I got to see my father, stepmother, and eight year-old brother this weekend for the first time in a couple of years. They were in town for this year's NAMM Show, which is an enormous music industry trade show. And I do mean enormous--there were over 65,000 registrants this year. The show was held in the Anaheim Convention Center, which is right near Disneyland, so heavy foot traffic in the area is not uncommon. However, it was easy to spot the NAMM people: whenever there was a walk signal, a sea of people in black spilled into the streets. They were worse than people at academic conferences, who, as you might know, are convinced that they won't ever get a job--let alone tenure--unless they look uniformly funereal. I don't care what anyone says; there is no "new black." Black is the new black.

Jessica, Eli, and I met for lunch in Downtown Disney and then stopped by my father's booth at the show. We said a quick hello between customers and then wandered around to check out the other booths. The drums in the above photo don't actually make any noise: you play them as you would play regular drums, but you only hear them when you put on the pair of headphones connected to them. Then, they sound very much like real drums. I think I'm going to get some brochures for that product and slip them under my drum-pounding neighbor's door.

We headed into the park in the late afternoon, made a quick stop by Toon Town for pictures with Mickey, and then played with the Innoventions exhibits. We didn't have enough time to hit all the spots we wanted to hit, so Eli and I made up for it by singing the Tiki Room song about a dozen times. I might have 24 years on him, but he's definitely my brother.

I finished my Disneyland blitz with beatnikside and stonesheep last night; alternacub also made it out for a while on Monday, so we were treated to some excellent stories. We had a blast; not even walking around in wet jeans for a few hours yesterday (going on the splashy river ride a second time was my brilliant idea) could dampen our spirits (ha ha). Today, I haven't managed to do anything but sleep a ridiculously long time, read some magazines, yawn periodically, and watch some baseball. Real life, it seems, will have to wait until tomorrow. Which is fine with me.

I spent the weekend at Disneyland with beatnikside and stonesheep. We had a great time despite the fact that it was unseasonably hot. It probably helped that we knew just when to plant ourselves at a bar and drink gin and tonics instead of standing in line. Geoff even has audio evidence to prove it. Should you ever fnd yourself at Disney's California Adventure and in need of a cocktail, head over to Ariel's Grotto. It looks like the kind of place where they serve nothing but cheeseburgers carved into the shape of mermaids, but there's a full bar in the back where they go decidedly light on the "mixed" part of "mixed drink." stonesheep and I each had only one gin and tonic, but those two drinks held about a third of the bar's stock of Bombay Sapphire. It'll remind you of the way you mixed drinks when you were 19, but hey, Disney's all about the youth.

Speaking of youth, I ran into my friend Pia on Saturday outside the Jungle Cruise. We went to high school and college together, and our brothers were very close friends. I hadn't visited with her since maybe 1992, and I was so surprised to see her that it took me a while to process that it was in fact her. It helped that she has apparently forgotten to do any aging, and therefore looks just how I remember her looking. There were about a billion hot, sweaty people at the park on Saturday, and the chances of running into one you knew ten years ago in another state have to be pretty slim, but I'm glad we beat the odds; it was good to see her.

Yesterday, the crowds were comparatively sparse, so we were able to walk right on to many of the rides, including Small World--not without ambivalence, as you know if you happened to listen to the pre-ride narrative. I decided it was funny, especially when I imagined the ways Disney might heighten their emphasis on product placement throughout the ride. "And here, we take our little boat through the Taco Bell drive-in! Arriba! Next up, Panda Express." I do believe stonesheep regretted her decision not to fortify herself with a third cocktail. We should have gone to Ariel's Blotto for a four-in-one.

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures over the weekend. I was more in hang out mode than look around mode, and the company was excellent. Below, however, are a few photos from my outing to the National Mall with Jim, daughters Mercedes and Reeve, and Scott. It was approximately one million degrees out, with 480% humidity. Never in my life have I had to eat a popsicle so fast. I couldn't help but wonder if the lunchtime joggers we saw weren't a little, you know, off. In the head. I also felt like the victim of a large-scale municipal prank when I read a sign on a water fountain that instructed me to "press button and wait." I pressed the button, and then I waited. And waited. And waited. But I had never been to DC before, and the sights were worth a bit of mugginess.

With Mercedes at the Lincoln Memorial.

Reeve somehow managed to make this look comfortable.

Kiteman. Not to be confused with Spoonman.

At the Washington Monument.

The Vietnam Memorial Wall.

The Lincoln Memorial.

Part of a habitat for the Bald Eagle.

Passing through Lassen National Park.

There were gopher holes everywhere in this meadow. Bill Murray would have gone mad.

From our hike near Fallen Leaf Lake.

And another from the hike.

Napa looks down the trail as Ivy contemplates plunging to her death because, you know, it's hard to resist a good chipmunk.

At a brewery in Ashland. Jeff = toasty. Me = toasty. Mom = toasty. Dad = not.

Before seeing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the Elizabethan Theater in Ashland. That's my dad's signature "you're taking a picture of me?" look.

Ben Stiller wipes the slate clean as Owen Wilson laments her unfortunate loss.


Bridge over troubled water joke goes here.


Napa loves her some swimmin'.


Down on the beach at sunset.

In the last week and a half, I:

- drove over 2000 miles
- visited my parents
- saw three plays
- bought some hiking boots that didn't cause a single blister
- visited Jeff's parents
- camped at Lake Tahoe for the first time
- took the dogs into water, mountains, and meadows
- made s'mores
- went without power or hot water for five days
- came home and took the Longest Shower Ever; and
- received over 300 emails, about five of which were actually worth reading.

I'm tired and sniffly and not good for much tonight, but I'll post more tomorrow. In the meantime, here are a few pictures.

Mount Shasta

On the beach at Lake Tahoe

Hiking near Fallen Leaf Lake

Roots

Maybe one of these days, I will get more than three hours of sleep the night before I go on vacation. Maybe I'll finish packing more than a half hour before our scheduled departure time. Not that I'm finished now.

So, I'm off. We're dropping the dogs off at Jeff's parents' house in Carson City, then heading to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, then going to my parents' house in Napa, and then meeting Jeff's family (and our dogs) in Tahoe. It's entirely possible that I won't have Internet access at all until I return on the 23rd. It's all very Gilligan's Island.

See you later, little buddies!

Do you need artythings? I bet you do, and I bet you will love the wares my friend Lorien has for sale over at tra la la. She regularly posts about items as she makes them, so keep your eyes open for new stuff!

Plans are afoot. Those of you who have been around for a while might remember that nearly a year ago, I drove up to Seattle to visit my parents, my brother—who was about to move to Korea—and some of you nice people. I talked my mom into coming along with me on the way back down so that we could stop at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. I had wanted to go to the festival for years, but had never gotten past the brochure stage. The two of us had a fabulous time, and before we left, we decided that we should go every year.

I was talking to my mom on the phone last week, and I happened to see the booklet for this year's festival, which I got in the mail a few months ago. "Hey, are we going to go to Ashland again this year?" I asked.

Within the next twelve hours, we had talked my dad* and Jeff into coming along, purchased our tickets, and reserved a couple of hotel rooms at a 50% discount, courtesy of my mother's impressive travel agent mojo. We'll be seeing Wild Oats, Present Laughter, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. There were only 50 tickets left for A Midsummer Night's Dream when we called, and as it turned out, one of the only blocks of four seats left was a four-seat box up on the right. While I'm not sure that the box will provide us with the greatest view we could get, we will no doubt make up for it with the opportunity to make jokes about the unwashed masses below: "Tom's of Maine deodorant doesn't work, you dirty Oregon hippies!"**

Soon, our plans had expanded. Over Christmas, Jeff's parents had invited us to go camping in Tahoe with them this summer. Their camping trip starts just after our Ashland visit ends, so we'll be piggybacking the two. In addition, since our dogs love hiking and swimming—and since we prefer not to leave them home when we travel if we don't have to—we're bringing them along. However, since we can't bring the dogs to Ashland, we'll be dropping them off in Carson City, then heading to Napa, then heading to Ashland, then going back to Carson City, and then to Tahoe. Then home.

