whoa. i'm back. in san francisco. there's something about airplanes that makes me feel like whatever place i was coming from doesn't actually exist. it's so strange to, in less than a week, go from one familiar place to another familiar place thousands of miles a way... i think it kind of breaks the mind a little.

i guess what it comes down to (maybe) is that our minds still don't believe that we can travel as fast as we can. i mean, believe me, that flight felt interminable, but still... 600 mph? that's nuts. i see the pacific ocean as we're about to land, and all my mind is saying is "no fucking way... we were just in the atlantic two days ago!"

anyway, great travel distances aside... it's nice to be back. don't get me wrong, it was nice to be in new york, too, but it's hard to relax when it's humid; that's what i've decided. humidity has a kind of looming feeling about it... kind of like that guilt/dread mixture that usually accompanies presently due papers or chores. it's omnipresent, humidity... even with an air conditioner going, you can feel it just on the other side of the window or door. waiting. and, really, there's not a whole lot else going on in new york in the summer other than humidity. and i sweat like a squeezed sponge in heat. by the way, why isn't the past participle of "squeeze" "squozen?" like "freeze" is "frozen?" i just looked up "squeeze" in the dictionary, and besides feeling like it's not a real word, what with all the qs and zs, i saw that squeeze doesn't have a known origin. it comes from squise, which comes from the obselete queise, and nobody knows where that came from. weird!

whatever, you guys just want new york dirt. okay folks, here it comes:

i arrived tuesday evening, and chugged into the city. it really is a sunovabitch, how long it takes the subway to get out to the airport. 90 minutes for a trip that's no more than 20 miles. 17.9 miles, according to google maps. anyway, when i got in, julia, jess, brendan, and julia's bf justin were at hand, so we did some preliminary hanging out. my grandma was staying at the apartment as well, in from long island for some work. my parents and sister were out on long island, and, at the anus of dawn (coming before the ass-crack) wednesday morning, i made my way to penn station to grab the 7:39 train out there. of course, 7:39 is 4:39 california time, and the new lirr cars are specially designed to make sleep almost impossible, and that, as they say, is where my troubles began. i'm pretty sure the sleep deprivation was a leading cause in my impending sickness.

after a far too brief rest, we headed out to the ocean, which, though i was tired out of my gourd, was a lot of fun. one of the things that i've always known was true but had never verbalized (or... writalized?) was that having kids around allows adults to do kid things that otherwise they might feel stupid doing. case in point: playing in the waves. so much fun. yet, i'd never think of doing it on my own, i don't think. well, i guess one time in san diego i went in... perhaps with james? anyway.

so, after the beach, i went and got some interview-type clothes from the gap. see, i knew i had an appointment with this guy who's assistant i might be on friday, but on thursday, mary, the woman who's been kind of mentoring me and coaching me on this whole thing, sent me out to the television studio where they make the show to meet some people, and all the clothes i had brought to long island were t-shirts and bermuda shorts.

we ate dinner wednesday night at a place on shelter island called "bob's," a lobster/seafood joint. i had a hamburger. eating lobster still kind of grosses me out. watching people eating it, that is.

the next day i shipped over to sag harbor, had a quick visit with gram, then was whisked off the studio. it was pretty cool; they're not in production so there were only four people there, but they were all really nice, and the whole thing got me pretty excited for the potential job. i met the person who i would be replacing, and she reassured me about the lack of correlation between this job and the devil wears prada. quick note: if i haven't said it before, anyone who thought that the devil wears prada was good needs to see a kevin spacey movie called swimming with sharks. it's pretty much the same basic story (thought sharks is considerably older, so gets the cred), but much, much darker and way more satisfying and sinister. and it's got kevin spacey in it, so, awesome. and i believe benicio del toro is in it as well. crazy.

back into the city that evening, straight to jess and brendan's for their "we're leaving the nyc metropolitain area" dinner, which was sad and fun and humid (they don't have a/c, but i love them anyway). there was a great few minutes where everyone was choosing their favorite elliott smith song. it's a hard choice, but i think all-time fav for me would have to be "bottle up and explode" off of xo.

i woke up the next morning for my interview, showered, dressed, and went. we met at the cornelia street café, which meant a twenty second trip. the interview was... fine. it's hard to tell if my lack of enthusiasm is self-doubt or something more substantial. i had been told that this guy was a bit of an egomaniac (lets hope he doesn't read this as part of any background research he might be doing...), and that the more i could get him to talk about him, the better. i did my best, but he actually did ask me quite a few things about me, so i one worry was i was talking too much about moi-même... it was a little hard to read him for most of the time, though towards hte end he started describing all of the grungier aspects of the job in a tone that i've described to every single person i've seen since as the same tone a parent uses with a kid who really wants a puppy. "you'll have to walk him every day and feed him every day..." his was more along the lines of "i need five or six reminders sometimes" and "this job takes a lot of attention to detail." it was vaguely cautionary with an air of being dissuasive. but who knows. anyway, he said he's trying to figure everything out by this evening, so, it's possible the phone could ring at any moment with a verdict.

after the interview, i zipped up to the bronx for a quick lunch with amalea, then back down to the village to give my dad a high-five as he headed out the door again to go back to long island. i hung out with julia, brendan and jessica a bit more, before jules headed back to the dirty jerz and jess and bren went to brooklyn to pack. i lazed around, which felt extremely nice, until 9-ish, when i met up with kristine, and we went to dinner with dan, son of the family who put me up in dublin. all in all it was an awkward dinner. dan was sick, and by now i was feeling pretty raw myself, and we never were able to hit any solid universal conversation topics. ah well. we ended up meeting up with kathie (kamili bailed/failed us all) and we went to good old standby lederhosen, a german beer garden on grove street off of hudson. it was fun.

then, getting home around 12:15, i called jetblue to invoke the $25 same-day flight change, and, by 12:30, they hadn't picked up, and, slightly drunk, i decided just to take my 7:00 am flight, and suffer. i got a solid 3 hours of sleep, and then headed out to fly here. and here i am.

i feel like there were more observations i wanted to make, but seeing as how this is slightly shorter than the odyssey i'll leave them for another time.

anyway, watch this space for information about my next life chapter.