On the relationship front, sadness and desolation. M. refused to bring me coffee in bed and instead made me get up and go to the kitchen.

Nice day with him and some of his old friends in Berkeley, though. And, I got some good cautionary advice from a woman who moved here from the Netherlands. She’s noticed a little resistance in the Californian, politically correct workplace to her accustomed direct style. So, I’ll be practicing saying shit like, “How do you feel about that?”

On the Nick front, I haven’t yet mentioned the best interaction yet, which happened Friday afternoon. A general ruckus outside is punctuated with “Denise, help, call the police.”

Turns out a disgruntled, young man wasn’t interested in giving Nick any promised money (sounded like a whopping $100) for the month of March, since he wasn’t able to move in just yet. For once in my life, I have to say it sounded like the landlord was actually the one in the right. Not sure what planet the young guy lives on where you don’t end up paying the man who owns the place whatever you agreed to in writing.

There is something a tad sad and dicey and uncomfortable about watching an angry, shouting guy in his 20s getting right into the face of an old Greek, such as Nick is, and looking like the punching might commence.

I felt sorry for Nick. I felt sorrier still when he came by our place a little while later feeling he needed to explain himself after the shouted allegations. (At one point the kid was screaming to everyone in the complex that Nick was a thief and we should all know it.) Nick’s hand was shaking as he showed me the paper the kid had signed.

Meanwhile, I’m still getting settled and feel almost there. One last milestone was being told about this website, which has info on where to perform. It’s about on par with stupid at this site. Pretty much proving that among comics there will always be a subsection of retards.

Not sure what I am thinking, but I just applied for a job on Craig’s List in the not-for-profit sector.

It spoke to me, perhaps the same way an abusive boyfriend convinces you again and again that he does love you and you do belong together.

BUT, and it’s a big but (kind of like mine (cheap, sad joke)), it’s for someone to write proposals and grants, not manage them. And, lord fucking knows I want to write and get paid in some capacity for it. Lord also knows, that I could have written the shit out of some of the grants I helped submit in the past, but it was not my “place” in the genius factories of academia. God, fucking, forbid an M.D. or Ph.D. admit that my skill was greater than her own.

It’s also a part-time position that pays better than most. If I could get a part-time gig that pays comparable per hour to what I had made per hour at my old job, life would be fucking fine. I want enough money to survive, but almost as importantly I want TIME. Time and a room with a view to write, or some such bullshit about which I am badly abusing the memory of Virginia Wolfe.

Check it out, I’m living with a sweet, sweet man.

Yesterday morning, in a wave of blueness, I wrote that I was a tad lonely what with being a stranger in a strange land. Later that same day, M. tells me he’s too busy at work to keep up with my web opus. Ah well.

That same evening, he decides we should check out a comedy open mike in the neighboring village of Saratoga. As we are walking to the place, he makes some crack about my being “lonely.” Rat bastard had been reading all along, and he had decided to bring me on a comedy outing.

Along with the sudden outbursts in my head that run along the lines of “WHAT THE FUCK? I SO TOTALLY MOVED,” there’s another cluster of shocked internal monologues, “WHAT THE FUCK? I’M LIVING WITH A GUY.”

Anywho, the open mike, which was at the Blue Rock Shoot cafe, was fun. It was about what you would expect for Tuesday and open mikedness — some good, some bad, no audience. Kind of reminded me of the All Asia, back when it was fun and the other comics were friendly to one another and there was some supportiveness.

I was also pretty impressed and pleasantly surprised with Ruth Lynn Miller, a 71-year-old woman who hosted. Back East, I’ve seen a few older, women comics, but mostly they never seem loose and like they are having fun. More like they are giving a lecture and not trying to entertain. Not Ruth, though. She seemed happy and what folks might call “a hoot.”

The sad thing was it kept making me think of Pat’s essentially chucking it all at 71. Here’s someone the same age out and about at a comedy show, reminding me that you can age any way you want to–I’m going for less than gracefully.

Likely to be Nick-less today. He keeps threatening to paint what has become my bathroom, but he doesn’t want to do it if there’s been rain.

Today is the first day in a really long while that I slept in by myself for a while. I was still up by 10 a.m., because that would be the crack of 1 p.m. backeast, and my circadian rhythms are hella fucked up. I’m damn near narcoleptic in the evenings (where I once was insomniacal.)

Probably not coincidentally, because I have the unfortunate tendency toward introspection and self-reflection (to a completely narcissistic degree, it;s the first day I’ve felt a tad lonely. It’s not real good, self-indulgent loneliness. It’s more like a pinch, a soupcon of lonely. (Really nothing to write home about (or post here about, yet I am compelled).)