It sounds so simple when I put it that way!

* When I say "my dad," I usually mean my stepfather, since he's been my stepdad for nearly twenty years.
** I have nothing against hippies or Oregon. I actually mesh quite well with hippies. A friend once told me that no matter what I was wearing, random hippies on the street always shot me an "ah, a fellow traveler!" kind of look. I wondered if maybe they had a sixth sense that enabled them to ferret out people who knew all the lyrics to "Box of Rain." Sixth sense or no, despite my affinity for hippies and Oregon, I refuse to budge from my "Tom's of Maine deodorant doesn't work" stance. And those "deodorant crystals"—you know, the rocks you're supposed to rub on yourself to neutralize smells—are the psychic hotline of personal care products. You might as well just pray that your stank won't envelope you in a Pigpen cloud.

"Callipygian" means "having beautiful buttocks."

I learned that today. And I think that in some strange way, the word was responsible for a very wrong answer I supplied while playing Cranium with Jeff, his mom, and his Aunt Tricia. Tricia and I had one of the charades-type questions, and she was doing the acting. After we established that "love" was part of the correct answer, she began to point at her back pockets and bend her knees.

"Butt love!" I shouted.

It's a good thing Jeff's parents aren't Robert DeNiro and Blythe Danner, because that kind of answer isn't exactly Circle of Trust material.

Tricia and I, by the way, are a Cranium tour de force. Seriously. We're unstoppable, but only when we're on the same team. She can put a relatively shapeless lump of clay on the board, and I'll understand that it's a radio. I can act out entire lullabies in a desperate attempt to get her to say "rock a-bye, baby," and she'll figure out that there's a treetop, boughs are breaking, and cradles are falling. She can draw three lines and a few dots, and I'll get that the word is "sweat." If we can figure out a way to make a living from it, we're going national.

In Napa, I saw a human-sized wine opener, and I saw lots of grapevines, and I saw several people who are related to me. When I was done seeing them, I felt a worrisome wobble as we drove, and then, I saw a street in Fairfield while I waited in the rain for some tire people to do their tire thing. I got a really good look at that street, because I was staring at it for around three hours. I next saw very little as we drove through Tahoe at night while it rained and snowed, but we did see enough to get to Carson City safely—safely enough to check into our hotel and see many full beer bottles turn into many empty beer bottles. I saw some people who are related to Jeff, and I saw a saloon called "Bucket of Blood," and now, I'm seeing snow. In fact, I'm seeing so much snow that it looks like I'll keep seeing it for a while. We were planning to leave tomorrow, but living in Orange County doesn't really prepare you for things like getting over snowy mountain passes in a chainless Volvo without pulling a Toonces.

The holidays were lovely, and I have enjoyed this trip. I'm particularly glad we were able to bring the dogs along with us. However, it's time to go home, and I'm getting, as they say in "Super Troopers"—which I swear is better than you think it is—a little antsy in my pantsy. Keep your fingers crossed for clear roads in these parts, yes? I hate driving off cliffs.

I'm pretty sure I hate it, anyway.

We're exhausted but home. Because the time change is so drastic, we left at about 10 am on Saturday morning in Singapore and ended up arriving in Los Angeles at 11 am on Saturday. Total flight time back was about 17 hours here, not including our stop in Tokyo (flight time was around 20 hours on the way there). I was hoping to be able to stay up until a decent hour, but I'm pretty out of it and still fading; I'd be surprised if I make it much past dinner time.

I'm about to get out of sequence in writing about what happened since I last made an update, and I also have a few overall thoughts I'd like to articulate when I'm more clear-headed. In the meantime, here's the story of Friday, the day we named "Waiting for Lydia." We didn't mean to wait for Lydia. What we meant to do was go to the botanic gardens and then later take a cable car up to check out the view from Mt. Faber. In fact, we were already in a taxi on the way to the gardens—and then, it started to rain. Hard. Just crossing the street could leave you soaked. Wandering around outside and looking at flowers suddenly seemed much less appealing, so we hastily came up with Plan B: have the cab driver drop us off somewhere near where we already were, which happened to be around Orchard Road, and find a good place to have cocktails.

Cocktails turned into wine and cheese after we found a window table in a little bistro, where we eventually saw an American woman who stuck her head in the door and shouted, "Fish and chips! Do you have them?" The restaurant served nothing of the sort—we were in Singapore, after all—but that was less funny than the fact that the woman was so intensely abrupt that she reminded me of people who make plans like, "We're going to wear jeans and be relaxed and have a good time, goddammit." When she demanded that the server recommend a place where she and her kids could get themselves some fishy goodness, he was clearly a little short on ideas. "The Hard Rock, maybe?" he offered.

"Oh, no way," the woman said scornfully as she then turned and stomped away. Now, by this time, the hubby and I were a little tipsy, and it was all we could do to wait until the door closed before we started laughing. The server shot us a questioning look. "I'm sorry—we just found her really amusing," I explained as Jeff made the new international sign for "give me some fucking fish and chips," which looks a little like the view Marshall, Will, and Holly from "Land of the Lost" had as they hid from angry dinosaurs in their cave. Obviously relieved that we felt no solidarity with Fishy on some sort of nationalistic principle, he stayed and chatted with us for a while.

Eventually, we decided to move on, but we were still limited pretty much to places we could get to during breaks between the worst of the rainy spells. We settled on a place called The Dubliner, where we parked ourselves with some Guinness and ended up having one of those afternoons that probably doesn't sound nearly as fun as it was. Public transportation in Singapore is really quite good, and the advertisements on the buses are often fascinating. One ad we had seen a few times featured a woman named Lydia, who was the star of a TV program of some sort—we couldn't figure out whether it was a cooking show, a sitcom, or something else. Whatever it was, Lydia looked wholly insane, and I started to obsess over getting a picture of one of the Lydia buses.

The Dubliner has a covered outdoor patio that happens to be right next to a bus stop, so spending some time there seemed like a perfect opportunity to sip some beer and wait for a Lydia bus. After one pint, there was no Lydia, but there were myriad other interesting buses—the stream of them was nearly constant—so I took pictures of them instead. After two pints, still no Lydia. Towards the end of the third pint, I declared that I'd now be upset if Lydia finally showed up, because her sudden appearance would have broken the Beckettesque aura with which we had started to regard the afternoon. And indeed, we didn't see her again for the rest of our visit.

After returning to the hotel for a disco nap, we had one of those nights that is lovely but not remarkable in very many particulars. It was also short; we got only four hours of sleep or so before we had to get up, shower, pack, check out of our hotel, and get in a cab headed for Changi Airport.

On Monday, I stayed relatively close to our hotel, as I was tired of gimping about painfully, and I thought a bit of rest might help. I headed over to Raffles, a hotel that is a big colonial landmark. I wandered around some of the shops and got myself stalked by some bored art gallery owners who were hoping I had an extra few thousand dollars on me. It feels strange to spend time in a place so unabashedly celebratory of its colonial history—particularly because I was all of the sudden in the midst of way more tourists than I've seen in most of the spots we've visited—but I had a couple of Singapore Slings in the courtyard bar anyway. They are fruity and tasty, though I can't imagine anyone drinking them all night; it would be like staging an extended flashback of sneaking cordials from the liquor cabinet when you were fourteen.

I met Jeff back in our hotel room when his conference had ended for the day, and we met some of his conference friends over at Chijmes for dinner and drinks. Chijmes used to be a convent, but it now is a restaurant and shopping complex. We ended up having tapas and then moving to an Irish bar for Guinness, which seemed like a rather strange thing to do in Southeast Asia, but the tapas were good, and Guinness is Guinness, so we were perfectly happy.

