The Doubting Thomas Chronicles

Nearer My God to Thee, or, A Dinner Party Weekend to Remember, 2011 edition

2011-04-03T13:02:00.001-07:00

It has come to be something of a tradition that the annual dinner party/winetasting weekend involves some high drama, often with a near-death experience. In 2008, I nearly got Keiko and me killed right around then. In 2009, Ed ate food until he nearly killed himself. 2010 was blissfully drama-free. As a result, presumably due to the principle of mean reversion, 2011 involved some high drama..

Jill and I had dinner in the city with her friends Tam and Mac on Wednesday night. I had just finished teaching my pro bono class in the Mission District, and met the three of them at the restaurant. We had a very nice meal, and then I drove Jill back to the Daly City BART station, which is where I'd left Bubba.

Jill drove off, headed for home, while I waited a few minutes to check email on my phone, and allow Bubba to warm up. It was raining for the 3rd consecutive day, and it was unnaturally cold, so I wanted to give Bubba time to get properly warmed up. At nearly 120,000 miles, he was not so sprightly anymore.

Thus, by the time I headed out, I was probably 10 minutes behind Jill. I drove home on the PCH as I always do, and I was deep in thought, mostly on autopilot, as I passed through central Pacifica, near the exit for Sharp Park Road.

Unbeknownst to me, a hail storm had passed through the area shortly before. It's hard to convey how unlikely that is on the coastside. The temperature just doesn't drop that low, ever. Even in the dead of winter. Jill had gotten caught in it on the cliff road, where CHP was forcing everyone to drive slowly, and was placing patrol cars at the most dangerous sections of road.

I was unaware of all this, and, as I said, was just headed home on autopilot, doing approximately 45mph (the speed limit) on a mostly straight section of road.

Jill sent me a text saying the road was icy from the hail, and to be careful. I never got that text; it probably arrived one minute too late...

As the road started to gently curve, Bubba's back end started to fishtail. Startled out of my reverie, I turned the wheel into the fishtail to prevent the car from 360-ing. I succeeded in preventing the 360, but the car lost traction with the road and slid to the side. Since the road is very narrow there, I almost immediately hit the curb. I remember hitting it, and the car jumping upward. Then, suddenly, the car slammed to a stop.

All I really remember is that there was a loud bang, and the car suddenly stopped. Then I was bent over in the seat, with a pain like I've never felt before shooting through my chest. I couldn't breathe. The car was tilted toward the passenger side.
I was somewhat hanging by the seat belt, which I managed to disengage. My only thought was to get out of the car. Still doubled over, I reached over and pulled the door handle.

It wouldn't open.

I started to panic a little. I still basically couldn't breathe. I was breathing in the shallowest, shortest little breaths possible, and it was nightmarishly painful. I pulled the door handle again, but the door seemed stuck. The panic level started to rise. Finally, I pulled the door handle and rammed the door with my shoulder, which caused it to dislodge, and I managed to shove the door up and out, and I sort of spilled out onto the running board. I sat on the running board, still doubled over, trying to take in air, but in so much pain I still could only take tiny, tiny, super-short breaths. It felt like I was on the edge of suffocation.

In a few seconds, I could see a couple people come up to me. One guy leaned over and asked me if I was okay. I sort of nodded, but said I was in a lot of pain in my rib area. He said he'd been behind me and had seen the crash, and had already dialed CHP, and that they were on the way.

Because so much CHP had been nearby on the cliff road, they showed up in less than 5 minutes. The ambulance showed up less than 5 minutes after that. What followed was a lot of different people asking me different questions, while the EMTs tried to figure out if I'd suffered any brain or spinal injuries, and the CHP officers tried to sort out exactly what the accident had been.

As for me, I tried to answer questions as best I could, doubled over and clutching my side, while sitting in the cold rain more or less unable to breathe. At some point, one of the guys standing around me said, "We should probably turn the car off." It turns out that the engine had never actually stopped running. I took that to mean that I should do it, and tried to turn around to reach in and grab the keys. However, I only managed a slight twist before gasping in pain, and whoever it was that had made the comment in the first place said "Don't worry- I've got it!" and shut it off.

Finally, the EMTs decided it was time to move me, and they placed me on a gurney. Getting onto that thing was excruciating, and once I was lying down, I felt even more like I was about to suffocate. They placed an oxygen mask over my nose, but that had the effect of increasing my panic level about suffocation, and I ended up sort of holding it a little off my nose, so that I could still get air from the outside.

Meanwhile, I was still getting a lot of questions from both the EMTs, and from CHP. The CHP officer in charge was trying desperately to fill out an accident report before the ambulance whisked me away. However, because he had to keep waiting for openings in the interrogation that the EMTs were giving me, it was slow going for him. By this point, I was asking everyone who would listen if they would please get my cell phone out of the car, because I needed to call my fiancee. However, no one seemed to be in the mood to listen to any request of mine, and I was worried that we'd drive off without it. I knew Jill would soon be worried when I failed to show up at home, and I wanted to try and head that off and let her know I was okay, at least in some macroscopic sense.

Finally, one of the EMTs came by and said "Uh, we couldn't find your phone.. there's a lot of glass and stuff in there." That completely failed to register, and I tried to explain that it was in the cupholder right next to the driver's seat, but then he left, they slammed the doors shut, and off we went. (With the poor CHP officer forced to glumly give up trying to get his form filled out.)

The ambulance ride to San Francisco General Hospital was, by my estimation, almost 3 weeks long, and definitely the most painful experience of my life. By the time we finally arrived, I was having thoughts like "I'm not so sure I'm glad I survived this." Every little bump or turn reverberated in my ribs, which I didn't need any doctor to tell me were broken, and I could barely breathe, and the oxygen mask, which was meant to make breathing easier, mainly made me feel like I was suffocating. They took me to SFGH rather than the tiny urgent care place in HMB, because SFGH is a Level 1 trauma center, and the EMTs were worried I might have neck or spinal injuries.

When I finally arrived at SFGH, there was no room for me, so I spent some time parked in the hallway wondering just how long the suffering was going to last, and wondering if Jill was freaking out yet. It's hard to say how long I was out in the hall; I'm not good at measuring the passage of time even on my best of days. But since the hospital was so packed that my final destination was the equipment supply room, I don't think it's just my imagination that I was in the hall for quite some time.

Eventually they did park me in the equipment supply room, and a very nice nurse named Jamie dosed me with morphine, which, I have to say, is both more and less powerful than you might think. It is quite powerful in the sense that it takes the edge off the excruciating pain, and if you're in that kind of pain, taking ANY edge off it is really quite a relief. On the other hand, it doesn't actually make the pain go away completely, or even mostly. It just dulls it to the point where you don't necessarily wish you were dead. It's not obvious to me how one gets addicted to it, but I was only on it for one night.

Pretty soon after they put me in the room, a social worker came in and asked who he should call to explain about my situation. Fortunately, I have Jill's cell phone number memorized (helpful life hint: have at least one emergency contact number memorized, in case your cell phone gets destroyed), so he took that down and left to call her.

And so I lay there on the table, trying to breathe.

And lay there.

And lay there.

And lay there.

Aside from Jamie checking on me, the only thing that happened for a while is that one of the other nurses kept having to come into the room to retrieve various pieces of equipment- not really surprising, given that this was the spare equipment room. The reason this particular detail sticks in my head is that my bed was in the exact center of the room, and each time she came in, she needed equipment behind my bed, and then in the process of getting it out from there, she banged it into the corner of my bed. For me, I'd come to a place where, with the morphine kicked in, I felt the pain/discomfort was manageable as long as I didn't move in any way. So when she'd bang a large piece of rolling equipment into my bed, the reverberation made it as though someone was stabbing me in the ribs.

The thing is, I could have lived with it happening once. But she came in like 5 times in an hour, and she banged into my bed literally EVERY time. Thank god she went into nursing, and not, for instance, selling fine china.

When Jill arrived, I felt a mixture of 90% relief and 10% mortification. The 10% mortification part was mostly what I'd thought about in the loooooong ambulance ride home. Remember, at this point I still had no idea that the car was totaled; I assumed I'd probably caused a couple thousand dollars damage to it- ruined a tire, bent the front fender, etc., probably negating what we might have gotten in selling it. Since Jill's mom had just offered 3 days prior to give us her old Prius, we'd decided to sell Bubba and use the proceeds to help pay for the wedding. Thus, I felt that I'd probably freaked Jill out, plus stupidly squandered an easy opportunity to defray some wedding costs. It was embarrassing, and I was prepared for her to be pretty upset with me.

Which, she wasn't. She was very sweet, and immediately set up next to my bed and began interrogating Jamie whenever she came in the room. Within minutes, Jill was the unquestioned queen of the equipment storage room, and Jamie had her keep an eye on my oxygenation monitor, with instructions to find her if it dropped below a certain level.

By that time, I'd had a number of scans and such, which had revealed multiple broken ribs (duh), but also a minor lung puncture that did not *appear* to be big enough to cause my lung to deflate, but which they wanted to keep me overnight to monitor. If my lung started deflating, they would need to do an operation to insert a chest tube.

Sadly, keeping my blood sufficiently oxygenated required consistent breathing, which still ranged from enormously uncomfortable with morphine kicked in, to excruciatingly painful when the morphine wore off. Jill stayed up all night watching the oxygenation meter like a hawk, periodically forcing me to breathe whenever it fell below the minimum threshold. That's how we spent the entire night.

In the morning, at about 7am, the doctor came and decided that I was probably not in danger of lung deflation, and could go home. He gave us a prescription for percocet and sent us on our way. The drive back to HMB naturally took us right by the scene of the accident. As we approached, we could see where I'd impacted the tree. About 3 minutes later, I had to ask Jill to pull over to the side of the road so I could spill out of the car and dry heave. I think this was the first time I started to get a sense of the gravity of the situation.

When we finally got home, Jill helped me climb into bed, a process which underscored just how painful absolutely every basic motion was going to be for a while, and I tried to sleep. Jill went to go find my stuff in the car, which had been towed to Daly City. She was gone for a while, and when she returned, she burst into tears upon seeing me. She'd arrived at the towyard, asked to see my vehicle, and been pointed toward one end of the yard. "I don't see it," she said. "There. Against the wall," the guy pointed. Apparently she'd passed right over it, because she wasn't expecting to see this:

That was when it really hit me, how close I'd come to actually dying. It made a lot more sense, in retrospect, why the emergency responders all kept saying that night "I can't believe you walked away from that."

Socci was due to arrive at the house that evening, and the rest of the NYC crowd was due the next day, so Jill set about spreading the news of the accident. She asked me if I wanted her to tell them not to come, but the last thing I wanted was for this to stop everyone else from coming and having a good time. All of them ended up offering not to come, but hey- the wine-tasting weekend extravaganza happens rain or shine, incapacitated host or no incapacitated host.

In the evening, Socci showed up, and he and Jill got the place set up for the others, and Jill started laying the groundwork for the dinner party Saturday night. Meanwhile, I continued to lay in bed in a percocet-induced haze; the only exception was that I did a skype tutoring lesson from my bed. God bless the internet for making such things possible.

It was a bittersweet moment when everyone showed up Friday night; I was happy to see all my NYC friends, but sad that I couldn't so much as get out of bed to welcome them. Getting in or out of bed was an extraordinarily painful act; I quickly learned to roll over onto my side, and then kind of fall out of the bed onto my feet. I couldn't push myself up without straining my ribs; it turns out that almost any kind of motion of your upper body involves your ribs. These are the kinds of things you never think about until something is broken.

Socci had, sometime over the last year, befriended a local group of Italian old men who got together to play music at one of the local eateries. They'd had need of an accordion player, so he'd taken it upon himself to learn the accordion. And, had taken to it quite quickly- so much so that the old Italian dudes had bestowed upon Socci the nickname "Tommy Squeezebox". Socci brought the accordion with him, so I got to listen to him regale everyone into the night with songs on the accordion. It was fantastic, and a surprisingly great thing to fall asleep to.

Tommy Squeezebox!!

The next day I was determined to have the dinner party happen, so I managed to get out of bed and help Jill do the preparations. Truthfully, she did 80% of the work, and we simplified the menu somewhat since I wasn't going to be very much help. But, we still managed to put on a dinner party in the spirit of our tradition. L came and joined us, and brought along a most delightful gift: a cake, with a roadway and a racecar on the top, to which he had added a broccoli tree and a little Aladdin figurine he borrowed from his girls, which he laid out next to the roadway with strawberry jam clumped around Aladdin's head. He'd had the baker write the wrods "Stop running into trees" on the cake. It was hilarious; here's a picture of it that Alison took:

The most hilarious cake I've ever had.

Upon unveiling the cake, Rose spontaneously altered the "happy birthday" tune into "happy alive day", and everyone sang it to me. It's hard to say how awesome it is to have such great friends, particularly when you're going through a time like that.

Good food, good drink, good company.

After a long, awesome meal, and much great wine (or so I'm told- I wasn't allowed to mix wine and Percocet, according to nurse Jill), everyone turned in, and we got up the next day to head to wine country. We'd tried something new, and instead of all getting hotel rooms, we'd rented a house in Napa. That turned out to be a brilliant idea; the house had a pool and hot tub, and plenty of space. Thus, although the trip up to Napa was not easy for me, I was able to go straight to bed and sleep for a few hours while the rest of the group went wine tasting. We had dinner reservations at Ad Hoc, which is Thomas Keller's (of French Laundry fame) other restaurant in Napa. NO WAY was I missing that, broken ribs or no broken ribs.

Sure enough, Ad Hoc was everything we'd hoped it would be. The food was absolutely out-of-this-world good. I could barely keep myself up in the chair for the entire dinner, and there were times when I wondered if I would make it (I hadn't gone such a long time without lying down to take pressure off my ribs since the accident), but it was well worth it. Great food is such a delightful experience.

The next day, the NYC kids did an entire day of wine tasting, hitting 8 wineries. That's commitment, let me tell you. Our experience of the previous year, when we'd all gotten totally wasted hitting just 6 wineries in a day (over the course of which I'd sent Jill numerous increasingly drunk, increasingly less coherent texts), caused everyone to be better about pacing themselves, and when they all got back, everyone was surprisingly not hammered. I was very proud.

Meanwhile, over the course of the day I had just lain in bed alternating between sleeping and pondering the mysteries of the universe. A couple times I got as far as the hot tub, which was heavenly. The first time I got in the hot tub, I realized after a few minutes that for the first time in several days, I didn't actively feel any pain. It's very hard to describe how nightmarish constant pain is; I don't know how people who suffer from chronic pain deal with it. Eventually the heat forced me out, but for a brief time, I felt human again.

Jill stayed with me all day and in the afternoon helped ready dinner for the crew. For her, it was another day of quietly taking care of me, and basically the entire group. At one point, while I was lying in bed thinking about one of the more vexing questions on my mind- who should be the officiant at our wedding- the clouds parted in the sky and like a vision straight from the heavens, the answer revealed itself...

me (weakly croaking): "jill..."

(no response... Jill is in the other room, preparing dinner for everyone)

me (slightly louder): "Jill..."

(still no response... I can ear all kinds of rustling in the kitchen)

me (mustering all my strength): "JILLLLLLLLL!"

(Jill comes running into the room, apparently concerned that I was about to die or something)

Jill: "ohmygodwhatisitareyouokay?????"

me: "I have it!"

Jill: "What?"

me: "I HAVE IT! I HAVE THE ANSWER!!"

Jill: "You have *what* answer?"

me: "JOHN ROBERTS!"

Jill: "Are you delirious right now?"

me: "No, wait- John Roberts should be our officiant! What do you think???"

Jill: "Ooooooh, that's *perfect*. That's a great idea!"

me: "Yup. I've made my contribution for the day. Uh, I'll just lie here now and bask in the warm glow of my brilliance."

Jill: "Yeeeahhh, you do that. I've got shit to do."

So, that evening Jill and I asked JRob to be our officiant, and we were delighted when he said yes. We celebrated with champagne, and I even got to have a glass myself. Delicious.

The next day, the last day of winetasting, I managed to get as far as the first winery, and even had a few tiny sips. Sadly, by the time we arrived at the second place, I was in so much pain I couldn't even make it inside, and Jill ended up having to take me back. Then once we got back to the house, we realized that we'd neglected to get the key from Ed, so we had to call Socci and use the magic of internet GPS locating software to meet at a random point halfway between the house and the winery (which were not at all close to each other) so we could pick up the key. Even in a severely weakened state, my ability to sow logistical mayhem was undaunted.

I spent the rest of the day in bed and in the hot tub again, until everyone returned and we could head back to SF for our traditional dinner at a steakhouse somewhere in the city. I loves me some steak, and I actually felt well enough to make it through the entire dinner without any significant discomfort. Then we dropped the NYC crew at the airport, and bid them goodbye.

It was sad to see them go; having the company around was actually instrumental in keeping my spirits up. Still, the greatest thanks goes to Jill. She took care of everyone all weekend, most obviously, but not exclusively, me, and did so without complaining, when frankly she had many reasons to do so. There are many ways to say "I love you"- some are grand gestures, like elaborate proposals with diamond rings. Others are more straightforward and obvious, like just saying the words. But I think that the most meaningful ways we say "I love you" to each other are in a thousand small actions throughout a day: helping the other get dressed because they can't do it themselves, making them meals again and again, taking care of their friends. It's easy to overlook or take for granted the little things that our loved ones do for us.

People often ask me: did the accident change you? Are you different because of it? The answer is: partly yes and partly no. To some extent I was insulated from the near-deathness of the whole experience, because I had no idea how close I'd come until nearly 24 hours later, when I already knew I would be fine (eventually). I am definitely a little more edgy when I'm driving in the rain. But really, the big change for me was seeing in a whole new way how amazing Jill is, and experiencing in a very real, concrete way how strong our bond had become in such a very short time. At one point she said to me "We can't live like we used to live anymore- we're not responsible just to ourselves, we're responsible to each other."

And the truth is, she's right about that. So perhaps the greatest change of all is that I feel keenly a sense of responsibility to her. Put another way, it's possible that the accident caused me to grow up a little bit. Me being who I am, I guess I had to nearly die in order for that to happen, but hey- we've all got our quirks. As L said, "Dude, you can't be Peter Pan anymore." I guess he's right.

And, that's ok.

A Modest Proposal, Part 6: Denouement

2011-01-14T09:37:00.000-08:00

I started writing this post in January, when Alison came to visit. But then I got busy, and then almost died (more on that in a future post), and so it's taken me this long to do the final installment...

You may be moved to wonder, dear reader, why I have chosen to tell this story the way that I have: in several stages, some of which included some relatively personal detail. The answer is that everything about the way I proposed to Jill involved a very deliberate choice- all the details tied in some way to the story of how we came to be together. By now, if I've told this story even semi-competently, you can see that it is an unlikely story- a long and rambling journey of persevering, overcoming obstacles, despairing that the story would ever have a happy end, and then finally triumphing. And so I felt that the manner of my proposal should reflect that unique journey that we had each taken, both separately and together. Now that you know the whole story (or at least, all of it that's fit to print), you'll be able to see why I made some of the choices I made.

I also told the story this way because if you *didn't* have the relevant details, my proposal plan would sound like it came from a crazy person. Who knows, you may still end up thinking that by the time it's all said and done.

For that reason, I told no one the details of the plan. Only a few people even knew the proposal was coming: L, SP, and Anne knew, because they were involved in the procurement of the ring. (Which, btw, is a story for another post.) And Jill's best friend Alison knew, because I recruited her as a secret agent, to play a role in the whole event.

Alison, you recall, I first met when I went to DC that first time in 2006, to ask Jill if I could see her more regularly. And, she was part of our merry trio in Belize. So she had been there throughout the whole arc of the story, and I needed someone I could trust. So I called Alison in July and told her how I felt about Jill, and what my intentions were. I also asked for her blessing, as Jill's best friend. I was both honored and relieved that she gave it enthusiastically.

Then, I asked her if she wanted to play a role in the event itself.

Me: "So, my last question is: would you be willing to play a role in the actual event?"

Alison: "Wait, what? You want me to be a part of the proposal?"

Me: "Yes. I need someone involved that I can trust. You're the best person for the job, and, frankly, the *only* person for the job. Will you do it?"

Alison: "Well, what exactly is it that I would be doing?"

Me: "If you're willing to play a role, then what I need you to do is get on a plane to LA the morning of 8/25. You'll be flying back to DC from SF on Sunday 8/29. That's all I can tell you."

Alison: "That's all you can tell me because you haven't worked out the plan yet, or that's all you can tell me because you're not telling me anything else."

Me: "Oh no- I have the whole plan worked out. It's a complicated plan. But I can't share any more of the details with you."

Alison: "WAIT! Why don't *I* get to know the plan??"

Me: "Because, Alison, when you first encounter Jill, she will not be expecting to meet you, nor will she have any idea what's going on at all. Consequently, in those first moments when she meets you, if she has even the slightest idea that you DO know what's going on, she will waterboard your ass until you spill all the details. She is ruthless. She is relentless. You are her best friend- you *know* this to be true."

(pause)

Alison (laughing): "OK, I get it. You're right- she *would* totally waterboard me. Better that I don't know the plan. Actually, I think it's going to be kinda fun."

Me: "I promise you'll come out of this with a good story to tell. That's a guarantee."

Thus, having successfully co-opted Jill's best friend, I set myself to plotting all the details. I had to create a spreadsheet, and every night I would review the plan, start to finish, once from my perspective, once from Jill's, and once from Alison's. As I did, I would ask myself the kind of questions Joel would always ask when something was being planned: "OK, that gets delivered there? How does it get delivered? What's the backup plan? If it's getting delivered, that means it got made? When does it get made? Where does it live between when it gets made and when it gets delivered?" etc., etc.

By doing that every day for 3 weeks, I'd gotten to the point where I had a remarkably detailed spreadsheet, and I didn't really start relaxing until I'd managed to get through my routine of reviewing the plan 5 days in a row without thinking of some new logistical detail I had previously overlooked. It got trickier once Jill moved in; the spreadsheet, the ring, and many supporting items were in the house, and I had to make sure she didn't discover them. It was not easy.

All along, I had been telling Jill that since August 26th was the 4-year anniversary of the day we met, we should be sure to spend the day together, and maybe take a few days to go somewhere. I'd left it that where we'd go that day would be a surprise for her. And that leads me to state one of the core principles of the whole experience: I wanted to pull it off without ever lying to her. So, when I said we'd be going somewhere, it was true. When I said it would be a surprise, it was true. When I said that it would involve driving, and hiking, both those things were true.

As the day approached, I revealed that "our trip begins on 8/25." Also true. Jill made a spirited effort on numerous occasions to get details from me, by saying such things as: "How will I know what to pack if I don't know where we're going?" But I got around that by giving general advice, plus saying I would pack her stuff for her.

The evening of the 24th, I had Kiddo email me to ask me for a skype lesson late at night (since she was in Israel). We had just finished packing, so I apologized to Jill and said I'd need to stay up late "dealing with Kiddo" and loading the car, but that departure in the morning would be 8am sharp. Thus, Jill went downstairs to go to sleep.

After "dealing with Kiddo", who was excited to play this small role in the event, I began executing the plan in earnest. I had said there would be hiking, and that we would use as our daypack the fancy new backpack that Jill had gotten for me just after we got back from NYC. There was a very specific way the bag had to be packed, and it took me a while to do that. Then, I got out a couple things I had made in preparation for the day: first, I giant message written on a huge sheet of packing paper, which said: "Do you trust me?" Attached to the sheet, at the bottom, were 2 envelopes- one marked "Yes" and one marked "No". The one marked "No", when you opened it, contained a sheet of paper which said only:

Liar.

But you just had to open this one, didn't you?

The envelope marked "Yes" contained Jill's instructions for the next day. Why leave instructions? Because I wasn't going to be there. I was leaving a clue for Jill to follow. The clue was embedded in a discussion of how the next 2 days would parallel the unique way in which our story unfolded, and that therefore, the first stage of her journey would be for her to get into her car at 8am and go back to the very beginning. The very beginning our of story, as told in Part 1, occurred at the Sportsmen's Lodge in LA, and I trusted that Jill would correctly identify that.

Having placed the sign and the envelopes on the glass door to the deck, I tiptoed downstairs with my stuff, Jill's stuff, and the backpack, and went out to load Jill's car.

Here is where the plan started to go awry. It is said in the military that no plan goes according to plan- that something always goes wrong. This plan was no exception.

I loaded the things Jill would need into her car: her suitcase, my backpack, which I had packed with two different hidden items, and, underneath the driver's seat, I hid the first letter I had written her but never mailed her, which I had written 3.5 years before in response to the letter she wrote me saying, essentially, that we could not be together (for a recap of that part of the story, click here.) But when I closed the back gate on her Ford Explorer, the inside light refused to go off. Now, since the plan had Jill leaving in the car at 8am, on a very tight schedule, it would be a serious problem if her brand new battery got killed because the goddammn inside light wouldn't shut off. I waited, and it stayed on. I tried opening it and shutting it again. No luck.

Thing is, HMB is utterly silent at night except for the waves, when the tide is coming in. And the tide was out, which meant total silence. Plus, Jukebox the Territorial Terrier was sleeping upstairs in the living room, and he *loves* to bark loudly at any perceived violation of the house's perimeter, which, based on his pattern of barking, appears to extend northward to the outskirts of Seattle, southward to Tijuana, eastward to the Mississippi, and westward to the end of the continental shelf. Thus, I had to be careful not to close the door to loudly, or too repeatedly, because if Jukebox went off the gig would be up.

After about 10 minutes of failure, I decided to go take my stuff and load my own car, which I had carefully stowed on the street 2 blocks away, so that when I started it up, it wouldn't wake up anyone in the house. I loaded my stuff, and then crept back to the house, trying to figure out how the hell I would solve the inside light problem.

[Note: for the record, I didn't realize until months later that the back gate on the Explorer has TWO latches- one for the window only, and one for the actual gate. I must've inadvertently tripped the window latch before getting the gate latch, which left the back window cracked. And that's what caused the light to stay on. But I had no idea about that at the time.]

However, as I crept around the corner at the end of the block, I froze- the light was on upstairs in the living room. And in the kitchen. That could mean only one thing- Jill was awake, and was upstairs. Which means, she'd found the note. She was not supposed to find it until the morning, so that I would have time to make my getaway. At this point, it was only about 2am, so now I was really screwed. Plus, that goddamned inside light was still on.

At that point, I made an executive decision. I figured that if Jill was up, she'd come down to the car soon, and fix whatever the issue was with the light. Maybe the door just needed to be slammed hard. But no way could I go near the house- this was all going to end really badly if I got caught now. So I turned around, ran back to the car, jumped in, and drove off.

The first text from Jill arrived as I started the car. She was FREAKING OUT. I wish my phone had enough space to save all those texts that came, but the 3rd one I remember said only:

YOU LEFT ME

Uh oh.

I had said in my letter that Jill would have to trust me, and if she did, then at the end of a 2-day journey, we would be together on our anniversary. But, we each had to travel separately for a while, and that while we did, we would have no contact with each other. But, in this case, I figured I had to do some damage control, so I responded to her texts. I said I was already on my journey, which was true, if only by 5 minutes, but that if she needed me to turn around and come back, I would. But I hoped she would trust me, and follow the directions I'd left. Then the texts stopped. So, I figured either she was willing to trust me, or I'd just caused us to break up. Only time would tell.

Now, I will introduce the guest post feature of this part of the story. Both Jill and Alison are here this weekend, so I'll turn the computer over to them at various parts to tell the story from their perspectives. I think you'll enjoy it. Here is Jill:

"First I would like to say that it's totally rude that EVERYONE duped me. Gus' family is exempt from my wrath but MY OWN MOTHER AND BEST FRIEND. That is so wrong. Good thing Gus didn't say anything to my Kevin or Amy because THEY would have let on (because they love me). They are true and honest and will inherit my lottery winnings someday. The rest of you can f***ing bite me.

So this all begins with the original "lie" that Gus had to help Kiddo with some sort of project late on a weeknight. See, that was my first mistake, trusting him not to lie about work. Now I have to question every late night in the office with a "are you going to leave me in the middle of the night again?" Kiddo can't be implicated in this part of the plan because her innocence was clearly being taken advantage of. Poor Kiddo. Don't fall for his tactics...question everything.

So I woke up after I heard Booba bark (which is rare in the middle of the night since he's usually up my ass passed out for 14 hours at a time) and thought that the lack of hearing voices (Gus and Kiddo--not the ones in my head) and keyboard clacking meant that Gus was either asleep on the couch or reading another 150 page Paul Krugman editorial. I wandered upstairs and he was nowhere...not on the computer nor on the couch, not in any of the spare rooms or bathrooms. I went outside and his car was gone. I was baffled. I checked the time. Where could he have gone that late? I sat for a few seconds wondering WHAT THE FUCK. Then I started texting. Nothing. Then after hateful pleas he confirmed that he had left and that I was going to have to figure it out. Figure out what? THAT YOU ARE A BIG FAT JERK? Done. Got it.

I went to my car and searched it. I looked through our bags. I looked through the house and even tried to call up his internet history. I found nothing and the goddamn computer was password protected. Hello Anger...my long lost friend. Oh how conveniently you have shown up at a time like this. Let's have a drink and catch up.

It was after some angry stomping around the house, cursing every breath that I discovered the poster on the glass door. I opened the YES envelope first. Read his treatise on "If you love me enough you'll find all the horcruxes and save the world"; threw that on the floor and read the "NO" envelope. This didn't help the anger level. Welcome to the red zone. I lay in bed FOR HOURS crying and angry and vowing to refuse his gauntlet and just stay at home. I got maybe an hour sleep. I spent the wee hours plotting my revenge.

The first clue wasn't too hard. Go back to where we began? Well DUH even I am smart enough to figure that out, Professor Snape. Maybe that's all there is to it...Los Angeles was easy enough. I could get there. I could wring your neck and be at Baja Cantina by 8. Done. You're on.

By 6 AM I couldn't come up with any unique ways to punish him. I was stuck on the idea of imposing celibacy on him for the next few years---say 100. It was actually a more complex plan than that but given that this is a family show I'll refrain from details. If you have ever heard of the Marquis de Sade you should know that he's got nothing on me."

Now, as the editor of this story, I would like to point out one important thing about the above re-telling: that I *never* lied to Jill. As I said earlier, that was one of the core elements of the plan- that everything be accomplished without once having to lie to her. I was extremely careful about that. Consequently, I asked Kiddo to email me saying she needed to skype with me, and when she did, I said to Jill: "Kiddo wants to skype with me tonight." And by the time I said it, it was true. Anyway, back to the story...

Meanwhile, at about 230am CA time Alison was on her way to the DC airport, to get on her flight to LA. I had to start texting her the news about Jill's state of mind. Alison's flight routed through Dallas, and had her on a couple hour layover that coincided with the 8am departure time that Jill was instructed to follow. I told Alison to communicate with Jill during that time, and make sure that Jill was headed to the right destination.

Alison had multiple roles in the plan, and one of them was to be the outside check that Jill was on track and correctly following the clues. Another was to keep tabs on Jill's state of mind. I told her that the 8am communication with Jill would be instrumental on both counts.

I had also snail mailed Alison an envelope with more detailed instructions for what would happen at the Sportsmen's Lodge. The way I envisioned the plan working was that Alison would arrive at the Lodge before Jill (who would be driving all the way from SF, departing in morning rush hour), and place another envelope with another clue in it into the room I had reserved for Jill. In fact, I had spent some time on the phone with a woman at the Lodge, going back into the records from 2006 to figure out which exact room I had rented, and I had that exact room rented in Jill's name. I also had a room rented in Alison's name, and arranged with the woman at the Lodge that Alison would be allowed to place the envelope in Jill's room before Jill arrived.

The envelope contained another riddle, which was that Jill would have to go to the exact spot that our story began. That spot was beside the pool, and I sent Alison a picture of the pool area, and circled on it where she should set up camp. I figured Alison would beat Jill to the Lodge by a couple of hours, so I told her to bring a swimsuit and a book so that she could chill out by the pool until Jill arrived. Jill, of course, would have no idea that Alison would be there, and I told Alison to be careful when she made the 8am communication from Dallas. Finally, I also told Alison to say to Jill when she first arrived, that she should look under the driver's seat of her car, where I had left something for her.

Of course, the Sportsmen's Lodge part of the plan didn't exactly go perfectly either. Here to tell her side is Alison...

"When Gus called me in the middle of the summer to ask me to "help" him propose to Jill, I said "sure!!" I mean, of course, why wouldn't I want to be a part of a joyous occasion and enjoy a free trip to Los Angeles on Gus's dime? How much effort could this possibly entail?

I should have known, knowing the elaborate measures Gus had taken to woo Jill in the first place.

My first hint that this was going to be a complicated scheme was the 2-page long email he sent me with a description of my role in his "schemes and plots" (a direct quote from his first email to me on the topic). The email explained, in step by step detail, that my role was basically to fly to Los Angeles, get to the Sportsmen's Lodge, and make sure that Jill also made it to the Sportsmen's Lodge without ever letting on to her that I was part of the scheme or even in her time
zone. I was to arrive at the hotel before Jill, place an envelope on her pillow (an envelope that Gus had sent me via snail mail the week before), and then lounge by the pool until she arrived. Gus, helpfully, had provided me a map with a sticky note showing me EXACTLY where I was supposed to sit next to the pool.

