Monday nights at Bug Jar. Flashback to 7th grade. Is that pearly pink Wet ‘N Wild lipstick Laurel’s wearing? Of course it is! And I’m fairly sure she’ll store it properly in a Kaboodle when she’s done with it.

So I thought it was evident, but that last box label isn’t real. I got some e-mail. Cats and vibrators (obviously) go in separate boxes.

I got a bike from this guy who rebuilds them in his garage. Totally sketchy, way too cheap for as chic of a bike as it is, but man, oh, man. His name is Peter and he had a bike just my size, so after leaving a message on his old-ass-midi-song-playing answering machine, Kris and I took a drive past Lake Ontario to his garage, where I tested out the bike.

I was wobbly because I haven’t ridden a bike in a really long time. Kris explained for me. He offered me some training wheels, which he then pulled out to demonstrate that he had them. I’ll throw them in for free! No, I’m really okay, but thank you. No, really, I’ll put them on right now. No, really, I’m completely fine without training wheels, save them for someone who needs them. Well okay.

If anyone needs a sketchy bike from a sketchy man in a sketchy garage, now we know where to go.

I think I’m going to like my new life. I loved my L.A. life, but now that I’m in Rochester, I realize it was time for something different. Not slower, but smaller and different. It hit me in the laundromat a couple days ago that all of this was permanent. I’m still processing all of it.

I bought Tender is the Night, Moby Dick and The Death of Ivan Illyich and Other Short Stories today. I’m seeking guidance while I make some major life transitions. Fitzgerald, Melville and Tolstoy are, like Juvenille and Balzac, smart guys.

Feeling is at least as important as thinking, and it’s easy to forget that while you’re preparing to apply to graduate school.

I’ve read but don’t remember Moby Dick, but I think I may have been too young. I’ve read and do remember The Death of Ivan Illyich and Other Short Stories, but having good short stories on hand is a good idea. And I happen to know that my copy is lost somewhere, because I didn’t pack it.

I liked Blindness so much, I want to read the Saramago’s sequel, Seeing, but these three first. Blindness was a great-but-quick read, so Seeing might be a good one to save for recreation once the semester starts.

Ah. It’s so late at night and I can’t wait until it’s morning. Now is nice, but I’m anxious to do day things and there are at least four hours left until then.

Because I have nice ripe peaches and pears and some Brie and all of them sounded like they’d be really good together on a wheat pita. And they were.

I warmed slices of the peach and pear in a pan and added a little bit of cinnamon and a dash of orange juice to keep the pear looking fresh. Then I toasted the pita with a very small amount of Brie in it in the oven. Then I stuffed the pita with the fruit and admired it. I was going to take a picture but I was too hungry and eager to resist eating it.

So far, I love Rochacha.

Rochester feels smaller, but not sleepier, than Orange County. The fact that I am behind on blogging is a good indication of that. I saw the concert halls at the Eastman School of Music with a student studying jazz there. I went to Bug Jar with department ladies and friends. I went to a BBQ with a pool and trampoline and orchard full of pickable peaches. And I saw a late night movie with Laurel (also from BCS). That’s not even everything, but you get the gist. I feel totally undeserving and spoiled to be here. The charmed life thing again. No wild peacocks here. But peach orchards, big empty unlocked concert halls and impromptu jazz jam sessions are pretty wonderful.

Tonight, this month’s Brighton Democratic Committee meeting.

Still need to change my driver’s license, arrange health insurance, set up direct deposit, get keys to the storage unit, blah blah, but, bit by bit, these things are getting done. Car’s not here yet, which is making things tricky, but I love to run and that’s a good thing when you have no car.

I’m looking for a bike, but I’m exactly the wrong size, it seems, to buy one secondhand. I’m somewhere between kid and lady. Maybe all the bikes that size are sitting, rusting, forgotten in the backs of garages. Maybe they’re all going to have to wait until the kids grow up and go off to college before they’ll be remembered. Maybe the parents, to deal with empty nest heartaches, will clean out their garages only then. Maybe they’ll toss out all the rusted adolescent-sized bikes, because knowing that their kids’ bikes are there would hurt too much and they’re rusted beyond repair anyway. And, honey, wouldn’t the cleared out space make a nice guest house? Your mother wouldn’t have to stay on the sofa bed and maybe she’d come visit more often.

Mmm, pear-peach-Brie pita…

Stuck in Newark, New Jersey, just for a little bit. The first plane I was on was accidentally missing a part, they realized after take off, and needed to land to get that part put back on? They were leaking fuel? Sounded serious to me. So… yes. Short stop in Phoenix, Arizona. But I missed my connection so I’m reading/blogging/drinking in the airport bar.