The servers at restaurants here won't give you your check until you ask for it. This would make more sense if they continued to check in and ask if you wanted more to eat or drink, but many of them seem to just disappear. I do believe the pace of things like dining is just more relaxed here than I'm used to, and it's nice not to feel like restaurant employees are chomping at the bit to kick us out and get more people in, but I must confess that I get a little impatient when I want to leave and can't find anyone to take my money. Still, I've been living in Los Angeles for quite a while now, and I know that I'm just used to the exact opposite kind of service—I've actually had servers ask me what I want while conspicuously looking at their watches ten seconds after I've sat down.

On Tuesday, Jeff cut out from his conference early, since it was a big day all about computational finance, which is not his thing. We had lunch at a Thai restaurant (I'm not sure there's anything better than really good curry), and then decided to visit the Asian Civilizations Museum. Unfortunately, there are actually two branches of it, and the one we went to first is closed for major renovations until February. It took a fair amount of wandering for us to figure out where to go instead, but wandering is always interesting here—I find myself stumbling across things I didn't know I wanted to see.

Singapore is an intensely multicultural republic, with large Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations; the four official languages here are Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, and English. The displays at the museum reflect this intermingling of cultures and communities: in one room, you'll take in an exhibit on Chinese women and betel-chewing, and in another, you'll find a photography exhibit focusing on mosques. A portion of one of the walls near the latter exhibit was covered with small pieces of paper shaped like mosques on which children had drawn: "Islam is peace" was a popular message, and one pragmatic young person wrote that "Islam is the practical religion."

In the evening, we took the MRT to a largely Malay district known as Geylang. Parts of it are basically an enormous flea market, with blocks and blocks of stands where people sell food, pillows, t-shirts, shoes, and flowers. We also managed to stumble across what we decided to call Karaoke Road, since we saw what seemed like a dozen karaoke bars in a relatively short strip. Most of them seem to be going for a trendy kind of feel, but most of them also seemed both overpriced and a bit seedy, though I formed this opinion mostly by peering through windows, so it's quite possible that I'm wrong. We had dinner at a restaurant we passed and randomly decided to try, and it ended up being a good find. Tiger beer goes well with chicken curry.

I'm sure there's more to see in Geylang, but it was getting late, and Jeff had to get up at 6:30, so we took the MRT back to our hotel. I stayed up a bit later and wrote postcards in the bar up on the 70th floor of our hotel—the view is stunning, and I like it there. I am probably a huge geek for writing postcards in a bar, but whatever.

I still have to write about yesterday, but I've been at the computer for far too long, so I'm going to blow this Internet joint and go Chinatown. I haven't been able to catch up on your journals, so I do hope all is well with you. Take care, and I'll try to check in again tomorrow.

I was going to take a cooking class at the Raffles Culinary Academy on Wednesday morning, but I decided against it—the class was going to focus on "spa cuisine," which sounded good, but wasn't exactly what I was hoping for. Then, I actually looked at my map and figured out that two of the places I wanted to visit were quite close to each other, and I wasn't going to have time to visit both and take the cooking class. The Science Center and Jurong Bird Park won out, and I'm glad they did.

I should explain that I'm a Science Center kind of person; I think you just either like those places or don't. When I lived in the Bay Area, I went to the Exploratorium whenever I could, and I always had a thing for gadgets and physics and cool exhibits. I used to have this idea that I was also good at mixing potions and being a chemist of sorts, but that wore off when I actually took a chemistry class and received the lowest grade I've gotten in any subject, ever. Happily, my chemistry class trauma left me with no ill will towards the science center people of the world, so I got on the MRT and headed out. Besides, the center has a Robot Zoo, and who doesn't love robots? I still mist up when Sean Young figures out she's a replicant.

I had heard that Singaporean parents often strongly encourage their children to either become doctors or go into IT work of some sort. Even if I hadn't heard that, the pro-IT focus would have been obvious when I saw the large exhibit on email, networking, and software development. It would have been even more obvious when I read the messages on the egg-like objects placed throughout the learning center. It wasn't a bad exhibit, really, but I will say that the kids I saw found the Robot Zoo and the aviation area a whole lot more interesting—as did I.

Plus, they had an exhibit with real chicks hatching, and that's ever so much cooler than exploring the metaphoric ramifications of hatching IT professionals.

Yesterday, we got up reasonably early and took a cab over to Orchard Road, which is a large shopping area. We didn't do a whole lot of shopping; we mostly just wandered aimlessly and took pictures. To cross one of the streets, we took an underpass—I believe it's connected to the MRT, which is the Singaporean version of a subway system—and I found myself rather frightened by the walls, which are lined with rotating ads and pictures of celebrities. Every few seconds, the ads all change at once, and they do so with a loud sort of clanking noise. BAM! and there's Harvey Keitel, or whoever.

Come to think of it, I'd probably be afraid to see Harvey Keitel jumping out at me from a wall pretty much anywhere.

We spent the most time at Kinokuniya, the largest bookstore in Singapore. It really was very big, and I could have wandered the aisles for several more hours, but I kept picking up books and stationery and then realizing I really shouldn't be buying a ton of books that I would have to lug all the way back home with me. After having a cup of coffee at a nearby cafe, we took a taxi back to our hotel. My favorite thing about the taxis here is that they are cheap. My second favorite thing is that they have little signs in them that say things like, "Infants in arms shall not be reckoned as passengers."

In the late afternoon, we headed over to the other side of the island to see the zoo and Night Safari. The zoo was beautiful, but it's incredibly humid there—I'm not sure whether or not that's always the case. The vegetation is much more lush in that area, so it makes sense that the air would be wetter, but we also were just about to experience a storm, so that might have been a factor as well. In any case, I've been reminded several times over these last few days that my hair is actually curly. I thought it had just gotten straighter as I got older, but really, it was just that I moved to the desert. Unfortunately, the kind of curly it seems to want to get here is entirely unruly, particularly since I'm way overdue for a haircut. Imagine the sort of floppy-haired Hugh Grant look, only lighter and with more length, and you'll have a pretty good mental picture of what I look like.

Despite my state of Hugh Grantosity, I very much enjoyed the zoo. They leave a number of the animals free to roam in various areas of the zoo, so as you walk around, you often come within arm's length of monkeys, lemurs, big lizards, and peacocks. The monkeys like to hang out in the trees and bomb people who are walking under them. I'm so not kidding. I developed a bit of a complex about it after I was nearly hit early in our visit, because nothing ruins your day like being shat upon by a monkey. My hair looked silly enough as it was. Luckily, we avoided incident, so we were left with plenty of ring-tailed lemur time.

Children at the zoo in Singapore are marginally better-behaved than children at the zoo in the US, but it would seem that dumbasses who mess with the animals are universal. "It's hissing at you because it wants you to go away," I mentally projected to a few people, but my skills at communicating telepathically are quite poor, and even if they had gotten the message, I don't think they would have cared.

We were left with a bit of time to kill between our visit to the zoo and the opening of the Night Safari, so we had some satay and beer while we waited. That's when the thunder and lightning started, and it was very impressive thunder and lightning indeed. I even jumped once or twice at the noise. I was half-hoping for a brief and intense torrent, just because big storms are exciting when you've been living in Southern California for the last eight years, but the rain wasn't terribly heavy. Which is just as well, because there was still much to see. We soon boarded the Night Safari tram and were guided through habitats for animals like tigers, cappybaras, hippos, Malayan tapirs, and babirusas. I couldn't help but joke that the babirusas needed work ever since "Welcome Back Kotter" went out of production.

The Night Safari experience was a bit like the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland, only real and with less frequent, more sinister jokes. "And here's the part where the lions are waiting to ambush us!" the guide would say perkily as she told us how fast the animals could run. "Jackals are scavengers, but these jackals are sometimes also pred-a-tors that can surround their prey and rip-it-apart!" she sang out a bit later. I wondered idly how many children had been emotionally scarred by the cheery morbidity of the whole thing, but I also found it hilarious.