This is exactly where I told Alison to be. Jill was sunbathing with Chris in precisely this spot (surrounded by a pack of admiring men) when I first met her.

Snag #1 occurred at about 4am EST, about which time Jill wigged out when she woke up to find that Gus had "abandoned" her. I woke up at the crack of dawn in DC to catch my flight, and I already had received a series of text messages from Gus explaining that the plan had hit its first snag. Jill was not amused and actually was quite upset at being sent on this mission. Gus used all of his powers of persuasion
to convince her to follow the clues he had left.

So, at this point, I knew that Jill was upset, but I couldn't call her and comfort her, because I wasn't supposed to know anything about this little adventure. Jill had told me that she and Gus were going on a secret anniversary trip--that's all I knew, from her perspective. During my extensive layover in Texas, I sent her a text message asking something innocent like, "Hey, so where is Gus taking you for the
super-secret anniversary trip?" At which point the floodgates opened, and Jill explained (using colorful language) that Gus was sending her on some treasure hunt and that she was NOT AMUSED. She explained that Gus's riddle suggested that she should head to Los Angeles to the Sportsmen's Lodge, but that she wasn't sure. She even had tried to hack into Gus's password-protected computer and had torn the car apart looking for clues and assurances. I tried to encourage her to "follow her instincts" and "trust herself," using every cliche at my disposal to push her in that direction without letting on that I knew she was on the right track and that, in fact, I would be there waiting for her.

At this point, I am feeling very very very guilty about participating in this little escapade, because Jill was clearly upset. I called a friend in DC and asked her advice--should I tell Jill the truth? I seriously considered spilling the beans to her and encouraged Gus to at least hint to her that "someone" would be waiting for her to help her. Gus immediately sent me a text message telling me to "STAY STRONG" and "DON'T GIVE IN" and "DON'T BE A PUSSY." I somewhat reluctantly listened to his pleas.

The plan hit Snag #2 after I arrived in Burbank and rented my car. I was waiting for the rental car shuttle when I received a text message from Jill, saying something like "I am 20 miles from the Sportsmen's Lodge. Gus better be there. Asshole." Again, the idea was that I was to arrive at the hotel before Jill and plant the envelope. Gus had told her to leave their house at 8am, but apparently his superb math calculations did not account for the fact that Jill would drive like a bat out of hell to Los Angeles. I knew I was going to have to improvise. I get my car and head toward the hotel. I am literally three blocks away when I get a panicked text message from Jill saying "Gus isn't here. Asshole. Do you have time to talk?" I text her back and say "I'm in a meeting, can you wait 5 minutes?". By "meeting," of course I meant that I was making an illegal left-hand turn into the
hotel parking lot. She proceeds to the hotel bar to wait.

I park the car and wander into the hotel, trying to pick her out of the small crowd of people sitting at the hotel bar. I wasn't sure how to announce my presence, so I just walked up to her and said hi. At which point she bursts into tears and says, "WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TRYING TO DO TO ME?"

From this point on, I became Gus's puppet. He sent me a text message with instructions for Jill, and I communicated them to her. My primary duty, however, was to make sure that Jill made it through the afternoon and evening without vomiting, screaming, crying, or deciding to drive off to Mexico. On several occasions, Jill made comments like "There better be a FUCKING CARTIER DIAMOND at the end of this scavenger hunt." I stayed mum on this point."

And now, here's Jill's re-telling of this part of the story:

"So I get out of bed. Angrily throw my shit together and then grumpily stand in line for Starbucks. It was a Wednesday before work hours and all the locals were getting their lattes to start their day. Smiling, chit chatting, enjoying a beautiful HMB day. I was just starting my revenge, and triple venti mocha with extra whip topped with spite was a good way to start. An hour later I had hit the 5 and at 95 mph, I was well on my way.

On the way over the hill from HMB I texted Alison that our surprise, romantic weekend had turned into an angry, tear-filled disaster and that I was on my way to LA. Yes it was sort of cute that Gus wanted to meet at the place we met. Ok, I'll give him a few gold stars on being cute but...I couldn't get over being ditched in the middle of the night. She thought it was cute and I thought to myself "WHO IS SHE RIGHT NOW?" (She's a traitor, clearly.) So I get a few messages from her throughout the day asking me how it's going. I appreciated her interest. Kevin though was sympathetic; although he too thought it romantic. I still needed convincing. I called my mom and got her machine. EVERYONE let me down. WHERE was my MOMMY? WHERE?! Hmmmm....I wonder…

I made it close to Santa Clarita and I texted Alison that I was almost there. She responded: "wow you made good time." YEAH I DID. I couldn't drive fast enough. I got to Sportsman Lodge, snapped a pic with my phone, and texted it to Mr. Asshole who had promised he would refuse to answer me.

(The text I got from Jill. Plan is proceeding somewhat shakily, but proceeding nonetheless...)

Fine...then you can view the progression of my photographic journey of pain. I get to the front desk and am at a loss:

"Uh...um...is there a room in my name?"

"Let me see. What's your name?" said the victim behind the counter.

"Jill Morris...I mean Gus Mattammal...I mean...what about a message?"

"Yes...I see…wait just a moment please"

waiting...WAITING...W.A.I.T.I.N.G

"Oh yes, Miss Morris (SMILE) we have a room for you (SMILE) but it's not ready yet (SMILE). I can give you a key to the pool if you'd like to wait (SMILE)?"

"Fine. I'll wait at the pool. How long?"

"It will be ready at 3"

At this point I call Lori. She and Eric are dog sitting at the beach house and since EVERYONE ELSE ISN'T PLAYING ALONG I needed empathy. I got it. I told Lori about my night and day and I cried. She cried too. I felt better--promised to call with an update. Where's the bar? I get there and order a beer...then another. I text Alison that I need to talk. She writes back "give me 5 minutes". That's fair. She's at work. I've probably been way too dramatic over this and she's a good friend to listen anyway. Ah...booze...I feel better already. BTW where is that MF Gus?!

I sip my beer. It's hot. The folks at the pool are having fun. I am at a loss. What next. WHAAAAAAT NEXT?

"BEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

The part of my brain that is recognizing the sound but can't compute the reality starts to quiver! I turn around. There, on the other side of the pool fence, is Alison. Smiling. SMILING.

"Uh, W H A T R U D O I N G H E R E?! !?" I stutter.

(SMILING)

"SURPRISE!"

Gus had flown her out. Um, why? How? Wait? You were emailing me from work? DOH! Foiled by the false pretense of the BLACKBERRY. BASTARDS. EVIL.

I cried.

I really cried. Then Alison cried. I ordered another beer. A whole separate, thick layer of weird was just slathered on this. I text Lori. I text Free. I text Kevin. I text Paul and Susan. I am OUT OF MY LEAGUE HERE. AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY MOTHER!?

Alison checks in the hotel and immediately I take to interrogating her in the best Ice-T as Law & Order’s Detective Fin technique I got. She clearly doesn't know much. She hands me another letter from Gus in the tell-tale Advantage Testing grey linen envelope. I follow directions and proceed to go rip my car apart. There it was, the envelope under the seat. DIDN'T I LOOK THERE ALREADY!?!?!?! DAMMIT.

Drat. He's too smart. He's really outdone himself. Hmmm. Jerk. We go to our rooms. I throw my shit all over the place. I stomp around. I need more beer. We go to the pool to dissect. We eat nachos. We drink beer. It's time to call in the SWAT team. We meet Paul and Susan for dinner at Nook. I love Nook. It holds some awesome memories. Paul is well connected there and I need comfort and I get it. Paul and Susan never disappoint in their ability to be rational, funny and comforting. I can't eat. I couldn't even talk straight. We hypothesize about what could happen.

Me: "I bet that bastard makes me hike Angel's Landing. He always said he wanted to do it and I always refused. Damn me and my big mouth. Ugh. Just UGH.”

In a moment of unintentional clairvoyance Susan says "I hope there's a big diamond at the top of that mountain". I tell her no. We aren't ready for that."

Back to my side of the story:

So, all things considered, Day 1 of the plan was a success- Jill had gotten to the place I wanted her to get to, she'd found and read the letter I'd hidden for her under her seat in the car, and I'd successfully planted her best friend there as emotional support. And, of course, to play double agent for me.

Meanwhile, I arrived in Las Vegas late that Wednesday night- well, technically arriving at almost 1am Thursday. After an adventure getting to my hotel, I had more adventures trying to check in (finally get checked in after an absurd wait, find when I get to my room and put down my bag that I've been stuck in a smoking room, call downstairs and ask to be switched, they say to wait there and they'll send up someone with a key to a different room, I go out in the hallway to wait since the room itself smells disgustingly like smoke, then after 10 minutes, with no one yet arrived with a new key, I hear the phone ring inside the room. I try to go answer it, except that I discover I neglected to bring the room key out into the hall, so I'm now locked outside and my bag is still _inside_. So I'm forced to go down to reception, have to wait an absurd amount of time *again*, and discover the bellboy left a few minutes ago to take a new key for the new room. I get assigned to a third room, then have to get *another* key to the original room so I can retrieve my bag.)

Finally ensconced in my room, at shortly before 2am, I started writing the clues for Thursday and assembling them for placement. By the time I had everything written, had procured some supplies I needed from the local 24hr drugstore, had assembled everything properly, and had reviewed the plan for Thursday again, it was 430am. And I had to be up at 6am. Thus went my 2nd consecutive night of essentially no sleep.

An hour and a half later, I awoke to verify with Alison that Jill had received the next set of instructions, which had her headed to Burbank airport to check in at Southwest. Neither she nor Alison knew what the destination would be, but I was clear about what time Jill would need to be at the airport. Once there, she discovered at check-in that she was scheduled to be on the 9am flight to Las Vegas.

While Jill was in the air, I'd gotten my own stuff together and went down to the Advantage Rent-A-Car at McCarran airport, where I'd rented 2 cars- one in my name and one in hers. I picked up my car, and while at the counter, I explained to the women working there that I had rented a car for my girlfriend, and that it was our anniversary, and that I'd been leading her on a multi-day, multi-state scavenger hunt, and I needed to leave the next clue there at the car rental place. The women were all tickled pink to help out, and so they hung the envelope with the next clue on the bulletin board in the back office.

The clue at Advantage was this: that the first stop on her journey related to the first episode of our relationship- the weekend we met. I told her that she was close to me now- we were in the same city. But where in Las Vegas was I? I told her that she would know where I was by thinking about the *second* phase of our relationship. Figure out where that was, and she would know where in Las Vegas to go.

The second phase of our relationship, as told in an earlier episode, occurred when we had 3 dates in New York City (read about that part of the story here.) I had chosen a very nice hotel room for us in the New York, New York hotel and casino, and was counting on Jill to be able to figure that out.

I texted Alison to tell Jill that when she landed, she should proceed to the Advantage desk and pick up the car in her name, and the clue which would be on the bulletin board in the back office. Then, I jumped in my car and began making my way north.

To Zion.

Now, at some point early in our relationship, Jill noticed that I had many pictures of the Angel's Landing hike in Zion National Park. Somehow it came out that I've done that hike with every long-term girlfriend I've ever had- Tasha, Sarah, Nacole, and Keiko. I've also done the hike with 3 of my groomsmen- Laszlo, Jeffrey, and Ed. Jill observed that I'd broken up with every girl I'd ever taken up there, and so she vowed that she would never, ever, EVER let me take her up there.

On my way out of town, I had to pull off the highway and into a parking lot so that I could make a couple of work-related phone calls. I figured that would be OK, since it was only 930am, Jill's flight didn't land until 10am, and then she'd have to get to the car rental, figure out the clue, get to the hotel, check in, and then find the clue I'd left for her in the hotel, which was a brief note on the bed telling her to look in the bottom of the main compartment of my backpack. I had hidden there, in a gray bag the same color and material as the inside compartment, the second letter I'd written her 3.5 years ago and never mailed, which I wrote the morning after Chris and John's wedding. I included with that letter instructions sending her to Zion. I figured by the time she got to the hotel and read the letter, Jill could not depart Vegas earlier than 1130am, and that therefore I had about a 2.5 hour head start on her. That's 150 minutes.

30 of those minutes I burned making work calls. 20 of those minutes I burned getting back onto the freeway, since it turns out I chose very poorly which exit to randomly get off on. I ended up wandering around North Las Vegas for a bit before I finally got back onto the 15 north.

I also was rapidly becoming famished, since I hadn't had a meal in the last 18 hours by that point, so when I got to St. George, Utah, I pulled into the In N Out and waited in the longest drive-through line in the history of fast food. I burned 20 minutes there. I got back on the freeway and continued along, although I was driving much more conservatively now since I was eating. In fact, I was so focused on eating that I missed the exit for Zion, and didn't realize that I'd missed it until I came to the north entrance to the park, which is not connected by road to the main section of the park, but is connected to the 15 freeway. It was there that I discovered that I'd missed *both* possible turnoffs to the main park entrance, the southern one (the first one I passed), and the northern one. Finding that out from the rangers at the north entrance cost 10 minutes. I then burned an additional 10 minutes getting back to the northern turnoff. That's 90 of my estimated 150 minutes of margin already burned.

At that point, just as I was getting on the north turnoff, I got a text from Alison saying that Jill was just a few miles away from the southern turnoff, and that she had left at *11*, and was driving like a woman possessed.

Uh oh.

If she left at 11, that means I'd only had *120* minutes of margin, plus I'd assumed she'd be driving no more than 5 mph over the speed limit, which seemed to be her normal approach to driving. If she was just a few miles away from the southern turnoff, it meant my lead on her was down to as little as 10 minutes.

Shit. Shitshitshit.

I drove like a bat out of hell on the windy northern approach to the main gate of Zion. I made reckless passes, drove 15-20 mph over the speed limit, and got to Springdale, which is the town outside the mouth of Zion, in record time. I was helped a little by having familiarity with the road, familiarity with the town, and the advantage of the northern route into the park being slightly shorter and straighter than the southern route in.

I parked my car in Springdale and took the Zion shuttle to the Visitor's Center. There, I went to the backcountry desk and again gave my spiel about the scavenger hunt, etc etc to the two 22-year-olds who staffed the desk. I told them my girlfriend would probably arrive within the hour, and then went to catch the shuttle to the Angel's Landing trailhead. From the shuttle, I sent the last text to Alison, telling her to send Jill to the backcountry desk at the Visitor's Center.

At that point, I was deeply worried that Jill was as little as 10 minutes behind me. Thus, when I got to the trailhead, I started moving *fast*.

Here now is Jill's recounting of getting to the trailhead:

"That night I barely slept. My latest instructions tell me that I'll get more instructions at 6:30 AM. Yeah well, bite me. I lay awake...in the same goddamn room he stayed in at JOC and Vanessa’s wedding. Damn him. DAMN HIM. And how did he manage all this. I mean this IS Gus...the man who jumps out of planes, nearly gets swept out to sea, pukes on the BART, gets a $250 parking ticket, etc, etc.

6 AM instructions: go to the Burbank airport.

I look at my stuff and repack. I consolidate all my stuff into MY backpack because the one he sent with me is his and it’s so big and bulky and not necessary. Mine is packed solid. No room for anything else. I wake up Alison who seems excited and yet complacent. I ask her when she’s leaving, etc. WAIT...what? You are flying OUT of SFO? WHY? WHHHHHHHHHY? Hmmmm....BASTARDS...all of you.

I get to Burbank in record time. I miss the cheap parking. F-It...I don't have time to think. I open my trunk and realize..."wait if I have Gus' backpack...what is HE carrying?" Then I start to feel bad...that I had over reacted. Clearly the guy had put A LOT of effort in this. I thought I'd be flying to NYC for our "second date". So I guess I should take his pack to him. I just picture him carrying all his stuff in a plastic Safeway bag (and I wound up being right about that). Awww...my soft side kicks in. FINE. I repack into HIS pack.

I get to the Southwest Terminal. Check in. Flight to Las Vegas. LAS VEGAS? huh? This doesn't make sense. We've never been there. We've hardly even talked about Las Vegas.

WAIT.

Nevada. I check the maps in the Driod. Vegas is only a couple of hours drive to UT...ZION.

Dick. I have you figured out. HA. I GET IT. TPPPPPPPHHT.

I get to Vegas. I text in my status. I am told to go to the rental car counter. Much like my experience at the Sportsman Lodge, it went like this:

"Hi...uh...do you have a car in my name...Jill...Morris?" (awkward smile)

"Uh. Let me see....hmmm...Where are you staying?"

"Uh....uh....my BF made the reservation. Is there a message for me?"

"Huh? Oh....wait...YOU"RE THE ONE! YOU'RE THE....”(SMILE, SMILE, SOMETHING IN SPANISH TO THE GIRLS IN THE BACK). Everyone piles out of the office smiling at me.

I am forced to tell them the story. They are smiling. I am not.

"He was just here about 45 minutes ago...you can probably catch up to him."

AH. HA. The HEAT is on!

She's typing away and another lady hands me an envelope. I read the letter from Gus.

What?

Huh?

I don't get it.

I look at the clerk in dismay.

"WHAT DOES IT SAAAAAAAAY?!!?!?!?!?!" (SMILE) She sings.

I explain that it says that I need to go to the place where we had our first date. But we had our first date in NYC...at a French bistro on the upper east side. NOTHING ABOUT VEGAS SCREAMS FRENCH BISTRO ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE. I DON'T GET IT. It doesn't make sense. It was NYC. NEW. YORK. CITY.

The clerk was all smiles. Her co-worker was all smiles. I felt really vulnerable.

THAT'S IT! I can't figure it out. I give up. This is too hard. I am tired and hungry and tired and tired. No. I am dumb. I don't deserve you. I am not smart enough for you. I failed. I FAILED.

I start to tear up and the clerk looks sad:

"WAIT...you had your first date WHERE?"

"New York…city."

"Hmmmm....NEW YORK...Where in New York?"

"Upper eastside of Manhattan. THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE."

"Have you ever been to Vegas?"

"Well, YES a dozen or more times BUT NOT WITH HIM. I. DON'T. GET. IT."

"Well, I wonder WHAT he was thinking when he wanted you to come to VEGAS when you dated in NEW YORK CITY."

(Blank stare. Tears. Blank stare)

"Hmmmm. NEW YORK....HMMMM, VEGAS....wonder WHERE YOU ARE STAYING?" she says.

"I guess in a casino, naturally. Maybe The...maybe...(I rack my brains)...The...THE..."

She tilts her head in the most "sweetheart you ain't so smart are you" sort of way. I blink.

"NEW YORK NEW YORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She slaps the key on the counter while everyone cheers and says "GO GET HIM!!!"

I am furious. Half way in this ordeal and I almost lose it. I race down Las Vegas Blvd and snap a pic of NY NY, text it to Gus. HA. I AM ON TO YOU.

I get to the counter with renewed confidence:

"I would LIKE to check IN to MY ROOM PLEASE!"

The clerk types in my name and says "Hmmmm....seems you checked in yesterday."

BLINK, BLINK.

"OH I DID, DID I?!" She gives me a key and I race upstairs. I get into OUR room and I see Gus' stuff.  

AH HA. I HAVE YOU NOW...jerk...wait...where are you...(looks around empty room).

There's a note on the pillow. It tells me to look in the bottom of his backpack. I look.

Nothing.

I look again.

Nothing.

I turn it upside down and shake the shit out of it.

Nothing.

I grab the bottom and pull with all my might.

It gives way. There's a grey bag in the bottom. It's the same color as the bag so I didn't see it the first 145 times I went in to that bag in the proceeding 36 hours. I rip open the envelope. Now I see that it's another sweet letter but I don't have time for this. I unravel the riddle and indeed I am to go to UT...to Zion. At record speed I change clothes, repack the backpack for hiking and gather my map to hit the road. It's mid morning and I don't have time to waste.

Now I have to back up here and tell you, dear reader, that not only is there all this drama and stress on very little sleep and no food, but also that the week previously I had injured my foot. REALLY BAD...probably could have used a stitch or two so I am limping a little. So I field dress my still smarting, gushy and bloody wound, so that I can go hike what turns out to be Kilimanjaro. At this point NOTHING is going to stop me from getting revenge!

I race to the car. I fly down the freeway. I hit AZ. I hit UT. I find the exit for Zion and I text Alison. SNAG. She isn't sure I am going to the right place.

WHAT? This MAP can't lie. IT's GPS, MF! Apparently Gus took a different exit. WELL AT THIS POINT I AM SUPPOSED TO TRUST HIM?! YOUGOTTABEKIDDINGME.

So it's finally determined I carry on. And from Alison's tone she gives away that I am hot on his trail. Finally her loyalties return.

I floor it. I make Zion in record time. I am instructed to go to the Back Country Desk. I do so to find a 20-something blonde chick smiling at me. I am not amused at this point.

"How long is it going to take me to get to the top of Angel's Landing?"

She's smiling.

"At least 2 and half hours. You'll need lots of water and here's a map that..."

I take the map and walk off. Run actually. I go and get the backpack. Look at it in scorn. It's big, heavy and it's HOT in Zion. Very Hot. Utah hot in summer hot. I hop the bus and have to rebandage my foot. Someone sitting next to me even mentions how bad it looks. YEAH I KNOW."

We'll leave Jill for the moment and return to my side of the story. I am now about to head to the top of Angel's Landing. Some things you should know about Angel's Landing:

Interestingly, Ed said to me in early August: "Maybe you should propose to Jill on Angel's Landing. You know, break the curse." I almost cracked and told him the plan then...

The Angel's Landing trail is about 2.5 miles each way, and ascends 1500 feet, 500 of it in the last half mile. That last half mile features chains cut into the rock, ledges no wider than a sofa with 1000-foot drops on both sides, and, at the end, a spectacular view of Zion Canyon. Even the first 2 miles feature super-steep switchbacks, including a section of 21 hairpin turns called Walter's Wiggles, that are pitched at an angle of elevation that makes you want to die. Having done the hike 7 times in my life already, I had a very steady pace for it- 2.5 hours up, 1.5 hours down.

On this occasion, fearing that Jill was right behind me, and might even end up being able to see me on the cliff face ahead of her, I made it to the top in just over an hour. I basically ran up the first mile and a half. And for that, my legs ached, and I mean *ached*, for days afterward.

But, I did manage to stay far enough ahead that I had time to sit at the top, drink some water, rest my weary legs, and work on my speech. I figured I should have a little speech. So that's what I worked on while I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I don't know exactly how long I was waiting up there, but I'd begun to get nervous. What if she'd gone on strike and just decided to wait me out at the bottom? I couldn't stand the thought that the plan would have worked only up to that point. But just as I was almost out of faith, I saw a head of black hair appear above the ledge.

And there was Jill.

Looking at me.

We simply stared at each other for a while from about 20 yards apart. I was sitting under one of the only 2 trees up on the top of Angel's Landing, which is a little scraggly thing that provides precious little shade, but does afford a view of where hikers first emerge onto the Landing, which is why I'd camped out there.

After a few minutes, Jill climbed fully up onto Angel's Landing and came over to me. I saw she carried the backpack, which I'd carefully instructed her to do. Now, where we were sitting wasn't really the best part of Angel's Landing; that bit was about another 100 feet or so ahead, just over a last small crest of rock. As Jill approached, I said- "Angel's Landing is really over there- I thought we'd do the last little bit together."

Jill lay down on the rock, in the small bit of shade, and we stayed there more or less quietly for several minutes. Then she professed to be ready to go the last distance, and so we went to the very edge of Angel's Landing together.

For a little bit, Jill told me about how she'd made it to the top, and how hard it had been. I wanted to give my speech, but there were several people around, and I waited for them to go. As they were leaving, I noticed a group of guys approaching, and I realized I probably wasn't going to get actual privacy up on top of one of America's premier hiking spots, in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the summer, so I bit the bullet and jumped into my speech.

I said that our relationship had involved a brief period of wonderful time together- both in the first couple months we new each other, back in 2006, and in the last few weeks, since Jill had moved in. Then our relationship had entered a long phase in which we had to make separate journeys of discovery, both from late 2006 until Belize, and again over the last 2 days. And in that time of journeying separately, neither of us could know for certain that we would end up together at the end; the only thing there was to do was follow our hearts, and follow what clues there seemed to be. But in the end, both then and now, we had ended up together.

At this point, I bent down and picked up the backpack, and started rummaging in the pocket where I normally keep a stash of pens. While I was doing that, I gave the second part of my speech, in which I said that I believed in the importance of symbolism, and that in her letter to me all those years ago, the one which responded to the 5 letters I'd written her telling her our story in the form of a fairytale, in that letter she had alluded to the many challenges of her life, challenges which she was still dealing with, and which made it not possible to accept what I was offering her then (in 2006), but which she felt she had made progress on and believed she would make more progress on in the future. In that letter, she used the metaphor of climbing a mountain, and said that she felt she had already climbed a mountain, and that all she needed to do was turn around and see how far she'd come.

"So," I said to Jill, "here you are. You've climbed the mountain. Now look, and see how far you've come."

The truth is, we had each climbed a literal and metaphorical mountain to get to that moment. I told her that being with me for life would not be easy, that there would surely be many times when, as on her hike up to Angel's Landing, she questioned whether it was worth it to keep on going. I asked that whenever those times came, she remember this day, and remember the decision she'd made to stick with me. I promised her that if she made the decision to stick with me, as she'd done this day, then there would always come a time when she'd look back and be glad she did.

And the last point I made was this- that in putting together this complex plan, I'd made a decision to trust Jill: to trust that she would follow me, even not knowing exactly where she was headed, to trust that she'd figure out all the clues, and to trust that she'd not give up, even when it seemed hardest. I wanted to have the opportunity to demonstrate how much I trusted and believed in her, and I wanted her to have the opportunity to prove to herself that she really did want this. Finally, I told her that everything she needed to succeed, everything necessary for us to be together, she'd had with her from the very beginning- some things she'd known she had: the intellect to figure out the clues, the determination and perseverance to follow them; but she'd also had some things with her that she *didn't* realize she had: letters stashed under her seat or in her backpack, for instance. And, I said, there is one more thing you've had since the beginning, that you didn't realize you had. At that point, I'd emptied out all the pens from their little pouch in the backpack, found the tiny ziploc bag I'd safety-pinned to the bottom of the pouch, and pulled out the engagement ring I'd bought for Jill- the ring that unbeknownst to her she'd been carrying for two days, across four different states and all the way up the mountain.

And so there, on Angel's Landing, I asked Jill to marry me. She started to cry, and then said: "Yes of course."

The group of guys who had joined us on Angel's Landing could see something was up, and one of them took some pictures of the event. I've included them here:

We are right at the cliff's edge. Either she will say "yes", or throw me to my death. Either way, I figure I get what I deserve.

She said "yes!"

Hooray! Now let's get the hell off this mountain before the storm that is rapidly bearing down on us from the left of this picture arrives...

Here to tell the story of getting up the mountain is Jill:

"I get to the trailhead and look up. FUCK YOU AUGUSTINE MATTAMMAL. I hoof it. I am almost at a jog. Back and forth, up a small incline, up another, slow down, get passed by an old Indian couple. Fuck. Nearly get passed by a deer. Damn. Tired. Hot. Thirsty. Limping. Hot. Slowing. Slowing more.

It's early afternoon and knowing how slow I'm getting I am losing my lead. Damn. I get to the ever famous switch-back Walter's Wiggles. Fuck you Walter. I have to stop every 6 feet and pant. The Indian couple waddles past me AGAIN. I've been on this trail almost an hour. I can do this, right? RIGHT?! SIGH.

I get to the sandy area just below the rock climb and I look up. Fuck and FUCK YOU. It's steep. But I made it this far. I've made it this far in life and it's not been easy I am not going to stop now. I am not going to let some crusty hill and smartass, funny man foil me. I am Hippolyta.

I start climbing. And by climbing it's really scampering carefully hand over hand over large and small boulders and sandy spots while clinging to chains. It's hot. VERY HOT. No cover. And the whole trail is a foot wide and the cliff is no wider than 10' in most places.

I reach the first apex. Whew. I am tired. I am sweating. I am determined. I look up to at least 50 feet of more rocks and chains. I start up.

I get up there and have to ditch the iPod. I can't listen to anything but the voices in my head that are cursing the existence of god, Gus and the sun.

I reach another apex and sit. How much more of this will I have to endure? Wait...Is that ANOTHER chain I see WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY up there? Yes it is.

I climb. I climb more. I skin my knee. I finish one of the bottles of water. I curse. I see a man coming down and I wait.

"Did you go to the top?" I growl.

"Yeah, It's not THAT much further." (SMILE)

Honestly, I am tired of the smiling.

"MY BOYFRIEND BETTER BE UP THERE GOD DAMMIT!"

Startled, the nice, graying, middle-aged man says "Oh he is".

I know he's lying...just telling me whatever I want to hear. He scampers away.

I look down. I think I may die. It's hot. It's REALLY HOT and I try to huddle under a scrawny tree. I am dirty, sweaty, tired, hungry, angry, scared. I drink a big gulp of water and then throw it up. Fetal in the dirt I think: "this isn't worth it. I can't do it. I am too tired. It's awful. I am not good enough. Maybe he should have married one of the other 6 girls that could actually make it up here. If I lay here long enough SOMEONE will find me."

Then I thought. WHAT IF HE'S NOT UP THERE? Something exploded in my brain. What if I get up there and there's another note. I. WILL. KILL. HIM. AND. NO. ONE. WILL. BLAME. ME.

I get up. I struggle. I slip. I cry. I stare at the thousands of feet of air below me. I see the top. I drag myself hand over hand up the chain. When I get to the top I see...

MORE ROCK AND MORE CHAIN.

There is no god. If there is a god he/she clearly HATES ME and in turn I HATE HIM OR HER (and Gus).

At some point shortly after that (or not so shortly since the heat has me blurry) I see that the rocks level off. I see a tree and I make it up to it and a flat rock. The horizon becomes flat and I see Gus sitting off at the distance. I stand there and vacillate on my ability to move. I know I can't run. I can't talk. I can't cry. He's standing there waiting MOTHERFUCKINGSMILING. Ugh. Death.

I can't move. I start to sway. I stand there a few minutes and stagger the last 30 yards to him like John Wayne at the end of True Grit. When I arrive he's SMILING and says:

"It's just a few feet over here to the end."

"IAMNOTGOINGANYWHEREWEAREGOINGTOSITRIGHTHEREASSHOLE"

How can he still be smiling? Oh that’s right, he’s been up here for HOURS (with his books and laptop, and water).

I see the smallest tree on the planet that couldn’t even shade a chipmunk and we park it right there.

It takes me a few good minutes to gather myself. This is the point where Gus is lucky I have ZERO ability to think or move or he would have been a memorial greasy spot at the bottom of the rock.

Me: stares out at the sky and rock.

Gus: smiling, rubbing my back, smiling.

Finally I talk:
“thatwasreallyhardandunfairandyouleftmeinthemiddleofthenightandflewalisontoLAand…and…and...”

I think at this point he went on and on about how he knew I could make it and how he was so happy that I was able to hang in there and follow his little plan.

Me: still staring…at this point thinking I just wanted to be back in Vegas in the AC, napping, eating real food.

As we sit there I manage to eat and drink a little more and share some trail mix with a very aggressive little critter. I think it’s the first time in my life I didn’t scream with delight to be within touching distance of something so squee. Screw you chipmunk.

So Gus convinces me to go closer to the edge (not a good idea if you know Gus). I comply because now I realize my revenge…he’s carrying me down. We take photos, chat, etc. There’s no one else on the rock. He goes over and digs in his backpack, the one I’ve been carrying and comes back.

This is what I hear: “BLAH BLAH BLAH…I love you….BLAH BLAH BLAH…I know that this was hard and you were upset but you made it, I knew you could…and BLAH BLAH BLAH (something about how everything I ever needed to get here I had all along).”

Now’s not the time for him to be poetic.

And I see a group of dudes coming up the hill. I look at Gus and he’s still talking and I look down at a ring. It’s very pretty ring. Very art deco, very shiny, something I would love. I think:

“wow, that’s pretty. He’s giving me a ring, that’s nice….”

(that’s right kids, I thought it was just a ring…I didn’t have the capacity to realize that it was THE RING—sigh—but it’s his fault my IQ had dropped 50 points from dehydration)

WAIT-A-MINUTE!

And I assume this is the part where he actually ASKED to marry me. In the 45 seconds it took me to figure out what was happening all I could say was “of course” to any and all interrogatives.

THEN IT HITS ME.

And I cry (for the 1400th time in 2 days).

Then I try to shove this gorgeous ring on my swollen like sausage of fingers. Voila.

WAIT…

WASTHATRINGINYOURBACKPACKALLALONG? HAVEIBEENCARRYINGMYOWNENGAGEMENTRING?

Yes.

Stunned. My drama cache is bankrupt. I can’t even register any emotion over this other than to tell him the story about how I ALMOST DIDN’T BRING THE BACKPACK to Vegas. At the moment of this conversation my engagement ring could be sitting in my car at the airport in California. THEN WHAT WOULD HE DO?

Also please note that when I was in the Burbank airport I poked around in the very same pocket it was in. Due to this incident, Gus has used up his ability to hide stuff like that in plain sight. Every crevice in his life is subject to my constant TSA-like scrutiny. Yes, every. Since then we have had several backpacks enter our lives- so far, no additional diamonds squirreled away. My oversight has 100% reliability now.

So, the dudes coming up the mountain catch what is happening (glad someone did) and snap our photo! Thanks! I LOOK LIKE BOILED DEATH.

