick sisterhood, would be cool and relaxed and not wanting to bitch, moan or stab, if only, if only, you would use a little etiquette and civility. Maybe ask if something is OK or how something goes. And, occasionally brush a little eye contact in my direction or act like I’m here and belong here.