The night ended with a martini and some postcards back at the hotel—I mailed about ten of them off today, so hopefully they'll start making their way to you all soon. I'll write more this afternoon, which should be relatively mellow. Jeff's conference has started, so I'm out and about on my own, but I'm afraid I made my ankle much worse by walking on it for so long yesterday; now, it's visibly swollen and quite sore. I think the cure is to stay off it for as long as I can today. This means I might end up scrawling more postcards over Singapore Slings, which strikes me as a perfectly reasonable thing to do while on vacation. Forgive me if I write you and you find yourself unable to make sense of my rambling.

We had sushi last night (they call it a "sushi counter" here), and ended up sitting in between a guy from Texas who works for Dell on one side, and a surgeon and his girlfriend on the other. We all had quite a bit of sake, and the surgeon leaned over to us, pointed to his girlfriend, and said, "She wants to order the spermy stuff. I don't need spermy stuff!" After the meal, we ended up going barhopping with the Texan. We had Cuban cigars and martinis at one bar and more martinis at another—where we also met up with several of the Texan's friends—and then headed to a bar called Pinkk. With two k's. It was a trendy but fun sort of place, as I'm guessing most places that spell "pink" with two k's are.

We slept in this morning, but found ourselves in surprisingly good shape after some water and Advil. We then decided to take a cab to Little India, where we wandered for a few hours. I managed to twist my ankle, which I do fairly often—I injured it while skiing when I was in middle school, and it has twisted easily since. That has made walking around rather painful today, but it's not too bad, so I'm just trying to ignore it. I've been successful for most of the day. Little India has blocks and blocks of shops: sari shops, watch shops, restaurants, and produce stands. The food prices are amazingly cheap. We had lunch (which was enormous, and with appetizers included) for about $5 U.S. I actually found myself quite taken with many of the signs, one of which announced, "Very Crazy Sale! So cheap! So good!" Also, ginger tea is my new favorite thing.

We returned to our hotel around 2:00 this afternoon and decided to spend some time lounging by the pool, which feels almost cliched, since it's such a vacationy thing to do. But that's fine with me. We then did a little shopping. Our hotel is enormous, and there's a huge shopping center on the lower floors. I made an entirely impractical cocktail dress purchase, which now means that I have to talk someone into having a cocktail party. It's remarkable how small the sizes are in most of the shops when you're used to shopping in American stores, but there are lots of tiny women here—for the first time, I'm regularly speaking with adults who are shorter than I am. (I also noticed during our layover in Tokyo that the tables are all lower than the tables in the U.S. "They're my size!" I told Jeff.)

Before dinner, which was at an incredibly good Indian restaurant, we had appointments at the spa. The largest spa in Southeast Asia is located on the eighth floor of our hotel, and I'd be perfectly happy to spend several hours there every day. I got slathered in mud, wrapped up in plastic, bathed in a whirlpool tub with herbs and salts added to the water, and massaged; the treatment took about an hour and a half. The hubby got a hot stone treatment. The prices were really quite reasonable, which makes returning all the more easy to justify.

We have a mellow evening planned—we did enough cocktailing yesterday to last us for a while, and an early bedtime sounds awfully appealing right now. Tomorrow is our last full day together for a while, since Jeff's conference starts on Monday.

"I need to search your bag," said the security man at LAX.

And so he did. He opened it up, poked through my makeup bag, made sure I didn't have any nailclippers, inspected my shampoo bottle, looked at my medications. And then, he picked up the case for my Fukuoku.

"Oh, hell," I thought to myself as he opened it up and looked confused.

"Is this an inhaler?" he asked.

"Um, no," I told him. "That's... something else."

"Oh. What is it?"

"It's a vibrator."

"A what?"

"A very small vibrator."

"Oh. Oh. Oh! Oh," he stammered as he turned red. "I thought it was an inhaler."

"No, no," I laughed. "It's more fun than that."

"A lot more fun!" he said, a touch over-enthusiastically.

And there I thought I was being clever by remembering not to wear my steel-toed shoes through the metal detectors.

So, I'm in an Internet cafe in Singapore. We left LAX at 1 pm on Wednesday, and—both because the flight is really very long, and because of enormous time changes—we arrived at about 1:30 in the morning on Friday (just about 12 hours ago). Singapore Air was great, the hotel is wonderful, I'm not terribly jetlagged, and I am a stupid American who can't figure out where to put my lunch tray when I'm done. Also, I've realized that living in LA has caused me to forget about the existence of certain things. Like humidity.

I'll try to check in again soon.

I met this guy in Eugene, Oregon on my way up to Seattle nearly six months ago. His name was Aaron. I had ended up hanging out with two women at a bar, and the three of us went to another bar, where we met up with several of their friends. Aaron was one of them.

At some point in the evening, he wrote me a poem. There was a reason for it, but I'm no longer sure what that reason was. I think I gave him some smokes. Or maybe he had run out of money, so I bought him a beer. In any case, I was sifting through a bunch of things this evening in an attempt to sort of pre-pack, and I found the poem he had written:

precisions incisions
dualities decisions
the crux
the nadir
of eyes like fire
vocalization
like sunshine peaks
and vegetable teeth.

Well, we were at a bar.

I really should drive around and meet random people more often.

At Mike's Roadhouse Cafe. It's in a small town in central California, but I've forgotten which one. I went there because I was feeling vaguely Swayze-esque. There, I had nothing to do but overhear a conversation that included lines like, "Well, see, I'm a know-it-all. But I'm a know-it-all and I'm very bright."

At a brewery in Ashland. I recommend the grilled portabello burger, as it goes well with the hot liquor tank.

Also in Ashland. It's a town chock-full of players, and I'm tempted to go back every year.

Just came from an evening with bohunk and ntropy. This trip has been just what I needed to start feeling grounded again. There's much I still have to write about, but since I'm borrowing my brother's ancient Mac with a 26-baud modem, it's probably going to have to wait until I get home. Spending time on a computer that can't handle current browser software because it doesn't have enough processing power is maddening. I can't even see my own journal or my friends page, but I didn't know that until after waiting one minute and 43 seconds for them Not to load. I just don't have that kind of patience, especially when the hope of gratification is slim.

I talked my mother into coming down to Ashland with me, and we're heading off in the morning. "It's 475 miles," she says, "so it will take 12 hours. We should get on the road early."

"12 hours?" I respond, "It won't take anywhere near 12 hours! More like 8. With a stop."

"Well, we'll stop at least 3 times," my mom informs me.

"3?!? Why would we need to stop before we've even gone 200 miles?"

And so begins the "with one of the parental units" leg of the road trip. My mom and I get along remarkably well, and I anticipate that there will be few personal problems—it's just that she's going to want to stop more often than I'll want to, I'm going to have to lay off the smokies while I'm driving with her, she's going to want to go somewhere around the speed limit, and I'm going to want to convince her that she really should like Neutral Milk Hotel. Which she won't.

Still, we'll soon be in Ashland seeing "Macbeth" and "Noises Off," and we'll be staying in a swanky hotel room she booked at $50 because she spent half a day finding a hotel in Ashland that would honor her travel agent discount card.

After that, we're heading to Northern California, where we'll spend time with my grandparents, aunt, and cousin. My grandfather's birthday is coming up, so I decided to extend my trip a couple of days so that I could have a birthday brunch with him and the family. It's getting to the point where I just don't know how many more opportunities there will be to spend time with my grandparents—every time I see them, they aren't doing as well as the last time I saw them, and I don't want to rush home when I know that the window of time for things like birthday brunches is getting smaller. Besides, it would mean a lot to my grandfather if I stayed, and I always have fun listening to his stories. So I'll stay.

unquietmind: If you're going to be around and available on my way down, I'd love to stop and chat for a while. It's looking like I'll be heading out on Saturday or Sunday. If a drive-by would work for you, let me know! You can text message me through the little box on my userinfo page, and I think I gave you my cell number. If I didn't, I will.

Take care, friends, and feel free to send me "You Are Invisible to The Fuzz" vibes.