Then all that drama disappears. I was stunned. He did an amazing job planning and executing this whole ordeal. He has NO idea how many times it almost all fell apart. He’s very brave. I felt bad that I reacted so hatefully, when all he was doing was executing the most ridiculous marriage proposal on earth. I am one lucky girl.

Really? You really want to marry me. Are you sure? Because you can have more time to think about that…

We sit and smile and cry and laugh and on the horizon creeping up on us is the biggest, blackest cloud in Utah. It’s about to rain on our parade. Not just rain either. It looks dangerous. Going down was easier or at least mitigated by the shiny rock on my sausage finger. Before we even got to the end of the trail we were picking out dates. But alas, the scheme had not ended..."

Back to me:

And so it came to pass that I tricked Jill into agreeing to marry me by waiting until she was near death from exhaustion and dehydration, and therefore sufficiently relieved of her mental faculties to say "yes of course" to any question I asked. Single men out there in the world may wish to take note of this strategy.

Sadly, there wasn't a lot of time to relax and take in the moment. We could see a pretty nasty looking squall headed down the canyon, and on top of Angel's Landing is not really where you want to be in a thunderstorm. Plus, we had to hike all the way down and drive the 2 hours back to Vegas that night.

So, we headed down the mountain together. As we hiked, Jill recounted the trip up the mountain for me. In a way it was all so very surreal- all the planning had paid off, from a big picture perspective everything pretty much went as planned, despite all the complexity, and she had said "yes." Mix all that with the exhaustion of all this activity, and a grand total of maybe 3 hours of sleep in the last 60 hours, and I was in a daze.

We got down the mountain, got to our cars, and drove back to Las Vegas. I had a bunch of people to call, and did the best I could- cell phone reception in the Nevada/Utah/Arizona desert is spotty. We pulled off the road in St. George to have a celebratory meal. I decided to take her to the place best suited to celebrate our new engagement:

Denny's.

mmmmm, Denny's. The St. George Denny's is a good one- I've eaten there several times. And anyway, it's not obvious that there are a lot of better options at 10pm in St. George, so don't judge me.

We finally rolled into Las Vegas quite late at night, and exhausted, we used the nifty in-room hot tub and then went to bed.

In the morning, Jill went out to do some shopping while I stayed at the room to do some skype tutoring. When she came back, she fixed me a look of daggers.

Uh oh- looks like someone has finally heard the last piece of the story.

You see, dear readers, some of you might have noticed a gap in storyline: I left the house at 230am on Wednesday, and then arrived in Las Vegas at 1am on Thursday. You might wonder where I'd been for 22 hours- Vegas is only an hour away from SF by plane, after all..

I left the house at 230am on Wednesday and headed to SFO to catch a 6am flight to Atlanta. It was from the airport that I texted with Alison, warning her about Jill's state of mind. I got on the flight, failed to get any real sleep, and arrived in Atlanta at about 230pm local time. I rented a car, and drove the 1.5 hours to Homer, GA, where Jill's mom lives. I arrived shortly after 4, and marched up to the front door and ran the doorbell.

After a few minutes, Jill's mom (Jane) came to the door. I could see her look at me, recognize me, and then look to the side of me, obviously looking to see if Jill was with me. She opened the door.

Jane: "Well, hello there.."

Me: "Hi Jane, how are you?"

Jane: "I'm just fine, thanks. Um, Jill's not with you.."

Me: "No, no, Jill actually has no idea at all that I'm here. She's on a little trip of her own."

Jane: "Well, what brought you all the way out here without Jill's knowledge?"

Me: "Jane, I came here to tell you a story."

Jane: "You flew all the way here to tell me a *story*? Why didn't you just pick up the phone and call me?"

Me: "Well, I think some stories are best told in person. I think you'll agree that this is one of them."

Jane: "Come on in then, and tell me your story. Though I kinda think I might know what this story is going to be about.."

So we went inside to the living room, and I began by saying that while I knew Jill had told her the story of how we had come to be dating from her perspective, I thought she might want to hear the story from my perspective. And so I told her all the things I wrote about in the first 5 installments of this series. It turned out that Jill had left out many of the more subtle details, so Jane seemed pretty interested. I ended by saying that I loved her daughter very much.

Jane: "That's a very nice story. Jill told me a lot of it- not all the details, but the important stuff. And she does look happier than I think I've ever seen her. But you didn't have to fly all the way here just to tell me that."

Me: "Well, there is a little more..."

And then I told her that it was my intention to ask Jill to marry me the following evening, and that I had come to ask for her blessing. I then said that I understood that once upon a time, another man had come to ask a similar thing, and that given that that situation had not worked out so well, plus the fact that Jill and I really hadn't been dating all that long, I wanted now to take the time to let Jane air any concerns she had, and ask all of her questions, which I would attempt to answer as honestly and fully as I could.

And so, the second half of our conversation was my addressing Jane's understandable concerns, and answering some questions about my own upbringing, attitudes about family and marriage, personal history, etc. It was very cordial, and I didn't mind answering any of the questions at all. When all was said and done, Jane did give her blessing, which I was very grateful for.

Jane: "By the way, how did you know I would even be home?"

Me; "Well, I remember Jill said you work half-days on Wednesdays, and I saw from the flight schedule that I would arrive late-afternoon, which I figured would be late enough that you would be home from work, but early enough to catch you before you went out for dinner or something. Truthfully, I didn't have a real good plan on this part- I really needed it to just work. And it did."

Jane: "Do you need a place to stay tonight?"

Me: "No, I'm actually on the 10pm flight out of Atlanta, so I can't stay too much longer."

Jane: "You're flying back out *tonight*? Well, would you like to get dinner before you go?"

Me: "Dinner sounds amazing. I actually haven't had a meal since... since I think dinner yesterday."

So we went to a nice dinner, and then I bade Jane goodbye. As we were getting ready to go, I said:

Me: "Like I said, Jill has no idea that I came here. And... I'm not going to tell her. If she says yes tomorrow, you will be one of the first people she calls. I'll leave it to you to be the one to tell her. It can be your surprise."

Jane seemed to enjoy that, and wished me good luck the next day. And off I went, on the drive back to Atlanta. At that point, I had now gone about 36 hours without sleep, and by the time I was nearing the outer edge of Atlanta, I was having to drive with the windows down, occasionally slapping myself across the face, to keep myself from falling asleep at the wheel. But I did make it back ok and on time, and got myself to Las Vegas.

Now, here's Jill again, recounting how she came to hear about this piece of the story:

"We drove back to Vegas calling everyone we know. I reached my mom pretty late and she sounded surprised and happy and said we’d talk tomorrow. I didn’t realize she was still in on it. We stopped in St. George to eat our first meal as a betrothed couple…at…Denny’s, of course.

It took me forever to get back to the hotel thanks to construction and traffic on The Strip. And when I got there Gus looked like he was about to pass out. I guess weeks of planning and hours of me hot on his trail wore him out. When I woke up the next morning he was already awake and before I was fully able to focus my eyes he said “so lets plan a wedding!”. He was up and calling his future groomsmen. I really didn’t need to call Alison SINCE SHE KNEW ALREADY! He had sent her a picture of the ring. I did manage to get the rest of the crew on the phone. It was reassuring to know that SOMEONE was surprised.

And then I hear the story about how he went to ATL.

Standing on Las Vegas Blvd near Barbary Coast my mom calls. I start telling her about the events and she asks me what my ring looks like. I started to tell her and then she interrupted me and said that she also thought the sapphires were more me than rubies.

WAIT…WHAT? IHAVEN’TGOTTENTOTHEPARTABOUTHTESAPPHIRESYET. How did she know? Wait? Did I post it on Facebook? Did I text it? Did I tell her last night? Nope. Gus told her.

WAIT? GUSTOLDYOUWHEN? “When he came to my house yesterday?”

“SHUTTHEFUCKUPWHAT?” Half of Las Vegas Boulevard came to a screeching halt.

After I got over my initial reaction to “oh god, I hope my mother doesn’t think he’s a stalker” I realized what a good plan that was. He was smart to do that. She was in on it all and now she’s gleefully smug that I was so duped by everyone, especially her. When I got back to the hotel he was on skype with a student. So I sat there staring with imaginary giant exclamation points swimming around my head and when he was done:

“YOUDIDWHAT?!YOUWENTTOGEORGIATOSEEMYMOTHER?!”

How in the world did he pull that off? HOW? That’s about as possible as me winning the basketball pool (oh, wait, currently I am)."

Editor's Note: As of this editing, _I_ am now winning the basketball pool, having taken over the top spot from Jill. Which has caused much consternation in our household, let me tell you.

We passed a blissful Friday at New York, New York in Vegas, having dinner at Paris, and checking out the local burlesque show. In the morning, we flew back to Burbank, and met up with Alison at the airport. Then, the 3 of us took all day and drove up the PCH all the way back to the beachhouse. Jill again:

"By the time we got back to Burbank to retrieve Alison I was spent. Totally spent. I only half enjoyed the ride up PCH to SF. Gus’ brother Mikey was in town for the night and as we recounted the story again Mikey said “did you tell Sweet Pea this plan because she never would have gone for this”. Gus is very lucky he didn’t tell anyone he didn’t have to. He’s lucky that my mother loves seeing me had over keeping his secret. He’s lucky that Alison didn’t doubt this union and tell me to run. He’s lucky that everything he wanted to happen did, just like he wanted when he wanted (don’t get use to that). But I am the lucky one. I am the one who gets to marry Gus (that is if he doesn’t change his mind)."

Final Editor's Note: The truth is, I'm the lucky one- I get to marry Jill, who is the most amazing woman I have ever met, and who has totally changed my life. This engagement story is complex, messy, and long. There were a million places along the way where it could have, and probably *should* have failed. But because of our determination, our love for each other, and the support of the people in our lives, in the end the story has a happy ending. And in that respect, this engagement story is the perfect metaphor for the relationship we have.

So thanks for reading it. If you actually read all this, you must be one of the special people in our lives. We thank you for that.

A Modest Proposal, Part 5, or, The Best of Romances Deserve Second Chances

2010-12-30T10:07:00.000-08:00

One year ago today, as told in Part 4, I saw Jill for the first time in 2.5 years. Over the course of that week, for both of us, feelings long dormant and perhaps even thought long gone came back to the fore. Intense conversations were had, and secrets revealed. We parted in the Miami airport like lovesick teenagers.

As we headed back to our respective lives, a big question loomed: what do we do about it? Do we just go back to living as we had before, and chalk it all up to one moment in time in the jungle, whose circumstances would never repeat? Or did the events of the week point to a path, and if so, should we try to follow it?

In the voicemail of my phone is the original message Jill left me when she arrived back in DC to pick up her dog. In it, she says that felt everything had changed for her. I felt the same way, and so very quickly we agreed that Jill would fly out to CA and we would spend a long weekend together. Over the course of that weekend, we would talk through all the issues surrounding the idea of our trying to date. We even assigned each other the homework of writing down what all our hopes, fears, concerns, and expectations would be about trying to date.

For the next 2 weeks, we each worked on our homework. Now, writing down all that stuff sounded a bit daunting, so we each, completely independently, opted to present our homework to the other in a creative way. Jill did her homework as a legislative resolution, fully replete with legislative jargon and vetted by the legislative counsel at her work. I did mine as a powerpoint presentation of the proposed merger of Jill, Inc. and GusCo. I included all the usual trappings of a powerpoint presentation: charts, graphs, tables, etc. The weekend of January 23rd, Jill flew out to CA, and we presented our projects to each other.

Jill went first, and I had a lot of fun reading about a relationship as written by a legislative analyst. Although the bulk of it must remain private, the preamble gives you a taste:

"FINDINGS:

WHEREAS "we", the parties involved, including "me", otherwise known as "I" and "myself", and "you" have decided that there is an agreement to carry forward a discussion of the possibility of a relationship between said parties in some capacity;

WHEREAS, in the vein of full disclosure we intend to be completely honest with ourselves and one another, not withholding any feelings or discussions, and reserving the right to ask for clarifying information;

WHEREAS, if one of us reverses position on any discussion and/or feeling, then the other shall be notified immediately, or within a reasonable or expected amount of time;

THEREFORE, we shall review and discuss these (but not limited to those issues as documented herein) issues:"

From there it proceeds into the various issues, each of which has its section, subsections, sub-subsections, and in some cases, sub-sub-subsections, as enumerated. One of my favorites is Section 5, "Children", subsection 2, which states:

"This issue shall be discussed as it is outlined pursuant to SECTION 1:(3)(a-b), SECTION 3, SECTION 4, and SECTION 6: (3) and (4)."

It took me like 15 minutes to look up all the references. It's amazing anyone actually reads any of the legislation that comes out of Congress, much less actually understands it.

Oh, wait.

Then I gave my presentation. Here are the first three slides:

It only goes downhill from the Venn diagram, let me assure you.

Our hopes, concerns, fears, and expectations overlapped by probably 95%. The only major difference was that I had not highlighted religion as an area of any concern. For Jill, religion was a concern because she had converted to orthodox Judaism for her first husband (and in fact still technically is orthodox Jewish, at least from the point of view of orthodox Judaism, a fact that I have lots of fun with) and she wanted to know if I would require her to convert to Catholicism.

When she revealed that, I actually laughed. I quickly apologized, saying I did not mean to trivialize her concern. But, for anyone who really knows me, and what a hopeless excuse for a Catholic I am, the thought of requiring someone to convert to Catholicism for me seemed entirely comical. So, we were able to dispense with that particular area of concern reasonably quickly.

Having established that we philosophically matched enough to think about dating long-term, we next commenced a discussion of whether we could make it work logistically. After all, we lived on opposite sides of the country, and we each (but most especially me) had failed long-distance relationships in the past. We decided there needed to be a stake in the ground- a point past which we would no longer do long distance. We further agreed that at that point, Jill would move out here, since she loved CA and had wanted to move back for some time and since I'd committed to building up our tutoring business in the Bay Area. In a surprisingly short time, we'd charted out the next 7 months:

Feb: Jill comes to CA for the President's Day dinner party extravaganza.
Mar: Gus goes to Harrisburg (HBG) for a weekend
Apr: Gus goes to HBG as Jill's escort to the annual fundraising event she organizes
May: Jill comes to CA for a weekend, and begins CA job searching
Jun: We meet in NYC since I have to be there for work
July: We go to StL to meet my family and Atlanta to meet hers
Aug: We try to see each other if possible, but 8/26 is the 4-year anniversary of our first meeting each other at JOC's wedding, and that is our stake in the ground- whether or not Jill has found a job in CA, we commence moving her out.

Thus, having plotted out the first 7 months of our relationship, we agreed that we should consider ourselves "dating". At this point, figuring we should probably stop planning and start adding in a little actual romance, I took us out to a nice dinner in the city, and we attended the opening weekend of the SF Ballet. It was a lovely evening, and a great way to kick off our officially sanctioned dating. Sadly, the next day Jill had to return to her life in HBG.

In Feb, Jill came out for the dinner party weekend. You can read about it here:

In March, I went to HBG, and about all I can say that's suitable for a blog of this nature is that I enjoyed meeting Jill's HBG circle, and that while we were out on the town Saturday night, we were photographed and featured in the HBG social pages. Here's the photograph that was taken of us:

Harrisburg Socialites

In April, I returned to HBG and escorted Jill to her big annual Gala event, which is a major fundraiser for her organization: the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape (PCAR). The weekend had the additional element that Jill's mom came up for the event as well, so it was my first time meeting her. Jane was very nice- a true genteel southern woman, and we seemed to get off on the right foot.

The event was everything you'd expect a nonprofit fundraiser to be: boring as crap, until the dancing started. For most people I imagine it was still boring as crap, but I can entertain myself on a dance floor for quite some time, and did that night. Here are some of my favorite pics from the evening:

We are simple folk, but we clean up nicely.

Tripping the light fantastic...

Yeah, that's right. Jill's tawkin' ta *you*.

In May, Jill came out to commence job searching, and quickly started getting some interest. But we mostly stayed home in HMB, and kept things pretty mellow. It didn't help that May is one of my peak busy periods, so it was hard to keep work from encroaching on our time, but we made the best of things and had a nice weekend.

In June, we met in NYC.

The best part about visiting NYC? Seeing all my old NYC friends. The 2nd-best part about visiting NYC? Halal cart.

I had to be there for 2 days of meetings for work, so we decided to meet in the city a few days early and re-live our first 3 dates there, from back in 2006. Thus, in the course of 2 days we had a nice lunch, went walking around Central Park, stayed at the Night Hotel in Times Square, had dinner at Asia de Cuba, managed this second time around to get a round of drinks at the Library Bar, and then, just for fun, we invited all our NYC friends to join us on the rooftop of 230 5th avenue, where once upon a time I had had my going-away-from-New-York party.

The party at 230 5th was a lot of fun, although I had a bit of an awkward moment when my former student IR showed up and I, in a semi-drunken haze, said loudly, "IR!!!! It's so great to see you! How are you?? Did you finally dump that fucking loser boyfriend of yours?"

(pause)

IR: "Uh... I'd like you to meet Forrest." (points awkwardly at the guy standing slightly behind her, who is not looking pleased).

Me (fighting hard to process this through the alcoholic haze): "Wait, uh, Forrest... that was your boyfriend's name, right?"

IR: "Yes, that's right."

Me: "Uh, yeah, right, well.. [searching vainly for a graceful recovery] ... Forrest! Pleasure meeting you!" (I shake his hand vigorously.)

Forrest: "Uh huh."

Aside from establishing that I hadn't lost my gift for saying exactly the worst possible thing in any given moment, the evening was a blast. As was the weekend in general. It's not often in life that you get a do-over, but we enjoyed our weekend re-doing our dates in NYC.

A few weeks later, we each flew into StL for a couple days. Jill got to meet my mom for the first time. I picked Jill up from the airport, and the meeting went like this:

(Gus and Jill walk in the front door..)

Me: "Hey mom, this is Jill.."

Jill: "Hi Mrs. Mattam-"

Mom: "OHMYGODI'MSOHAPPYTOMEETYOU!!!" (bear hugs Jill and bursts into tears) "SOBSOBSOBSOBSOB YOU'RESOBEAUTIFUL SOBSOBSOBSOBSOB"

(Gus shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot as Jill endures the bear hugging/sobbing, looking a bit like a deer caught in headlights..)

Me: "Uh, sorry... she doesn't normally do this when she meets people."

But, Jill handled it well, and in short order we got settled.

Relaxing on the sofa post bizarrely-emotional-mom-greeting.

No introduction to StL could be complete without baseball, so we went to the Cardinals game that night with Kev and the gang, although sadly the stupid Brewers managed to win.

Even losing to the Brew Crew can't dampen the enjoyment of a beautiful day in a beautiful park, with Jill and Kev and the gang..

My brother Willie drove up from McConnell AFB in Kansas to join us, and so on Friday morning he, my sister, my nephew Zack, and my mom went with Jill and me over the river into Illinois to visit my grandpa. We met him at the Denny's in Waterloo- as a connoisseur of Denny's, I have to say that it's fairly average, but still a good time.

Straight chillin' wit' gramps at the Waterloo Denny's

When we got back over the river, Anne joined us and we went downtown to the City Museum. 100 years ago, the City Museum was a shoe factory. Now, it is nothing less than a Temple of Extreme Awesomeness. Everything in it is a tunnel to crawl through, a structure to climb on, or something to slide down. I was in heaven..

Yes, that is a *bus* hanging off the roof..

.. which reminds me to tell you this story: in 8th grade, they made us take a career questionnaire in school. You answered a ton of questions, and then there were 100 careers shown. Your personality profile, based on your answers to the questions, caused each of the 100 careers to be categorized 1 through 5, according to this rubric:

5 = you'd be great for this career!
4 = you could certainly consider this career.
3 = not obvious that this career suits you, but then again, not obvious that it doesn't.
2 = you should probably stay away from this.
1 = for god's sake, don't even bother considering this as a career choice.

I remember my results well. Not perfectly, but well. For instance, I *do* remember of the 100 careers, how many got assigned to each category for me:

2 careers were assigned a 5.
1 career was assigned a 4.
0 careers were assigned a 3.
2 careers were assigned a 2.
95 careers were assigned a 1.

I don't remember anymore what the 4 or the two 2's were. But I do still remember what the 2 careers they were certain I'd be great at:

College Professor

and

Bus driver.

There is a ferris wheel on the roof! (Among lots of other things to climb.)

I wanted to see how far back-and-forth the seat would swing at the top, but Jill politely informed me (and I'm paraphrasing here) that doing so would be the equivalent of choosing lifetime celibacy.

Still, I thought about it.

To get onto the roof in the first place, you must first pass through a room. A room with a great dome. And up at the very center of the great dome is a small portal to the roof. You have two options at this point. If you are a superwuss, you stare up at the center of the great dome, and then find the doorway that leads to stairs that lead to the roof.

However, if you are a superhero, you climb inside the rebar cage, and climb up the side of the dome, and then through the tiny rebar tunnel that leaves you totally prone and inching along 50 feet above the floor, with only a few pieces of rebar separating you from certain death. The rebar tunnel leads to a Thunderdome-like cage at the center of the great dome, and at the top of the cage is the little portal to the roof.

I am a superhero.

Still climbing the side..

But the best part of the City Museum? The ten-story slide. That's right: a *ten* *story* *slide*.

Pure awesomeness.

The next day, my sister and Zack headed back to Texas, while mom and I opened up the house to all my StL friends, to come on down for snacks and conversation.

My sister and my nephew Zack. By all accounts, Zack is already putting the moves on girls, which he surely gets from his uncle Mikie. Also by all accounts, these moves fail miserably, which he surely gets from his uncle Gus.

It was a beautiful day, and we all sat around the yard trading stories in the shade for several hours, until it was time to head to the airport to fly to Atlanta. Almost all my StL friends came by, including my latest reconnection with my distant past: Bryce. Through the magic that is FB, we reconnected after approximately 20 years. He and I had been in an after-school math program for super-geeky people, and he looked me up on FB. He's a great guy, and it was nice to see him again after all those years.

Kev (24 years later, still utterly inseparable from the phone), Reilly, Janet, Bob, Tom, Sandy, Mike

Bob, Jeffrey, Sandia (pregnant, and insisting on standing)

Jill, me, Bryce

Me, shots, and drunk chicks (Jill, Kate). Life is good.

But, eventually it was time to head to Atlanta, where we were due the next day to attend a massive 4th of July (that's pronounced JEW-lie in the South) celebration at Jill's uncle Phil's place. It was an old-fashioned southern family get-together, with tons of food and lots of folks. I mostly resisted the urge to suspect that at least some of this was about coming on down to have a look at the new guy dating Jill, and instead focused on chatting with folks, and playing football with some of the kids.

A small fraction of Jill's clan..

After a very long day of meeting what seemed like all 3,427,853 members of Jill's extended family (these kinds of events tire me out, since I'm naturally introverted and only enjoy interacting with people I already know), we finally headed back to Jill's mom's place.

The next day Jill took me around town, showing me places that were significant in her childhood, and then we had dinner with her mom and headed back to Atlanta for our flights back to our respective homes. It was a whirlwind weekend of meeting family, but it went remarkably smoothly, and while exhausting, was surprisingly enjoyable.

Pit stop to meet the Giles kids.. Jill's quasi-nieces-and-nephew, soon to become my quasi-nieces-and-nephew-in-law.

In late July, Jill came to CA one more time, for interviews. She actually ended up getting the second job offer of her Bay Area search, but neither the first offer (in Sunnyvale running a shelter for the YWCA), nor the 2nd offer (in Berkeley, doing marketing for other nonprofits) was the right fit.

Also in July, we determined that Jill would actually move out to CA a little earlier than anticipated, arriving in CA on August 9th. It would be the start of a whole new era for both of us. But in the meantime, we'd go almost a month without seeing each other, after seeing each other every couple weeks for the past few months.

And in that month, I realized that it was time. And so, a grand plan began to take shape...

A beachwalk with mom

2010-12-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

(waves crashing into shore, birds flying overhead, as we walk...)

(comfortable silence)

(comfortable silence)

(comfortable silence)

Mom: "Have you ever thought about how cool it would be to know exactly how many rocks are in the ocean?"

(pause)

Me: "Mom, are you stoned right now?"

Mom: "No. I just always think about stupid things like that."

(comfortable silence)

(comfortable silence)

(comfortable silence)

(Mom yelps as a large wave drenches her to the knees.)

Me: "Mom, if you're going to walk that close to the waterline, you've got to keep an eye on the waves."

Mom: "Yeah, I know. I like to walk where I'm going to get creamed. There's kind of a thrill in it."

(pause)

Mom: "I guess I have Gus genes."

Me: "OK, I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. I'm clearly the victim here."

Puts all the stories in this blog in a whole new light, eh?

Deep Thoughts

2010-12-27T15:26:00.001-08:00

The other day, on the 23rd day of Angry Birds Christmas, as I was drifting peacefully off to sleep in my nice warm bed, only to be startled by a knee in the small of my back from Jill thrashing about and yelling "F**k!! F**king smug pigs!!", I was moved to ponder, as I waited for the pain to subside so I could drift back to sleep, the following question:

I wonder if, somewhere in a cave in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Osama bin Laden is playing with his brand new Droid and cursing as his holy warrior angry birds futilely blow themselves up trying to liberate the little Wahhabi eggs from those smug Zionist pigs.

Ponder that as you go to sleep tonight.

A Modest Proposal, Part 4: Welcome to the Jungle

2010-10-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

The end of 2009 saw me getting ready to have an adventure in the Belizean jungle with Alison and Jill...

From SF, you can fly to Belize through either Dallas or Miami. So, I routed myself through Miami, for one simple reason:

Ed.

Ed's family lives in Miami, and I knew he'd spend the holidays at home, so I thought it would be fun to spend a night on the town with Ed. I figured the odds of survival were high, and that if I focused hard, I could probably make the flight on time, maybe even with a couple hours of sleep.

So I landed in Miami on 12/29 and Ed picked me up at Miami-Dade. We went straight to Calle Ocho, the Cuban sector of town, and wandered around before stopping in a favorite cafe of his, where we had delicious Cuban snacks, and Ed failed to convert me into a lover of cafe con leche, which he would describe as "delicious", and I would describe as "disgustingly milky sweet lukewarm coffee". Some cultural differences cannot be bridged.

From there, we headed to Ed's apartment in Miami, which Ed's brother Javy currently inhabits. It's in a high-rise building with a view of the ocean. After chilling out there and meeting up with Javy, we went by their parents' house, on the way to meet a bunch of Ed's friends. Ed's parents are hilarious, but it's hard to describe them in words. They are plump, happy, voluble, irreverent Cubans. Everyone should have the pleasure of meeting them.

As it happens, that night was the night of the University of Miami's bowl game, so the entire city was out on the town. We met a bunch of Ed's HS friends at a bar/restaurant, and proceeded to watch the game. Sadly, the mighty Badgers of Wiscahnsin defeated the 'Canes of Miami, 20-14.

The most interesting part of the football-watching experience for me (not being either a 'Canes or Badgers fan) was meeting Ed's friend Mike Bowen. They had been very close friends in grade/high school, and Mike, it turns out, was the son of Sir Barry Bowen, the 2nd-wealthiest person in Belize. The Bowen family owns the national beer, Bellikan, as well as organic shrimp farming operations, most of the country's long-haul trucking operations, all of its Ford dealerships, and a 300,000 acre private reserve in the difficult-to-get-to tropical northwest of the country. On that land sits Chan Chich resort, where Jill and Alison and I were currently scheduled to spend our first 2 nights.

Chan Chich had been recommended to me by Alix, who stayed there while going out on wildcat observation trips with a pair of researchers who are based there, and who got a lot of their research funding from the Wildlife Conservation Society, which Alix's family is very involved with. Alix said the resort was amazing, so we were excited to go there. So it was intriguing to accidentally meet Mike, since his father owned the whole place.

It turned out that Mike was living in Belize, running the shrimping operation, and had been scheduled to go back that morning, but his flight had been canceled, and so he wound up out with us that night. He had been rebooked on the same flight that Alison and I were taking the next morning, so when the evening was finally done, I said I looked forward to hearing more about the country on the flight the next morning.

Ed and Javy and I rolled into the apartment around 2am, and were asleep by 3am, so I was actually able to get about 4 hours of sleep, which was nice (and probably a sign that we're starting to slow down in our old age). When I arrived to the airport the next morning, totally on time (which was a first for any flight involving Gus and Ed), I nested at the gate and soon enough, Mike showed up.

We spent a lot of time talking about Belize, and his experience coming back to the country after largely growing up in America. His mom and dad had split up when he was young, and now he had followed a similar path. He'd been in the States visiting his wife and kids, from whom he was separated. But we had a good time talking, and he promised to call up Chan Chich and tell them that we were friends of his, and to take extra special care of us.

Not long before boarding, Alison arrived at the gate. She'd left DC that morning. I hadn't seen her since the night in DC that I wrote about in Episode 3, which at this point had been almost exactly 3 years ago. But I recognized her right away, introduced her to Mike, and we got comfortable with each other pretty quickly, I think.

The flight to Belize was mercifully short, and we passed through customs without a problem, and then began to look for Jill. She had brought her own family to the airport that morning and sent them back to the States, and was just waiting for us. Thus, after walking through customs, I saw Jill for the first time since Chris and John's wedding, 2.5 years prior.

It was an odd moment; we were at once awkward around each other, and yet totally comfortable. It's very hard to explain. But there wasn't much time to dwell on it all, since we had to go find Vernon.

Vernon is an old Canadian dude who came down to Belize some 30 years ago, and, in his words, "just decided not to go back." He flies his little plane around the country, schlepping folks like us to places like Chan Chich. You charter his plane for around $500, and doing so saves you a 4 hour trip through the jungle on muddy, unmarked roads. The flight takes about 20 min, at 9000 feet..

Alison is praying she survives..

Shotgun!

Vernon.

It turns out you really feel it when your tiny Cessna is flying through a rainstorm.

We survived!

When we landed on the "airstrip", which is just a lane of grass next to a barn, the lodge sent some of their minions in a van to get us, and we headed into the jungle to find the lodge.

The lodge is made up of several private cabanas and a main house, with an outdoor pool/hot tub (inside a mesh cage, to keep out the howler monkeys), and a gazillion miles of jungle trails.

Our cabana.

We arrived mid-afternoon, just in time for lunch. You pay about $75 per person per day for food on top of the cabana cost (Me, on phone with Chan person, "Do we *have* to buy into the meal plan?" Chan: "Well, no... you don't *have* to. But the only other way to get food is to forage in the jungle." Me: "Uh, ok then, I guess we'll take the meal plan.") But I have to say, the food at Chan is outstanding, and we had a wonderful lunch out on the patio, watching the rain come down.

Side note: It's possible you have never thought to wonder why they call it a "rain" forest. The answer is: it rains. It rains *a lot*. And when it rains, it doesn't rain in a kind of light, misty/feathery way. To pick an analogy at random, it's like when you were a kid, and it was summertime, and your little sister was being really annoying, and you took the garden hose and sprayed her full in the face with it, and ran around the yard still spraying her with it, until she finally ran into the house, soaking wet to the bone. Rain forest rain is like that.

First on the agenda that afternoon was napping in the cabana while listening to the rain, and that was quite enjoyable.

Sleepytime in the cabana.

When the rain finally let up a bit, we went on a walkabout around the lodge, ultimately wandering into the jungle and finding small archaeological digs into small mounds, some of which will likely turn out to be tombs, I think.

Rain forest = lots of big trees and mud.

After a couple hours of wandering in the damp jungle, which actually is a lot more interesting than it sounds as I sit here typing this sentence, we came back and had a lovely dinner before retiring to our cabana to drink, talk, and read our books late into the night.

Another thing you should know about rainforests is that they are surprisingly loud. There are always birds chirping, insects buzzing, and, during rainy season, rain that is FUCKING LOUD AS SHIT. I awoke several times during the night when the rain got particularly loud.

The only thing that is louder than the rain is the howler monkeys. And howler monkeys, I must inform you, are on old people schedule. They wake up at about 5am, and by 515am you have a deep, visceral understanding of why they are called "howler" monkeys. Fortunately, I grew up across the street from a firehouse in a house with a loud cuckoo clock and a father who snored in a way similar to what I imagine it sounds like when 2 tractor trailers loaded with china collide head-on, spent a lot of time at my grandma's house, which was right next to freight train tracks, and lived for a couple years at the corner of 2nd ave and 86th street, which treated me every night to that godforsaken M15 bus whose wheel bearings were so shot that it sounded like sheet metal was being lathed in my apartment every time the damned thing passed by on 2nd ave. In short, I've developed the skill of being able to wake up, identify any noise as part of the ambient environment, and then fall back asleep immediately. It's a useful skill to have, especially in a rainforest, and I don't think the girls were quite as lucky in that regard.

The next day, 12/31, we left after breakfast to take a much longer walk through the jungle. The lodge was planning an afternoon celebration of the new year down by the lake, so we decided that we'd fit in about 4-5 hours of hiking before getting ready for the NYE celebration.

The hike was good- alternating between little bursts of sunshine and long periods of cloudiness.

Somewhere along the way, we were walking alongside a river, and Jill said: "That looks like a crocodile out there!" I looked at it and said, "Nah- it's a log. See!" And I started throwing these large seed pods that were lying around at it. Although I never hit it directly, I plunked several extremely close to it, and it didn't move, just like you would expect a log not to do. So, I teased Jill for her inability to see the obvious, and also stated for the record that were we not in the middle of a long hike, I would swim out there just to prove my point. Anyway, sometime in early January, Jill send me this picture:

Hmm. In retrospect, I guess it's a good thing I didn't swim out there.

