12:01am 21/11/2009
  but here's the damn thing - if you give up on having things to look forward to, then what the fuck is the point?  
     

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In Memorium: Simon Longfellow   
10:37am 14/11/2009
 
mood: sad
RIP

Simon Longfellow



Oct 31, 1994 - Nov 14, 2009


Black cat born on Halloween. His face was the first sight I saw the morning I woke up on my first visit to [info]annamaryse's home in Canada; his response to seeing me awake was to bash my face with his forehead, a ritual he repeated at bedtime that night and almost every night for nearly a decade.

Fearsome hunter, lover of all humans, constant companion. You will be missed, dear friend.		  
     

(5 coins in the fountain | make a wish)
 
   
04:09pm 31/10/2009
  Just saw an ad for a company looking for webcam models.

starting hourly is $6 more an hour than I'm making currently.		  
     

(2 coins in the fountain | make a wish)
 
And while we're posting pictures...   
12:24am 31/10/2009
  ...some pictures of our new home can be found here.  
     

(make a wish)
 
Tis the season!   
11:36pm 30/10/2009
 
mood: creative
Our front window decked out for Halloween. Click the images for the Scrapbook page.



  
     

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My Quake Story   
11:51pm 19/10/2009
  (two days late due to real life getting in the way)

It's a little odd to realize that more years have elapsed since the Loma Preata earthquake than I was years old at the time. The distance of those decades has softened the details a touch, but my own story was, in the inimitable fashion of the young, one more of boredom than concern.

In 1989 I was a freshman in high school. The crew I was running with at the time I had met primarily through the auspices of theater, and yet through machinations based as much on politics as on merit, I was the only one who had a role in that fall's production. So that afternoon had been spent, as had countless prior to it for the previous weeks, rehearsing select of my eight lines in various scenes in various ways. Having declared my independence from the tyranny of two-wheeled transport but not yet eligible to operate more lethal vehicles, I set out on the mile or so urban hike that would carry me home to a house devoid of life but for a dog that needed to a pee and a cat that needed nothing.

My route of choice took me through a vacant lot behind a 7-11, the patch of dirt bisected with train tracks that had not, to the memory of anyone I knew, ever carried a train. When the first rumble began, my first instinct was shock - not of a pending earthquake but of the belief that now, at this moment when I'm about to need to cross the tracks, there's a train coming?

When the realization dawned, I did one the dumber things I've done in my life - I shed my backpack like a too-small carapace and decided to surf the tremor. After all, I reasoned, these things never last more than a few seconds anyway...

Dear reader, please do not mistake my youthful exuberance for a failure on the part of the earthquake drills exercised by the California public educational system (which, recall, was at the time only just beginning its fall from the grace of being the nation's exemplar). After the fact I realized the calculations that had gone into that snap decision:
- I was on a broad, flat plane
- the nearest building was a couple hundred feet away
- there were no power or phone lines overhead, and no poles in proximity
- aside from dead scrub brush, there was no vegetation to speak of
- should I fall, the packed dirt, while hardly yielding, would not cause as much injury as pavement

It was, in other words, more or less the best moment I would ever have to do something that dumb, and I would at least like to believe that I was able to deduce that in a fraction of the time it takes to read. Either that or I was just very dumb and very lucky.

Having retained my vertical base for the unexpectedly long duration, I continued the trek down the street. I did have the presence of mind to flip my ever-present walkman to radio so I could catch call-in reports to my mind-poisoning rock station of choice; the only one that sticks out, for some reason, is a kid about my age calling in and bemoaning the death of a pet fish. I noted a few broken windows and some misplaced debris, but otherwise no significant damage open to the naked eye. Chalk another one up for structural regulations, regardless what the libertarians might say.

The rest of the day remains less distinct. My mother met me within a block from home; we had to drive somewhere, for some reason that I don't recall, but it took hours to go no great distance. I recall the power being out, and everyone huddling around the pocket-sized TV I'd acquired on a recent student exchange trip to Japan that ended with a shopping holiday in Hong Kong. I recall us all sleeping on the ground floor that night, out of my parents' fear that the upstairs might collapse - which struck me as odd, seeing that if that was a fear you'd want to be over rather than under.

Mostly I remember being bored. Bored with having no power for computers or game devices. Bored with having nothing on TV but the same shakey camcorder footage played on an endless loop, commentated by increasingly exhausted anchorpeople who weren't allowed to leave their post. Wanting to read a book, play a board game, do SOMETHING.

There was no substantial damage to our home. The brick facade shifted an inch or so to one side, a few bookcases fell over, the cat made herself scare for 3 days and we never did actually figure out where she went. But other than an extended cleanup the next day and a lingering blackout (ours was the last block in the neighborhood to have power restored, nearly a week later) there was nothing worthy of note.

Ah, the suburbs - where even natural disasters can be robbed of drama.		  
     

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