My Pain and Sadness is More Painful and Sad than Yours

Home has been a roller coaster of temperatures, sleeplessness and good times. To begin, there is an average of a 30-degree temperature fluctuation from day to day, sometimes from afternoon to evening. It is fairly typical weather for this odd place, although I can't remember ever being home for a good stretch of time during the painful change of seasons. Instead of the gradual appearance of wildflowers. and the return of chirping birds that I'm accustomed to the change seems to be more akin to the shock of stepping out of my apartment into an oven, and rounding a corner into a freezer. We are dragged screaming into Spring. The cause of said freezer rolling in over the western hills:















It's baseball season again. I'm not a huge fan, and rarely watch it on TV, but I enjoy going to games. Plus the stadium is really pleasant. I went on Thursday night. I think San Francisco lost. I also think that I had a few beers and some nachos. Maybe a pretzel as well.

I went for a hike up in Marin on Sunday. I enjoy hikes that I haven't done before, but it can be a crap shoot. Saturday happened to be 87 degrees in the shade (of which there was very little on the trail). It was nice while it lasted, which is to say not very long.

When I'm home, particularly after a long stretch of exhausting travel, I really like to sit in the sun and read (I was pleased to find that a new Kurt Vonnegut book of posthumanous lectures and essays, Armageddon in Retrospect had come out), listen to loud, abrasive music (Torche has been doing the trick lately) and going to the movies. Other than Robocop, there seems to be a serious drought of quality, or even half-decent movies out these days. That is not to say that I am holding today's films to the same high standard of Robocop, but there is nothing that I would sit through for two hours and not leave afterwards feeling cheated of both my intelligence and ten bucks. That said, I saw Leatherheads on Saturday, not really even sure what it was about before (or and after, for that matter) seeing it. Whatever, Roger Ebert.

I went shopping yesterday for some article of clothing to outfit myself against the bipolar weather that is sweeping through the city these days. I was thinking a vest, helmet, a fur loincloth and maybe a pair of flippers. I happened across a pair of women's shoes (not really my size) that got me thinking about a number of things. I had a conversation with a friend of Yenie's last night (at an amazing German beer house with Lexi, but that's another story altogether) who spent some time in the Peace Corps in The Ukraine and was talking about how popular English t-shirts were, regardless of what they said (often something ridiculous). That reminded me of a woman that I saw in the airport in Rio with a shirt that said, in sparkly sliver paint 'Super Last Cookie.' Great. That in mind, these shoes said, with a fair amount of authority 'call me a bitch again and I'll pee on you.' You tell 'em sister.

I leave on Wednesday for Death Cab rehearsals. By then I hope to have cured myself of this brutal insomnia that has me up at 4 AM every day watching Yo! MTV Raps.