That was the only wildlife we saw (or didn't see, in my case), for quite some time. Then, while I was clambering out on a tree hanging over the river, Alison started squealing, and Jill ran off with the camera.

Who can resist climbing out on something like this? Not me.

By the time I got myself back onto land, they were standing hushed under a tree, pointing at moving furry creatures- white-nosed coatis. A whole group of them. They're cute and furry, and fun to watch. They goof around like monkeys.

White-nosed coati.

In time, we returned to the lodge and got ready for the lakeside NYE celebration.

The drinking starts at 2pm.

They took us out to the lake in vans, and they had a drinks table and a BBQ going. The sky looked totally clear, and so I headed down to the lake shore.

A beautiful day for canoeing, no?

After a while, Jill and Alison joined me, and I pointed out that a couple groups had gone out onto the lake in canoes. There was one canoe left, with only one paddle, but no way was I going to pass up a chance to go canoeing, so the 3 of us climbed into the canoe, and I paddled/steered us from the back.

In retrospect, probably should have paid more attention to those oncoming clouds...

I wanted to explore the entire perimeter of the lake, so we struck out along the edge, eventually getting deep into reedy side areas and such, which were tricky to get out of with only one paddle. We were in the canoe for quite some time, and finally Jill pointed out that a large cloud system was rapidly approaching form behind. In turning to look, it became pretty clear that that cloud system would be carrying rainforest rain of the type I described before.

Naturally, we noticed this right around the point where we'd gotten to the far side of the lake, at the point farthest from the dock. I began to spin us around, and started rowing as fast as I could toward the dock. At this point, it became like one of those problems they give you in 7th grade math: a storm moves due east at 40mph, while a canoe moves due west at 1mph. If the canoe is 1/5 of a mile from the dock, and the storm is 4 miles from the dock, does the canoe make it to the dock without getting soaked?

(I'll wait a moment while you do the calculations.)

Answer: No. The canoe makes it halfway back to the dock when the skies open up.

Alas, too late to avoid getting soaked..

By the time we were back, we were soaked to a degree normally achieved only by being physically dunked in a large body of water. There was a small table with a large table-umbrella there on the dock, and so we huddled under there for a while. While there, we met Jackie, who was Mike Bowen's sister-in-law. Jackie was on the dock helping her daughter fish, in the pouring rain, in what Jill identified as $500+ designer heels. Jackie, it turns out, was from Texas, and I have to say- she's exactly what Sarah Palin is trying hard to be, but isn't actually.

We had a lot of fun talking with Jackie under the umbrella, until the rain finally let up. Then we all tramped up the hill to rejoin the rest of the celebration, which had been hastily removed to under a small canopy. Just as quickly as the rain came, it was gone, and in not much time the drinks and food were flowing again. We met Jackie's husband Zander, who was Mike Bowen's half-brother, and then we met Mike's father, Sir Barry Bowen, and his wife, Dixie.

I took an immediate liking to Dixie for a couple of reasons- first, she's from St. Louis, so she's naturally pretty awesome. And like so many St. Louisans, she's both friendly and direct. We talked for quite some time, and finally, as they began loading up the stuff and the guests to head back to the lodge, Dixie invited the 3 of us to come with her and her family to the next party, rather than go back to the lodge with the rest of the guests.

The thing is, they have a 300,000 acre ranch with organic coffee growing, sustainable logging operations, cattle ranching, exotic produce growing, the lodge itself, and who knows what else. It turns out that it quite literally takes a village to staff all that stuff. Basically, the Bowens have a factory town, populated by the workers and their families, and they were off to go throw the factory town a NYE party. As Dixie pointed out, "There will be free food, free beer, and dancing late into the night. You can party 'til dawn with the actual locals."

Who can resist an invite like that?

So, we joined the Bowen family and went to a good old fashioned company town bbq. It was fun. As promised, there was free food, free beer, and dancing. However, the local folks did kind of keep to themselves. After a couple hours of being there, we decided we'd catch a ride with Jackie back to the Lodge, so that we could go on a night hike with the grizzled night hike dude.

The night hike was a lot of fun. The highlight was finding tarantula holes in the ground, and poking sticks in there to get them to come out. These tarantulas were BIG. I'm not scared of spiders per se, but there is something pretty creepy about giant hairy spiders near your feet.

That's a big spider. I'd've put my foot right next to it to show you the perspective better, except that it's a GIANT HAIRY SPIDER, and frankly, I don't love you that much.

We hoped to have some other wildlife sightings on the hike, but all was quiet in the jungle, except for the constant sound of water falling from the upper parts of the jungle canopy to the lower parts. That's another thing I noticed- even when it's not raining, it sort of is, because a lot of water gets caught up top, and then over the next several hours slowly drips down onto everything below. It's remarkably loud.

When we got back to the Lodge, it was about 10pm, and lo and behold, Barry and Dixie drove up. I use the word "drove" somewhat loosely; Barry was clearly 395 sheets to the wind. They joined us on the steps of the Lodge, and immediately Barry went into the bar to get out some bottles of champagne.

And so, for the next couple of hours, we drank 3 bottles of champagne with Barry and Dixie, and all told stories, until Barry got sufficiently drunk that he started telling us stories about his daughter, who was up in Boston, and whipped out his phone to show us pictures of her. By "pictures", I mean "half naked pictures of her and her friend in the hot tub." I am not making that up. Barry was a riot, but I can guarantee you that if I ever have a teenage daughter, I will pray to god that no one, including me, EVER has half naked pictures of her on their cell phone. I don't think Dixie was so thrilled that Barry whipped out the half-naked daughter pics, but she looked like she'd seen this kind of thing before, and seemed pretty stoic about it.

When the champagne was all gone, Barry went inside and brought out a bottle of homemade cognac, and we started into that. I don't recommend going to cognac after a couple hours of champagne (and a several hours of mixed drinks before that). By the time Barry and Dixie said goodnight, and went to drive back down to the company town (I can't believe Barry was off to go drive through the dark jungle when he was now at least 795 sheets to the wind), Jill and Alison and I were beyond wasted. The last thing Barry said to us was that we "had" to go sit in the hot tub. "My hot tub is spectacular.. you *must* try it."

Not wanting to be rude, we staggered back to the cabana and got into our swimsuits, and proceeded down to the hot tub area. We could barely walk, but we did make it. After about an hour of hanging out talking about nothing, Alison cried uncle and went off to bed, leaving Jill and I alone in the hot tub, a volatile situation indeed.

Not for the reasons you might be thinking, you with your gutter mind. Have I not mentioned that I'd consumed enough alcohol to sedate an ox? No, it was volatile because 2 drunk people with complicated emotions who haven't seen each other in 3.5 years end up having their own personal Hot Tub Time Machine moment:

Jill: "I always loved you, you know."

Me: "Riiiight. Easy to say now."

Jill: "No, really, I did. It's just that I don't deserve someone like you."

Me: "Well, there you go. And that's why, all these years later, we find ourselves here. On opposite sides of a hot tub in the middle of the jungle. Because *you* don't think you deserve something better."

And... scene.

The scene of the scene.

Many more things were said that night, but I don't remember enough of them to make it worth the retelling. I know at some point we were actually yelling at each other about who did/didn't/had/hadn't/love/loved whom. Anyway, you can see from this snippet what the basic idea was.

The next morning, there was a whole new layer of awkwardness, as neither Jill nor I was willing to bring up the discussion from the night before. Anyway, we had to leave fairly early to go meet Vernon, who was flying us to a spot relatively close to the Guatemalan border. Our next stop was Tikal, where some of the most spectacular Mayan ruins can be found.

As we pulled up to the "airstrip" and saw Vernon and the plane, we also discovered... Barry and Dixie! They were waiting for us with a bottle of champagne, to toast us as we headed out. Still wearing what they'd been wearing the night before, I might add. We put away a glass of champagne each, and then hopped aboard Vernon's plane, promising to come back and see them again.

In a sad postscript, on February 26th, the small plane that Barry Bowen was piloting crashed while landing in high winds, killing himself and his 4 passengers. He was certainly a complex man, but I am glad to have met him, if only briefly. He had quite a colorful and influential life in Belize, which you can read about here:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1883050

But that day, we were convinced we'd come back to see Barry and Dixie. So, we bid them farewell and got on Vernon's plane. Our flight was even shorter this time; only about 10 minutes, which saved us several hours of travel if we'd stayed on the ground. And, Vernon was even kind enough to drive us from the little airstrip into the border town, where we could get a taxi to the actual border crossing. Otherwise, we were looking at hitchhiking our way into town along the main Belizean highway.

In the border town of San Ignacio, we stopped and got food at Happy Burger, which was pretty much the only place open- it's a somewhat dingy, dirt floor cafe, apparently owned by an American, which promises the best burgers in Belize. My guess: he's operating a burger joint in Belize because if he tried to do so in the U.S., he'd go out of business in half an hour. Still, it was food.

We caught a taxi to the border, and fortunately had a painless trip through Guatemalan customs. A van was waiting for us from the Tikal Hotel, and we began a 3 hour ride to the park. Sadly, only a fraction of that ride was paved, so it was *very* rough in places. The driver had to weave back and forth across the road in an effort to avoid (a) oncoming traffic, and (b) giant craters in the road. The smoothest place is dead center, but obviously both directions of traffic cannot use the center simultaneously, so a certain kind of unspoken negotiation takes place to determine who gets the choice piece of road. By "unspoken negotiation", I mean a negotiation which consists of equal parts "vigorous pounding on the horn" and "cojones". Negotiations, win or lose, are inevitably concluded with muttering curses in Spanish under your breath.

I rode in the front passenger seat, so I had a nice view of all this. When our driver was not engaged in negotiating, he was a very cheerful fellow. We had a painfully slow conversation, because my Spanish could generously be described as "minimal", and his English could generously be described as "nonexistent." However, he was quite chatty and wasn't about to let a mere language barrier stop us from having conversation on the long drive to the park.

At one point, we passed a dude standing on the side of the road with a bunch of stuff, and our driver looked at him as we passed by, and then hit the brake, stopping us a couple hundred feet ahead. Our driver then looked at me excitedly and began chattering at me in Spanish, the gist of which was that this guy was a "friend", and would it be OK if his "friend" rode with us.

Giving a glance in the mirror at the dude on the road, I decided to just play along with that, and said OK. So we put it in reverse and went back to the dude. Our driver got out, said to wait a minute, and in the mirror I watched what appeared to be another negotiation. Not, I might add, the kind of negotiation one might expect between 2 "friends".

Nevertheless, in short order negotiations were concluded, and the dude's stuff was unceremoniously lashed to the top of the van. At that point, I figured, "Well, he probably significantly increases his day's compensation by running a private taxi service in parallel to this, and who am I to stand in the way of 3rd-world capitalism?" So the dude climbed in, and off we went.

About halfway to the park, the driver's second form of compensation-increasing secondary activity became apparent. I'd seen this before in Egypt and in Kenya. We passed several sets of shops along the way, but the driver had a particular set of shops we stopped at, so that we could "take a break". The driver presumably gets a small commission on anything we buy at the shops. So we dutifully poked around, but it was a fairly sad set of shops, and I don't think any of us bought anything.

About another half hour down the road, we again came to a screeching halt for people waiting along the side. This time it was a pair of Guatemalan police. Again there was some vigorous negotiating, and then the police climbed in. I doubt our driver got paid for that, but I imagine in a place like Guatemala it helps to have done some favors for some of the local police.

We dropped the police off about 10 miles down the road, at what appeared to be a municipal dump. It's not clear why the police would want to go there, but they crossed the road in front of us and headed through the gate.

Thankfully, that was the last diversion on the road to Tikal. We arrived at the park just before dark, and checked into the hotel Tikal and took a nap. After napping, we went to explore the local eateries. You basically wander into the dark from the hotel, but if you follow the road you quickly come to an area with some cabana-like structures that house local mom-and-pop eateries. We picked one at random, and I ordered some nachos, since I hadn't had salsa in days, and thought this would be a good place to get some.

Wrong.

I want you to imagine the worst sporting-event nachos you have ever had in your life. Those nachos were like eating at French Laundry compared to this. If you put stale chips on a plate, sprayed them with Cheeze Whiz, and then nuked the plate, and served it with ketchup, you'd have something along the lines of what came out, except that what I had was worse. I could only eat a few before giving up and ordering the spaghetti bolognese, which was blissfully almost mediocre. Fortunately, every entree on the menu equates to like $3, so the cost of mis-ordering is pretty low.

We eventually made our way back to the hotel and turned in for the night. Jill and I were still pretending like we hadn't had the discussion of the previous night, and we were also still pretending that we didn't notice that we were pretending. It made every interaction between us a multi-layered experience.

The next day, we got up early and headed into the main park. The Tikal complex is spread out over a very large area, and quite a bit of it remains to be excavated, so we budgeted for an entire day of wandering around looking at temples. That, it turned out, was a good call. You really can spend the entire day wandering around Mayan temples, and some of them are truly spectacular.

The temples are *steep*, btw.

More temples.

If you like to climb all over stuff, Tikal is *awesome*.

Intrepid explorers.

The signage in the park is very helpful.

Temple V, from the top of Temple IV.

The climb up to the top of Temple V is not for the faint of heart; you climb up several vertical ladders that are made of creaky, rotting wood.

Temple V. The top looks so close, and so easy to get to. But it's not, and it isn't. You can see the wooden ladder in the upper left of the pic.

I don't recommend either looking down, or contemplating the probable engineering expertise of the folks who built the ladder system.

Here's a better sense of how steep these temples are.

On a day like we were there, you also have strong winds blowing at you. All you can do is focus on one rung at a time, and not ever look at anything until you're all the way up. We had a snack on the top of Temple 5, while we listened to monkeys in the treetops, observed the other temple tops poking out of the jungle canopy, and watched hot Australian girls trying to take their picture at the edge of the ledge.

Well, anyway, *I* watched the hot Australian girls trying to take their picture at the edge of the ledge. I was, you know, concerned that they might fall over.

Chilling out at the top of Temple V.

Of course, then you have to climb *down* the creaky rotting wooden ladders with the wind blowing. That's way worse, because it's harder to ignore just how high up you are when you start. But, happily, we made it up and down without incident.

Here's the view from the top of a temple that it turns out you're not supposed to climb.

Oops.

It's just that... well, from behind, it just looks like a hill, because it hasn't been fully excavated. I hypothesized that a temple was underneath the hill, and climbed it. Turns out I was right! There is a temple underneath. Something you can easily see from the front, where there are numerous signs, ropes, etc, saying that this is an active archaeological dig and that under no circumstances should you attempt to climb this temple.

Oops.

Some people- and I'm not naming names here- are the kind of people that see a hole in a rotting 1000-year-old wall in the middle of the jungle and think: "I just have to stick my hand in that. I just *have* to."

Here we see a temple entrance guarded by the Mayan Moon goddess Ix Jill and the Mayan street god 50 Quetzal.

Another temple you're not supposed to climb. OK, fine, this one I *knew* we weren't supposed to climb. But still...

By the time we exited the main park, we'd been hiking around for almost 7 hours, but it was only 3 o'clock, and there was rumored to be a lake with crocodiles nearby along one of the trails, so Alison and I bullied Jill into hiking on one of the trails that was labeled on our little map.

That hike ended up taking a little bit of a Gilligan's island theme to it.

We did, after quite some time, find the lake, but there were no crocodiles to be found. So, we kept going, since it was supposed to be a loop trail, but it ended up just taking us deeper and deeper into the jungle. Meanwhile, the rains started again, and it started getting dark rapidly. At that point, we'd been walking long enough that it seemed like a better bet to keep going and gamble that the trail really did loop in some fashion, versus trying to backtrack the entire way we'd already come. Jill in particular was not happy at this point; we'd bullied her into going on the hike in the first place, and now she was openly worrying that we'd end up sleeping in the jungle.

I assured her that if we did end up sleeping in the jungle, nothing bad would happen, but, just to try to avoid that, we should keep walking. Quickly. Soon we were all walking in silence as fast as we could go, since we were almost out of daylight and had no real idea where we were anymore. The trail, meanwhile, just continued to continue.

Lost on the trail? Here's some more helpful signage, as long as you define "helpful" as "telling you random facts about trees that aren't marked."

At some random point we came across a really nifty observation deck up in the top of a tree. I climbed up to the top via a ladder/wooden step system that made the Temple V ladder/wooden step system seem like a mall escalator.

The observation deck is up in there.

That looks pretty sturdy, right?

I say: "Yea!"

Jill says: "Fuck this- no way am I going up there."

Wuss.

It led to a platform that had a 20% grade on it, so you really had to watch yourself, but the view was spectacular. At the time, I kept to myself that the spectacular view was of jungle to the horizon in pretty much every direction; i.e., it was not obvious that we were anywhere close to anything approximating civilization. But that seemed like a piece of information that could probably wait to be shared later.

After climbing down, we resumed our worried walking. Fortunately, we did finally emerge from the jungle just after dark, so we got to have another dinner at one of the local eateries- a different one this time, that served food that was probably quite mediocre, but seemed pretty awesome relative to the grubs we were thinking we would have to forage for if we'd spent the night in the jungle.

We all passed out early that night, and the next day we had to catch the long ride back to the border. Fortunately, this time our driver, who was a different dude, did not stop to pick up anyone. He did stop at a set of shops, nicer ones this time, so we all picked up a few things to bring home.

We did eventually make it back to the border, and once again made it through customs without much problem. I'm convinced that the secret to expedited travel if you're brown is to be traveling with white women. It just makes everything go faster. No one sees you as a threat if you have a white woman with you. It's pretty remarkable.

Once back on the Belize side of the border, we got picked up by the Black Rock Lodge, which was where we would be spending the last two days of our trip.

The ride from the border to Black Rock took us up into the central highlands of Belize, which are beautiful. Again, we had to take some sketchy roads to get there, but we arrived in one piece in the middle of the afternoon. The Black Rock Lodge is up on a hillside in a river canyon, and after checking in, we were led to our cabin, which overlooks the river and the small waterfall below. We were told, upon checking in, that the Lodge would supply a free beer to anyone who could go over the falls on a tube and not get thrown off.

Doesn't look so bad, right? Except that you're seeing it from 100 yards away and from 150ft up. It's worse than it looks.

Hello, irresistible challenge.

As soon as we'd dropped our bags off and lounged around the cabin a bit, I suggested that we get the inner tubes and float down the river. I was determined to get a free beer (which, of course, I would give to the girls. Beer = gross. Going over a waterfall, free beer or otherwise, = HELLS YEAH!)

So, we rented tubes (which came with helmets- jesus, who needs a helmet to float down a frickin' river??) and hiked upriver about a mile and a half, to the main put-in. And, we spent the next couple hours leisurely floating down the river, watching the tropical highland forest. It was quite lovely.

As we came around the bend and saw the lodge, I was in the lead and could see the path straight down the middle for the falls. I started paddling with my hands to build up speed, and then executed a spin just before entering the falls, thus setting myself up perfectly to ride forward and through. In a moment, I went over the falls and airborne for the 8 foot drop into a tiny gorge. I pulled back on the front of the tube so that I could hit close to flat, and pulled that off successfully. However, I didn't lean forward again quickly enough, and in the swirling water at the bottom of the falls, the slight lean backward caused me to flip, submerging me completely and washing me downstream. When I surfaced, several guests of the lodge were up on the deck watching, and gave me a cheer.

Alas, no free beer.

Next, Alison came through the falls. She made a nice go of it, but flipped pretty much immediately.

Alas, no free beer.

Last came Jill. She didn't really have an organized approach; she just went over kind of sideways. Amazingly, she hit bottom and didn't flip. However, the water shoved her sideways, and we saw her crack her head on the side of the small gorge, which then caused her to jerk to the other side, and flip. From where I was on the riverbank, I could hear the crowd up on the deck audibly wince at the crack her helmet made against the rock.

For the record, that explains why they include helmets with the tube rental. I now strongly suggest wearing them.

When we finally dragged ourselves out of the water and climbed up the hill, the folks at Black Rock came out to meet us, and they judged that since Jill had made it over the initial falls without flipping, she won the free beer, a point which Jill has not let us forget.

Here is the result of another bet which Jill won, and which she has not let me forget.

Our cabin at Black Rock.

We headed back to the cabin to change for dinner, which at Black Rock is a communal dinner with everyone at one long table out on the deck. It was a lovely meal, with a lot of nice wine flowing, plus we discovered a scrabble board that allowed me to beat up on Jill and Alison while we waited for food. We had a great evening, but we decided to turn in early, because the next day was ATM, and departure from the lodge was at 730am.

ATM stands for Actun Tunichil Muknal, a Mayan cave that was discovered only in 1989, and which is an active archaeological site with all kinds of artifacts, plus human remains. To get there from Black Rock, you ride in the van for an hour to a random place on the edge of the jungle, then you hike for an hour through the jungle, fording the river 3 times. When we were there, it was technically "dry" season, but since it had been raining so much the fording the river part involved getting wet up past waist level.

On the trail to ATM

After the hour hike, you climb down into a little valley, and you come upon the mouth of the river that flows through the cave. The river is flowing out of the cave, and the water is super cold, and it turns out that to get into the cave, you have to swim upstream into it.

You have to swim in against the current, like salmon. If salmon swam into cold dark caves.

Once inside, there's a ledge that everyone gets out onto, and while the guide explains what's going to happen from there, you put on your helmets and caving shoes.

And, let me tell you- you do need the helmets.

Helmets on and ready to go.

From that initial point, you walk forward single file in the dark, with only your headlamp, and the path is occasionally out of the water, but is mostly in it. A lot of the time, the water is chest high, and sometimes you have to start swimming again. The whole cave system is about 3 miles long, but you hike back for only about 2 miles, which takes a couple hours. Along the way are sites where the Mayans performed ritual sacrifices. The progression of these sites is fascinating.

The Mayans believed that the gods lived inside the cave, at the place where the river emerges from underground. You can trace the progression of Mayan history by how deep the artifacts are, and by how serious the sacrifices were. For instance, in the earlier years of the main Mayan civilization, rains were plentiful and crops were good, so the Mayans were apparently feeling good about life and decided the gods would be fine with sacrifices of small amounts of crops, relatively close to the mouth of the cave. However, the Mayans went into a period of prolonged drought, and as the drought got worse, they moved deeper into the cave, and started sacrificing animals. Finally, as they approached the collapse of their civilization, the Mayans apparently decided that the gods would not be satisfied with anything short of human sacrifice, and in the deepest parts of the cave, there are human sacrificial remains. In many cases, the remains have been calcified by the flow of calcium carbonate enriched water from the cave, which have crystallized the remains and made them essentially part of the surrounding rock.

This is one Skull & Bones society you probably don't want to be a part of.

After seeing several of the early sites, and then winding/swimming/crawling deeper and deeper into the cave, you eventually come to a larger cavern, and the guide directs you to start climbing the wall of the cavern. It's a somewhat treacherous climb; there are no ropes or safety devices of any kind, everything is slick with cold cavewater, and it's quite dark. But about 20 feet up, you end up in a hidden cavern that is littered with sacrificial pots, and in several places, the bones of sacrificial victims. There are multiple skulls, and several other bones. It's pretty awesome, in a pretty creepy way. Meanwhile, you have to be really careful where you step, because if you're not paying attention you could step on a 1000 year old pot and destroy it.

In the Cave of the Crystal Skull.

After looking around the main chamber for a while, the guide takes you deeper into the hidden cavern. After climbing down and through some skinny crevices, you come to a last, deep chamber. In the chamber is the ricketiest ladder you have ever seen in your life (more rickety than the ladders at Temple 5 in Tikal), and one at a time you climb into this final ledge area. In the back of this last, hidden ledge, lies the Crystal Maiden. Her entire skeleton is perfectly preserved, still in the place where she probably bled to death after having her back broken in ritual sacrifice. She is the only thing in the entire cave complex that you can't actually touch.

The Crystal Maiden.

It's pretty awesome to be able to see her. The whole experience up until that point feels like being on your own Indian Jones adventure (I mean, there really *is* a crystal skull at the end). It's incredible to think that the Mayans got that deep into the cave, and discovered all these nooks and crannies, using only torches, and no helmets. Because believe me, everyone on the trip hit their head on a rock at least 3 times. It's totally black, and you really do have to wiggle through a bunch of tight crevices. And you're totally in contact with everything in the cave (except the Crystal Maiden herself); it hasn't been all safety-ized, or sanitized, or Disney-fied like such a place would be in the United States.

Once we'd all had some time to ponder the Crystal Maiden, we began the long hike out of the cave. A few hours later, we were out of the cave, across the river, and back at the van for the long drive home. The drive was mostly in silence, since we were all exhausted.

We got back to the Lodge shortly before dinner, so there wasn't time to really rest before getting ready for dinner. So we joined the rest of the guests at the Lodge and had a wonderful dinner.

For a while, Alison and Jill and I just sat at the table and talked. Eventually, all the other guests were gone. And after a while longer, Alison decided to head off to bed, leaving Jill and I alone at the big table. After some brief small talk, the real conversation began.

And wow, what a conversation it was. It was a conversation about what had happened in Gus and Jill 1.0, it was a conversation about what each of us had gone through over the last 3 years, it was a conversation about our families and our personal experiences, and how those experiences have shaped us in relationships.

And, eventually, it was a conversation about the possibility of us.

In a million years, I never would have thought we would have had such a conversation. What was most amazing was how open and honest it was. We had never had such an open, honest, and sober conversation ever. We sat alone at the table talking for over 3 hours. But finally, it was time to get some sleep. We were scheduled to leave the following morning and head back to the U.S.

The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast, we headed back to the airport. Our afternoon flight to Miami went smoothly, as did customs. The 3 of us had dinner in Miami airport, and then Alison left to catch her flight to DC. Jill's flight did not leave for another 2 hours, so we sat on the floor in Miami airport and, like a couple of sappy lovesick teenagers, played songs for each other on each other's iPods until Jill had to go.

Sadly, my flight to SFO did not leave until the morning, and Ed had already gone back to NYC, so I spent the night in Miami airport. Which, I must say, was frickin' freezing. I basically shivered all night. Jill, it turned out, had to spend the night in Atlanta's airport because her flight to Harrisburg didn't leave until morning, so we texted each other all night and I tried not to freeze to death.

Finally, the next day, I made it back to CA. When I landed, there was a message from Jill saying that she felt like everything had changed.

And, it had.

A Modest Proposal, Part 3: The Dark Ages

2010-09-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

In our last episode, Jill had just left my apartment to catch her train back to DC, and after she was gone, I decided that it was time to stop waiting for chance to bring her back to NYC. I wanted to see her regularly, really begin dating, and so I plotted how to make that happen.

I started by looking up flower stores in DC, and that afternoon I ordered flowers delivered to her office for Tuesday, along with a note thanking her for coming to the dinner party and saying how much I'd enjoyed seeing her. Can't go wrong sending flowers, I figured.

Two things happened on Tuesday.. First, I got an email from Jill thanking me for the flowers and telling me how surprised she'd been to receive them, how pretty they looked, and how much inquisitive attention they were generating from her co-workers. The second thing that happened is that I came home to find that a package had come from Crate & Barrel. When I opened it, I saw that it was from Jill, and that she had sent me... [an egg separator]. Until that moment, I'd completely forgotten our little exchange about egg separating, probably owing to the fact that I had been at least 40-50 sheets to the wind at the time it took place, but the moment I saw the egg separator, it suddenly all came back. (See part 2 for a recap). It came with an impish note from Jill, and I laughed and laughed.

In that moment, I remember thinking: "If we have just one more date, I think we'll end up married to each other." Since Jill had thus far done all the traveling, I decided to offer to come down to DC, with a secret agenda of asking to see Jill on a more regular basis. And to test that theory, about one more date.

And that's when the Dark Ages began.

In retrospect, I think they actually began before the dinner party; Jill had a certain... distance to her that night and the next day that I hadn't felt before. But we'd still had a great time together and so I'd overlooked that. But when followed over the next almost-a-month was a strange dance of trying to find a time to connect via the phone, having a hard time doing that, agreeing on a time only to have it fall through at the last minute, etc. It was hard not to come to the conclusion that what was happening was the soft landing, the no-without-saying-no to a question (are you really interested in me?) that I hadn't even had the chance to ask yet. But I had never felt so strongly so early for a woman before, and I didn't want to just let it fizzle, so I hung in there and we did eventually speak.

In that conversation, Jill told me that she'd been offered the job in Mayor Bloomberg's office, but that she'd turned it down. She said she had too much going on at her current job to leave it now, and also that it didn't work in her personal life to make that kind of life change at this moment. Although privately disappointed, I expressed support for her decision and then made my pitch to come and see Jill in DC.

After some negotiation, Jill said she could do it in early December, on a weekend when it also happened that her best friend Chris was going to be in town, so as long as I didn't mind that Chris would be there too, I was welcome to come. Now, that seemed pretty suspiciously like the weekend one would pick if one wanted a buffer there, but under the half-a-loaf-is-better-than-no-loaf philosophy, I accepted.

Thus, a few weeks later I found myself on a plane to DC. I figured we would go out that night with Chris and some other friends, but that eventually I would have at least a few minutes alone, so I'd rehearsed a little speech in my head and was ready to go.

We had dinner that night with Chris, and then went out for drinks later with Jill's friend [Alison]. We had a very nice time- I enjoyed getting to know Chris better and I also enjoyed meeting Alison. Finally, we returned home and all went to bed, and at last I was alone with Jill. And so, I mustered up all my courage, and started The Conversation.

Gus: "So, I just wanted to say that I've really enjoyed the time we've spent together in New York, and I wanted to come down here to tell you that, and to say that I'd really like to see more of you, and I'm wondering how you feel about that."

(pause)

Jill: "Thanks."

(pause)

During that pause, which lasted probably a second in real time, but approximately 3 years in subjective time, the following images all crashed into my head at once (not making this up- I've always remembered this moment *very* vividly):

... the bases are loaded in sold-out Busch stadium. The fans are on their feet... it's the bottom of the 9th, down by a run, the bases are loaded, and Gus is at the plate with a full count. There is an announcer:

Announcer: "Here's the pitch... SWING, and a MISS! That's the ballgame!"

silence in the stands as Gus stands dejectedly at the plate...

... World War II... a B-22 bomber has just taken a hit and is streaming smoke and flame as it begins to plunge toward an anonymous death in the middle of the Pacific. Through the window of the cockpit we can see pilot Gus as he engages in a futile attempt to pull up...

... that scene from Pearl Harbor where the Arizona is slowly sinking, and those sailors are all trapped inside, and you can see their fingers sticking out of the grating as the water starts pouring in and the ship slips below the surface...

Then the pause ended, and Jill went on to explain that she was going to be extremely busy at work until her big event she had to plan (4 months away), and she tended to disappear on people, and that she sometimes used work to keep distance from people, and that "It's not you, it's me."

At that point, I almost laughed- I remember thinking "Oh my god, I'm in dating cliche hell: too busy at work, you know, for like, *ever*, it's-not-you-it's-me, oh god, please let this stop."

Finally, we just settled into an awkward silence, and I think she eventually fell asleep. As for me, I just lay there. All I could do was lay there thinking: I am so stupid. I mean, colossally, stupefyingly stupid. How could I have thought this would end any other way? The signs were all there. But no, I just had to come down here and humiliate myself, like a moth that gets really close to the flame, all the while thinking, "Gee, it sure is getting awfully hot. That can't be a good sign. But whatever, I just have to touch that light... I just have to... I just ha-" (death)

I did not sleep a wink the entire night. It seemed like the longest night of my life. When the sun finally started coming up and there was enough light in the room to read, that's what I did. Eventually, Jill woke up and said we ought to get out of bed and join Chris, and as she moved to do so, I reached out and touched her arm very lightly.

There are 2 things I'll always remember about that moment: first, the almost electric feeling of that tough, and second, the look that Jill gave me when I did it. It was a look with a lot of layers to it- I read in it that it had been as physically electric for her as it had been for me, that it had touched her emotionally, and that it scared her. Now, that's a lot to read into one brief moment, and by no means was I feeling particularly confident at that point about my ability to read Jill, but as I write this, I've had the benefit of some months for Jill and I to relive all those old moments, and tell each other what we each were thinking at the time. And it turns out I had that look mostly right.

But at the time I didn't know that, and the moment passed, so we went out to join Chris. I was just running out the clock, waiting until 10 for the cab to come and get me and take me back to NYC. I put on the happy face as much as I could until it was finally time to go. Jill walked me out, and I remember her standing there on the street watching me go as the cab pulled away. She looked as beautiful and inscrutable as ever.

As for me, I slumped down in my seat and began the odious process of Updating People. I had shared with a few people my grand intentions in going down there, and of course they all wanted to know how it had gone. I tried, not particularly successfully I'd imagine, not to let show how humiliated I felt, but I got through it and got home.

For the next few weeks, I listlessly went through my lessons and tried to focus on putting it all behind me. Around Christmastime, I went on a date and took her for a walk around the southern tip of Manhattan. It was a beautiful night, and New York City is at its most romantic (in my opinion) around Christmastime. But what I discovered as we went on this very romantic walk was that I could think only of Jill, and how much I'd like to take her on this walk.