I had a beer at a Denny's in Woodland. I stopped at Shasta Lake and took some pictures. I met some random people in Eugene, and one of them wrote me a poem. I-5 was closed for a while, and I had to take a frontage road, and it rained a little, and then I got to Seattle. I love my reliable little Toyota because it still gets 32 miles to the gallon and can go 85 over the Grapevine. My brother and I stayed up all night before he left for Korea and talked about things like how this girl we knew in high school was lying out in the sun and told me she had to leave because she had a tanning appointment. I helped my mom have a garage sale and talked her into giving me a bunch of the stuff she planned to sell. I now have three handbags, four reams of paper, a tiny Christmas tree, and some dishes. bohunk and I had drinks last night and are going to have one or two more tonight. I am at her house right at this very moment, and it is good.

I have so many things to do before I leave for my road trip tomorrow that I'm doing none of them. Here they are, because if I write them down, they will seem more real:

- Make sure car isn't about to blow up.

- Pack. Since I'll be gone for nearly two weeks, I'll obviously need three weeks' worth of clothes, at least twelve pairs of shoes, the bocce set, the croquet set, and all the books I'll need to write my dissertation, which I'll complete in a leisurely fashion while relaxing in Motel 6 rooms along I-5.

- I suppose if I'm going to pack, I'll need to do laundry. This step might be optional, since it's entirely possible that I could talk my mother into doing laundry for me when I get to Seattle. I'm guessing she'll tell me to do it myself, since that's what I tell me if I were her.

- Send in rebate form for new phone, which I had to purchase because the bastards at my old phone company electronically branded the phones so that they can only be used for service with that company. That's what the new company tells me, anyway. Come to think of it, I don't know who the bastards really are. Frederic Jameson tells me this is one characteristic of the postmodern world in the age of late capitalism, only he doesn't use the term "bastards."

- Look at that letter from the police department again to see if I really just need to send in proof that I had insurance at the time I received my ticket, because if I'm wrong about that, I'll either have to stop by the cop shop tomorrow morning or decide that words like "500 dollar bail" don't really mean anything, because you can't put a price on freedom.

- Decide I need to compile and burn at least two more CDs. Realize it's essential that I rip tracks from twelve different CDs to achieve just the right range of songs. Amuse myself by including a Little River Band tune on one of the discs. Sit down; take a look at myself. Acknowledge that I want to be somebody. Crash computer three times, possibly four. Break CD burner again. Fix it again.

- Treat petunias and geraniums for infestation by the little rat-faced caterpillars I have tentatively identified as tobacco budworms. Wonder whether "mix and apply" means that I sprinkle the whole solution over everything or avoid the blooms. Wonder why they never specify such things. Wonder if they don't specify such things because they think only an idiot wouldn't know. Wonder if that means I'm an idiot.

- Return emails to the slew of people whose emails I haven't returned. Meditate on the wonders of communication in the digital era. Two emails into the queue, take a break to read friends page, check on last-minute travel specials for trips I have no intention of taking, look up weather forecasts for the Pacific Northwest, play with my Palm Pilot to determine whether or not it has magically fixed itself, and consider re-stringing my guitar and bringing it along on the trip, because I still remember the G chord, and you never know what kind of musical breakthrough might occur if I'm near the guitar. Answer two more emails. Repeat break, adding "play with dogs" to the sequence of activities.

So, I was planning to fly up to Seattle, but now I'm thinking that I'll drive instead. It will give me some time by myself. I'll find cheap hotels, drive, think, chainsmoke, drive, think, drink Big Gulps, and drive some more. And think. I'll stop when I want to take pictures. I'll make lots and lots of tapes.

Pros: This would give me time by myself, which would do me good. There will be adventures. I won't have to rent a car when I'm in Seattle. I recently got my car serviced, and I have new brakes.

Cons: My car has over 100,000 miles on it. This will end up being more expensive than flying. I'll have to get a new cell phone plan before I leave. I'll have to stop by the police station to deal with that ticket I got for not having my driver's license with me at that sorry excuse for a law enforcement activity where I behaved suspiciously. I'll also have to hurry to meet a project deadline before I go.

I think the pros are winning.

We found ourselves quite tired when we woke up on Saturday. We were incapable of moving quickly. Moreover, we later discovered that the maids had a nefarious plan to "clean up" the desk on which we had placed the piece of paper with Brenda and James's phone number. Sorry, you two! I'm glad you had a lovely day.


We decided to cab our way down to Navy Pier to browse the shops and be even more obviously touristy than we already had been. We sprung for the A*Mazing Chicago attraction, which was so cheesy that I laughed my way through the whole thing. In a good way.


We stopped for a drink. Jeff ordered a hot buttered rum, and was served a glass of hot water with some rum and a pat of butter in it. It wasn't exactly what he had in mind. "Try putting one of these in it," said the bartender, holding up a container full of teabags. "That's all right," returned Jeff, reaching for a glass of water.


We then rode the ferris wheel, which is, unfortunately, sponsored by McDonald's. Each of the cars has little golden arches painted on it, which I consider annoying. Ferris wheels just shouldn't be subjected to such blatant advertising techniques. Neither should sports arenas. I used to laugh gleefully each time Chick Hearn referred to "The Forum" for a year or so after it became the "Staples Center," and only in part because something about Chick Hearn is just inherently funny. But that's another post. From the Navy Pier, we went to Arun's for Thai food. We had read wonderful things about it, we had heard wonderful things about it, and we knew it would be pricey, so our expectations were high. It was, hands down, the best food I've ever had in my life. There is no menu. Each person pays a flat fee for a twelve-course dinner, which consists of six appetizers, four entrees, and two desserts. The portions were small, but any way you look at it, it's a whole lot of food, and I was glad I'd had only a salad earlier in the day. The presentation was artful. The service was impeccable. And by the time we made it back to the hotel to turn in for the evening and prepare to head back to the airport, I could barely keep my eyes open.

6:00 am came far too early.

On Friday, it was back to the Art Institute with us. We spent a good amount of time at the Ansel Adams special exhibition, but I do believe I liked the street photography collection better. We also peered at the miniature rooms, which were remarkable. I couldn't help but think of marstokyo, because to me, miniature art = marstokyo. We wandered around the museum until closing time. I thought the people at Trader Vic's were ushering people out rather unceremoniously, but museum guards, apparently, have "intimidation at 20 minutes to before official boot-you-out-time" down. One of them actually followed me about 15 feet as I walked into a room just to make sure I had heard her shout that it was 4:10. Then again, if I had to stand up at my job all day, I'd probably want to go home right on time, too.

We then grabbed a cup of coffee, which restored our post-museum-overstimulation-spunk. This was a good thing, for it was time for us to get ready to head out to Lou Malnati's and meet several LiveJournal folks for the first time. Cindy and Kevin came out from Wisconsin, and Pat, Kathleen, Heather, Heather, Brenda, and James all came from various parts of the Chicago area. The poor Heathers might as well have not lived in the Chicago area for as long as it took them to get to Malnati's; I think Jeff and I must have brought some of our bad 405-mojo with us, however unintentionally. I was delighted to spend time with everyone, and I wasn't a bit surprised to find that everyone was just as I expected them to be—which was very cool indeed. After pizza, we walked over to an Irish bar and continued our conversations as best as we could. Kevin took the picture below. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with my hand, there, but I swear it wasn't obscene.

My only regret is that I didn't get to spend more time with people in smaller groups or one-on-one. More of you will just have to come to LA at some point! Better yet, I'll have to make it back to Chicago.

On Thursday, I walked over to the Palmer House with my conference paper in hand. There, I met up with the other Claremont folks with whom I had put together the panel. I also got to meet kricker for the first time, as she was chairing the panel. The session went fairly well. I had been a bit worried that we wouldn't have many people in attendance at our particular panel presentation, since we were up against the old guard, who had a presentation scheduled at the same time as ours. However, a good number of people did come to listen, and many of them offered some helpful and interesting comments during the discussion that ensued. My composure was briefly dealt a serious blow when my efforts to be smooth about pouring a glass of water were subverted by an aggressively packed pitcher full of ice, but I got used to doing spectacularly unsmooth things and moving on at a young age, so I didn't feel wholly devastated. After the session, one of my fellow panel members took the rest of us out for a drink. My chief thoughts during this conversation were: 1) I really like hanging out with a bunch of smart women at the same time; and 2) I love being able to smoke inside.


