That's My Bix!

I’m in the middle of a non-vacation vacation. It’s non-vacation in that I’m still working my usual work week (actually, less than usual, because I’m holding it to 40 hours rather than 50ish) but a vacation in that I’m not in vacation. It finally occurred to me that my job and farflung team members mean that duh, I don’t actually have to be working from the office. I have permission to work from home whenever I want and with the magic of cell phones and wifi connections, that home could be in Wisconsin or Berkeley, where I was in the early part of this week, or Everwood, where I am right this minute.

This week has gone by in a blur. I landed in SFO late on Friday night, after working a mostly full day and then suffering through the worst flight ever. What’s more, I purposely limited my luggage so that I could do carry on only, as I knew that I’d be landing late and with the added time to fetch a rental car, plus the drive over to the East Bay, I didn’t want to waste an extra half hour waiting for someone to throw my bag on a conveyor belt.  Except that when I was boarding our very full flight, the gate agent came by and said that they were checking all roller bags because it was so very full. Sure! I thought! I’m a veteran of the gate checked bag! You drop it off at the end of the jetway, they store it somewhere and you pick it up when you get off the plane. You don’t have to worry about jamming it up into the overhead or making people wait while you do so. Brilliant! Except, no, that’s not what he meant: he actually CHECKED our bags. Bastard. I packed light and lugged my crap across the MSP airport for exactly no reason whatsoever. GAH! And then the rental car place was annoying on top of it, which meant that by the time I finally got on my way, I hadn’t eaten in like twelve hours and was a touch crankypants. Then I accidentally went to Alameda. Then I purposely went to In N Out Burger, because damn, y’all. Damn.

Mo and Ian graciously allowed me to crash in their living room for the California leg of the trip, and it was delightful. I thought I wasn’t planning anything, other than meeting Magnus (who is absolutely gorgeous and I can’t stop looking at his cuteness) and also, a last minute plan to race up to Napa for brunch at Ad Hoc (overrated, I’m sorry to say), but despite that, it still felt like every minute was full of stuff going on. We went out for tapas with the 3 Fast 3 Furious posse (Jenfu was even in town from Everwood, another bit of serendipity) and watched Drunk History at Nonk’s house (I can’t watch the Tesla episode without snorting) and had a complete tour of the Igigi headquarters, which involved an amazing montage where I was literally running through the rows upon rows of hundreds of Igigi garments, picking out what I wanted to try on next (that probably deserves its own entry) and also had the BEST SUNDAY NIGHT EVER playing Rock Band. I was Kim Deal! And Aych was Frank Black! And it was MAGIC!

And then I flew to Everwood, to hang out with my bff at his parents’ house. We went to a giant copper mine, and it was all mine-y and then for something completely different, we went to afternoon tea where a chamber quartet made pop hits seemed austere and refined.  We also went to an amazing sculpture garden that made me question my commitment to artistic expression. I don’t know that I have it in me to write shit in stone. I barely have a blog anymore.

That’s really the crux of it. I’m having some kind of identity crisis, I think. It’s this thing I’m doing which I’m not really doing. I call it “this thing I’m doing” (TM Wendy MC) but in reality, I’m not actually doing it. Although when I’m not writing, I’m still spending a whole lot of mental headspace inside the universe of “this thing I’m doing”. Perhaps if I had a garden to fill with pages dedicated to my faith, this faith of words and language, perhaps then I would see a purpose to it all, or maybe even feel worthy to do  it.

Utah makes me think the wacky, I think. I’ll probably shake it off.