When I got home, I decided that since I still couldn't get her out of my mind, I'd try to see if I could get a conversation going again with her. I was still confused about what had actually happened, especially given that she'd never actually said something like "I'm not interested in you," or "I only think of you as a friend" etc, etc. So I bought her a pair of wine glasses (since she'd complained once about having to drink wine out of paper cups at her apartment) under the guise of its being the holidays, and mailed them to her with a letter.

The letter worked, in the sense that we did end up having a conversation about it. We had a long phone call one night in early January, and in it, Jill for the first time shared some things about her past, and why it was hard for her to respond to what I was trying to offer her. The upshot of the conversation was: "It's not that I'm not interested, but I'm not in a place in my life where I can accept what you're offering me."

Me being me, I chose to focus a lot more on the "It's not that I'm not interested" part, and a lot less on the "I'm not in a place in my life where I can accept what you're offering me" part.

Though I hoped that that conversation would be the first of many conversations about what was going on in our lives, and how we might move closer together, it turned out to be the first of exactly one conversation. We slipped back into only the occasional email, and then in mid January I was offered the position of Director in the company, with the chance to move back to California and have the Bay Area territory. It was a tremendous opportunity, but I said I needed a little time to think about it.

Now, I knew that Jill loved California, and would more than likely be open to moving back there at some point, and so before I made a final decision, I thought I would try one more time to see if there was any chance that Jill and I might date.

Shortly thereafter, a chance to do that presented itself when Jonathan invited me down to DC for a concert. I contacted Jill and told her I would be in town, and asked if she wanted to get together for coffee or something. She met me at the metro station by her house, and we went for a long walk with her dog Jukebox, and then went back to her apartment. We talked for a long time, but I couldn't seem to steer the conversation to anything significant. Jill was a professional lobbyist on Capitol Hill, so I suppose I was overmatched in terms of trying to control a conversation, but I could tell she was keeping me at arm's length, and deliberately preventing the conversation from getting too close to anything like what we'd discussed on the phone, or even when I'd come down the last time.

In the end, I left without having talked about any of the things I'd hoped to. I had been searching for any reason to hope we might get together, and Jill was careful not to give me any. If she had, I would have gone back to NYC and said that I couldn't accept the Directorship for another 1-2 years; I was willing to do the bulk of the travel to DC to see Jill, and I was even willing to eventually transition to working half the time out of the DC office, until such a time as Jill was ready to move to CA. No one else was interested in either SF or San Diego, so I figured there would still be opportunities for a directorship in CA.

I never mentioned any of that stuff to Jill at the time; these are among the things that we have revealed to each other only as we have dated over the last 8 months. In any case, I went back to NYC and accepted the directorship in SF, and began making plans to move that summer.

Back in NYC, again moping my way through my lessons, I eventually decided to have a dinner party, and summon some of my close friends to tell them the story, and see what they had to say about it. So, over President's Day weekend, my sister, Dan, Shara, Joel, Ed, Jonathan, Jeffrey, and a few others gathered for a working dinner. I told the whole story, and then posed the question: "What do I do? Do I just write her off completely? Or do I continue to try and pursue her in some fashion, and if so, how?" Then I went in the kitchen and cooked for a while, while the group discussed the situation.

Even though I was in a different room, I could tell that the discussion was quite a spirited one. When I put dinner on the table, and we started eating, we went around the table and each person gave their recommendation. Interestingly, the entire range of possibilities was represented; there wasn't anything even close to a consensus. But it was great fun to listen to all the different perspectives, and by the time we were done, and had moved on to board games (which eventually saw my sister punching Ed in a fit of competitive frustration, which I think turned him on), I had made up my mind. I opted for a course different from any I'd heard, but which nevertheless was inspired by the discussion overall.

Over the next 10 weeks, I commenced a campaign based on the premise that the primary thing that was holding Jill and I back from dating each other was actually not a fundamental lack of feeling for me, but rather that she was scared of taking the chance on the relationship, only to have it not work out and end up getting hurt. Now, while I'd been pretty clear that I was interested, I had not really communicated the full extent of my interest in Jill. I'd kept that part somewhat close to the vest, wanting first to see how she would respond. But now, I thought, it's time for the Hail Mary pass. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that.

I knew that in 11 weeks I would see Jill at Chris's wedding, where she was to be Maid of Honor. So, I wrote a series of 5 letters in which I told the story of meeting her and going on the dates that we'd gone on, and how emotionally significant it all was to me. But, figuring that it would be hard to read that directly, I wrote the letters as a fairy tale in 5 parts, about a knight and a lady. I also made 5 mix CD's that functioned as a soundtrack to the 5 letters. I alternated between them, sending 1 letter or CD each week, which took us until the week before Chris's wedding.

I hoped that the letters would spark more dialogue between us, but I didn't hear from Jill until after I'd sent the last CD. She sent a letter, which arrived just a couple days before I left for LA for the wedding. It was, in many ways, a beautiful letter, which spoke back to me in the kind of language that I had used in my letters to her. But, it didn't say any of the things that I'd hoped it would. It prompted me to write [a letter back in response], but because I'd promised in my 5th letter that I would stop already with the letters and CDs, etc., and that I would stop pursuing her unless she gave me a clear signal to do otherwise, I instead FedEx'd it to myself, and put it away, thinking that if we ever did get together, I would surprise her with it as a gift.

So I went to Chris's wedding expecting that it would probably be the last time I ever saw her, and trying to take some comfort in the idea that I'd really tried, really given it my very best shot.

The wedding, it turns out, was a very dramatic affair. It was great to see Chris and John married, and the service was great. But Jill was not in a good place, and at one point just before the service, she walked up to me and said:

"I hate weddings. Promise me that when you get married, you won't ask me to be in your wedding."

And then she looked at me expectantly.

I thought about it for a second, and then I said:

"I'm sorry Jill, but I can't promise you that."

That turns out to have been one of my more prescient moments in life.

At the reception, Jill delivered her maid-of-honor speech, which is outside the scope of this blog, but which is legendary in its own right. It was a pretty spectacular public self-immolation, and the echoes of it still ring down through the ages. Afterward, Jill largely disappeared (insofar as I could tell), and I took refuge on the dance floor, where I could forget about all that had transpired. I didn't see her again until almost the end of the last song. I'd hoped to get one dance with her, but it seemed it was not meant to be.

And then, the DJ put on one more song, to play while he packed up. It was: Don't Stop Believin.

There's so much we don't understand about how the universe works, and I've often marveled at how *that* particular song was the one the DJ chose to play. We danced together, essentially alone, since everyone else was filing out of the reception hall, and we sang along to the song. It was... fun. And I wanted to say that if she would just say the word, it could be like that all the time, but I'd promised to give her space that night, and so I kept quiet.

There was a long after party that night, and I had a good time. Jill and I didn't really speak to each other, but I did look over her way a lot, and it sure seemed like she was looking over at me a lot. But eventually the party wound down, and with a perfunctory hug goodbye, I went back to my room, fully expecting never to see or possibly even hear from her again.

The next morning, I laid in my bed in the hotel room and tossed and turned. Finally, in an effort to get everything that was in my head out of my head, I wrote [another letter to Jill], which I also ended up FedEx-ing to myself, rather than actually sending to her. When I got back to NYC, I threw it in the closet with the other one.

In the meantime, I drove up to JOC's house that day, and he and I had a long conversation about all that had happened. I was on my way to the Bay Area to scout places to live, and a place to put the office. Since JOC's house was halfway to the Bay Area, I spent the night there. He was very supportive, and since he'd known Jill pretty well for several years, he was able to help me make some sense out of everything.

That night, around 3am, my phone went off. I'd gotten a text. I rolled over and picked it up, expecting it to be Kiddo or one of my other students. Instead, it was from Jill. Although the text was itself innocuous, I had the sense that it was a trial balloon kind of text, as if to see if I would respond at all. And I laid there for a couple of minutes trying to figure out if I wanted to respond, given all that had happened.

In the end, I figured that Jill needed more people in her life who would support her. And I thought that if I couldn't date her, well, at least I could provide her steady friendship and support. The truth was, I still loved her enough that that was better than nothing. So I did respond. She was in the airport in Atlanta on her way back to DC.

When I finally arrived in the Bay Area the next day, I did a lot of looking at office spaces, and even interviewed with the guy at Google who controls all their real estate and office space (thanks to L, who set that up). By the middle of the afternoon, I was sure I'd put a stake down in Palo Alto, and so I turned my thoughts to where I'd want to live.

Since I'd spent the last couple years living literally across 2nd avenue from the office, my first thought was that I'd do something similar, and try to find an apartment as close as possible to the office. But then I remembered Half Moon Bay, which I'd driven through in college with Joel and Z-man, and so I decided to take a drive to the beach.

When I got there, HMB was showing her very best self. It was sunny and 72 degrees, and I went for a walk down on the sand. I sat down, and texted Jill that I was sitting on the beach in HMB. She responded with something "omg, that's my mom's favorite place in the whole world! What are you doing THERE?"

At that point, I'd been on the fence about whether I should live close to the office, or maybe look for a place near the beach. But when I got Jill's text, it tipped me. I decided that when I moved out to CA, I'd look and see if I could find a place in HMB. So, in a very real way I ended up in HMB because of Jill, and so it's only fitting that we are getting married there next year.

The next day, I went back to NYC. I was very sad, but I knew it was time to put it all behind me and move on. And that's what I did. A couple months later I met Keiko, fell in love again, and over time, healed. Along the way, Jill and I would email perhaps once a month, and let each other know what was going on in our lives, so we stayed in touch. I watched as she moved away from DC, which was a toxic environment for her, got control of her life, and moved on in her own way. 2 years passed like that.

Then Keiko and I broke up. It was a very hard breakup, and I was miserable for about 4 months. Somewhere in that time, Jill invited me to go meet her and Alison in Belize over New Year's. Needing to do something fun, and figuring enough time had passed that we could see each other in a healthy way, I agreed.

And then everything changed.

A Modest Proposal, Part 2: The Backstory (continued)

2010-09-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

The end of Part 1 saw me flying back home to NYC on 8/27/06, wondering if in fact I had just met the girl I would marry, and also wondering if she in any way remotely felt anything like what I did.

My first thought upon landing was: "How long do I wait before I call her?" Waiting too long would convey a lack of serious interest, and I didn't want that. Calling too soon would convey desperation/lameness/crazy-stalker-guy, and I didn't want that either. After much rumination, I settled on 2 days as the right balance.

So, on Tuesday evening I called Jill. I had no idea if we would have anything to talk about, and I was nervous as heck, but it felt immediately comfortable talking to her, and we had a nice, somewhat lengthy conversation. She mentioned that she was applying for a job in Mayor Bloomberg's office, and that as a result she would probably be heading up to NYC in the near future for interviews.

That first conversation led to a couple more phone conversations over the next couple weeks, until finally Jill had a date she was going to be in the city for interviews. We agreed to meet for lunch on the Upper East Side, and agreed that we would meet at my apartment (which was right across the street from my office).

We met at my apartment because I wanted to start us off with a nice view of the city; I was lucky enough to have scored a penthouse 1 BR that had a balcony with a view of the Chrysler building. It also had that rarest of rarities in a NYC apartment: it was the size of a normal one-bedroom apartment, like you might find in any average American city. In NYC, that made it enormous.

So we met at my apartment building and took in the view, and then I took us to a French bistro near Central Park, where we had a delicious lunch. From there, we went for a walk around the reservoir in Central Park. It was a beautiful day, and I was struck again by how comfortable and easy it was to be with Jill. I had worried that it feel a little awkward or forced, getting together for the first time a few weeks after the wedding, but in fact it felt completely natural.

So, when we made it to the West side of the park, it was time for her (and me) to go, so I hailed a cab for her, and away she went. As for me, I was already 15 minutes late to my next student (Alix), but I knew she'd forgive me if I told her the reason, since she knew how much I'd been looking forward to this date.

Apparently the interview had gone well for Jill, because just a couple of phone conversations later, she told me she'd be up in NYC interviewing again, on a Friday morning, and this time was planning to make a weekend out of it, so did I want to get together? Naturally, I did.

I planned to take Jill to Asia de Cuba (highly recommended) for dinner, and then walk a couple of blocks to the Library Bar, which is a fun rooftop bar with a view of, wait for it... the NY Public Library. It's an intimate place, and we had just had our summer holiday party at work there, so I knew the place well.

When that Friday arrived, I told my last student of the evening, Jordan, a senior at a high school in northern NJ, that we would be having a truncated lesson this time, and that I would make up the time when we met next week..

Me: "Okay dude, at precisely 715pm, even if I'm in the middle of a sentence, I am out that door right there, 'k? Because I've got to get down to Plaza Flowers and get some flowers to take with me for when I show up at Jill's hotel."

Jordan: "Hahaha... you're going to bring her flowers? Is that how old people like you date?"

(pause)

Me: "Okay, Mr. Casanova, why don't you give me some dating advice. Who's your Primary Love Interest right now?"

Jordan: "Oh, she's this girl who works in the music store in the mall by my house. OMG, she is so hot."

Me: "Okay, so have you asked her out yet?"

Jordan: "Well, uh, no... not exactly."

Me: "So then what's your strategy for asking her out, Mr. Big Talker?"

Jordan: "Well... last time I was there I bought piano music."

Me: "You bought piano music."

Jordan: "Yes."

Me: "Wait.. do you *play* the piano?"

Jordan (shifts uncomfortably in his seat): "Uh, well, ... no."

Me: "Niiiiiiiiiiice. So what is this hot girl's name?"

Jordan: "Uh, I don't know."

Me: "What do you mean, you don't know? You bought the piano music from her and didn't ask her name?"

Jordan: "Well, that's the thing. I walked up to her counter to talk to her, and... and... then I panicked. I couldn't think of anything to say. But she was standing in front of a shelf full of piano music, so... I bought some. Actually, I bought a bunch of it."

Me: "Exactly how much piano music did you buy?"

Jordan: "I don't know... maybe $50 worth."

Me: "You bought FIFTY DOLLARS worth of piano music???"

Jordan (sinking slowly into his seat): "Yes." [in a tiny voice] "Three times."

Me: "You did that THREE TIMES??"

Jordan: "WELL NOT IN THE *SAME* *DAY*!!"

Me: "OH... OH... well, that's MUCH less pathetic then. So, to recap where we are, I'm going to take my old-man self and my old-man flowers down to the hotel room of the hot girl *I'm* interested in, whose name I know, and then I'm going to take her out for a nice dinner and drinks, and then at the end of the evening I'm going to ask her out again, while meanwhile you are going to be spending $50 a week buying music for an instrument you don't even play, until the day finally comes when your nutsack descends enough to ask the girl you're buying the music from what her name is. Is that where we are?"

Jordan: "Uh.."

Me: "Okay, you do NOT get to criticize my dating strategy ever again. Are we clear?"

Jordan (tiny voice): "Yes."

Me: "Awesome."

So, as promised, I bolted the room at precisely 715pm, with Jordan wishing me luck, and I headed down to Plaza Flowers to pick up a very small bouquet to take to Jill. I gave her the flowers when I arrived (Jill: "Wow, you brought me *flowers*?" Me: "I know it's how old people date, but there's a story here..."), and then we headed to dinner.

Dinner at Asia de Cuba was amazing. We had the strongest (and most expensive) mojitos ever while we waited for our table, and then we had a huge dinner that couldn't be beat, while putting away an entire bottle of really nice wine. Thus, by the time we left, we were roaring drunk, and getting up the Library Bar for more drinks was clearly not happening. Instead, I walked Jill back to her hotel.

At this point, I will gracefully fast-forward to the next day, riding in a cab downtown to teach my pro bono SAT class, when I thought back on the evening, and how amazing it had been. Not that any one thing in particular had been amazing, but as always, spending time with Jill just seemed... right... somehow. It was tremendously exciting, and I thought that there was really just one more thing I wanted to know before attempting to get really serious about this, which was: how would Jill mesh with my friends? The answer to that: throw a dinner party and see.

Jill and I had talked about cooking, and I had mentioned liking to throw dinner parties, but I think she thought I exaggerated the size/scope of them. Unfortunately, it was going to be nearly a month until she could make it up to the city, but I took that in stride and set the date she chose, which was in mid October.

When the day of the dinner party arrived, Jill texted me to say she was willing to come early to help. I had learned from throwing these types of parties that it's best to have a sous chef, and Ed was my sous chef of the day. But I told her if she wanted to help, Ed would probably need all the help he could get chopping vegetables.

When Jill arrived, she set her stuff down and we chatted for a few minutes. As she walked by my bookshelf, she noticed some of my science fiction books, and said "Oh, you like science fiction? I should borrow some of your books."

I was stunned.

I mean, I love science fiction, unabashedly so. But, I had never met a *woman* who liked science fiction. I mean, not one I was actually attracted to. I had actually, right up until that moment, never even considered the possibility of dating someone who shared that particular interest. I was barely able to stop myself from making the joke: "You like science fiction?? OMG, will you marry me right now?"

But, I didn't make that joke. At 18, that's a kinda funny joke. At 36, making that joke to a 35 year old woman, that joke has a much higher probability of going horribly awry.

Anyway, Ed arrived soon afterward, and I put them to work chopping vegetables. They seemed to get along just fine, which I was glad to see, but I was mostly busy in the kitchen.

At one point, I was working on the dessert, and was separating eggs, when Jill came into the kitchen to see how I was doing. At that point, I was separating eggs the old-fashioned way, going back and forth between egg shells. Jill seemed fascinated by it...

Jill: "You know they have a tool for that, right?"

Me: "There's a tool for *separating eggs*?"

Jill: "Yeah. It's called an egg separator. You just pour the egg into it, and the whites slip out the bottom and leave the yolk behind. You should get one."

Me: "Wow. That could be... totally life changing."

Jill: "Smartass."

I'd invited a bunch of my NYC friends, and we had a very grand dinner indeed. Naturally, I started late, probably around 9pm, and consequently we went until around 230 in the morning, at which point everyone was stuffed and wasted. I remember most of the guests were getting ready to go, while meanwhile Socci was camping out on the sofa looking like he was going to settle in and keep drinking wine. Jill was in the bathroom, and I remember pulling Ed aside:

Me: "Uh, dude, what I need you to do right now is get Socci the hell out of here. You know what I'm saying?"

Ed: "Right... got it. I'm on it."

With that, Ed half cajoled, half dragged Socci out, while also shooing everyone else out, so that Jill and I could get some alone time.

Gracefully fast-forwarding us to the next day, I noticed that Jill had a certain... distance to her. Intermittently. In some moments it seemed like she wanted to get close, and in other moments it seemed like she wanted to pull away. It was hard to read, especially given that we were clearly both recovering from the effects of the night before. And anyway, all I could really think about was that we'd had 3 really great dates, and it was time to think about what the next step should be.

In time, Jill had to leave to catch her train back to DC, and after she was gone, I began to plot the next step. Which I'll tell you about, in Part 3: The Dark Ages.

A Modest Proposal, Part 1: The Backstory

2010-09-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

I got engaged last Thursday, 8/26/10. There's a story there, but before I can tell it, you need certain background details. Important details that you might wish to hang onto for later will be bracketed as such: [important detail]

The story begins, really begins, at a wedding.

On August 26th, 2006, I flew from NYC to LA, for JOC's wedding. I was a groomsman, and I was looking forward to seeing him. I was pleased that he had finally found a nice, sane girl to marry, and so I was excited about being there to show my support.

I was also kind of excited because this was the first wedding I was attending as a single guy since a wedding my parents made me attend in India when I was 7. Still, JOC warned me on the phone early that week that the population of single women attending the event would probably be fairly small, and to manage my expectations accordingly. Which, I assured him, was totally fine- after all, the point of being there was to show my support for his marriage to V.

So, I arrived in LA not expecting to meet anyone. After checking in to my hotel [The Sportsmen's Lodge] and running errands that morning/early afternoon with JOC, I decided to head down to [the pool] around 2pm and go for a swim.

Not expecting that I would be meeting anyone, I made no effort to, you know, pretty myself up in any way, after a cross-country flight + running errands in the heat. When I got to the pool, I discovered that Grossman's fiancee Chris (note: Grossman was JOC's best friend from HS and was another groomsman) had gone to the airport to pick up her best friend, and the two of them were now laying out at the pool, surrounded by a swarm of admiring men.

That best friend was Jill.

I remember the instant I saw her. I remember thinking "Wait- who is THAT? JOC said there were not likely to be many single women, let alone any HOT single women." (not that I actually knew she was single at that point- I'm just relating the thoughts that went through my head). So I made a point of briefly introducing myself, and then coolly going for the pool. I say "coolly" because, as I noted before, there were already several admiring guys trying to make small talk, and I didn't want to seem too eager to join them.

After swimming some laps, in as coolly detached a manner as possible, I finally got out of the pool and joined the throng of admirers. Over the next hour or so I joined in the small talk as best I could, but then it was time for all of us to go get ready, so that we could do a rehearsal and help set up.

Thus, around 5pm, I found myself at The Bistro Garden, a few blocks down the street from the Lodge, and while we were waiting for everyone to get ready to do the rehearsal, I saw Jill sitting by herself on a chair at the edge of what would eventually be the dance floor. Having watched enough nature documentaries to know that your odds are better if you can separate the prey from the herd, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and go over to talk to her.

As I said hello, I remember that Jill tilted her head and looked up at me, and this was the moment that I first looked into her eyes (she had been wearing sunglasses at the pool). I am a firm believer that you can tell a lot about a person by what you see when you look in their eyes, and what you see when you watch them move. It's easy to hide the truth with words, but it's hard to hide with your eyes, or with your body. What I saw when I looked into Jill's eyes were tenderness, intelligence, complexity, and... something else I can't exactly put a name to but which I was deeply attracted to.

I don't remember anymore exactly what it was we discussed then, but I think it had to do with traveling, which it turned out we both loved to do, and then it was time for me to go rehearse. From that point on, I didn't get much of a chance to talk to Jill; I was a groomsman, so I was busy all the way until we sat for dinner, and Jill was at the next table. From time to time I tried to surreptitiously glance over at her, and several times when I did, I saw she was looking at me. Now, I'm not real good at this kind of thing, so I was left to wonder if this was a sign that she was at all interested, or if she was just amusing herself and passing the time by watching to see how long I would go before the next time I would crack and have to look her way. She was very attractive, and carried herself with a kind of brash confidence, so I was definitely unsure which of the two options it was.

Finally, dinner ended and the dancing started. Given all my experience with dancing, I've always viewed the dance floor as home court advantage for me. So, I hatched the following plan: I was seated at a table that did have a couple other single friends of JOC's, so I first made a move to dance once with each of them, thereby establishing myself as skilled on the dance floor. By the time I had done that, I noticed that Jill was standing on the edge of the dance floor watching, so when I walked the last person back to the table, I went up to Jill and asked her to dance. Fortunately, she said yes.

From that point on, I didn't dance with anyone else the rest of the evening. It was a great wedding, and we danced for hours. After a while, I did have to give Jill a break, and we got drinks and went outside for fresh air. Outside, for no reason I can remember, we ended up talking about art. Jill was telling me about impressionist painting techniques, and although I had absolutely nothing useful to add (indeed, that one conversation probably doubled my total knowledge base about painting), I enjoyed learning from her. I was totally hooked.

After quite a bit more dancing, we headed back to the Lodge for the after party. I remember as we were crossing Coldwater Canyon road, Jill reached out for my hand. It was like being 12 again, when Linda Burrow held my hand on the bus one day and I couldn't think about anything else for like a week.

The after party was nice, and now, this being a public blog, I will simply gracefully fast forward us to The Next Morning.

The next morning, I saw Jill at brunch. I was a little nervous; had last night been as significant for Jill as it had been for me? I had no idea. She looked fantastic, and we sat next to each other at brunch and again started talking. She had to leave to go to a baby shower, but before she left, she gave me her number and said, "I hope I'll hear from you."

Later that afternoon, I had to get on a plane and head back to NYC. JOC and Grossman were, of course, giddy for details, none of which I was willing to supply. But I knew something had happened that changed everything, and as the plane was taking off that afternoon, I remember quite clearly thinking: "Is it possible I have just met the woman I will one day marry?"

That was a deeply terrifying thought, for a number of reasons. First, I had never had that thought that clearly before. Second, I had no idea if Jill felt anything remotely like that. And third, I didn't know Jill at all, really. It was a weird mixture of exciting and terrifying to think about that, which is what I did for the entire 6 hour flight back to NYC.

And so ended phase 1 of Gus and Jill 1.0. Stay tuned for the story of phase 2...

Dreams from my father, 2010 edition

2010-07-20T15:10:00.001-07:00

It's one year since you passed away, dad. Wherever you are, I hope that there is a comfy couch, with a nice TV, that is showing nothing but soccer, tennis, Shaolin movies, and re-runs of Hawaii Five-O. You are loved, and missed.

U-S-A! U-S-A!!

2010-06-26T14:18:00.001-07:00

Alas, the Well has finally run dry.

Jill and I watched the US-England game with Ed and Alison on a giant screen on the street in Brooklyn. It was an awesome game. We let ourselves get down early, but then we went to The Well of Miracles, and lo- the English keeper hands inexplicably started oozing industrial-grade lubricant, and we managed to salvage a thrilling tie.

Joel and Beth and I watched the US-Slovenia game at the French cafe down in HMB harbor. That time, we let ourselves get down 2-0. It's absolutely terrible to get down early at this level, so we once again went to the Well of Miracles, and lo- it was 2-1. And then 2-2. And THEN, 3-2, but for the Curse Of The Ref Who Hallucinated The Entire Second Half And Thought At One Point That He Was Giving A Yellow Card To A Unicorn. We can only assume that somewhere in Slovenia, in some town whose name has no vowels in it, a ten-year-old boy also went to The Well of Miracles. No matter- vengeance will be ours someday when the residents are tricked into saying the name of their town backwards, and they all disappear back into the 5th dimension.

In any case, it was a thrilling game, where once again The Well of Miracles came through for us, and we salvaged a 2-2 tie.

I watched the US-Algeria game in the Elephant and Castle, a bar near the SF office. I arrived at 710am, and the place was packed. I watched the entire game standing in front of the little sign that said "The Hostess Will Seat You". Since it is a British pub, they had the England-Slovenia game on the giant screen in the basement, and the US-Algeria game on all the little TVs on the ground floor.

In this game, we somehow blew chance after chance, and in this game a tie was as good as a loss. So, in the waning minutes of the game, we shifted to our old reliable strategy of going to The Well of Miracles, and lo- Landon Donovan scores the game winner!! My ears only recently stopped ringing from all the screaming that erupted.

I just got back from watching the US-Ghana game. I watched it at an Italian bar/restaurant with the owner and a bunch of his family/friends. I was standing on the sidewalk watching on the big screen, but one of the ladies left quite early so I just invited myself to sit down in her chair, at their table. They spent the entire game jabbering at each other in Italian, and largely ignored me.

In this game, we once again did that thing we do where we give up a goal in the first 3.2 seconds of the game. So, we found ourselves down again for the *third* time in this World Cup. Again, this is not the level to be doing that. Early in the second half, we were forced again to go to The Well of Miracles, and lo- we were awarded a penalty kick on a marginally bad tackle in the box! Landon Donovan scored off the post, in a kick that was a lot closer to missing than it really needed to be.

Aha, back in business, tied 1-1. But then it went to overtime, which is like a whole new game, and so predictably we had to start off by immediately giving up a goal, as our slothlike fullbacks, both of them, failed to get in front of Ghana's striker, who ran right through the middle of them and made a nifty kick to score.

And now we were desperate. In the closing minutes, we were forced once more to go to The Well of Miracles.

But, here's the thing about The Well of Miracles. If you keeping going back to the Well again and again and again, sooner or later you discover that the well has run dry. Sadly, today was that day for us, as a flurry of chances were denied.

It was a good run, Team USA. I laughed, I cried, I exulted, I screamed profanities. God willing, I'll see you in Brazil in 2014. Who's with me?

More beachcam "best of"

2010-06-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

April 28th... excellent interplay of the clouds with the music.

May 18th... nice moonset at the end, great sunset, fun to see how many different directions the fog/clouds come from.

The Princess Diaries, Chapter 5, or "My goddaughter says something as profound as anything I've ever heard on ESPN."

2010-06-03T11:21:00.001-07:00

A beautiful day in the Bay Area... me, Li (now 7) and Em (now 5) are all in the backyard at L's...

Em (to me and Li): "Let's play soccer."

Li: "Okay! What's the goal?"

Em: "The GOAL is to SCORE!"

Excerpts

2010-06-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Day 1:

Jill: "I can't believe you're continuing to hold out on me about my note."

Gus: "What note?"

Jill: "The note I left you. Jerk."

Gus: "WHAT note you left me? I have no idea what you're talking about."

Jill: "The note I left you. In your silverware drawer."

Gus: "You left me a note in my silverware drawer?"

Jill: "YES! You mean you haven't *seen* it? How can you not have seen it? Have you not opened your silverware drawer in TWO WEEKS?"

Gus: "Uh-h-h-h, well, you see, right before you came I cleaned my kitchen and did a massive load of dishes, and, well, it seemed pretty pointless to put them away, so I've just been taking clean dishes out of the dishwasher and using them. So, um, no, I haven't opened my silverware drawer since you were here."

Jill: "omg."

Day 2:

Gus: "Haha, yeah, so, I opened my silverware drawer last night and found your note. Very funny. Smartass."

Gus: "Also, I figured that maybe I should put away the rest of the dishes. Except, once I started doing that, I realized that I actually never *ran* the dishwasher in the first place."

Jill: "You mean you've been using DIRTY dishes for the last two weeks??"

Gus: "Well they're not DIRTY. I rinse them before putting them in the dishwasher. Thoroughly."

Jill: "omg."

Day 3:

Jill: "So, I have a nice coffeetable that I thought I'd bring. We can put it in your living room."

Gus: "Why would we do that. What do we need a coffeetable for?"

Jill: "So you have somewhere to put your PLATE while you're EATING. That's what people use coffeetables *for*."

Gus: "I *hold* my plate while I'm eating from it, and then, when I'm done, I put it back in the kitchen. There. Problem solved."

(pause)

Jill: "Life is going to be so much better for you in so many ways once I get there. Practice saying that out loud. So that it feels natural."

Stirring the Pot: Illegal Immigration

2010-05-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Oh blog my blog, how I have missed you...

A quick installment in my ongoing series of publishing my actual opinions on things, thereby ensuring that I can never be elected to any public office. Today's topic: illegal immigration.

The topic has been on my mind since Arizona passed that new law of theirs. Now, I do believe that illegal immigration is a serious issue, that could use some serious actions to address. But, that law is an extremely poor way to try and tackle the issue. Instructing the police to demand identification from anyone they have "reasonable suspicion" of being illegal makes no sense. What is the differentiating behavior that illegal immigrants do that will distinguish them from legal immigrants or native citizens?

There are circumstances in which it does make sense to use the standard of "reasonable suspicion." It makes sense to instruct police to pull people over if there is a "reasonable suspicion" that they're driving drunk, for instance. In that case, there are clear behaviors (weaving on the road, etc.) that distinguish someone who is likely driving drunk from someone who likely isn't. There's no corresponding behavior that's specific to illegal immigrants, and so in the absence of such behavior, policemen are going to use whatever algorithms they have in their heads, which, let's face it, are pretty much going to boil down to "That guy looks Mexican, let's stop him and see if he's here legally or not." That's over the line if we want to live in a free, democratic society. It's not over the line if we want to live in a totalitarian society, but I don't think that's what most people actually want.

Of course, if the Arizona strategy isn't the right one, what is?

First, let me repeat that illegal immigration is a serious issue. My dad immigrated to this country legally, and it was quite a lengthy process for him. It made things harder for him in terms of starting and supporting a family. And yet, he did it the way you're supposed to do it. So I start my approach from the assumption that there definitely *should* be some kind of consequence for choosing to try and go around the system.

That said, the vast majority of people who immigrate illegally are not bad people. Many of them do not actually have the option to immigrate legally. There are only 4 ways to immigrate to our country legally:

1) through the sponsorship of a close family member who is a current U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident

2) through the sponsorship of a U.S. employer (as of 2006 there were 140,000 of these allowed per year)

3) through the special lottery of visas which promotes diversity (i.e., the visas are distributed to applicants from countries that do not normally send a lot of immigrants here.) As of 2006, there were 55,000 of these allowed per year.

4) by being classified as one of the "protected classes" of people (e.g., victims of political persecution, etc.)

So let's do a thought experiment: you're a 35 year old Mexican man with a wife and 2 young kids. You live in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most dangerous cities on earth, and you are poor and underemployed even at the best of times. Every day when you wake up you look out the window and can see America, which is quite literally the city on the hill. (Ciudad Juarez is spread out on a series of low hills on the south side of the 10 freeway, while El Paso sits on the north side of the freeway.) Your goals are simple, and basically the same as the goals of virtually every other man on earth: have a job, have a place to live that is reasonably likely to be safe for you and your family, and have some education for your kids, so that 20 years from now, they're not waking up to face the same option set that you currently are, which pretty much boils down to:

Option 1: stay where you are.

Probability of achieving your goals with option 1: minimal. Unemployment is widespread, and violence and crime are endemic.