I headed back to the hotel room around dinner time to meet up with the hubby and wait for our friends Chris and Danielle to arrive, who were driving in from Madison to meet us for dinner. They are two of our oldest Southern California friends, and we have gone through withdrawals since they decided to move back to the midwest, so we were very excited about seeing them. We decided to go to Webster's Wine Bar for dinner. Our server described himself as "very opinionated" about the wines they served, which was a fabulous thing, as the wine list was so enormous that I occasionally found myself turning the pages over and over again in awe. We got red flights and cheese flights and little appetizers, and were pleasantly toasty by the time we hopped back into a cab to return downtown.



We next went to Trader Vic's for enormous, silly drinks served in things like skulls, and it did seem that our own skulls felt rather silly after a while. We would have stayed longer, but the restaurant closed—people in Chicago are very insistent about things like closing time; funny that—and we mounted an unsuccessful search for a bar with a dartboard. In the absence of darts, we went with another drink at Miller's Pub.

Wednesday, we slept in for a while and then walked over to the Art Institute. It quickly became obvious that we were going to have to come back if we wanted to see even close to everything we wanted to see, so we spent most of Wednesday looking at paintings and decided to leave the photography and several other things for later in the week.



I briefly wondered if we could just move in there. We would hide, we thought. We decided against it, with some reluctance.



We then headed out for dinner, where I demonstrated, once again, that I'm not even a good pseudo-vegetarian anymore. Afterwards, I headed to our room so that I could indulge myself in an extended last-minute wigging session over the paper I was presenting the next day. I threw away large chunks, replaced them with new chunks, and still suspected that the whole essay blew chunks. Fortunately, I ran out of time—after a while, it was necessary that I Just Stop.

On Tuesday, we flew into O'Hare, checked into our hotel, and were delighted to discover that: 1) it was really quite nice; 2) they had robes for us; 3) there was free cheesecake every night in the hotel lobby; and 4) we seemed to be near absolutely everything. We decided to wander around the city by foot until we found a place where we wanted to eat, and we gawked at the scenery, as Chicago really looks nothing at all like Orange County. Not even a little. We settled on an Italian place called Rosebud. I half expected to see enormous pictures of Orson Welles everywhere, but there was no Orson Welles. There were dishes served in truly enormous proportions.


On the way back from dinner, I was taking a couple of pictures. "Take a picture of me!" I heard. I turned around and realized I needed to look down to see the source of the voice that had spoken to me. There was a small child looking up at me. His father was about 15 feet behind him. Soon, his father caught up; he was carrying some sort of alcohol in a paper bag. "Hi, I'm Michael, and this is my son Michael," he said. "But we call the little one Mike-Mike." He said they were trying to find a place to stay for the night. We bought a postcard from them ("Give them the best one!" Michael Senior told the boy) and gave them our leftovers before heading the rest of the way back to the hotel.

We walked around this beautiful place for about three hours today with our from S., our two dogs, and her two dogs. The dogs are under the mistake impression that they can climb any surface, no matter how steep.

After our hike, we had dinner at one of my very favorite Italian restaurants. Really, it was a perfect day.

And I posted a couple of pics over in dogs, too. Because I like it over there.

Big Bear Lake is one of those towns that is built around country kitsch. The first thing you notice is that there are wooden bears everywhere. There are bears with Robinhood hats outside of hotels. There are bears with fishing poles. Bears with hiking boots. Bears on bicycles. We saw no actual bears—or even warnings about bears—and I do believe I started to wonder if there might not be just one of them out there somewhere, one (admittedly large) specimen who's pissed off about all the ski lifts.

When shopkeepers decide not to spring for the wooden bears, they resort to puns: "Beary Wonderful!" "Beary Delicious!" And I need not say anything more about that, because it reminds me of Strawberry Shortcake. This one, not that one.

Somehow, the town manages to pull all of this off. And I do believe it's the only place in Southern California where I've actually seen people putting their SUVs to good use.

The cabin we rented was cute. I had imagined something slightly more rustic and isolated, but I'm not sure where I came up with that idea. We were just a couple of blocks away from some trails, which the dogs thought was fabulous. If it hadn't been so slippery up there, I would have loved to do more woodsy walking, but I'm not a huge fan of falling down right next to cliffs. We had fun anyway; we just decided to stick with more neighborhood-type walking after our initial hiking foray.

On New Year's Eve, our friends came up to join us. We made s'mores, we listened to music, we made tempura veggies in the fondue pot, we played some games, and we drank a whole lot. I drank way too much, felt spinny whenever I sat up the next day, and have decided to try out Project Clean Livin' ^TM for a while. Currently, Project Clean Livin' still includes lots of cigarettes and caffeine. I can only handle so much Clean at a time.

We cuddled away most of New Year's, glad we still had one more evening in the cabin, and then went on another long walk after checking out yesterday. It was, overall, a very good time in a beautiful place. Next time, I'll make snowfolk.

I'm taking a break from packing to head out to the cabin in Big Bear tomorrow. It's entirely possible that I'm dramatically overpacking, but we'll be there for a few days, and I'll be damned if I'm going to drink Folgers or sip my wine from plastic cups when I have a choice in the matter. I described the contents of our boxes and cooler to my mom this evening: five wine glasses, five champagne flutes, a tea kettle, a French Press, a coffee grinder, a large pot, a colander, a pasta-stirring spoon, a fondue pot, and various food and drink items. "Ha ha ha!" said Mom. When I asked why she laughed, she responded, "Oh, nothing. It's only that you sound just like me."

She's right, too.

Christmas was good. It was lovely to be back in Seattle. I don't hate Southern California, but I can't see myself living here for the rest of my life. Even after a two-year absence from the Pacific Northwest, Seattle felt more like home than Orange County. I got to tell jokes and laugh and talk with my family, which just isn't the same over the phone. Plus, I got to meet a whole bevy of Seattle LJers, who were just as interesting in person as they are online.

I was grateful to be able to spend time with bohunk several of the days I was visiting. I went through bohunk withdrawals after returning from our cross-country drive, and it was important for me to get my LorFix. She is right there at the top of my list of "People Who Don't Suck."

I'm off to pack some more. If I get too carried away, kindly remind me that bread makers, food processors, and rice cookers aren't truly necessary on a three-day excursion.

Happy New Year to you all!

Lor and I slept in a bit on Tuesday. By the time we were ready to get on the road, we were itching to make good time, so breakfast at McDonald's it was. Since the truck wouldn't fit under the overhang leading up to the drive-through (or "drive-thru," as The McMan would have me call it), we went inside and found a whole horde of very young people messing around and generally being obnoxious. I usually have little against certain forms of obnoxious behavior, but I was feeling cranky. "Isn't it a school day?" I grumbled to Lorien, thus causing myself to feel both old and cranky.

This particular McDonald's did not sell French toast sticks.

We quickly made our way through the rest of Colorado and into Utah. Utah was absolutely gorgeous, but it was very, very windy. There were times when the wind was blowing towards the truck so hard that I had the gas pedal floored but couldn't go past 60. This wasn't as frightening as the random gusts of wind coming from the side, which was a little unnerving on the more mountainous passes (particularly when less alert drivers let themselves be blown partially into our lane), but we managed to avoid any incidents. It helped that there were long stretches of road with no cars at all. It's a strange and lovely feeling, being the only people on the road while surrounded by such an awe-inspiring landscape. I felt a little like I must be trespassing. Lor snapped many photos through the burial ground for bugs that was our windshield, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing them when she gets her computer set up in Seattle.

