And when they arrive they are just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather is holding.

Yesterday it happened several times -- while in the pool, hanging onto the side talking to foxycoxy, while lying in the grass afterwards letting the sun dry my shorts, in the cafe while waiting for our lunch, and finally at sunset looking out the high-rise windows as I made the decision to leave work early -- I would stare out at the sky and be taken aback for a moment at how gorgeous it was. A sky of intense blue with fast moving clouds streaming across, the big fluffy whites that are flat on the bottom from moving so swiftly, and a few had the edge of gray that would occasionally block out the sun as they passed. At twilight it seemed more amazing and the colors of the sunset were more compressed. It was part of my need to leave the work at 8, an hour before my usual time, I needed to follow the end of the day, to catch it, I needed to be outside, so even though it was early and I maybe need the money, I left. I made a phone call and talked in between doorways and bus shelters as I zigzagged through the blocks with no clear destination. It had been a hard day and all I wanted to do was go home and get fcked up and go to sleep. I made a bargain with myself that I could do that with no judgment or guilt, if I made that call. I was disappointed it wasn't voicemail, but the universe does what it does.

Everytime I looked at that sky, I thought, I know there's a word for this. A word for the literary metaphor of describing the weather to inform the emotional state of the character and how this day wasn't it, there were no storm clouds, there wasn't even the unrelenting scorching heat. There was drifting beauty and I was glad because looking at it would put it all in perspective for a few moments, or not so much that, exactly as it would just give me something beautiful to look at that was inescapable from even my twisted up head.

Today my best friend is going through something intense, well, I'm sure for the past couple weeks its been intense, but there's a specific event happening today, and its been in the back of my mind all week. And if any of you people out there know thebrownhornet, I would appreciate you sending up a thought for him. I'm sure one day he himself will write about it, because he's a journalist, a writer, a chronicler and I can't imagine he would totally let this go unpassed. But as writers, this is helpful after the fact, we sometimes maybe don't always do enough in the moment.

On Wednesday night I finished the novel I was reading, The Post-Birthday World. I was on the bus and had 40 pages to go and I realized, I'm not doing anything until I get to the end. If it hadn't been nighttime, I would have read the few blocks walking from the bus to the house. I got home and stretched out on the futon and turned the last page and felt overwhelmed, SK mentioned recently the pain of ending a good book, and so I sat outside with a glass of wine for an hour and let it stay with me. It is not a book I could recommend to just anyone, it is also not a perfect book, it just hit me close in the moment and I bought it for myself, one of my gifts of San Francisco. I haven't been reading many novels since April, since starting my new novel, because it can get too much (I mostly have been reading short stories, poetry, and research), but this was a perfect exception while taking a sort of vacation. And a reminder of why I want to be novelist. I mean, I AM a writer, but I'm not yet a novelist. And not because I don't have one published, but just because I don't have one finished.

Sitting outside the other night I realized, damn, I spend a lot of time making the backyard beautiful and I don't spend enough time enjoying it. Sitting in the dark was nice, and I pretended I could at least smell the flowers and tomatoes and basil in the breeze, and maybe I could a little.

Tonight after work I have a date. It is drinks, and what else follows depends, but that is okay. I am a little pleasantly nervous, but overall, even in the little bit we've talked, he feels easy.

Um, I don't mean like that, but maybe that is true too.

I'm underloved, I'm underfed, I wanna go home.

Before I left for SF a few weeks ago, I downloaded a bunch of random Calfornia, San Francisco, and birthday songs to throw onto my shuffle. You know, to be all festive. One of them was The Mamas and the Papas "It Never Rains in California" which is a song that Damon and I often joke about whenever I have my obligatory freakout about escalators being outdoors with no shelter in L.A. The song pops up today on the ride to work, and I haven't really listened to it in years, I just knew the melody and the words to the chorus. Damn! That isht is depressing. Let me hurry along to this Camera Obscura song to cheer me up.

So, for my birthday, I got lots of amazing time with amazing people, which is what I wanted. And a only few tangible items, though even those I mostly bought for myself. Except for my gift from thebrownhornet who dragged all the way from Orange County and up to San Francisco....a Nintendo 64 console with two controllers, a memory pak, and a copy of both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.
( pictures! not of mine, but of what I'm talking about )

I hooked it all up last weekend and got it going, but then I haven't touched it much since then, mostly because I'm afraid of losing hours of my life to it when I should be working on something else. But today is Friday and after crossing a few things off my to-do list this morning, I decided to fire it up. It is highly entertaining. And although I fumbled a bit the first time I started it up, to get a handle for the controllers, it only took a couple rounds before I started to slip right back into Perfect Dark with no problems, lots of it coming back to my memory while also cracking up at the things I had forgotten about. (For those unfamiliar with the raybear history, brownhornet and I met almost eight years ago at roommates, and during the entire spring and summer, we played our jointly own nintendo unit while eating rib tips and fried chicken and occasionally watching action or kung fu or horro movies from the video rental place around the corner. It was the foundation for our friendship.) Awhile back, I had considered buying myself a Wii for my birthday. Instead I got a N64. And I'm way happier. Because I mean, the Wii will still be there in a few months. But this isht is only getting more obsolete. And you know, history.