My whole life, and probably not the least bit related to being the baby sister, I am sure, I have been subjected to "good-natured" teasing.  Testament was born by nickname that echoed bitterly in my second grade, after a star turn in the class play about Toyland.  I went from being not just "Moose" for my size, but "Moose the Mechanical Man" for my robotic tour de force.

Commonly, any morsel of food I dared put to my lips in childhood engendered one brother or another to utter something akin to "Look, she's eating again." or simply, "Horse."

In adulthood something about my nature kept me an easy and apparently agreeable target.  I changed my name a couple to a dozen times on this Internet bulletin board to spare my jangled nerves some attention.  At least the nickname of comedic adulthood, dee-rob, doesn't have me swinging my coronet case at the mean boys and threatening to crush them.  

As a side note, if you ever have a precocious daughter who starts to grow more quickly and larger than the other kids, for christ's sake don't hand her a trumpet when she says she wants to play an instrument.  A flute, a piccolo, a clarinet.  Something lean.  Nothing is quite as poignant in a wrong bad way than a chubby, adult-dimensioned little girl wielding the decidely large and brassy sound associated with Dizzy, Louis or Myles.  

So, when I ventured off here to the left coast, the plan was simple:  A Madonna-worthy change from that girl to a newly minted Cali version.  No longer the subject of mirth and sometimes derision.  In fact, I told myself that when I got a new job everyone there would face only a very professional, almost somber character.  One without quirks, idiosyncracies and other fodder that shouted "different."

Goddamnit, here was my chance to conform!  Fuck ya.

Guess what?  Some delusions die harder than others.

Do you think the fact that yesterday at work someone saw me holding a plate with three pieces of cake (to share with others), saw only cake and me and shouted (literally) to someone else, "Hey, That's why Dee IS FAT!" means my plan for the totally stealth, low key persona have failed?  Or maybe, it was today when I mentioned something about someone in my life who is gay, and the follow up joke was a confusing bit about my own sexuality and whether I was "packing?"

Rodney Dangerfield said it best, "I don't get no respect." 

Pretty much I think we lived a Northern California cliche today. The kind of cliche that lends itself to the smugness of the Bay Area about quality of life, beautiful vistas and whatnot.  Probably would have been a good time for an earthquake just to keep my New England sensibilities about nothing ever getting too good being allowed.

A co-worker had gotten through an auction an afternoon's wine tour and tasting.  We toured, we tasted and then we picknicked.  Lovely.

And, the boy-o got to drive the new wheels through winding mountain roads.

Better yet, the dad who was the essential host of the event is a geologist, specializing in the kind of fossil fuel ooze that creates wars and protests and hybrids and Hummers.  I love old dude characters.  

I learned today that there's a big ole pool of black gold under L.A.  Apparently, drilling through Beverly Hills High could gets us more than a few satisfying barrels of crude.  All with the added attraction of being a quick commute to where the cars are.  No pesky pipelines.

So the next time the Hollywood elite environmentalists get going, it'll be tough not to ponder saving ANWAR and letting LA take the heat.

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The lawyer came through, and a big, fat, honking check showed up in my cubicle.  I did not turn around, go to the bank and keep on walking away from gainful employ.  It was tempting, sorely, sorely tempting.

The lesson learned today — Banks, well Bank of America in particular, but I bets they all be the same, banks sure do treat you different if you strut in with a few extra zeroes than usual on your check.  Your check made out to "Densie S." my last name, no less.  It cashed up all right, just as though that were my name.

Densie S., she is now a V. eye fucking P. at the old Bank of A.  VIP, probably could get myself some champagne in the vault room.  V. I. P.  No fees and much more interest, 'cuz that's how us rich folks roll in the VIP treatment.  The rich do get richer and I'm going to plan on exploiting every angle.

Not sure when I get to know the the secret handshake.

Meantime, back at the working people ranch, the moment the check was delivered by the very sweet dude who does that thang, I was reading yet another cunty delight of an email from the cunty delight of a worker bee who reminds me of my Boston roots.  One person in all the people I deal with in a daily, weekly, monthly basis, one person, one, who seems to revel in making shit hard.  Hard and nasty.  But not the good kind of hard and nasty.