Option 2: migrate internally within Mexico

A lot of people choose this option. In fact, the vast majority of human migration is within borders. It's extremely difficult and stressful to move to another country, with different customs and possibly a different language, so most people don't. The result is the rise of cities like Mexico City (population ~21 million), Mumbai (~21 million), Sao Paulo (~20 million), and Cairo (~16 million). Each of these cities has individual slums that are larger than most American cities. I spent a day doing little more than walking the slums of Cairo, and the scale of it is mind-boggling.

Which means, if you don't have some kind of connection in whatever other city you're thinking about internally migrating to, you're probably facing an Option 2 probability of achieving your goals that is "marginal." After all, without a connection or some other kind of advantage, your highest probability is that you end up in one of those giant slums. Still, "marginal" beats "minimal", and hence Mexico City and other cities like it continue to grow. But, you want to keep considering options. So, let's move to:

Option #3: migrate to a non-U.S. foreign country.

Well, there are certainly a lot of non-U.S. foreign countries. But which one do you pick? How will you get there? What will you do when you get there? An international move is an enormous gamble, and you need to pick a place where the increased probability of success outweighs the enormous risks of making a move.

And the thing is, what country is that exactly? The farther you go from home, the bigger the risks are, so the better the payoff needs to be. If you're in Mexico, the nearest non-U.S. neighbors are places like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, etc. Not confidence-inspiring in terms of providing a much better opportunity than taking your chances in Mexico City, in all likelihood. And the prospects really don't get that much better going farther afield. Which leads us to:

Option #4: migrate legally to the U.S.

The thing is, is this really an option for our hypothetical case? Recall that there are only 4 ways to immigrate legally. Method 1, have a close family member who is already a legal resident, isn't an option for you- you don't have any family in the U.S.

Method 2, have a special skill and/or be sponsored by an employer, isn't an option for you- you're poor and largely uneducated, and your best skill is your willingness to work hard as hell for crazy hours while being extremely flexible on compensation. And that skill, while important and useful, isn't "special" in the sense of "differentiating you from a lot of other people."

Method 3 isn't an option, because you're from Mexico, and there's plenty of immigration from there already.

Method 4 isn't an option, because nobody's persecuting you personally; you're just living in a crime-ridden place that offers minimal prospects. That's not enough to make you a "protected class."

Which means, legal immigration isn't an option. Probability of achieving your goals via this method is zero. Which leads us to:

Option #5: Immigrate to the U.S. illegally.

Thing is, you know it can be done. You know that there's a staggering difference in the amount of opportunity available in America versus the amount of opportunity where you are. Yes, you might end up in a slum in LA or Phoenix or Dallas, but even those slums are not Ciudad Juarez, and even if they are, you're breaking even on that dimension while having a chance at more employment, and some education for your kids. It's high-risk, but potentially high-reward.

Hence, the people who ultimately choose Option 5 are largely people who are coming for economic opportunity, and who respond to a high-risk, high-reward payoff matrix. And actually, it's good to have a nice fraction of your population have that kind of mentality if you want your society to be dynamic, and to foster entrepreneurial activity (starting a business is definitely a high-risk, high-reward payoff matrix).

I mention all this because I feel like what gets easily lost in the debate over illegal immigration is the decision to illegally immigrate can be an extremely rational one. That is, can all of us, faced with an option set like that, truthfully say that we would look at option #5 and say "Well, as compelling as it is, it's against the rules, so I won't do it."? In short, empathy seems to be largely absent from the debate on this issue. And while I see from Justice Sotomayor's confirmation process that "empathy" is not necessarily held in esteem by everyone, I think it's an extraordinarily powerful tool for working out solutions to problems.

So what would I do, if I got to decide?

1) Ruthless enforcement of existing laws regarding the hiring of workers.

It is a well-known and well-observed fact that some businesses go out of their way to hire illegal immigrants. You know what? If, in order to be successful, your business model requires that your labor force be composed of illegal immigrants, then you have what can only be described as a bullshit business model, and you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

And if it's really true that a significant portion of our nation's agricultural output, for example, simply cannot be properly produced without importing seasonal labor, then fine- it's the role of government to create a program of seasonal visas that allow people to be here legally for specified times. And then anyone who doesn't use that program to bring in their workers should be punished.

2) Institute some kind of sensible penalty for the people who do choose to come here illegally.

There does need to be some kind of consequence for people who immigrate illegally, otherwise there's no incentive to play by the rules, as my dad did. But, I don't think it makes sense to incarcerate people who aren't dangerous in some way, so I wouldn't use incarceration. I wouldn't deport people solely for having immigrated illegally, if there's evidence that they have managed to successfully begin integrating into society. And fining people, which has the benefit of being extremely simple, is nevertheless a tough way to penalize people who are likely to be of extremely modest means, and who we would ultimately like to see fully integrated into at least a middle-class existence.

So, my preferred option, upon discovering someone was here illegally, would be to:

1) set them on a path toward legal permanent resident status. However, I would make that process be longer than it is for people who start off doing it right. It already takes 6-23 years to become a legal permanent resident here, so I'd make the process for someone who was starting this way last 25 years.

2) Institute a required 100 hours per year of community service. That's a lot of community service over 25 years, but you did break the rules, and there needs to be a consequence. That consequence can be to help build up the society you wanted so badly to join.

3) If, during your 25 year path toward legal permanent residency, you were ever convicted of a violent crime, then I'd have you deported without hesitation. There's a limited amount of room here, and there are plenty of other people we'd rather take. If you in any year failed to meet your community service requirement, I'd have you appear before a judge, who would determine if there were a sufficiently good excuse, and if so, would allow the unmet hours to roll over, with some kind of modest penalty. If it were determined there was not a valid excuse, you'd get one more chance. If you failed to meet hours a second time (with no valid excuse as determined by a judge), I'd have you deported. Again, there's limited space here, and we want people who can live responsibly and follow through on things.

Now, there's still the little matter of how you identify who is here illegally. But I think you can get around that by enforcing the hiring standards, rigorously checking for proper identification when people are applying for things (jobs, licenses, etc.), and by offering a quasi-amnesty program where anyone here illegally can 'fess up about that and get put on the above-mentioned longer path toward legal status without any additional penalty. I bet a lot of people would do it.

Obviously, all this would require some effort put into monitoring progress toward community service hours, and coming up with useful community service work, etc., but I think it would be a dramatically better approach than whatever it is you call whatever it is we've got now. Hopefully we'll see some leadership on this issue in the coming months...

Too true, too true...

2010-05-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

Dude, totally.

Beachcam Drama

2010-05-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

From yesterday...

Another good beachcam movie...

2010-04-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

April 5th, 2010. The music seems to go quite well with the cloud action...

One minute in the life of a high-end tutor...

2010-04-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

I am tutoring my 8th grade boy, JS. We are discussing Newton's 3 laws. In a discussion of action-reaction pairs, we talk about how it's not just that the earth pulls on JS, but that JS also pulls on the earth (that's what's meant by "every action has an equal an opposite reaction").

Gus: "So, you are currently pulling on the earth. As am I. Though, I regret to inform you that your ability to influence the earth is even smaller than mine."

JS: "Yeah... because you're FAT!!"

(pause)

JS: "Haha... j/k LOL."

(pause)

JS: "right?"

(pause)

Gus: "I am going to *kill* you."

One minute in the life of a high-end tutor...

2010-04-03T19:02:00.001-07:00

I was meeting with my student V today, and we had this exchange as I was examining V's essay from last week's practice test, which I graded last week and had not looked at since...

Me: "There's no conclusion, and there are 3 examples instead of 2, and the indentations are barely noticeable, and you write way too small... I gave this an 8?? I can't believe I gave this thing an 8.."

V: "You're such a douchebag."

(pause)

(pause)

Me: "Wow... I'm trying to remember the last time a student actually called me a douchebag during a lesson."

V: "Pretty recently, I'd guess."

Kinship

2010-03-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

Kinship, as you might be aware, is defined differently in various cultures all over the world. For example, the !Kung people of the Kalahari have only 36 names for men and 32 names for women, and you are considered related to people who have the same names. For instance, my sister's name is Maria; in !Kung society, that would mean the same incest taboo that prohibits me from marrying her also prohibits me from ever marrying *anyone* named Maria. (So, from the !Kung point of view, one of my college relationships was incest. But what can you do, you know?)

I bring this up because I realized yesterday that I belong to a kinship group I never realized before.

I was almost done with my beach run when I noticed that the ocean had washed up a set of keys onto the shore, a set of keys that looked suspiciously like the ones that ended up at the bottom of Mendocino Bay in the Valentine's-Day-gone-awry story with Keiko. Given the way the currents work on the coast of California, it is actually possible that my keys could one day wash up on the beach in HMB, so I stopped to pick them up.

But alas, the car key, though it looks a lot like mine, is a little thinner. And the key fob, though it looks like mine, is a little squarer. And the housekey that's attached, though it looks like mine, is a little rounder. Plus, there's no office key attached.

I examined them for awhile. Whoever owned these keys must have lost them a while ago, based on the amount of rust on them. Then I tucked them into my pocket and kept running. I felt good. Not because some foolish dude lost his keys in the ocean; that was a terrible experience and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But rather, I felt good because I realized that there's a whole different group of people I'm related to out there that I never knew about before.

And so I say to you, foolish, foolish dude, who was surely doing something pretty obviously stupid, probably against the wishes and sound advice of your girlfriend, when you lost your keys into the ocean, I say to you: you are my brother. And there must surely be more than just the two of us- a whole family of foolish brothers, scattered far and wide throughout the world. To you, my brothers, I say: you are always welcome here in HMB.

But if you should ever come for a visit, I'm going to insist that we stay safely on land...

Awesome cloud action...

2010-03-17T17:58:00.001-07:00

Check out this movie from the beachcam on March 3rd, especially toward the end of the day...

At last, someone who understands me...

2010-03-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

This weekend I flew to Harrisburg, PA to visit Jill.

The flight there started as usual- planned to go to the office before heading to the airport, but didn't allot enough time and had to rush, arriving at my gate moderately early, at least by my standards.

Now, you can't fly directly to a place like HBG from San Francisco. And, there aren't a whole lot of airline options. I chose Delta, which I basically never fly, since it was cheapest by far. Delta, you may remember, bought out Northwest a few years back. Northwest, I am sad to say, I have flown many a time, and as near as I can tell, that airline has never once in its entire misbegotten history flown an on-time flight.

Thus, when Delta bought NWA, I wondered if the relative competence of Delta would be dominant or recessive in the merger. This would be my chance to find out.

My flight to Detroit started out a modest 15 minutes or so late, which id definitely not the end of the world, and compared to most of my experiences with NWA, a stunning success. Just based on that flight, it was hard to tell if the 15 minutes was just random variation, or the slow infection of Delta with the disease of NWA incompetence.

Then, on the 2nd flight, a 54 minute flight from Detroit to HBG, we hit a flock of geese on take-off. It makes a surprisingly loud thumping noise. It is, I might add, disconcerting to hear your airplane suddenly start making an odd thumping sound while it's taking off.

So, now we have a problem: since we just hit a flock of geese, and "Sully" isn't flying our plane, we need to land and have the plane inspected. Except, we have to finish taking off. And then we have to get out of the takeoff lanes in the air. And then, we have too much fuel to safely land, so we have to do doughnuts around Detroit's airport until we burn off enough fuel to be allowed to land.

My problem with this is: if you're worried the plane might crash because of damage to the hull/engines, why are you going to make us circle forever above Detroit? I mean, granted that at this point, if we do crash we have very low odds of actually hitting the 5 buildings left in Detroit that are actually occupied at any given moment, but still, it's a 54 minute flight, so if you're going to make us circle for 35 minutes burning fuel, couldn't we instead burn the fuel by, I dunno, FLYING TO HARRISBURG??

By the time we land back in Detroit, we've been in the air 44 minutes. And I am now convinced that incompetence/being constantly subject to weird star-crossed turns of fate is the dominant gene in airline mergers.

So, we taxi to a stop on the runway. Of course, there's no gate for us. We wait for a gate. Then, they finally find a spare gate for us, and commence the inspection. For the record, the inspection process seems to consist of the following components:

1) Jimmy comes out of the basement with his wrench and gives ol' Betsy a few gentle taps here and there to verify structural integrity. (approximate duration: 5 minutes)

2) The proper forms are located, delivered to the captain, filled out by the captain, and filed with the proper regulatory and insurance agencies. (approximate duration: 45 minutes)

I was really hoping someone would fire a frozen turkey into our engines, but alas, no such luck.

Thankfully, ol' Betsy passed her inspection, so we tried again to take off, and this time managed to do it without hitting anything. And so, I did eventually make it to HBG, a couple hours late.

Since it poured pretty much nonstop the entire time I was in HBG, we didn't get out too much, but we did have dinner with Denni, an old friend of Jill's, and her husband Steve. It was a nice dinner, at a Tuscan restaurant owned by a woman whose level of service was absolutely exemplary. And apparently, this morning Jill received this feedback from Denni:

"Did you get the message from Steve and I? He’s great; unbelievably handsome, normal, fun, smart, normal, interesting, normal, and did I say normal???!!"

At last.

At long last.

Someone understands that I am indeed so normal, it's worth saying 4 times in just one sentence. It's so great to get that from an unbiased source.

Other than that, we mostly stayed in. Dinner at a fantastic French restaurant Sat night, with the best veal meatballs I've ever tasted, and then we hit one of HBG's few clubs. Apparently, there is little enough nightlife in HBG that we made it onto the website showing the local scene:

Just 2 normal folks out on the town.

Sunday was Alice in Wonderland, which I very much enjoyed. Johnny Depp is always fun to watch, even if he's always playing variations on the same theme.

Sadly, I had to get up at 430 this morning to catch my flight back here. By the time I get home tonight, I will have been up almost 24 hours straight. Good to know I haven't lost all of the stamina that got me through college. And life in LA. And grad school. And life in NYC...

Valentine's Day 2010, or If Only I Were a Person Who Really Loved Wine...

2010-02-20T09:29:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the annual dinner party extravaganza.

As always, I had grand dreams of deciding the menu well in advance, doing a practice run of each of the dishes, and having a good enough tactical plan to start dinner on time. And as always, I was still making menu decisions the day of, I did not get a practice run of anything, and the tactical plan was disrupted somewhat by waking up late, brunch going a lot later than planned, etc.

The whole weekend looked to be in peril initially, since the entire East Coast was hammered by snow storms. In fact, Socci had planned to arrive in SF on Wed to hang out with a friend of his, but his flight out of JFK got canceled, and they couldn't guarantee him a flight before Sunday. So, in a display of heroic dedication to the dinner party cause, he took a 19 hour train ride to Chicago, flew from there on Thursday to Long Beach, and stayed overnight in a Travelodge to catch the early flight to SF on Friday morning.

Consequently, the first guest to actually arrive was Socci's GF Carey, whom I had never met. She arrived Thursday night, so I picked her up from the airport and took her to In-N-Out, and from there to Safeway for some of the grocery shopping. Considering we were complete strangers to each other, and didn't have Socci there, we were surprisingly comfortable with each other. She's 22 to his 33, so it's a pretty eye-opening age differential, but on the other hand, Keiko was 25 and I was 35 when we started dating, so I guess it's dangerous for me to be throwing stones from within my little glass house.

After the Safeway, we headed back to SFO to pick up the next guest: Jeffrey. He flew in from Richmond, ready to have another exciting weekend in the Bay Area (see hey-thanks-for-coming-out!). His flight was late, so by the time we got back to the house, there really wasn't time to do any of the cooking prep that I'd planned to do.

The next morning, I had to get up and go get Socci. Once we had him in hand and were back at the house, I was finally able to get started making food. I sent the 3 of them out for a number of things, and started baking. Among the things I asked them to get were champagne, for brunch, and brandy, for one of the recipes. And although they successfully procured these things, 2 of the bottles of champagne and a sizable portion of the brandy ended up being consumed over the course of the afternoon. None of it by me, btw, since I was frantically trying to catch up to where I was supposed to be in the tactical cooking plan.

Thus, by the time the evening rolled around, and we were about to leave for Socci's friend Michael's party up in the city (which we figured we'd hit before heading to the airport to pick up Jill, who was coming from Harrisburg, PA and the rest of the NYC crew, who were scheduled to arrive within 20 minutes of each other in a fortuitous bit of airline flight scheduling) Carey and Jeffrey were totally shitfaced, and Socci was looking a little wobbly. Carey and Jeffrey immediately hit it off because Carey, like Jill, has the ability to identify and instantly become BFF's with any gay man within a 5-mile radius.

So we headed up to a very nice party in SoMa. The 4 of us took 4 different approaches to the party: Socci, who knew several of the people there, had a good time catching up with people. Jeffrey, who was 95 sheets to the wind, sat on the sofa and proceeded to drift in and out of sleep sitting up. Carey, who was 195 sheets to the wind, bounced around the room in full-on Brownian motion and draped herself randomly on people, one at a time, and attempted to engage them in conversations that didn't make any sense, to the point where eventually Michael came up to me and asked who was responsible for her that evening. I did what I always do at such parties- I made a half-hearted attempt to engage people in small talk, which I am not especially good at and which I don't particularly enjoy, in the hopes of blundering into a conversation I actually found interesting. That didn't happen until the end, when we were trying to get everyone together to leave, and I realized by process of elimination that Jeffrey must be in the bathroom, and so I stood in front of the bathroom door and had a 20-minute conversation with the host's GF and a few of her friends. After 20 minutes of talking, I started banging on the bathroom door, and after about 5 minutes of banging, Jeffrey finally emerged, claiming to be perfectly fine.

Riiiiiight.

By this time, we'd discovered that Jill's flight was basically on time, while the NYC crew had been delayed almost an hour, so the fortuitous bit of airline flight scheduling had gone down the drain. So the 4 of us drove to the airport and picked up Jill, and then we went to get her rental car, and then 4 of us went home to the beachhouse and left Socci with my van to pick up the NYC crew.

Back at the house, I got started on another round of cooking, while Jill unwound and Jeffrey and Carey more or less passed out. Eventually, the NYC crew showed up. It was good to see them, and a bit lucky, given all the flights that got canceled out of JFK. A good sign for the weekend.

The next morning I served the traditional Gus breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, fruit salad, and cinnamon rolls. We'd forgotten to put the other bottles of champagne in the fridge, so no mimosas. But we got a late start, and took a long time eating, so it was basically 2pm before I started the day's cooking. That was about 2hrs later than I'd hoped. Not a good sign for an on-time 7pm start.

Still, with plenty of sous-chef help from Jill, and also from Jeffrey and at times some of the NYC folks, we made up some of the ground and actually had dinner on the table not long after 8. That worked perfectly, because that's when Laura and Dmitri arrived. I was hoping L & GA would come, but they couldn't find a babysitter, so GA stayed home, and L came late, arriving for the 3rd course. Here was our lineup for the evening:

1st course: fried masa cups with spicy pork filling, and spiced ground beef empanadas
2nd course: black bean soup with shrimp
3rd course: jicama salad with oranges
4th course: meat and vegetable stew with rice
5th course: slow-roasted pork in banana leaves, and spice-rubbed baked fish
6th course: almond-flour torte with mixed berry compote

Amazingly, with the prior planning and prep, plus significant amounts of sous-chef assistance, the entire dinner was done by 1145pm, the swiftest and earliest-ending dinner party ever. The downside of moving so quickly was that we only went through 8 bottles of wine, but the bright side was, we were able to get out of the house the next day by 2pm. Last year, Ed was still fetal at 5pm the day after.

Naturally, I forgot to give Jill my camera to take some pictures of the dinner party. I don't know why I even bother owning a camera- I never remember to use it.

Sunday, the original plan was to get out of the house in time to stop at the wine store in SF before heading over to our 2pm brunch reservation at the Cliff House. We needed a stop at the wine store because on Saturday afternoon Alex and J-Rob had taken a group there to get the wine for the dinner party, and a few of the bottles turned out to be bad, forcing us to go into the leftover wine from last year's dinner party, plus some of what I bought on last year's Napa trip. I didn't mind at all consuming the wine from my stash, but it was offensive in principle that the store had sold us several expensive bottles of bad wine.

Unfortunately, we didn't end up leaving the house until 215pm, so we had to go straight to the Cliff House. It happened that this was the weekend of the Mavericks surf contest, so beach traffic was nightmarish. By the way, because of the El Nino, the waves in HMB have been spectacular all winter, and they had record surf at mavericks. In fact, a rogue wave came overall the seawall and literally swamped the judges' tent and dozens of people. None of them drowned, but a few had to be hospitalized with broken bones (you can hear in the video clip halfway down the page people screaming for a medic because of a broken leg). I know the feeling, dudes.

Here's a link to some photos from the event. There's some pretty awesome pics in there. It really makes me want to learn to surf. Apparently individual waves can crest as high as 50 feet, though I think this year they only got to 40.

Anyway, we got to the Cliff House around 330pm. Brunch there was as fantastic as any buffet-style brunch could ever be- there was an amazing selection, it was all actually quite good, and they kept the champagne coming the entire meal. They even made Ed a special bowl of eggs after they'd taken away the last container of them, but he still wanted more. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, as you can see:

The view from our table.

Working hard to eat all that delicious food.

Ed & Alison

Me & Jill

After the Cliff House, we split into 2 groups: one for the wine store, and one to go for a hike around Land's End. That's the tip of the SF peninsula, and on clear days it offers stunning views of the Marin headlands, plus the Golden Gate bridge, from the west. Since it was a near-perfect day, me, Jill, Jeffrey, Ed, and Alison opted to take the hike, and we agreed we'd meet the others in Chinatown after they were done at the wine store. Since it also happened to be Chinese New Year, we thought it might be fun to be in that part of town.

So, I led us on a hike around Land's End. Now, given that it was already 5pm, it might have been a little smarter to just do the short version of the hike, but the last time I was there it had not been nearly so nice a day, so I pushed us all the way to Eagle's Point:

That ledge just below center in the picture is Eagle's Point.

The Golden Gate from Eagle's Pt. The container ship full of lead-poisoned toys from China really makes the picture.

This pic looks like folk rock cover art. The Ali Cats.

The sun is setting rapidly now, and we're a long way from any light. Also, this is as tall as I will ever look.

The sun is still setting rapidly. Also, this is as angelic as Ed will ever look.

We started to head back, but there was a nifty section of beach below, so I led us down there, figuring we'd be able to make it back before it got completely pitch black...

Sunset from the path down to the beach at Eagle's Pt.

Almost to the beach at Eagle's Pt. Beautiful, no?

The waves were coming in strong, and it's very rocky, so it was creating some cool, creepy sea foam.

Ed, pretending he's Neptune, and calling forth the power of the sea.

Suffused with delusions of godhood, Ed catches sight of this dude on the giant boulder, and, in an attempt to prove he has a giant penis, sets out to climb there...

...however, confirming that in fact he has a tiny penis, he wussed out and settled for climbing the knee-high rock.

I, drawing on my vast experience of injury/almost dying in situations involving boulders, climbing, darkness, inappropriate footwear, and the ocean, opted not to make any attempt at all. I think that counts as wisdom.

Although, to be fair, I think if only 4 out of 5 of those factors had been involved, and not *all* 5, I probably would have tried it. Certainly after seeing Ed chicken out.

Sunset from the foamy beach

Of course, by the time we started climbing back up, the sun was already below the horizon, so it was getting dark quickly. And, it turns out that climbing/hiking in the lee of a giant cliff, after sunset, with no sources of light cliffside, is harder than you might think. It was getting pretty hard to see anything by the time we made it back to the car. However, we *did* make it back, just fine. I don't know why anyone was worried. Sheesh.

Of course, the other group had long since finished their errand, and had retired to a pub in the financial district near where we'd decided to meet. So we made our way across town to meet them, and I parked Jill's rental in the garage that I normally use at the office. Then we walked over to the pub and got some drinks, and settled down in the basement to watch the NBA all-star game on TV. Plus, they had a pool table down there, so I played Alison in pool for a while. I'd asked Ed, but he refused to get up while the game was still on; he's not as much of a multitasker as I am.

After a while, we were all starting to fade, so Jill and I lobbied to take our group back to the beachhouse. The other group was going to stay, because some friends of Rose's were about to meet us at the pub. They arrived shortly thereafter, so Ed said, "C'mon... one more drink."

Nothing good ever happens when Ed says that. If I had acquired wisdom about that, I would've ignored him and taken us home. But I didn't.

Consequently, after another round, and some chitchat, we walked back to the garage, arriving at precisely 1105pm. Only to discover that this garage is not open late; in fact, it closes overnight. At 11pm.

The dude was locking up the gate, and I ran up to him saying "wait, our car is in there. It'll only take a second to get it out!"

Dude: "Sorry- the system is shut down." Proceeds to twist the key in the gate lock.

Me: "Wait!! That's a rental, and it has to go to the airport. Here's $40 and the ticket, you can run it through the system tomorrow. Please just let us get the car!"

Dude: "Sorry- I'm late!" Jumps in his waiting car and drives off.

Shit. Shitfuckingfuck.

A quick call to the number on the sign goes to the office of California Parking. Which is not staffed right now. But I can leave a message- they open at 6am. No emergency number is listed on the sign or on the voicemail.

So, a desperate call to Socci, who is driving my car, reveals that they have headed out to drop off Rose's friends before going to the airport to pick up our rental van for the Sonoma trip tomorrow. I explain the situation and Socci swings around a few blocks and meets us on the corner.

The problem is, my Envoy technically seats 5, and with Rose's friends, there's already 7 in the car. Plus, the wayback is loaded full with wineboxes and styrofoam, for the muling back on the airplane of all the wine the NYC crew is going to buy. So we agree that Socci and the gang already in the car will go to drop Rose's friends off, and we'll wait on the corner, which we do.

When Socci and the gang finally return, we proceed to turn my Envoy into a clown car. Socci and J-Rob take the front, Alex has Rose on his lap, I have Jill on my lap, and Jeffrey is wedged in between us on the back seat, and we carve out a cubby of space amongst the boxes and styrofoam in the wayback and stuff Ed & Alison in that. The entire trip to the airport was full of disembodied comments coming from the wayback (disembodied because you literally could not see either of them- they were entirely encased in styrofoam)like "No! Don't lean there!" and "Hey! Slower on the turns!" Fortunately, the airport was only 20 minutes away.

At the airport, we dropped everyone off at the rental place and Jill and I parked my car in long-term parking, so that I'd have a way to get home after Sonoma. The drive back to the beach house was *much* nicer, since we'd rented a 12-person van for the wine country trip.

The next morning, we managed to muster by 9am (nothing motivates this group in the morning like the prospect of imminent drinking), and we headed up to the city to drop off Jill at the parking garage. Fortunately, she was able to retrieve her car without incident, and she headed south to the airport to get herself back to Pennsyltuckey. Tragically, she had to work the next day.

The rest of us headed up to Sonoma, and were there in no time. J-Rob, Alex, and Ed had put together an aggressive lineup of wineries to hit. We were largely going to young, up-and-coming vineyards getting extremely good reviews, and typically specializing in Pinots. We had a lot of wineries on the agenda, but one that *wasn't* on the agenda was a new winery getting a lot of rave reviews: Hanzell.

Most wineries in Napa/Sonoma offer tastings, or tours of the vineyard, or both. The prices for a tasting can range from free (for instance, Rocchioli, which supplies wine to the White House and whose wine club has a 5-year waiting list... their wine is so awesome that as soon as you taste it you just want to buy it in mass quantities, except you can't afford to, and so they don't feel a need to charge for tasting) to a nominal $5 or $10. A few of the most aggressively priced places will go as high as $20 for a tasting.

Hanzell: "We do a tasting and tour of the grounds for a price of $45 per person."

J-Rob (retelling to us): "I was like, 'Are you kidding?'. So I said, 'Um... I don't think we're going to want to do the tour. How much is it just to do the tasting?'"

OK class, it's time to do a negotiating exercise. You have bundled together services A and B at a price of $45, but your set of 8 potential customers has said that they don't want service B, and the price is too high, and has inquired about the price of service A alone. You must choose a negotiating strategy. I'll pause for a moment so you can consider what strategy you'd employ...

(pause)

I think the strategy here is pretty obvious. You've probably already hit upon it yourself. And to their credit, Hanzell also hit upon the obvious negotiation tactic in a situation like this:

condescension.

Hanzell: "Well, we find that people who really *love* wine go on the tour. Because they want to see the grounds, and how the wine is actually made."

J-Rob (retelling to us): "I didn't even know what to say at first. I mean, I wanted to say 'Right- I did hours of research to find this place, got on a fucking plane in the middle of fucking February, and flew all the way across the country to get here, all because I only kinda like wine.'

But I didn't say that.

I said, 'Uh, yeah, we're not going to want to do the tour. Can you give us a price just for the tasting?'"

Hanzell: "Well, I'll have to talk to my manager and call you back."

OK class, you're up again: you went with the obvious strategy and it didn't work. Now you're going to have to actually dig deep and get creative. Fortunately, you've bought yourself some time to do that by saying you'll need to talk to management, who, we can only assume, will draw on their vast well of experience in customer service to help you craft a negotiating position that will lead to the kind of win-win situation that we all aspire to in negotiations. I'll pause for a moment again for you to draw upon your own vast well of customer service experience to come up with your new strategy...

(pause)

Whatever you just chose, it probably isn't as clever as the solution that Hanzell came up with. Their solution has a kind of elegant simplicity to it, an almost Solomonic quality really...

Hanzell: "I talked to my manager. Good news- you can just do the tasting only... for $45 per person."

J-Rob (retelling): "I didn't say anything at first, because I thought she was joking. I mean, I seriously thought she was joking. When I realized she was serious, I took a deep breath and explained that we do this every year, and we typically hit about a dozen wineries, and in our years of doing this, no one has EVER charged more than $20 for a tasting. No one. EVER."

Hanzell: "I'll have to talk to my manager again and call you back."

I'm not even going to bother pausing here, because only an actual genius could come up with what Hanzell came up with, on only the 3rd try:

Hanzell: "OK, you can do the tasting only at half-price: $22.50."

J-Rob (retelling): "OK, that at least seemed like a semi-reasonable offer. It would still be the most we ever paid for a tasting, but whatever. But then I said to her: 'OK, that seems fine, but I just want to make sure you're OK with the fact that although there are 8 people in our party, there will only be 5 tastings, because one of us is driving, and there are 2 couples who share tastings, since we're going to 6 vineyards in one day. Obviously they'll share a glass and you don't need to pour any more than usual- I just want to make sure you're OK with that.'"

Now, sharing tastings is pretty standard stuff, and in fact this is how we've done it every year, at EVERY winery we've ever visited. J-Rob was just being buttoned up about it with Hanzell, since everything they do seems to be unusual. But in fairness to the woman from Hanzell, who must surely have been heady with feelings of genius and self-congratulatory beneficence, this last wrinkle would surely have caught her completely off guard.

Which would explain why she defaulted once again to the obvious negotiating strategy:

condescension.

Hanzell: "Well, it's just that we're really more of a boutique winery, and less of a bar."

J-Rob (retelling): "And that was it for me. I was done. I thanked her for her help, and said we wouldn't be coming. She seemed genuinely surprised. I mean, genuinely SHOCKED that we wouldn't be coming, when they were bending over backwards to be accommodating."

And that's why we didn't end up going to Hanzell. For the record, their wine is supposed to be quite good, even if their customer service strategy isn't. Anyway, if you're unlike we are, and are people who actually *love* wine, you'll take their tour.

We started the day at Rocchioli, where I took down some menu ideas for the dinner party next year from a couple letters on the wall from the White House, which always say what the wine was served with. From there, we went to MacPhail, which was phenomenal. And had excellent customer service. After that, we hit Nalle at some point (pics below), which was not bad, but was not especially good, but we also hit 3 other wineries I think, and it's hard to remember, because I wasn't sharing a tasting (I need Jill to be present next year) and consequently was pretty wrecked by the end of the day.

In fact, I apparently sent texts to Jill throughout the day. Which she transcribed exactly, in order, and included the time stamps, and then sent to me in an email the next day.

eek.

Here they are, copied exactly from Jill's email, which begins: "Here is the wonderfully sweet and hilarious drunken progression of texts from yesterday:

(1:56 PM): babe we just tasted a bunch of fucking phenomenal pinots @an up-and-coming winery & now I'm totally tipsy. we should build a house together, & hv a wine cellar.

(2:48 PM): 3rd winery not as good but I drank everything they gave me & now i'm perilously close to shitfaced. Next plc only 4min away. Wish you were here my love...

(5:18 PM): leaving our 5th winery, for the 6th plc. i am totally shitfaced. thank god socci is driving. I miss you & can't wait to take you here.

(6:08 PM): Now we're leaving the 6th plc. Omg, i am *fucked* *up*. i hope your flights are going well. I miss you so much...

(6:24 PM): we're trying to find dinner now. I'm alive, but fucked up. I miss you so much. i swear I can't drink another drop of wine.

(6:42 PM) we've settled on healdsburg bar & grill for dinner. they use the acronum HBG-it makes me think of you. Oh god I'm drunk & i really want a bacon cheddarburger&you

(9:43 PM) just walkws into the hotel & am going straight to bed. I love you and miss you and will talk to you tomorrow..."

I remember I liked this place. The dude working there was hilarious. Can't remember which winery it was though.

I think this is the same place. Not sure. But it *is* a pretty day...

Uh, a winery. In Sonoma.

A great day for a wine country visit...

Taking a work call while waiting for our last appointment. Although the call actually went very well, in hindsight it was maybe not smart to do that while hammered.

Drinking is hard work.

At our final appointment. What J-Rob clearly needs is another glass of wine.