The drive from Grand Junction to Vegas took us about seven hours total, and we arrived safely, though we were beset by MapQuest impishness on the last portion of the trip: "Take the 95 South to the 95 North? What is this?" While we correctly identified that particular directional item as wrong, the rest of the directions were vexing, too. This led to a cell phone conversation between Lor and beatnik during which a stressed-out me (being even slightly lost while driving a truck in heavy street traffic isn't my bag, baby) decided to think good thoughts about the pizza and beer that awaited us. By the time we pulled into the parking lot and bumbled around looking for a place to leave Penske—I had begun to think of the truck as a pseudo-person by this time—everything seemed funny to me. "You want me to back up? Back up?!" I shrieked, laughing.

After some food and Shiner Bock, we headed out to the fabulous Venus, where we met up with doctorgogol, hugged, chatted, and hung out until we could no longer ignore the fact that Lor and I were really very tired. We went down to a restaurant in the hotel, and I managed to toss my cigarette several feet behind me while trying simply to raise my hand. I refused to look for a while, afraid that I had managed to land the butt in the faux fur coat of a liposuctioned socialite with half a can of Aquanet on her head and The Bloodlust in her heart, but luckily, the lit smokie just landed on the floor. Still, it was obviously time for bed.

On Wednesday, I woke up at 5:30 am for no good reason, and after trying to get back to sleep in vain, I decided to walk down to the drugstore for some nail polish remover. Lor made us breakfast, and then we lounged around and played on beatnik's computer until the afternoon, when we took Penske out for a spin to pick up some lunch and some dinner fixings. Lor made an artichoke dip that was seriously delish, and I made gemelli with artichokes, feta, and capers. We had wine, joked around, and watched old videotapes. The doc came over to join us and then very kindly lugged my enormous suitcase (I over pack. It's a bad habit. I brought six pairs of shoes.) around for me while I checked into my hotel. He and I then spent some time chatting in the cafe downstairs until my 5:30 am wake-up time caught up with me. The day and the evening were just what I needed, perfect after a few days on the road.

I slept in on Thursday and then met up with the good doctor for lunch and round-town adventures while beatnik worked and Lor took some much needed alone-time for herself. We ate at a wonderful hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant with a signed picture of Suzanne Somers on the wall. There were other celebrities on the wall, too, but I had a direct Chrissy view. We headed out to a couple of thrift shops, where it was determined that I just wasn't in shopping mode, and then to the Shark Reef, because I was definitely in aquarium mode.

At the Shark Reef, we decided that the person who wrote the script for the guy who narrated the exhibits—upon entering, we were given talkysticks and could enter the numbers of the different exhibits to hear a spiel—really should not have a job: "Here at the Shark Reef," the talkystick said, "the environment is soothing and tropical. You don't have to worry about airports, jet lag, or getting shot." We then decided that someone should start a band called the Water Monitors. I marveled at the sharks and rays, but I was absolutely transfixed by the jellyfish. We later met up with Lorien and beatnik at Venus and eventually headed down to the same restaurant we had eaten at late on Tuesday. This time, I managed not to throw anything.

On Friday, the doctor and Lor went out to lunch and thrift shops while beatnik and I went out to lunch (I had Thanksgiving on a bun!) and rollercoasters. Well, just one rollercoaster, but it had two loops and a double corkscrew. One of these days, I'm going to have to take a systematic tour of all the rollercoasters in Vegas. I love those things. After leaving the Canyon Blaster, we played carnival games and a video game or two until we ran out of quarters, and then we wandered over to see if we could check out the spinning carousel lounge, but it was closed indefinitely. Instead, we decided to blow the circus joint and go to Caesar's Palace, where we spent some time at Shadow and then wandered around the Forum Shops a bit.

We met up with our thrift store-savvy friends for Mediterranean food, and then we all took a nap break before meeting up again at Cheetah's, which was way too crowded. After being jostled one too many times, we went to the Double Down, where the doctor and I eventually bade goodnight to the Seattle-bound among us, who needed to get a good night's sleep. Gogol and I proceeded to stay out altogether too late—it's easy to do in that town—and I made it back to my hotel room with just enough time to sneak in a few hours' sleep before checking out, saying goodbye to the crew, and catching my plane.

Trip Highlights So Far

On the way out from LAX: Like a fucking idiot, I wore steel-toed shoes to the airport. "Beep," said the X-Ray machine. "Take your shoes off and put them through the machine, miss," said the security lady. "Glare," said the National Guard, silently. "Sigh," said I.

Once we got on the road, we discovered that in Minnesota, there is an actual gas station and mini mart called "Pump and Munch."

In Iowa: We stopped at a greasy spoon with the word "FOOD" printed simply on its roof. The salt and pepper shakers featured covered wagons. Grilled cheese sandwiches were $1.75. In a cooler, there was some sort of frozen orange confection. It looked like a big hunk of sherbet on a stick, but upon closer examination, we determined that they were supposed to look like Hershey's Kisses, only large. And orange.

In Iowa, we also started to spot a chain of establishments called—I'm totally serious—"Kum & Go." Lor and I joked about the other names that people in that brainstorming session must have rejected: "How about 'Get Off and Take Off'?" "Nah... too long." Indeed, we saw many fabulous signs (not just in Iowa), including:

"Hope: 1 Mile."
"Friend: Exit 369."
"No Name: Next Exit."

We ended up settling down for the evening in Lincoln, Nebraska. We attempted to head out for a beer, but found that the lounge across the street was closed (it was about 11:30 by this point). In fact, all of the bars and liquor stores around our hotel room seemed to be closed. However, one place was open: Doctor John's 24-Hour Sex Shop, a veritable novelty palace. After checking our identification to make sure we were old enough to browse around (ha ha ha!), the shopmistress quite helpfully pointed us in the direction of the vinyl nurse outfits and gave us directions to the nearest bar (of the sports variety, as it turns out) that stayed open past midnight.

On our way out, another shop employee let us check out the store's signature ambulance, which was painted, noveltied-out, and genuinely cool. We then headed down Cornhusker Street (really) to the sports bar for a beer. It was already nearly last call when we discovered a free Internet kiosk in the bar, so we hopped on for a quick email and LJ check.

After returning to our room, we slept the sleep of the sleepy. When we headed out for breakfast the next morning, Lorien and I ended up in a conversation about the difference between regular bastards and "special bastards." This conversation did not endear us to the restaurant's other patrons. Regular bastards, as you no doubt know, are people born out of wedlock. "Special bastards," on the other hand, are people who are born out of wedlock, but whose parents later marry. I am, in fact, a special bastard.

At one point, Lor asked, "Well, what do they call you if you're born out of wedlock, but then your parents later marry, and then they get divorced, but later marry once again? A bastard with honors? A bastard with distinction?"

"Bastard cum laude!" I proclaimed, thus earning me a particularly baleful evil eye. In retrospect, I'm guessing the woman who tried to turn me to stone with her gaze had no idea what "cum laude" means. Of course, it's also possible that she just didn't want a side of bastard with her hotcakes.

It was shortly after this conversation that we were hit with inspiration. People throughout the midwest had been looking at us with thinly-veiled suspicion—you could just see "they're not from around these parts" running through their brains—and we decided that we should embrace this opportunity to make an impression. This impression came in the form of signs posted in gas stations across Nebraska, Colorado, and Utah. The signs read simply:

I WANNA BE
YOUR JOEY RAMONE.
LOVE,
SHASTA AND LORIEN

We thought that the chances anyone in Utah would get it were slim, but we posted them anyway.

Soon after the inspiration hit, so did the rain. It didn't last long, and it washed the little bug splatters off the windshield. We forged on. Going through Denver at rush hour wasn't much fun—the blind spots on the truck are quite large, and changing lanes in heavy traffic is difficult when people tailgate. However, we got a bit of a break just past Denver in Golden, where we stopped for dinner. When I ordered a drink, I couldn't have anticipated that the glass would be damn near the size of my head, and it became clear that walking around for a bit would be a good idea. We did, and it was good to move with our actual legs.