I bought a glass of wine when I first got here, which I decided was okay because it was past noon, and then I realized it was really still breakfast time in California and I briefly pondered whether I should feel guilty about the wine. I decided no, no I shouldn’t. I drank it guilt-free, chased it with four shots of weak airport sports bar espresso, and then reread my notes from Roger Levy’s and Alex Clark/Shalom Lappin’s summer institute classes. I followed up with highlighted sections of Maria Teresa Guasti’s Language Acquisition textbook, some papers discussed in the classes and the book, and then I played Tetris until my cell battery died. It’s actually been a really pleasant morning.

I met some people, one of whom was a member of Calvary Chapel. She wanted to talk about Christian women and Pascal’s Wager. (You’re facing eternal damnation, why not be safe? I’m open to pretty much anything but I can’t make myself believe something I don’t, I’d just be faking it, and then I go to hell anyway, yeah? Yeah… So that’s where I am. Huh, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m going to hell? Yeah, what do you believe happens when you die? That’s just it. And if you’re wrong? Hell, but I couldn’t help it, but what if you’re wrong? What do you mean? Would you be living the way you are if there were no heaven or hell? you mentioned that the church required discipline, that you had to hold back, especially as a woman, and what if this is just it, that when it’s over, it’s over? you’re making a wager too, yeah? I… wow, yeah. Wave at me from heaven if you’re right? Hah, okay. And if I’m right. What? Get it? Funny.)

I’m going to get back to reading. An hour more to kill until my flight. And when I get to Rochester, So You Think You Can Dance finale at Patty’s house! How rockin? Very. Rochester kids are so cool.

I didn’t get done so many things that I wanted to get done before I left, but it’s time to go nonetheless. Southern California has been ridiculously good to me and I’ll miss it. Mikeh and Mike especially. I know we’ll talk a lot, but that’s also not the same.

I think I sampled a lot while I was down here, and much of it was really beautiful. The pier in Huntington Beach, the crêperie in Belmont Shores, roaming peacocks in Palos Verdes. A lot of it was totally sketchy. Porn valley in Chatsworth, the Greyhound station in downtown Los Angeles, egg donation facilities in Newport Beach, the Brazillian carnival at the Palladium, the gallery on Melrose. (And I probably don’t need to say it, but I appreciate the sketchy at least as much as I appreciate the beautiful.)

People have said L.A. is a bubble world, a city composed of miniature parallel cultures that don’t interact with one another, and that is totally true. And that worked for me. I’ve been able to pop my head into different little universes often. A great place for a fledgling reporter, sure, but also great place for a fledgling adult. I was 19 when I moved to California. I did some of my most important growing up here.

So Cal was a weird place to be when the hurricane hit. Very separate and detached. (I won’t miss that entertainment news dominates airwaves.) But I think it was good for me to see how people are. That people can’t—and I do believe can’t is the right word—relate to things that don’t affect them on some level. They want to, but they just can’t. I don’t think I believe in true empathy anymore.

So I guess the best you can do to understand the world is to collect personal experiences in the hopes that a diverse set of experiences will allow you to relate to more, get closer to understanding, keep you caring. And under that theory, the more personal experiences you have, the better.

So no regrets for the bad and the hurtful and the frustrating. And I can’t be angry at the mechanisms and mechanism designers that caused the unpleasantries. And California has been so good to me in that way, even on the rare occasions when it was bad to me (Kaiser Permanente… HMO oh no… USC Financial Aid Office… holy… and… San Francisco landlord… that still wasn’t all of my deposit… Registrar of Voters… missing paper ballots and… thumb drive in the tabulating machine… just wow).

You can’t beat California for opportunity. It’s true. Whatever it is you’re looking for, it’s here. Really. Thank you, California, for being everything I needed and more. You’ll be missed.

I met Deborah at a coffeehouse in Long Beach today. We chatted a little and I met her dog Lucy. I hadn’t seen her in more than six years, since I was in high school. I met her at Underground Sounds on Magazine Street. I was a dorky little tomboy music nerd and she was a badass punk rock record store woman who agreed to carry my zine and book my band. Classic punk right, right? Totally.

I didn’t know she’d moved to California until a few months ago, nor did she know that I’d moved here after high school. So we’ve been unknowingly living only 16 miles away from one another. She’s converted her production company into a booking agency and now arranges tours for bands like Agnostic Front, the Queers, the Horrorpops, and Pulley. It was really awesome to see her again today. New Orleans people in California make me smile. And I love when life is circular.

Hopefully this isn’t my last late night Lego climb at Downtown Disney, but it may be for quite some time. I didn’t think I’d be saying this, but I’ll miss Orange County. It goes without saying, but I will very much miss Mikeh.

I can’t believe this is it. I leave for good Wednesday night.

I keep coming across things in the house that I’m not sure what to do with. Like poor Valentine, my childhood ragdoll.