Honestly, for me the day is pretty much a blank after MacPhail. I remember the bacon cheddarburger at HBG was good though.

Tuesday, we got up early to make an appointment at Freeman, which has an extremely good reputation, and which we all enjoyed, although their wine did not seem as revelatory as we were expecting. Still, we got to have a tour of the Wine Cave, which was pretty neat...

The Wine Cave. Cave vino.

The Freeman wine cave guy. Very nice, very helpful. Jill and I may go and volunteer there this fall to help with the harvest. It could be a blast, and we can learn winemaking operations, in case we should ever retire to a vineyard.

Rose, fast-tracking inebriation, and using the opportunity to cop a feel.

The gang.

Freeman was our 1st stop. Merry Edwards was the 2nd, and was quite good. She's been around a while working for other vineyards, but is relatively new as her own label. But the experience shows through.

After that, I know we hit 5 other wineries. I don't know precisely which ones they are/were, except that I remember we went to Marimar for an excellent tasting/gourmet lunch (which, btw, cost $40... eat that, Hanzell):

Seriously, the meal was *delicious*.

Drinking is very serious business...

unless you're Rose...

and a total lush.

Ed, proud that his people have not been *completely* overshadowed by the French and the Italians.

Rose married a Jew, and hence feels obligated now to eat Christians, preferably babies.

You know what a world-class winery needs most in order to convey that special je-ne-sais-quoi?

Giant fucking dog sculptures.

Rose. 'Nuff said.

Alison, enjoying life.

Ed likes it doggie-style.

Ed, thinking he is Atreyu.

Goodbye, giant dogs. Don't chase after the van...

Once again, it gets pretty blurry after this. And, because I was too wasted the night before to remember to charge my phone, it died halfway through the day, thus mercifully preventing me (mostly) from sending ridiculous texts to Jill. The last one I sent ended with "I koce you," so you can imagine the state I was in.

Don't mind me... I'll just be back here w/ the prosciutto. And the box of raisin nut bran I picked up at the Safeway. b/c nothing cleanses the palette like a combination of prosciutto and raisin nut bran.

By the time we made it back to the city for dinner, which we had at Harris' steakhouse, I was pretty wrecked again, and had had the hiccups for like 3 hours. But dinner was excellent, and I began the process of sobering up. We had a nice long dinner, and then we headed down to the airport. Although the flight ended up delayed, everyone got home OK; the only casualty of the weekend was a bottle of Zinfandel that broke in transit on the plane. A truly tragic event, but hey- we fulfilled the only real goal of the weekend, which was not to have to dial 9-1-1 for any reason.

After all, it's important to have goals...

And nice to achieve them.

Tonight's sunset

2010-02-01T19:05:00.001-08:00

The beachcam makes a funny...

2010-01-30T12:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's movie:

Sometimes you're just having a day...

2010-01-20T11:28:00.000-08:00

8am: Wednesdays I have to be in the SF office by 9am to do my weekly phone meeting with Sheila. After being late 2 weeks in a row, I make sure to be out the door by 8am. The average time to the office is 50 minutes, with a standard deviation of about 4 minutes, so I have a better than 95% probability of making it to the SF office on time. And that includes having inclement weather, which there's been a lot of recently, and which is in full force today.

To get to SF from HMB, I take the PCH along the cliffs, which is 1 lane each direction, through the Devil's Slide area and down into Pacifica, where it turns into 2 lanes each way and goes around another set of cliffs before depositing you onto the 280 and a clear path to the city.

815am: Despite the pouring rain, I am making pretty good time. I'm still easily projecting a 50 minute trip time when I come around a bend and see that a pickup truck has skidded, lost control, and t-boned the side of the hill, thus blocking the other direction of traffic completely. Traffic is already pretty backed up on our side.

For the next 30 minutes, I slowly inch forward until I get to the place where it becomes 2 lanes in each direction. CHP has shut down the southbound road from there, and is turning everyone around and sending them back north. Thus, our northbound lanes are having to accommodate twice the usual amount of rush-hour traffic, and they're not doing an especially efficient job of that accommodation.

845am: I finally make it past the slowdown, and gun it for the Daly City BART station.

855am: I arrive at the BART station, but now if I get on the train, I'll be WAY late to the meeting with Sheila, so I decide that I'll have to call Sheila from the car. That's what the magic of cell phone technology allows you to do, after all. With the 5 minutes I still have before our scheduled time, I decide to drive down John Daly Blvd and look for a coffee shop or something where I can grab a pastry.

Sadly, I have a 50-50 shot as to which way leads to the coffee shops and restaurants, and I of course choose wrong, as I do approximately 99% of the time when faced with a 50-50 shot of getting something right. So, I end up having to pull over and park at a meter so I can call Sheila.

9am: Upon opening my phone, I realize that I forgot to put it on the charger at work yesterday, and I am down to one bar of juice. Not enough to do a 1-hour phonecall. So I call Sheila and explain, and while explaining this to her, my phone changes from 1 bar of juice to "low battery", meaning maybe 5 minutes of talktime left, tops.

Sheila generously agrees that if I can get myself to the SF office in half an hour, she'll do our phone session in full then. So I start up the car to head back to the BART station. Now, in the 5 minutes it has taken me to make the call to Sheila, a Comcast van has pulled into the meter ahead of me, and a pickup truck has pulled into the meter behind me, and BOTH of them have left about an inch between my vehicle and theirs.

909am: After a 100,000 point maneuver to get out from between these two imbeciles, I am headed back to the BART station. It is still pouring rain.

914am: I pull into the surface lot at BART. No spots. No problem, I'll head for the GIGANTIC parking structure.

916am: I enter the parking structure. No spots on the first level.

917am: No spots on the second level.

918am: No spots on the roof. I have shown up here as late as 10am and still been able to at least get a spot on the roof. No problem, there is a secret area behind the parking structure, that I found once only by mistakenly heading down a service road- I'll check that out.

920am: Secret back area is totally full. No problem, there is a secret small overflow lot down the tiny unmarked, unsigned back road behind the parking structure. I'll use that.

922am: The secret areas, it turns out, cannot actually be said to be secret in the generally accepted sense of "other people not knowing about them." No spots.

923am: I consider heading back home; I could make it there in 25 minutes. On the other hand, the direct route is southbound on the PCH, which I happen to know is currently shut down. Therefore, I have to chance driving all the way into the city. On the other hand, it's technically past the peak of morning rush, and apparently everyone has decided to BART in, so hopefully the 280 is not too back up.

930am: The 280 is totally backed up.

955am: I arrive in Chinatown. I'm in such a hurry, I forget that the cheap garage is on Pacific, not Jackson, so I inadvertently park in the Hilton parking garage, where I will ultimately pay about a billion dollars to park.

1005am: I finally arrive at the office. It has taken over 2 hours to get the lousy 23 miles from my house to here. And because Joe Fucktard couldn't control his fucking pickup truck and drive competently in the rain, literally hundreds of people, including me, had more than an hour tacked onto their commute, and in addition to that, his incompetence will cost me an extra $200 in compensating Sheila for an additional hour of time (which she did not ask for, because she is very kind like that, but which I will pay because it's fair), plus the marginal cost of paying to park at the Hilton rather than paying $3 at BART. And the additional wear-and-tear on my car, and an additional fraction of a barrel of oil from some godforsaken bullshit country in the Middle East that one or both of my brothers could end up doing another tour in. And the additional carbon impact. So thank you, Joe Fucktard- heckuva job you've done today.

Grr.

Belize Navidad!

2009-12-25T01:40:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone!

First, credit where credit is due- the title comes courtesy of JOC. He would definitely want you to know that.

Mom and I just got back from midnight mass here in HMB. I've never attended mass here; there's only one church, and HMB is so provincial that I've always been a little skeptical about the likely quality of the mass. Since music is the part of church that I most enjoy, it's hard to find a church I will actually attend that's not in a big city, where there's enough local singing talent to put together decent music. So I was, as I said, skeptical going in.

Reality, it turns out, exceeded my expectations for how bad it would be. In order:

1) The pre-mass singing was, in a word, awful.

2) The pre-mass violinist was terrible in "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring", which is one of my favorite pieces ever. She was pleasantly mediocre for "O Holy Night". She achieved her greatest consistency in being quite distinctly flat in absolutely every note she ever tried to play in the upper parts of the register.

3) The mass did not appear to be rehearsed; people at times looked like they weren't sure what came next, and the musical director at one point polled the audience to see if anyone knew a particular Spanish carol that they really wanted to sing, but didn't currently have anyone who really knew.

4) The homily was awful. And when it was finally, blissfully, over, one of the other priests got up and gave it again in Spanish. It was much better in Spanish, since I couldn't understand most of it, and that priest spoke a lot faster.

Moments ago, as I was airing this complaint to mom:

Mom: You should become a deacon. Then *you* could preach...

Me: Ma, they're not going to let ME be a deacon.

Mom: I was talking to Father McCabe about this, and he said they'd never let you be a deacon either. You think too radically. He did, however, think you could be a Jesuit. They like to think radically.

Me: Mom, I'm single like 4 months and already you're trying to recruit me for the priesthood???

Mom: Not ME. Father McCabe. He said since you just dumped another girl, you should think about it.

Me: OK, I admit my situation is grim, but it's not THAT grim. Jeez.

5) After communion, one of the associate priests had disappeared (his chair was now conspicuously empty). The main priest just sat in his chair quietly, and the entire congregation sat there looking at him. Minutes passed. "What the hell is he waiting for?" was what was going through my mind, when finally one of the other priests jumped up and went to the microphone to explain what was happening. In Spanish. Apparently, it was amusing.

Finally, the back door of the church opened, and in marched Santa Claus. Or, technically, the missing priest, now back from his quick costume change and ready to march up to the little manger yelling "Hallelujah! Christ is here!!" He then made a big show of bowing several times to the little toy Jesus, and then exited the way he came, again shouting "Hallelujah! Christ is here!!".

Once he was gone, the main priest explained that Santa represented commercial christmas, and that the symbolism of seeing him bow to the baby Jesus was important.

Oy vey.

But it's over now. If we do christmas in CA again, I'll take mom up to the city for midnight mass. I'm not doing weirdo mass here again.

Just 4 days until I board a plane bound for Belize. I so need to get away from here for awhile.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all! And to all, a good night!

Things That Exist Only Because Women Exist, Part 1

2009-12-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

Dryer sheets.

Seriously, no man would ever have invented such a thing.

I think of this because tonight, as I was throwing my laundry in the dryer, I was momentarily distressed to realize I had forgotten to throw in a dryer sheet. Prior to dating Keiko, I had never actually laid hands on a dryer sheet, but she felt very strongly about the importance of a fresh scent coming out of the dryer, and bought me some. Over the next year, I slowly evolved to the point where I am now- that it distresses me not to have a dryer sheet in my laundry.

This is what women do to you.

Nowadays, I leave the seat down, I at least strongly consider throwing away socks and underwear just because they have a few holes in them, I actually launder my sheets periodically, and I find myself distressed if I don't have dryer sheets.

I am but a shadow of a man anymore...

Thank goodness for moms

2009-12-18T18:15:00.000-08:00

Mom arrives tomorrow for a week. As silly as I feel saying this, being a 37-year-old man and all, I really need her right now. It's not great for me to be alone in the house as much as I have been over the last couple of weeks. It will be great to hang out, have metaphysical conversations, and read books. Also, it's nice to come home to home-cooked curry, which is comfort food for me.

She leaves 12/27, and on 12/29 I leave for Miami, and then Belize. 6 days of tracking around the jungle with JJM and AC is exactly what I need- the chance to explore, be away from my life here, and remember what it's like to be have fun and be happy.

Then I have to come back and figure out how to really start building a life here. Lots to figure out where that's concerned.

But more on all that stuff later. Right now, thank goodness for mom...

The hearts that never played in tune...

2009-12-13T22:32:00.000-08:00

That's a line from a song called "Aubrey", by Bread. It's a fantastic, if extremely mournful, song.

This is going to be one of those cathartic, mostly depressing posts. So, you might want to consider not reading it. I'd almost rather you didn't. Last time I wrote a post like this, L read it and strongly suggested I take it down, on the grounds that I shouldn't allow anyone to see me so emotionally stripped bare.

But the thing is, this blog is something I actually do for myself. I allow it to be publicly readable because my life is just wacky enough just often enough that I think it has the ability to amuse the small group of people who actually read it. And I've never regretted not taking down that previous post, because from time to time I read it to remind myself of what I was feeling then.

So, I'm writing another post like it tonight, to try and get out of myself the feelings that have left me all but paralyzed for the entire weekend. I need to get the feelings out, because I have to get up and function like a normal person tomorrow, but I want to remember through the years what I went through during this time.

And so this is it: your last chance, dear readers, to bail out before we do a deep dive into what LAJ once called "all my complicated glory". You've been warned.

Although Keiko and I broke up over 3 months ago, we have tried hard to be friends, and continued to gchat a little pretty much every day, and talk on the phone maybe once a week. That was a lot less communication than we used to have when we were dating, but both of us hate being single and I think were relying on each other to be a steady presence even as we confronted an uncertain future, and the need to start getting back out there and dating other people.

Recently, as Keiko started to get out there and start meeting people, (something markedly easier to do when you're 27, stunningly gorgeous, and in a town full of single twenty-somethings, than it is to do when you're 37, balding, and in a town full of software engineers), it had gotten harder for us. For me, it was hard to see her moving on, even though I knew it was the right thing for her. For her, I had only in the last month really done enough processing of our relationship to do the relationship post-mortem from my perspective, and that stuff was hard for her to hear. All of her relationship post-mortem stuff had come in the first month post-breakup, and although that stuff hadn't been easy for me to hear either, I'd listened to all of it and tried wherever I could to validate whatever she was feeling. I know the job I did was imperfect, but I think I did a reasonable job of that.

But the end result was that this last week we had a series of very hard conversations followed by a series of very painful emails. I was reminded anew of some important rules about email:

1) NEVER put in an email something that requires the reader to correctly supply complicated nuances of tone. What will happen, invariably, like a law of nature itself, is that the reader will hear in their mind that sequence of tones which is most directly *opposite* the ones you wanted them to hear.

2) When someone writes an email like that to YOU, remember that (1) as noted above, you are almost certainly getting the tones all wrong, and (2) whether you've got the tones right or wrong, NEVER respond to the email while you're still gripped by whatever emotions you're feeling. Slow it down. The emotional release you'll get from the quick response will last for the briefest of moments. The regret you'll feel about what you said, that you'll carry for the rest of your life.

In our last series of emails, both Keiko and I violated those rules repeatedly. As it all spiraled out of control, the last email she sent, late late Friday night, ended with "I think it'll be better for us if we were just exs who tried once and realized we didn't work as friends. I loved you passionately and I learned and grew so much from this relationship. Thank you."

I don't know if I've ever been so hurt by a couple brief sentences.

So, in clear violation of Rule 2, I wrote back that I was sad that she didn't want to be friends, but that I would leave her her space and wait 6 months before trying to give her a call to see how she's doing. Looking back, I wish I'd slowed it down more along the way. Who knows, we may well have come to this point anyway, but maybe not. We'll never know.

Now I confront the loss of Keiko a 2nd time. Losing her as a girlfriend hurt a lot, but losing her as a friend, confronting the possibility that we may never again share laughter or really know what's going on in each others' lives, I feel that loss a thousand times more strongly. In the end, we did not actually make great life partners for each other, for a number of different reasons, but we *did* actually make great companions for each other, and the loss of that companionship has left me, for the first time in my life, feeling deeply, deeply lonely.

I doubt that Keiko will ever read this post; I remember her saying a couple weeks ago that she couldn't read my blog anymore because it was just too painful for her. But Keiko, if you do end up reading this, this is what I would say to you now: I didn't do as good a job as I should have in the time I had you of loving and cherishing you as you do indeed deserve to be loved and cherished; I didn't communicate with you nearly as much as I should have, nor did I do enough work to understand your communication style; I think you looked to me for leadership in this relationship, and I totally abdicated that responsibility. That's a lot of different ways to have let you down, and I'm truly sorry for that. But I did grow to love you more deeply than I have ever loved another woman, and the 2 years we spent together are an important part of who I am, which means *you're* an important part of who I am. I will love and treasure that part to all the end of my days, and I hope that you will find it in your heart to do the same. And maybe, just maybe, one happy day 6 months or 6 years from now we will reconnect as friends, and once again find ourselves eager to share with each other what's going on in our lives. I know I will always be hoping for that.

Goodbye, my baby. May you one day very soon find the man who will love and cherish you as you deserve, and who will give you the simple, quiet family life that I know in your heart you desire. And through the years, if you should chance to think upon me, know that wherever I am, I am wishing you peace, love, and happiness...

Always.

Questions some people out there really ought to spend some time pondering...

2009-11-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

Question:

"Why is it colloquially called a 'fast lane', and not a 'set-my-cruise-control-to-5-miles-over-the-speed-limit-at-the-tail-end-of-morning-rush-so-as-to-effectively-block-all-the-people-who-are-running-late-and-would-love-to-be-doing-85-right-now lane?"

A 1 minute conversation with my mother...

2009-11-22T18:11:00.000-08:00

Mom: "What's up?"

Me: "Hey mom- I'm working on editing application essays that are due tomorrow for one of my students, and I'm basically behind in like every aspect of my life right now."

(pause)

Mom: "Is this new for you?"

Me: "I'll talk to you later mom."

The Fisher King

2009-11-19T10:33:00.001-08:00

I sometimes tell my students about "Gus's Threefold Path to Happiness". I always preface it by saying that there is more than one path to happiness, and you should always run screaming from anyone who claims there's only one path, because that person has an agenda, and whatever it is, it probably isn't in your best interest. Mine is just one possible path- I can't remember if I've written about it before, so here it is:

1) Learn to love people.

Not all of them individually- there are a LOT of assholes out there. But people in their messy aggregate. Because doing so keeps you optimistic, and makes your heart strong. Otherwise, you end up cynical and unhappy, and that's a terrible way to live.

2) Learn to love learning.

Because doing so keeps your mind strong, and because if you do, then you can never be bored, because there will always be something else out there to learn about.

3) Learn to love baseball.

Because it's a metaphor for life. Here are just a few of many ways in which this is true: you start at home, and you spend pretty much most of the game trying to get back home in one way or another. Like life, most of baseball is fairly routine, but if you learn to appreciate its subtleties, even the routine stuff is interesting in its way, and the routine bits are punctuated by moments of the greatest joy, and moments of the most crushing sadness and disappointment. Baseball, like life, is a curious mix of individual performance and performance of the others that individual relies on. And finally, as with life, you know precisely when baseball starts, but you have no idea when it is going to end. Sure, there's a statistical average length of a baseball game, and most games are going to be around that long, but sometimes games go into extra innings, and last a lot longer than you thought.

And sometimes, a game you were really excited to see gets rained out before it even really gets a chance to begin.

This is a story about one of those rainouts.

MK, who is one of the most amazing people I know, got married almost 2 years ago in NYC to Carrie, who is also amazing. Keiko and I went to the wedding and had a blast, as expected, since those two are always a riot. A couple months after the dinner party in CA where Ed almost killed himself, they discovered that they were pregnant with twins. Natural ones- no fertility treatments involved. From the beginning, it seemed like a tough pregnancy, but MK & Carrie fought through it with their typical wry senses of humor.

This summer, they found out they had Twin-to-twin Transfusion Syndrome. TTTS occurs when one twin is essentially starving the other by taking the lion's share of the nutrients in utero. This situation does not typically end well for one or both of the twins, but MK & Carrie went to Philadelphia to get a cutting edge surgeon to do an operation to try and save both twins.

And miraculously, it worked. Both twins made it through.

Thus, Fisher and Truman were eagerly anticipated. The plan was to keep them in until the 3rd trimester, and then get them out of there and into incubators. The surgery would serve to make it possible for them to live long enough to make it to the 3rd trimester.

And on October 15th, Fisher and Truman were born. Obviously, they were super primi babies, but they made it into the incubators, and we were all thrilled for MK & Carrie. They had many funny stories about it all, which MK blogged about. I will include the link to that blog at the end of this post. It's worth reading.

So began the wait to see how they would do in the incubators, and after a month, it seemed like they were doing well enough that talk began to shift to a discussion of when they would finally be able to come home from the hospital.

Then, on Monday, Fisher was diagnosed with necrotizing endocolitis (hoepfully I'm spelling that right). Basically, bacteria was eating his intestines. It was pretty serious, and no Tuesday they did a major operation to try and save him. As a result of his diagnosis, they also checked Truman, and he had a similar issue, but not nearly as advanced. In fact, it was caught early enough that he could simply go on antibiotics and not have to do an operation.

Fisher made it through the operation on Tuesday, but was looking at needing at least another one. And on Wednesday, in his mother's arms, surrounded by family, he died, barely more than a month old. But in so doing, he may well have saved his brother's life.

It is moments like these that can cause a person to wonder: what is the point of it all? Is it that there's no point at all, as many an atheist would claim? Or is it "God works in mysterious ways yada yada yada insert cliched judeo-christian nonsense here"? Or is it that somewhere out there, there is a vast reservoir of consciousness, which you can call God or whatever you want, and from that reservoir bits of consciousness come to earth and are born, in order to accomplish some task?

I don't pretend to have answers to such questions, but I do know that Fisher saved his brother's life, and in doing so, accomplished more of significance in his one month of life than many people will in their entire existences. I wish I had gotten to meet him- I assumed that eventually I would. His passing serves to remind us all that the most important thing of all is spending time with those we care about, because it is not given us to know how much time they or we have left. It's altogether too easy to forget that little lesson in the daily routine of life.

And so, Fisher, I bid you Godspeed, on whatever journey awaits you on the other side. I will look forward to meeting you there someday.

MK's Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Blog:

http://twintotwintransfusion.blogspot.com/

Hey, thanks for coming out!

2009-11-13T09:57:00.001-08:00

Jeffrey was in town this past weekend...

I hadn't had a chance to see him since Keiko and I visited from NYC the summer I left. He's busy running his coffee shop in Richmond, which I highly recommend (Crossroads Coffee Shop). We'd been plotting a trip out to CA for him for a while, and finally we managed to engineer it.

Now, Jeffrey is one of my last single friends, so I had an aggressive plan of going out worked out. Thursday night we met up for dinner with my student Tim, and his wife and a couple of friends at an awesome place in Chinatown called R&G lounge. We ate and drank until pretty late, to the point where the only other people left in the place were the wait staff, who were having their own dinner by that point at the table across from ours. We put away several bottles of wine, and fortunately it was a long walk back to the car.

Friday I had to work a little, but then I came home and we plotted out a pub crawl in the Mission district of SF, which is supposed to be one of the up-and-coming-but-still-gritty areas of the city. We drove up to Daly City and then took the BART in the rest of the way, figuring that the BART wait/ride on the way back would be good sobering-up time.

Once in the Mission, we headed up Mission ave and started hitting pubs. The first place, we went to was a real neighborhood dive kind of place, and we had a couple drinks there that were decent, but nothing special. From there, we went to a much fancier place on the next block that looked like it would be a nice date place. Very nice atmosphere, etc. The crowd was a little older. The drinks, however, were still nothing special, just more expensive.

From there, we ended up in a super-crowded place with early 20-somethings. That place had fun energy, and the drinks were the best to that point. We nearly came to blows with some people over seats, which were very hard to come by, but then ended up talking to them for a while. The food looked very good.

From there, we wound up in a place called the Beauty Bar, which is the only place whose name I can remember anymore, although I think Jeffrey has notes written somewhere in his phone. The Beauty Bar had a nice, if small, dance floor and had good music. Also, the Jack and Coke I had was *strong*. At this point, I probably should have started to slow it down a little, but I didn't. Plus, I'd had different drinks in every place, so I had a lot of different kinds of alcohol swimming around in there, plus hadn't really eaten. Not smart.

Anyway, we enjoyed the Beauty Bar- it was a very good time, although I must say that it's not clear where the beauty is, because it wasn't in the decor or in the clientele. But we enjoyed the place anyway.

From there, we went to another place whose name I don't remember, before reaching 16th street, at which point I wanted to head over to the parallel street and work our way back down to the 24th street BART station. At that point we would have made a full circle.

On our way along 16th street, we passed an unmarked door which clearly had the sounds of a club emanating from behind it. Now, being who I am, I couldn't let an unmarked door go unexplored, and that's when I'm sober. By this point, I was fairly drunk, and NO WAY were we going to pass that up. I grabbed Jeffrey and said "WE'RE GOING IN HERE!"

I threw open the door and we stepped in. And everyone sort of stopped and looked at us.

One of the things you learn as you study ecology is that over time, populations in an area will fragment, and the different sub populations will evolve to take advantage of different tiny niches. Thus, as frogs move into an area, there will initially be just the one population, but then a million years later, you'll have 12 different related species of frogs, each of which has adapted itself to one specific niche in the area. The same thing happens with consumer products- for instance, someone invents shampoo, but then 100 years later, you have shampoo for blonds, shampoo for brunettes, shampoo for people with dry hair, shampoo for people with oily hair, etc. A million different types of shampoo, each for some niche in the market.

The same thing happens with human cultures, I think. For instance, take gay culture. In a city like, for instance, Richmond, VA, where the culture is extremely conservative, there are probably at most a couple gay bars, and pretty much anyone who's gay has to go to those few places. And keep it fairly on the DL, since the broader culture is still not very accepting of homosexuality. In other words, gay culture in a place like Richmond is not very well evolved.

Contrast that with a place like SF, which is more or less the global capital of gaydom. In SF, what you find is that gay clubs are all over the place, and as such have evolved into specialties. Like, for instance, this place we'd just walked into, which was clearly a hispanic gay bar.

Everyone looked at us. We looked at them. For a moment, it seemed like even the music had stopped, like you see on TV shows and in the movies. In that moment, I thought, "Oh well, we can't just walk out now."

So we stepped boldly in. And everyone went back to what they were doing.

We bellied up to the bar, where the bartender looked fairly amused to see us. Jeffrey was the only white person in the bar. I figure since I look Hispanic, they gave him a pass, and probably assumed we were, you know, together. I decided I needed a strong drink here, so I order a shot of Patron.

Also not a good decision, since I really needed to be slowing down the pace and the drink strength. But whatever, I had my shot. Immediately, I Mexican dude came over and started chatting me up. His English was limited, but we had a nice conversation for a while, until his friend dragged him away to go play pool. Honestly, I was a bit relieved.

Then a lesbian Chicana came up and we started talking. She explained right up front that she really liked girls, so we hit it off well since we have that in common. We talked for about 15 minutes, and then she went off and I turned to Jeffrey.

Me: "Wow, this is wild. Wasn't expecting this to be a gay bar."

Jeffrey: "Yeah, me neither. By the way, you know I'm gay, right?"

(pause)

Me: "Uh, what?"

Jeffrey: "Yeah, I've been slowly coming out to my friends over the last year or so. That's why i was bummed that I couldn't come out for the dinner party earlier this year. But, I figure there's never going to be a more appropriate time to come out than right now, so there you go. I'm gay."

(pause)
(I grab the last of my Patron and down it.)

Me: "Well, good on ya' for being who you are. Guess that explains why we're still alive in here- I look Hispanic and you're gay. We fit right in."

To be honest, it wasn't really all that surprising. Nacole had called that years ago. But I figured it's Jeffrey's right to be who he is, or to pretend to be whoever he wants, so I never asked or said anything about it, figuring if he had anything to say about it to me he eventually would. I just never would have guessed it would be in a gay Hispanic bar in SF.

(Joel on the phone the next day- "so wait, you were in the gay capital of the world, in a part of the city known for its gay bars, and you went into a bar with an unmarked door? What did you THINK was going to happen??" Me: "Why don't you shut up?")

So we had a nice conversation about what it's like to be gay in Richmond, how it had been coming out to people, etc. Then we finally left and headed to the next place, which was around the corner and which was refreshingly hetero (well, refreshingly for me, anyway). I only remember this place very dimly, and I remember ordering a Bay Breeze on the grounds that I should really stop drinking anyway. I don't remember actually drinking it, but I'm pretty sure I did.

From there, we went back down 16th st, because we were both completely wasted by this point, and we hadn't eaten so we were starving. Right across from the Hispanic gay bar was a taco place, so we went in there and I had an awesome chicken quesadilla while trying to remain seated in my chair, which seemed to be really unstable for some reason. After putting away the quesadilla, we decided that maybe we'd better call it a night, and went down the street to the BART station.

Amazingly, we didn't have to wait long for the BART, which doesn't run so often that late at night, and we got on needing only about 5 stops to get back to Daly City. However, the BART is not real gentle, and after rocking back and forth for a couple stops, we hit the Balboa Park station and I said to Jeffrey "We're getting off here."

Which we did. I collapsed in a heap on the platform, grateful that the platform was moving a lot less than the train had been. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be perfectly still, which is what I *really* needed at that point, and within moments I realized that puking was imminent. I hated the thought of puking all over the platform, so I started crawling for the edge so I could lean over and puke on the tracks. However, on the way there (the 4 feet along the ground that I had to crawl to get to the platform edge), I saw lights in the distance in the tunnel, and in a last brief moment of clear thinking, decided that maybe in my condition, being anywhere near the platform edge was maybe not such a good idea. So, I puked up my guts right there, a couple feet from the platform edge. But it was in clear view, so hopefully no one stepped in it. I feel real bad about that.

Stomach emptied, we got on the next train and made it the last couple of stops. Jeffrey drove us back, with me giving directions in what I guess was coherent enough fashion to get us there. Once home, I said thank you for a most interesting evening, and then went into my bathroom to spend some quality time driving the porcelain bus. And then I went to bed.

Thank god I didn't have to work on Saturday.

Saturday I'd planned another night out, but instead all we did was eat and eventually go see a movie. Neither one of us had the energy for anything else. That afternoon I checked my cell phone, because I learned after the night of Plaid's bachelor party that it's a good idea to check your phone the next day and see what you texted the night before. There were some eyebrow-raising texts from that night, and if I'd known about textsfromlastnight.com back then (thanks JJM for introducing me to that) I definitely would have had some things to submit.

Checking the phone Saturday, it looked pretty quiet, except there appeared to be a call from Alix that apparently I'd taken, but couldn't remember at all. I called her to see...

Me: "Uh, um, did we *talk* last night?"

Alix: "You're a very cheerful drunk, you know that?"

Me: "Uh, what did we talk about?"

Alix: "Why? Are you worried you said something you shouldn't have?"

Me: "What? Uh, no, I.."

Alix: "Ohmygod, you totally think I'm an idiot, and you're worried you finally actually said that to me!"

Me: "Ohmygod, can you stop being so goddamned insecure for 30 seconds and JUST TELL ME what the hell we talked about????"

Alix: "I actually called for some boy advice, which turned out to be very entertaining for me. And you totally think I'm an idiot."

Me: "As soon as my head stops hurting, I am going to kill you."

So we had a very mellow Saturday, which turned out to be exactly what we needed to recover. Here's the sunset:

Sunday I had to work a little in the morning, and then it was time to go to Max's 3rd birthday party. Jeffrey, being a mellow sort, was game to go, largely because I promised another pub crawl afterward. "Just remember there's going to be beer afterward," I said. So we headed over to the "My Gym" for a raucous afternoon of birthday celebration.

I don't know about you, but birthdays today seem to be a much larger production than they ever were when I was a kid. BTW, there's a part of me that can't believe that I write/say things like "Things are so different from the way they were when I was a kid." When did I become someone who says things like that?

Anyway, I don't remember having parties very often, and if I did, a couple people came over for some cake. And that was it.

Nowadays, birthday parties require hiring professional help, like the My Gym, or the Princess Ariel impersonator that Em had at her last birthday party. And there are lots of Activities, and birthday rides on the sled while all the kids sing happy birthday. And a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls. A zip-line! I want a zip-line that ends in a giant bin of balls for my 38th birthday, goddammit. But it was fun to see Max having such a good time. Jeffrey weathered it all well, and I got to catch up with some of Laura's family, which was nice.

After the party, which included our getting to take home 2 extra-large pizzas that turned out to be extra (they ended up feeding me for an entire week), Jeffrey and I headed up to the city for our second pub crawl, this time in North Beach.

This time, we decided to be a lot smarter about our pub crawling. For instance, we decided to hold the pacing to one place per hour, and no more than 2 drinks per place. Plus, we decided to allow for eating and drinking water along the way. As a consequence, I remember a lot more about the places we went, and I remember some of the conversations I had with people at the various bars we hit. They were all reasonably nice neighborhood bars; by the time we got through 5 of them, it was already getting close to midnight, and we had to drive back, and the rest of the places were on Broadway in the red light district, so we opted to save that stretch for another day. Best decision ever, especially considering I actually had to be at work in the morning.

Thus, the next morning I went to work- sadly, I had to work a lot of the day, but in the evening we went to Little Sheep Hot Pot, which is the best hotpot ever. And we got to play pool for a couple of hours too. Then I had to take Jeffrey to the airport, to bid him farewell. It was a great trip, and it was fun to be out and about- since virtually all my local friends are married with children, it's rare that I end up going out like that. And it was a good reminder that I am not 22 anymore, and I actually do need to manage how I drink if I want to be able to function in the slightest the next day.

But eh, I've always been a hardway learner. It's just how I'm wired...