As we stopped to refuel before getting back on the road, I pulled off a particularly smooth maneuver in the Penske truck. I then started to get cocky. "I'm such a badass in this truck," I declared. "I'm Truckmaster T."

And then we hit the blizzard in Vail. We had been idly wondering why road crews had been spraying down the highway with some creepy-looking substance, but their actions would shortly make sense. We found ourselves on a very icy surface with bona fide snowbanks, and soon, the snow started coming down hard. I was no longer Truckmaster T. I was Chumptrucker C., totally out of my depth and saying things like, "I live in Orange County. Snow just doesn't happen there. I don't drive in snow. And before I lived in Orange County, I lived in Seattle. It snows there every year, but people are afraid of it. When it snows in Seattle, people just cancel shit until it stops snowing. Every day is a 'snow day.' Moreover, I really don't do 'truck in snow.' What I normally don't do in snow is a Corolla. A little, itty, bitty, 1993 Corolla."

And then we were through it. I was almost sad when it stopped, because with the snow coming at our windshield so fast, it looked very much like we were in the mothership at warp speed, but I got over my semi-disappointment quickly.

We had decided on Grand Junction as our goal destination for the evening, and we made it there a little before midnight. We pulled into a Best Western, congratulated ourselves on our hardcore mileage for the day (about 850), and then settled in for some wine, some Xena (it was very brain-level appropriate), some cigarettes, and some quality time with our blankets.

Saturday, we threw some clothes into a bag, gathered some snacks, and headed towards Vegas. Have you ever noticed on longer trips that certain types of vehicles seem to have it out for you that day? Some days, Honda drivers all seem to want to box me in. Other days, people in enormous SUVs won't stop tailgating me, no matter which lane I'm in. Well, on this particular day, it was minivans. They kept trying to change lanes into me—not just trying to cut me off; I'm used to that. They were trying to move into my space when I was right next to them. There was braking and honking.

We stopped for gas somewhere past Barstow but before state line, and I glanced at the thermometer. "Does that really say 119 degrees?" I asked. I stared at it for a while, because I almost never see numbers that big on thermometers. While I was looking, the temperature changed to 120.

We arrived at around 6:30, checked into our hotel, and then headed out to meet up with beatnikside. We had drinks at the Fireside Lounge at the Peppermill. We had more drinks at the Double Down, where I was disappointed to learn that the mechanical horse—the kind they sometimes have outside grocery stores—wasn't operational. We chatted and put songs on the jukebox. Beatnik took a picture of me next to a sign that read, "Midgets are people too." We then decided it was Very Important to go dancing, so we shook around for a while and checked out other people who were shaking around. After all that exercise, we headed to the more mellow environment of the Hookah Lounge, which might very well be my favorite place in Vegas. If I lived in Vegas, I'd probably try to study there.

Things start to get slightly blurry at this point, because it was already ridiculously late, but the thing is, we were in Vegas, so onward! We had breakfast at the Texas (stop that rhyming, I mean it!), where Kelly and beatnik made fun of my tendency to be very precise about the way I butter my Belgian waffles. The Excessively Deferential Server seemed apologetic for giving us the bill, and she actually bowed to us. Beatnik told stories, and Kelly and I listened in awe. More drinks happened, and then not nearly enough sleep.

Sunday, I was a zombie. After struggling mightily to get out of bed and check out of the hotel before noon, I revived briefly and enjoyed some shopping over at Caesar's Palace, but I soon had no choice but to nap. One of beatnik's friends, who was shopping with us, kindly volunteered her place as a makeshift nap station. Without the nap, I don't think I would have been able to stay awake on the drive back—as I near thirty, I'm just not as resilient as I used to be—but with the nap and some caffeine, I was good to go. The drive back was uneventful. Traffic was light, and we made good time. Jeff was asleep when we returned, and soon, I snuggled in and joined him.

We never did make it to the rollercoaster on top of the Stratosphere. It was closed for maintenance. We didn't mind.

"Let's go to Vegas," Kelly said. "There's a rollercoaster on top of the Stratosphere." And I said, "Viva!"

We're heading out tomorrow and returning on Sunday. I'll finally get to see the Double Down with beatnikside!

Note to self: martinis before rollercoaster = ill advised.

I love doing fun things on the spur of the moment. Kelly and I once were stressed out and tired, and I showed up at her house after work. "Let's do something," we decided. We went to the Santa Monica pier, hopped on the ferris wheel, rode the rollercoaster, did the funny little "how passionate are you?" tests for a quarter, and then grabbed dinner and a few beers. It sounds simple; really, it was simple. And it was the best time I'd had in quite a while.

Last time I went to Vegas with Kelly was for a Grateful Dead show in 1995. We watched hippies at the slots and marveled at the contrast of neon and earth child. We danced like... well, the way people danced at Grateful Dead shows. We got too hot and had to sit in the shade for a while. And then we drove home and reflected on how it had been a damn cool weekend.

I'm back from my fabulous trip to Vegas, where I got to meet beatnikside, bohunk, and doctorgogol, three of my very favorite LiveJournalers. I wasn't surprised to learn that I like them in person every bit as much as I like them online. I was there from Thursday to Sunday, and here's the day-by-day lowdown.

Thursday, I arrived at the airport to discover that my flight had been canceled. I only call to check on such things beforehand about half the time, and of course I didn't this time. Ah, well—the delay until I could catch another flight was about two hours, just enough time to stand in lines for two different airlines and sneak outside for cigarettes. When I finally arrived, I was whisked away for drinks, much to my delight. After checking into my hotel and grabbing a bite to eat, we all went to beatnik's Mad Pad to chat and learn how people react when someone says, "Look at meee! I'm a flying pig!" in a crowded room.

The next day, after a delightful lunch, we all met up at a vinoteca to dine, drink wine, and listen to music. I had the eggplant, which was delish, but I wish I had ordered the risotto. A perfect risotto is a sublime thing, but I'll just have to keep that in mind next time I eat there. Afterward, we migrated to the Hookah Lounge, where I kept thinking of myself as a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

Saturday was picnic day up at a meadow in the mountains, where the air was much cooler and the beer tasted just right. I contently munched on cheese and crackers while enjoying the conversation and thinking that the field would have been perfect for kickball. I didn't suggest it, because my other friends always laugh and make "slow and bouncy" jokes whenever I bring up the subject, and anyway, we had no ball. I suspect I might be only "about thirty" person I know who still harbors such a love for that game. As it was, the relief from the heat was welcome, the scenery was gorgeous, and I was surrounded by people I adore. Later, I even got to see the laboratory of the good doctor—who, incidentally, dresses exclusively in white lab coats—and his lovely wife, who became my partner in Gradual Lung Destruction.

The evening brought a trip to the palatial estate of a man who is funny by nature and owns the best couch I have ever seen. If I tried, I might be able to fit everyone I know on that sofa. The doctor went mobile with his talents, mixing potions (add two olives, and it comes alive!) at his Lounge Away from Home, and I met a whole bevy of very cool people. One of them now has me wanting to make myself a dress out of duct tape.

On my final day in Vegas, bohunk was safely back at home, but I met up with beatnik and the good doctor for lunch, and then went shopping for used books and for souvenirs. I found a wonderful book dedicated to the Little Black Dress, some Dryden I'd been trying to track down for a couple of years, a fistful of great cards, and a lunchbox with drawings of the "World's Strangest Freaks" that would have been perfect for a friend, but which I just can't bear to give up to her.

My flight home went considerably better than the flight out, and I arrived back at the new homestead to find a husband and dogs who were very gladdened by my return and who know just how to make a tired woman feel rested and glad to be home. I am so happy I was able to meet the faces behind this fabulous cross-section of my LJ friends list, and I hope to repeat the experience some time soon. In the meantime, maybe I can get some of you fine folks out to the OC to do LA and marvel at the Very Orange Tile that adorns a fair portion of a couple of our new walls.