I think the solution is to, I don’t know, get myself a regular grown-up life. Get out, get a JOB, check out some comedy places. Playing house is fun and all, but one needs a life.

(Honest to fucking god, I don’t know how stay at home types do it. Although, I guess different strokes, different folks. I’ll go absolutely batshit if I don’t get out there in the world.)

Part of it is I’ll need to make some West Coast friends of my own.

But, I was thinking it’s not so much friends I’m missing, it’s adversaries to hate. I’ve tried hating these folks. (And, as god is my witness, there is a lot to fucking hate.)

However, distance and lack of contact really does mellow you the fuck out. I had planned on writing about the guy who is the single most passive-aggressive human I have ever met in my life and who envisions himself a comedy impresario. But, a few months back I realized how little his very tiny corner of the planet has an impact on my life, and what with being so far away, I just don’t care.

I figure he’s a pretty sad guy. (He is positively encyclopedic in his knowledge and, I think, love of comedy and comedians, but one on one he seems to truly hate comics.) Could you imagine your passion, your love bringing you so much pain that you regularly punch walls in public and cry about your heartache to anyone who will listen?

Soon enough, though, I will have fresh sources of righteous indignation, no doubt. I plan on checking out SF open mikes, so that will help bridge the hate gap in short order, I suspect.

And, I’m considering doing a temping stint for employment. Temping has always been good to me, providing opportunities for real employment and cautionary tales of what not to become. I have no doubt at all that a couple of chaotic temp gigs later, and my lust for controversy and provocation will be sated.

I’ve been kind of living a half life, since the fact that I have moved hasn’t really sunk in to my skull. It’s more like an extended vacation than an actual reality. (Of course, getting a job will crash that little idyllic bubble.)

But, as M. and I wandered around the San Jose Flea Market, where I bought avocados and garlic and tangerines with the leaves and stems still on them, because it’s not a cold and muddy March in Boston here, the nasty, cold, cruel world intervened. We came back to my car and the rear driver’s side window was smashed.

No big deal, really, since glass is insured and at 60 degrees the breeze was fine. Most importantly, the alarm must have scared the ne’er-do-wells away, since my GPS and iPod carelessly left in the car (but not in plain view) were in tact.

Honestly, if I had lost the GPS I would have cried at the violation. The GPS has greatly affected the possibility and ultimate success of this move. Having my own car with me has been fabulous, and having a GPS device, which allows me to find important things like the nearest Target, gas and Bed, Bath and Beyond, has provided a degree of autonomy that makes me a far more pleasant person.

Tomorrow, I guess, will bring me at an auto glass shop and picking up the last of the staples I require to feel secure (baking soda, baking powder and salt). After that, I must seek employment and toil here in the Golden West. (Picture Grapes of Wrath without the devastating, grinding poverty.)

It’s like I’ve moved to a foreign country or something.

I mean, like, I can’t buy Pepperidge Farm bread and the milk selection is smaller and gas prices, whoo boy, don’t get me started.

There are actually some differences, really. Like the other day, M. and some of his friends and I went to a Korean restaurant. It was small and friendly and probably family run. And, I was the only white person there, I think. In Boston, you are pretty hard-pressed to find a place that is 100 percent full of Asians.

I was such an anomaly that the waitress kept asking the other people if “she” was OK with spicy food. We all assured her I was fine. Nonetheless,when she brought the soup, she brought over some extra plain chicken broth and explained to the group that I should dilute my soup. (I didn’t, partially because I like spicy food, and partially because I am a stubborn, macho jerk.)

California is a special wonderous place, though. Last night in an Italian place in North Beach, San Francisco, the check came with a giant bowl of community gummy bears for us to sample. It was an enchanting sight and not one that I have seen on the East Coast.

(After goading M. to take a big fistful for me, to go, as it were, I spent the rest of the night amusing myself reenacting the last scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Gummy bear? They’ve been in my pocket. They’re real warm and soft.”)

Other than that, as I’ve gone through the new place and worked on getting settled, I’ve been compiling a list of evidence that I might be a tad obsessive-compulsive:

Other than that, much love and legging breaking success to these guys, who are doing a few big weekend shows. (If you are in the Boston area, it’s a worthwhile evening’s diversion.)

Yesterday on the news I heard in passing but didn’t really hone in on this little nugget. (Try here if you are adverse to signing up for news stories.)

What I hadn’t realized is that it happened in the place in which I now reside. Worse yet, desperately hungry while running around the other day, I ate at Wendy’s. I felt better when I realized not the same one.

California is scary.