A birthday weekend in LA

2009-10-28T00:52:00.000-07:00

It was JOC's birthday this weekend, and he had his birthday party in LA. He lives near Madera, which actually is in the middle of nowhere- pointing to where he lives on a map of CA actually lands your finger on an empty space west of Yosemite and just east of Madera. Which means, it's not convenient for *anyone* to get to, and hence the party in his hometown, Los Angeles.

One of the nice things about living in SF is that you can get plane tickets to LA on virtually no notice for $100 roundtrip. And that's before they build the supercool 200mph train that's going to run between LA and SF. It's scheduled to be done by 2018, which means that it might possibly be done by 2030, but I wouldn't put money on it.

So I hopped on a flight to LA. It was the usual story- couldn't get out of work quite when I wanted, so rather than take the train I had to drive, and drive fast, in order to get to the airport in time. But I still arrived at the gate a solid 20 minutes before takeoff, so it wasn't particularly close, for me anyway.

Once in LA, I picked up my rental car, which was a little Kia that was the absolute worst shade of puke-burnt-orange EVER (they ought to call it the Kia "Birth Control", because no way are you getting any driving a car like that), and headed to Paul and Terry's house, where the party was going to be.

Paul and Terry are awesome, and last time I was at their house, we had a six-degrees-of-separation moment when we realized that Terry was in Cats with the wife of one of my tutor friends from the NYC office. They are extremely generous people, and they have a great house for hosting parties.

I arrived around 630, and so I hung out with JOC and V and Paul and Terry, and helped set up a bit. And, then I fell asleep. I'd worked late the night before, and I'd had to get up early that morning to be in the office, plus I figured that any party involving JOC would go until the wee hours, so I took what was supposed to be a short nap, but turned out to be long enough that by the time I woke up, pretty much all the guests had arrived, and the party was in full force.

Since it was also United Nations day, people were encouraged to come as something relating to their favorite country. Generally speaking, I do not dress up, not since the Smurf Incident in 4th grade...

Up until 4th grade, I was pretty into the idea of dressing up on Halloween. But in 4th grade, my mom came home one day pretty close to Halloween and said she had bought me a costume. A Smurf costume, in fact. Since I liked watching the Smurfs on Saturday mornings.

Thing is, although I *did* enjoy watching the Smurfs on TV, I was also reaching that point in the development of any young boy where life was becoming extremely Darwinistic at school, and the last thing I needed to try and improve my survival probability was to show up dressed as a smurf. I mean, that's fine if you're obviously bigger than all the other boys, preferably in your grade and at least the next couple up, but that's seriously unwise if, just to pick something at random here, there are only 6 boys in your class and you are clearly the smallest one.

I explained all this to my mom. Well, OK, it was probably a little bit more like:

Me: "MOM! No WAY am I going to school dressed like a smurf!"

Mom: "What? I bought this costume for you! I bought it, so you are going to WEAR it. You LIKE the smurfs!"

What followed was variations on this exchange, right up until the morning of Halloween, which was a schoolday that year. We continued to have that fight even as my mom forcibly held me in place and painted my face blue, and put that stupid costume on me. She literally had to drag me out the door and stuff me into the car, and then when we got to school, I refused to get out. So there, on the street, in front of the other parents and the nuns, my mom had to reach inside the car and pull me out. I fought as best I could, holding onto everything possible, but ultimately I lost, and as soon as I was safely dumped on the sidewalk, my mom jumped back in the car and drove off.

What followed was a very, very long day. I won't describe it, except to say that it wasn't all that different from what you've seen on those nature shows, where the one smaller, weaker goat gets separated from the herd by the pack of ravenous wolves, and then the little goat valiantly gives its best shot at escaping before the story finally ends in a way which is not good for the goat.

Since that day, I have not dressed up for Halloween. Except for once in college when me and L and JH wore our costumes from the modern dance piece we were in (they were brightly colored silk pajamas) to the big Halloween party on campus. We declared ourselves to be The Three Tops, and we sang "My Girl" at the door to get in for free. But otherwise, I've avoided costumes.

Including at JOC's party. I looked up the colors I was wearing in the database of flags, and discovered that my colors matched the flag for Estonia, so I declared myself to be the representative from Estonia, but I don't think many people bought it.

There were some good costumes though, including Big E in a fez, and a girl who came as Angelina Jolie, complete with giant stick-on lips and a bandolier of little ethnic babies. That one won a prize.

In typical JOC fashion, the evening featured drinking and talking until the wee hours. By midnight, I was in the giant outdoor hot tub, and in fact I stayed put there until 4am, at which point I looked like a prune. But it was a wonderful night.

Sunday I got up and went to brunch with JOC and V and their families, in the same place where JOC and V got married. I hadn't been there since the wedding, and it was nice to see the place again. Many happy memories associated with that place and that weekend. We had a wonderful brunch, and afterwards I went out to Calabasas to visit Cara and Marty and Danny.

Danny is my unofficial godson, and he's in high school now, which is terrifying because I remember holding him in my arms as a baby when Cara brought him into the office so she could attend a big contract negotiation. He cried nonstop until he passed out, and then I was afraid to move him so I just sat there until long after I couldn't feel my legs anymore. And now he's in high school. I spent a few hours hanging out at their house and catching up, before heading back to Paul and Terry's to meet them and JOC and V for dinner.

After a wonderful Italian meal, we headed back to the hot tub, where once again we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, which was awesome, but which I paid a certain price for since I had to get up and be out the door at 6am in order to get over the hill to catch my flight out of LAX. I suffered through the rest of the day.

But enh, sleep when you're dead, and all that...

Beautiful days in HMB...

2009-10-17T23:54:00.000-07:00

The sunset tonight

The movie of yesterday, which was utterly perfect weather:

What to do about all these wars...

2009-10-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

Mom and I had a conversation the other day about Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan...

It's obviously a particularly charged subject for both of us, since both my brothers are in the military, they've served a combined 5 tours already and could conceivably serve more, and one has already been wounded over there once.

The particular trigger was a piece in the news about the possible decision to do a "surge" of troops into Afghanistan. There are a lot of places you can go to get a reasonable (or unreasonable) perspective on that, but here's mine:

The only actual threat to our physical security comes from terrorist cells, which are highly decentralized and aren't tied to any particular country. The only way to combat a threat like that is with absolutely superb intelligence. I argue that what we need is not 20,000 more soldiers in Afghanistan; what we need is 20,000 people who speak Arabic/Urdu/Pashto etc., who would be willing to do deep cover assignments in every major city in the Middle East, plus the major mosques in Western Europe and the U.S. That, plus better integration of efforts between existing U.S. intelligence/law enforcement agencies- don't forget that a couple different people in intelligence services flagged a couple of the 9/11 hijackers before 9/11, but the dots did not get connected, with the obvious tragic results. Note also that this intelligence was gathered just fine without a Patriot Act in existence to blithely gut our constitutional rights.

So, what's needed is not more military; it's more intelligence and better use of the information we have. Which brings me to:

Get the military the hell out of the Middle East.

If I were President, right now I would pressure the current Afghan and Iraqi governments to lease us land in a relatively removed part of each country for the next 99 years, a la Guantanamo. I would build serious bases in both places, and I would staff those bases with a couples of strike teams each. Then I would make the following international address:

"People of the world- listen up. First, to Iraqis: if you want to chop each other up based on something as trivial as whether you are Sunnis, Shias, or Kurds, fine. That's your business. Personally, I don't think it's a great idea, but whatever. Also, if you really would rather have a autocratic loon run your country, because life was just so awesome under Saddam and you just miss that life, fine. Also your choice. Personally, I recommend capitalism and democracy, because that seems to be working out a lot better than the alternatives pretty much everywhere, but we're not spending another goddamned dime trying to force either one on you. Do what you want.

What we're going to do instead is hang out here on our base, and we'll shoot anyone who comes near it. What we'll be doing on this base is closely monitoring your entire frickin' country for anything that looks like it might have even the tiniest little possibility of being a terrorist training camp or terrorist cell. Anytime we find such a thing, we'll go and totally destroy it. We will do this whenever we bloody well feel like it, and without any prior notice delivered to you.

Second, to you folks in Afghanistan- the same goes for you. We're going to hang out on the base here, and shoot anyone who comes near it. The moment we withdraw from the rest of your country, the Taliban are going to come flooding back. And if life under the Taliban is so goddamned awesome, then welcome them with open arms. Otherwise, I again recommend considering capitalism and democracy. In the meantime, we'll also be monitoring your country from our base, and anything that even hints of being terrorist-related will be destroyed. Again, we will do this whenever we want, with no notice given to whatever circus act you're calling a government at the time.

Finally, to the rest of the world- we're expanding our intelligence activities everywhere. Anytime we find a terrorist cell, we're taking it out, and then we'll let you know we did it. And frankly my dears, I don't give a damn about "national sovereignty". Believe me, if we take a terrorist cell out on your soil, we just did you a favor. Pakistan, that especially applies to you. Everybody clear? Great. God bless."

In the end, if people in places like Afghanistan and Iraq want to have shitty, oppressive, corrupt governments, they will. And life will suck for them as a result. People will die, immense quantities of human potential will be squandered, etc. But eventually they'll realize that life sucks, and that life doesn't suck in a lot of other places, and at that point they'll make progress toward better governance. But you can't do it for them, and the billions of dollars we're spending trying is just a tragic waste of money that would be better spent on jobs and infrastructure here, plus sensible assistance to countries that are actually making an effort not to be basket cases.

And don't even get me started on the wasted lives. I've more than once considered running for office solely because the prospect of losing a brother in one of these retarded wars makes me sick to my stomach. But so far, I've resisted the temptation.

Besides, this blog ensures my unelectability anyway...

Don't judge me...

2009-10-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

I hate it when a stranger looks at you, and you know that right now they're judging you in some way.

I bring this up because mom is out here visiting right now, and the thing is, she fell in the grocery store last week. One of those big metal wheeled ladders that they use to stock the upper shelves was blocking the shelf that she wanted something from, so she tried to climb through it, tripped on the metal ankle-level bar, and smashed the side of her face in against one of the vertical supports. Gushed blood everywhere, had to get 4 stitches in the side of her face, and now is sporting a HUGE shiner.

Which means a number of things. First, it meant that our first activity together upon her arrival was for me to take her down to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation's urgent care facility to get the stitches taken out, since her doctor told her they should come out on what turned out to be her first day here. It had been almost 3 whole weeks since the last time I had to deal with a medical issue, so I'd been feeling a void in my life anyhow.

But it also means that whenever we walk up to a counter together, for lunch or something, people look at her, see her enormous black eye, and then look at me. And I can see them thinking. It's painfully obvious what they're thinking- "Oh my god, is he BEATING this poor old woman? Does he HIT her??"

After the first few times, I got so annoyed, I almost wanted to pre-emptively shout "SHE FELL IN THE STORE, GODDAMMIT!!", but let's face it- that isn't going to help. In fact, it's just going to make it worse. "Riiiiiiight," they'll think, "She fell in the store. Uh huh. Didn't Suzanne Vega write a song about that?"

Yes, she did. You probably remember it:

"My name is Mary
I fell in the grocery store
I live in Saint Loo-ee
You've probably never been there before.

If you see me
With a black eye
And I'm there with a
Shifty looking kinda guy

Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me what it is
Just don't ask me, what it is."

And of course, it doesn't help that I look nothing like her, so it's not like people can assume I'm her son or something. People probably just think I'm some thug that's beating up an old woman for her social security checks.

The irony of that, especially with the grocery store connection, is that when I was about 3, my mom would often take me grocery shopping. My grandma always used to sing an old song called "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to me to make me go to sleep, and I really liked it, so while I was sitting there in the grocery cart I would amuse myself by singing that song at the top of my lungs. Despite how obviously adorable that is, my mom was a little embarrassed by the spectacle I made of myself, bellowing that song continuously, barely even stopping to breathe, so she would park the cart at one end of the aisle, and then walk up that aisle and down the next, grabbing everything she needed in her hands, all the while pretending like I wasn't her kid- like she really had no idea whose little brown kid that was belting out old showtunes. And it probably worked, since I look nothing like her.

But in the great cycle of life, we often switch roles with our parents, and now I find myself shaking my head embarrassedly at my mother's grocery store antics:

Mom: "So, I think this next year I'm going to focus on my health. I need to keep exercising and stuff. Then I'll figure out what I'm going to do next."

Me: "That sounds like a great plan, mom. A couple of steps toward that goal, that you might want to seriously consider, are: (1) not forgetting to take your damn medicine all the time, and (2) not doing stupid shit like climbing around a metal ladder like you're a frickin' chimpanzee, rather than ask the 23-year-old stock boy to move it for you. I think you should make those things part of your health strategy."

So for all you dear readers who have read the stories in this blog and wondered to yourselves: "Why the hell does he do such stupid shit all the time?", I have a simple, one-word answer for you:

Genetics.

Stirring the Pot: Chapter 5: Gay Marriage

2009-10-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

I saw today that DC is about to pass an ordinance making gay marriage legal in the District. The usual suspects in Congress will kick and fuss and try to block it, and will likely fail. Which is fine with me.

But on the larger issue of gay marriage, here's where I stand:

Governments should not be in the business of recognizing marriages. Hetero, gay, whatever, the government shouldn't have anything to do with that. The government should only recognize civil unions between any two consenting adults. Civil unions have all the legal benefits of marriage (or should anyway- I'd fix that too if it were not so), for instance, joint property, health and retirement benefits, etc, but avoid all the religious overtones that the word "marriage" carries with it. I'd have all governments stop issuing "marriage licenses" immediately.

This way, any 2 adults who want to make a commitment to each other can, and they can get all the benefits associated with that. And, people who want to include or exclude other people from a religious concept like marriage can be free to do so. In this way, society can be supportive of equal rights, and people who want to discriminate due to whatever their religious beliefs are can do so. Everyone gets to live the way they want.

But I doubt this is going to happen anytime soon.

I lost on Jeopardy, ba-by...

2009-10-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

I got back from a quick trip to LA this week...

Ed called me the other day to tell me he was going to be on Jeopardy, and that none of his other friends would be able to come. So, taking a quick look at the schedule, I decided to skip out of town for 2 days and see him on the show.

Southwest is magical: on 24 hours notice, I got a round-trip ticket to LA for $29 each way. That is a thing of beauty. Ed and I agreed to share a hotel room, and I got a rental car from Advantage for $14/day.

All these arrangements went down Sunday night, which means all day Monday I was slammed, seeing people back-to-back-to-back until it was time to race out of the office in a desperate attempt to get to the airport on time. As veterans of this blog know, desperate attempts by me to get to the airport on time pretty much always end well; it's the times where I try to be responsible that inevitably lead to disaster. And sure enough, with some hyper-aggressive driving on the 101, a little bit of shuttle karma, and a short line at security, I managed to make the flight a full 20 minutes before takeoff. Another job well done.

I spent the 55 minute flight to LA trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. Earlier that day I gave an interview to a prospective tutor named Leyan Lo, who until 2006 was the world record holder in Rubik's Cube solving, at 11.13 seconds. He had me mix up a cube for him, and then had me time him. It took him just over 16 seconds, and I have to tell you, it was amazing to watch. He then proceeded to teach me how to solve it, and presented me at the end of the interview with some instructions for how to do it. It was huge fun to solve it there with him, but I wanted to see if I could retain the knowledge long enough to do it again on my own later.

The verdict: nope.

My dance teacher (perhaps somewhat ironically named Gaye) always used to say that you had to learn something 5 times before you really learned it. How to solve a Rubik's Cube appears to follow that rule. Even with the written instructions I got bogged down.

That said, he gave a great math and physics interview, so he's almost certainly coming on board.

Anyway, in short order we landed in LA, and the girl next to me, who had been with some amusement watching me flail even with step-by-step instructions in front of my face, wished me luck. I headed out to find the shuttle to Advantage.

Now, Advantage rent-a-car is like the opposite of Advantage Testing; Advantage rent-a-car appears to be the cheapest option out there, with a service level to match. I realized after waiting a while that because it's a very small operation, the shuttle might only come when they were actually expecting someone, which meant waiting another 20 minutes, and I hadn't remembered to write down the number of the place, only the reservation number. So I hit upon a Brilliant Idea.

My Brilliant Idea was this: rental car places are all located in pretty much the same area, so why bother waiting for the Advantage shuttle? I could just jump the next major car rental shuttle, and then just spot for the Advantage lot.

So, 10 seconds later I jumped the Hertz shuttle, and off we went. As we passed through a light, I saw a sign that indicated that Alamo and Advantage were up the road. So, when we pulled into Hertz, I got out and started walking.

And walking.

And walking.

And walking.

It turns out that LAX is bordered by a pretty large, slowly decaying, totally-deserted-at-night industrial area, which is sprinkled here and there with car rental companies. Not, it turns out, especially adjacent to each other.

Ed called me on the phone as I was walking through a little urban meadow of broken concrete and shattered crack vials, and asked what the hell was taking so long, because he was starving. I informed him that (a) I was starving too because I hadn't actually had time to eat that day, and in fact had last had a meal over 24 hours previously, and (b) was trying to focus on finding the goddamned car rental place.

At that point, I was saved by... wait for it... the Advantage shuttle. Not that it picked me up or anything, but I saw it go whizzing by, probably on its way back from the airport, where it failed to find me in this universe but presumably *did* find me in some of the other multitudes of universes in which I did smart, normal-people things like sit down and fucking wait 20 minutes, or, you know, write down the car rental phone number or something. I saw the shuttle disappear down a little side street.

I ran after it, and got to the corner just in time to see it distantly turning right. So I headed down that street for quite some time, and then eventually stumbled upon Advantage car rental.

Like I said, it's a small rental company, and probably doesn't get a lot of business at 9pm on a Monday night, so there were only 2 people working, and each one was helping someone. I was excited since there was no one ahead of me in line, figuring that that would imply a very short time until I was once again on the road in LA.

But, I guess when you're stuck at work on a Monday night, and there aren't many customers, your incentive is to go ve-e-e-e-e-e-ry slowly, as a means of alleviating the boredom. It took a solid 15 minutes before one of the 2 guys finished, and who knows how long they'd been helping these people before I showed up.

But I did finally get my little Hyundai Elantra, which made me nostalgic for Julio, my Hyundai Elantra with the stupid little spoiler that I had from 1995-2003, before trading it to Plaid for a pile of used science fiction books so his kid would have a car to drive. After all, I had just moved to NYC, and knew I wouldn't be needing a car for the foreseeable. I got in this newer, less charactered Elantra and headed for the Radisson in Culver City.

Once there, Ed and I greeted each as we are wont to do:

Me: "Yo dude, good to see you!"

Ed: "Yo dawg, what's up?"

Me: "Dude, I'm really fucking hungry. Let's get out of here and get some food."

Ed: "Me too. But first I have to finish dealing with my clothes here."

Me: "WHAT? You couldn't have fucking done that during the SIX HOURS you've already been here? Can't this wait?"

Ed: "Fuck you. Listen, I don't iron. What I do is hang my clothes in the bathroom and turn on the shower, and let the steam take care of most of the wrinkles. So I did that tonight. But then my brother called and I was on the phone with him for an hour and forgot that my clothes were in the bathroom getting steamed. I just got off the phone with him 2 minutes before you got here. Here, feel this shirt."

I feel the shirt. It is very, very, VERY damp.

Me: "Dude, you are fucking retarded."

Ed: "Hey- why don't you shut the fuck up and let me finish dealing with this, huh? How 'bout that?"

There are some days where I feel that, if Ed and I hadn't each become high-end tutors, we'd instead have become Vincent and Jules (John Travolta and Samuel Jackson) from Pulp Fiction.

So I waited for Ed, and then we headed off to Tito's Tacos. Mmmmmmm, Tito's. I don't know what Tito is doing there, but he makes the best damned taco-stand tacos on earth, bar none. We had a long leisurely dinner and played catch up, and then headed back to the hotel.

The next morning, Ed had to be on a 730am shuttle, so he had his wake-up call set for 530am. Now, for me there is no significant difference between the time it takes for me to get ready for a special event, and the time it takes for me to get ready normally. Basically the entire difference can be attributed to (1) putting on shoes that actually have laces and therefore need to be tied, and (2) tying a tie. So all that tying of stuff adds up to about 2 extra minutes tops.

For Ed, there is no significant difference between the time it takes him to get ready for a special event, and the time it would take a really really neurotic woman to get ready for the same event. I'm not sure why that is- I mean, he's not putting on makeup or anything. At least, I don't think he is; if he is, it isn't making him any prettier. The 2 hours of time he allotted was supposed to allow for him to have a leisurely breakfast, but he ended up only having time to grab coffee to go. Again, I'm not sure why that is- I had my head under my pillow, trying vainly to sleep through all his pimping and preening.

As a contestant guest, I was supposed to be at the studio at 1030am. So, I got out of bed around 1010, was out the door at 1020, and arrived at the Sony lot at 1030. Fortunately, the intake process for all the guests and just random people who wanted to be in the studio audience took long enough for me to park the car and join in. They made us buddy up with someone for the long walk through the forest of sound stages, and I wound up talking to the new husband of one of the contestants. They were also from NYC, and he was a biochemistry Ph.D., so I spent the walk trying to recruit him into Advantage.

Once in the studio, the guy who announces for Jeopardy explained how the day would go for us. They film 3 shows in the morning, take a mandatory 1-hr lunch break, and then film 2 more shows. So, an entire week of Jeopardy happens in 1 day. Alex Trabek simply goes backstage and changes suits in the break between shows, and then also comes out and takes questions from the audience. That's the stuff I remember being told. Now, Ed swears that he was told by the Jeopardy folks that we, the contestant guests, were ALSO told not to look at, try to communicate with, or otherwise acknowledge the future contestants, who sit in the section next to us while they await their turn up on the stage, on the grounds that the Jeopardy folks need to ensure that there's not even a snowball's chance of any cheating occurring.

I guess, in retrospect, that would explain why, when the contestants filed in and starting sitting down in the section next to us, and I started waving, flashing 2 thumbs up, and smiling encouragingly at Ed, all the other contestant guests seemed oddly restrained, and Ed seemed, well, sheepish.

Ah well. I, uh, may have drifted in and out a little bit during that spiel at the beginning. And following directions has never been one of my core competencies anyway.

I brought some ACTs with me to work on, anticipating that there would be a lot of down time. But actually, there surprisingly wasn't. But I also used the paper I brought with me to keep score of how many answers I knew all throughout the day, just to see if I had any chance as a contestant myself. Basically, it broke down like this:

science/geography/vocabulary: 5/5
history/literature/current events: 2/5 - 4/5
fine art/music/sports: 1/5 - 2/5
anything with movies, TV, or celebrities: 0/5

And with that last one, that's 0/5 *every* *time*. And it's not like I was guessing wrong, and then saying "oh right, I should have known that!" I mean, the questions get read, and I have blank, Homer Simpson stare. Then the answer is announced, and I *still* have blank, Homer Simpson stare. The answers didn't mean anything more to me than the questions.

Game 1 started with a male returning champion, and a woman originally from upstate NY who now lived in LA and was a patent attorney, and someone else challenging. LA woman managed to knock off the champion in a relatively well-contested match.

Then, 2 members from the contestant pool were chosen at random to come up and take the stage to challenge LA woman in Game 2. No Ed though, and no Roopa, who was the wife of biochem dude. Interestingly, as I had bonded with her husband, I could see that Roopa and Ed were sitting next to each other and had apparently bonded as well.

LA woman, whose house had burned down a couple months before in one of the SoCal fires, dispatched both those challengers pretty handily. 2 more contestants were chosen at random for Game 3. Still no Ed and no Roopa.

Game 3 was marginally better contested, but still ended in a pretty convincing victory for LA woman. Now it was time for lunch. Contestants were kept sequestered in the dining area for Jeopardy staff, while we were told to walk off the lot and forage. So I found some Japanese food in a minimall across the street, and came back to discover that I was apparently late (they made me leave my cell ph in the car so I had no way of keeping time, but was *sure* I hadn't been gone that long), and so I had to run across the Sony lot by myself. Fortunately, I remembered the way back and got to the studio just as they were closing the doors.

Which was good, because Ed was up for Game 4, along with a woman from South Dakota somewhere. Ed and LA woman went at each other like heavyweight fighters, leaving Dakota girl in the dust. They went into Final Jeopardy tied at $9600 apiece, with Dakota girl in a distant 3rd at $2400. The category was "Pulitzer Prize for Drama".

Uh oh.

Right away, I knew this was going to be trouble. Ed's not a big drama buff, and had it been me up there, I would have bet $0 and hoped that LA woman got it wrong, simply because I would estimate my probability of getting a Final Jeopardy question in a category like that correct to be less than 1%.

Ed, however, true to his nature, went balls-out and bet it all. And... got it wrong. Meanwhile, both the women got it right, and so he finished 3rd. LA woman won again. It was an exciting game though, and it will air on 10/29. Ed was the most entertaining contestant that day by far though, so I recommend watching it even though you know the final outcome overall.

After the game, Ed came back out to sit next to me. Roopa was one of the 2 called up to battle with LA woman next in Game 5. We watched her finish 3rd also, while a dude from New Bedford knocked off LA woman. Then the day was done, so we headed out, back to the hotel...

Ed: "I need to be drinking. Now. Make it happen."

Me: "OK, I'm on it."

So we dropped off stuff at the hotel and headed down to Santa Monica. I took us to Yankee Doodles on the promenade, because I always enjoyed drinking there back in the days when I was in advertising and was expected to go to events in bars to schmooze with buyers.

So we drank and played pool for a couple hours before going to dinner at Father's Office on Montana with our friends Scholzeey and Allegra, who work in the LA Advantage office, and whom we have known since they joined the NYC Advantage office in 2004. They are a lot of fun, and we talked well into the night. It was good that they were there, because the entire night up until that point had been Ed lamenting the fact that knowing just one more question was the difference between having $1000, and having $19,200 and the pride of being a Jeopardy champion. He can be a little obsessive, and so I was glad we were able to at least mostly get his mind off of it.

I woke up the next morning with a headache that I recognized as being the thing I always end up with after a night of drinking with Ed. He and I had booked our flights out that evening, in case he had won a few games in a row, so we had a whole day in LA to kill. We didn't end up getting out of the hotel until noon, and so after a hearty anti-hangover breakfast, we went down to State beach and spent a couple hours laying out. It was so nice to just lay out on the sand. Then we hit the Beverly Center, and then Versailles for some Cuban food.

Of course, this story can't end without my noting that true to form, we spent too long at dinner, and wound up having to race through west LA to drop off the rental and get to LAX in time for our flights. But, with some aggressive driving and a short line at security, we both made it. So I wished Ed goodbye, and thanked him for a most entertaining couple days...

Me: "Dude, it was great seeing you! And thanks for another interesting story..."

Ed: "You know what would have made it an even more interesting story? Winning 19 thousand dollars. FUCK! fuckfuckfuck."

Me: "Dude, seriously, you've got to stop that."

Ed: "Dude, I'm over it. I'm fucking over it. Don't worry about it."

Riiiiiight.

You know you're retarded when...

2009-09-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

...you cut your nose shaving. Your nose.

At this point in my life, the entire surface area of my body divides into:

1) Places that should have hair, but don't,
2) Places that shouldn't have hair, but do, and
3) my nose

But I was in a hurry, and downstroked and nicked the side of my nose, right on the cartilage, which means it bled slowly and forever. I mean, _forever_. Half an hour later, it showed no signs of stopping, and I was beginning to wonder if I'd become a hemophiliac. I drove all the way to work pressing a wet rag to the side of my nose. Fortunately, it did manage to stop bleeding before I died of exsanguination.

Dammit.

Goodbye, cruel summer

2009-09-22T11:42:00.000-07:00

Equinox in 2.5 hours. At that point, the summer of 2009 is over. I will not be missing it.

The Princess Diaries, Chapter 4

2009-09-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

I babysat the other day for Kate and Max, while LAJ attended a meeting at their co-op school. Dima was on a business trip to Moscow, so I, the cavalry, arrived around bedtime to see if I could mind the kids for an hour and a half.

Kate is 4 and Max is 2, and a year ago if Laura left even so much as the room, Max would cry and cry, while Kate would be pretty nonplussed. Somehow, in the last year, the roles have started to reverse a little.

I set up in the kids' bedroom, ready to read stories, but poor LAJ had to basically peel Kate off of her leg in order to leave. And so, Kate commenced an operatic demonstration of the immense agony of separation. It was really something to behold. For a few minutes I waited to see if she would calm down, but she had some real stamina. So I began reading Max a story in Russian.

Now, my Russian is extremely rusty, and even in a book for a 2-year-old there will be a lot of words I don't know. So, I kept having to slow down to sound out words. It turns out that it's even *more* boring to be a 2-year-old listening to an adult sound out words than it is to be an adult listening to a 4 or 5 year old sound out words. Max all but said, "Dude, you're the adult here- why can't you read?"

So, I could see him starting to lose focus, and watch the show Late was putting on, which, to be fair, was a pretty impressive show. Finally Max turned to me and said, "Can you help my big sister?" I looked at him and said, "Well, I think she still needs to be sad for a while. But she'll be ok."

Hearing this, Kate calmed down for a moment, the better to overhear what was being said about her. But once she realized I was done, she let out the longest, highest-pitched wail I have ever heard. I actually laughed. I said, "Kate, you sure are working awfully hard over there. Doesn't that take a lot of energy?"

At this, she started to crack a smile mid-wail, before then realizing that she was breaking character, and resuming a full-throated wail. At this, Max turned to me and said, "Can you help my big sister, PLEASE?"

After a couple vain attempts to persuade Kate to abandon the histrionics, Max looked at me and said, "Maybe we can wait for Mommy in the TV room." I thought that was a perfectly good solution, so we invited Kate to join us, and then headed into the TV room. The wailing stopped as soon as we were down the hall.

But she never did join us. After 10 minutes in the TV room, we went back to the bedroom to discover that Kate had climbed up into her bed and fallen asleep. I guess it really did take a lot of work to be sad.

Max, however, had not burned up any energy on theatrics, and he proceeded to motor around the TV room for an hour. At the end of that, he suggested we wait in the living room, on the sofa. So I joined him there, and immediately felt exhausted. He was wide awake and alert though, and verified that each passing car was not mom's car.

After a while, I turned to him and said, "Aren't you just a little bit tired? It's getting late." Max's response: "No."

And so we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Verifying cars the entire time. Finally I asked again (because I was starting to fall asleep), "Are you SURE you're not the least bit tired? You could lay in your bed and wait for mommy there." Max's response: "No."

He did, however, suggest we move to the kitchen, where he proceeded to demolish all the ham and cheese left over from dinner. And that's where LAJ finally found us- sitting at the kitchen table eating ham and pondering life, as men are wont to do. He was very excited to see her.

Honestly, I have no idea how parents manage...

Why I Love Half Moon Bay, Pt 7

2009-09-19T16:40:00.000-07:00

1) Because of the sunsets:

9/11/09

Here's the movie from that day:

2) The little surprises you occasionally come across while biking

Yesterday morning I came across the Google maps guys, biking along the cliff trail with a cart in tow that had cameras mounted all around it. They're getting video footage of all the bike trails. So, I biked up right behind it and mugged for the cameras for a few seconds. So, hopefully whenever anyone clicks the ground-level view of the HMB beach bike trail, there my ugly mug will be.

On a different day a few weeks ago, I came around the bend at one of my favorite trees to discover a modeling shoot. Models in tiny black bikinis and sky-high heels being made to hang around the trees like a band of superhot simians. It was wonderful. It's so awesome to be male; the simplest things can make a whole day seem better: unexpectedly stumbling upon a troop of bikini models, having a particularly satisfying bowel movement, scratching yourself.

I love living here.

The Doubting Thomas Chronicles

Nearer My God to Thee, or, A Dinner Party Weekend to Remember, 2011 edition

A Modest Proposal, Part 6: Denouement

A Modest Proposal, Part 5, or, The Best of Romances Deserve Second Chances

A beachwalk with mom

Deep Thoughts

A Modest Proposal, Part 4: Welcome to the Jungle

A Modest Proposal, Part 3: The Dark Ages

A Modest Proposal, Part 2: The Backstory (continued)

A Modest Proposal, Part 1: The Backstory

Dreams from my father, 2010 edition

U-S-A! U-S-A!!

More beachcam "best of"

The Princess Diaries, Chapter 5, or "My goddaughter says something as profound as anything I've ever heard on ESPN."

Excerpts

Stirring the Pot: Illegal Immigration

Too true, too true...

Beachcam Drama

Another good beachcam movie...

One minute in the life of a high-end tutor...

One minute in the life of a high-end tutor...

Kinship

Awesome cloud action...

At last, someone who understands me...

Valentine's Day 2010, or If Only I Were a Person Who *Really* Loved Wine...

Tonight's sunset

The beachcam makes a funny...

Sometimes you're just having a day...

Belize Navidad!

Things That Exist Only Because Women Exist, Part 1

Thank goodness for moms

The hearts that never played in tune...

Questions some people out there really ought to spend some time pondering...

A 1 minute conversation with my mother...

The Fisher King

Hey, thanks for coming out!

A birthday weekend in LA

Beautiful days in HMB...

What to do about all these wars...

Don't judge me...

Stirring the Pot: Chapter 5: Gay Marriage

I lost on Jeopardy, ba-by...

You know you're retarded when...

Goodbye, cruel summer

The Princess Diaries, Chapter 4

Why I Love Half Moon Bay, Pt 7

Valentine's Day 2010, or If Only I Were a Person Who Really Loved Wine...