Among the reasons I took the job was the name on the door actually connotes the antithesis of a hidebound, east-coast, heirarchical, fuck you you're a peon ethos.  Seriously, the name on the door is something you might hear about at some hotshot MBA exec training seminar, some kind of book you might read, some kind of corporate culture koolaid you're supposed to down and bring back to work with an eye toward happy, happy, joy productivity.   A huge swath of the day, people live the now business cliche and it ain't half bad.

But, there's the one delight who didn't get the corporate ethos memo.  Nope, and she is apparently hoping I roll on over to her dark and bitchy side. 

So I read the email, and I thought about Johnny Paycheck and living cheaply out of my car. 

I'm pretty sure I'm homeless now.  Not in the sense of living out of a shopping cart, yet, but as in no longer possessing a corner of the planet with a deed in my name, or my bank's name.  I don't think I own my house any more.

I dunno, though.  It's all vague and sketchy and reliant on a too incommunicative for me to stand lawyer-type chick.  Theory is that at some point today, a UPS envelope will come with my name on it.  Inside will be one of them there check gizmo pieces of paper that banks run on.  It should have many zeroes (many being a relative term in my humble single-digit existence).

Then, I will go to a bank, and I will be a thousandaire.

I will have no debt (apart from the credit cards I use and pay each and every month).  I will fantasy greatly about changing my name, stuffing the cash in a duffel bag and going off the grid.  I will be Henry David Thoreau meets the Unibomber, but with a little more of a greeting card over letter bomb sensibility.  My stage name will be Henry Dee-Rob Kasinsky.  I will move to the woods in order to live life with more hilarity.

Seriously, no debt, no address, sweet, sweet homeless fantasy living.   A thousandaire.

AAAARRRGGGHHHH.  Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.

I just wrote out a bunch of fabulously humorous shit about all the coincidences of place I have experienced.  Like a friend living in the house where my ex dickhead beau once lived with his eventual dyke-loving ex-wife after she sold it to a womyn from her drumming circle, who I later met and saw naked in a hot tub. 

Somehow, though, through a key combo I haven't figured out or a lingering mouse click the new MacBook fucks some clickety click bullshit in FireFox and gone, gone, gone, fucking gone.  Humor, brilliance, late night babbling gone.

Computers should suck my cock.  Figuratively, of course, since I am cockless.

The point is a chick from work is leaving.  She's moving to Cambridge, 'cuz there's some big school there or something.  And, judging by her description, she'll be in M.'s old neighborhood.

And, I went out with people from work, just like used to happen in other jobs before the bad, horrible place.  Nothing bad or horrible happened, of which I know.  Except the waitress shushed us.  Shhh, keep it down ladies.  Yeah, again, suck my figurative cock.

Oh, one last thing, I really, really, really hate the chick who is lawyering for me.  She can suck the imaginary cock, not once but twice.  Suck it, lawyer lady.  Suck it. 

I have to admit my favorite part of marathon day was going here:

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I think it's now a historical landmark, and it opened in the '40s as part of a beachside amusement park.   You walk into a dark, black room with no windows but a rotating mirror reflecting through a hole in the roof a living projection of the scenic shore outside.  It's like science and photography and a total waste of time all rolled into one.  In other words, a few of my favorite things.

For modern amusement, they've thrown up a few holographic images for shits and the kids today with their cameras and computers and all.

There was a chatty little girl inside, who her mother had left alone in there.  She wished she was taller to see the holograms and asked me to explain a few.  We discussed one that I thought might be a gremlin, given that holograms seem so '80s.  She had never heard of them.  She said, she does have a video she hasn't watched yet of hobgoblins, though.  I really hope it's not this video.

I don't think M. thinks I'm right in the head.  When we were walking away down the seawall, I pointed out that the little girl was damn lucky we weren't pedophiles.  It was implied to me that normal people don't think like that or, I guess if they do, don't mention it. 

Here's my baby at about 6 a.m. today.  He appears to me as less than a happy camper.[image:4069:l][newline]

Here's the same guy only a few hours later.[image:4078:l][newline]

He finished unofficially according to the chip reader the half-marathon in 2:38:23.  (I thought it was going to take much, much longer, since I had seen that face at the beginning, and I had experienced the tossing and turning, restless sleep first hand.)

Not bad for an old dude, and the bonus of doing the half was we could hang out without hospital gear all day.

Today is/was the San Francisco Marathon.  So, M. and I are up in the city with a Triple-A deal on a Marriot Courtyard.  Conceivably, it could be romantic, what with it being SF and all.