I left Valentine at home for safekeeping when I went off to college. But, alas, my family got a puppy while I was away. The puppy took issue with how Valentine looked at him and did what he had to do. I returned at Christmas to see Valentine sitting eyeless on my bed.

Do you save something like Valentine? The banana stain on her armpit, that was me.

The September 2007 issue is out at newsstands now. Way to go, Anita! Everyone else, go get yourself a copy. You can also try the recipes out yourself.

It’s been an emotional week, and yesterday was particularly draining. My chin is up and my ears are stiff, but wow. A lot of nostalgiac feelings flood back when you’re digging through boxes and packing things up. And oh-so-many good-byes. (”You’ll come visit?” “Rochester is soooo far away from L.A!”)

But, not to dispair! I found cheer-me-up shoes today while I was looking for other things at the store. They’re Nine West sneakers I saw almost a year ago when I was actually shoe shopping and decided against because they were entirely too expensive for sneakers. They were only $12 today. ($12! For Nine West shoes!)

So yeah, I’m totally superficial and this is my second blog post about shoes this month… this week even! Wow. Yeah. I feel sufficiently self-conscious about that, and I realize I’m going to need to earn that karma back, but I can’t help being happy about these shoes.

I love them. They’re casual and totally punk rock (except for the Nine West part) and a little bit trashy but in a kind of cool way. They’re perfect for me, yeah? Yeah. Best part, the lady at the store said they’d been there for months because they run small.

I think this must mean the universe is trying to keep me happy.

When I was about 14 years old, my good friend and first boyfriend Pierre recommended the Descendents to me. The recommended album introduced me to the concept of ALL.

The Descendents sang a lot about coffee in an almost reverent way. Coffee complements a lot of the values I hold nicely, and the Descendents seemed to understand that and share the same values. Being awake, aware, looking outward. Being active and involved. Bill Stevenson and friend Pat McQuiston developed a philosophy around those values while fishing and drinking coffee late one night. They called their idea ALL.

ALL is the “the total extent.” It’s a quest for self-betterment (“greatness”) that is, by definition, impossible to obtain. It’s endless and all encompassing, whatever that means to you. It’s trying to be a better person every day in whatever way you see that you can. Happiness is the pursuit of ALL, not the achievement of ALL. Sure, it’s not a novel concept (“Life’s the journey, not the destination,” yada yada), but I think it’s elegant nonetheless. I like that it’s an unattached philosophy. I like that it was conceived of late one night over coffee by two friends in a fishing boat.

The Descendents 1987 release is titled ALL after the philosophy. It features two of my favorite Descendents songs, “Clean Sheets” and “Cameidge”. I’m listening to “Clean Sheets” now.

Today is deviantART’s 7th birthday. 7th! And it’s August 7, 2007. Wow, so lucky! Congrats, dA people!

People who know me here also know the story, but deviantART is partially responsible for my winding up in Southern California (and, subsequently, at USC in Linguistics and, subsequently, Rochester Brain and Cognitive Science now). My first trip here was to attend a deviantART party (where I met Mikeh). I wouldn’t normally have gone to a party 6 hours away, but I was feeling inspired by something I’d just read.

The people I met that night at the dA party are the same people I had to say good-bye to earlier today. Matt and Angelo in particular, I’ll miss you guys. Matt’s known me longer than anyone else down here. (A full 6 hours longer! He drove me down to the party from San Francisco.)

Today is a bittersweet day for me. I ate some chocolate cake earlier with dA folks, and any day where you get chocolate cake can’t be totally bad. (Bittersweet… chocolate… almost punny.) I’m very excited about Rochacha. Sad to leave, sure, but I’ll be happy to arrive in a new place.

I stopped trying to predict how things would work out a while back, and I think it’s saving me some hurt right now. Good-byes hurt less when you’re not entirely convinced it’s really a good-bye. For once, my skepticism serves me well. We rock with it, roll with it. Juvenile is also a very smart man.

I need to pick a final move away date. It’ll be something like the 15th.

New on the list of search strings used to bring people to my blog: celeste and emma. I’m actually amazed that celeste and emma is unique enough to get a user here, but apparently it is. In fact, celeste and emma brought more traffic here last month than slutty.

When I Googled celeste and emma, my blog didn’t come up until the second page of results. Could this new search string be the result of people having met Emma and me together at the LSA Institute? That seems a bit strange. I mean, how often do you meet two people together and then go home and Google them? I don’t do that.

Strange.

Actually, it’s 21, not one million. Also actually, most of these are from San Francisco, not Palo Alto. But since I was up there for the institute, I thought the title appropriate nonetheless. In a semi-random order.

So, I know I haven’t been posting often, and I hate to be so superficial, but these shoes are so cute. And they’re too big for me! BC Footwear stopped making 5’s, and 5’s were already pushing it. I’m like a 3 1/2 or a 4 really. Ugh. So sad. We would have been good friends.