Vacillating Velocity

You’d think, with decade 3 of my life almost at an end, that I’d be done discovering new allergies. I’m long over my childhood sensitivity to milk and milk products – thank god, because I have a love for cheese that is illegal in 26 states. (And no, mom from 20 years ago, tofu is not a reasonable alternative) It’s possible I’m allergic to shellfish, but that would be like having an allergy to moon rocks – not likely to cause problems in the next fifty years or so. So I thought I was done.

Imagine my confusion, then, when recent consumption of iced tea has frequently led to mild nausea. I’m talking tea prepared by various locations in our franchise and some prepared by myself in my home. I’d pretty well linked the cause and effect after it happened a few times, but resigned myself to live with occasional mild queasiness when I wanted my caffeine delivered in a non-coffee way. No big deal.

This morning, tea decided to up the ante in the Battle of My Digestive System. I brewed up a pot of Ceylon Fancy, inadvertently making it a bit on the strong side. I sat down and began drinking it during my morning troll through the internet. After two cups or so, my body immediately and without warning sent out that all-too-familiar distress call: “Find something to contain your hurl, RIGHT NOW.”

I think the toilet bowl absorbed more of the caffeine than I did. What am I going to do with my increasingly more awesome collection of teas from around the world?

Brook Busey, a.k.a. Diablo Cody, is five days younger than me. I need to get going.

I know you’re creeping up on me, 30, but don’t expect me to go quietly into this next decade. Witness the $17 pimping of my ride:

Dreamt of Colorado last night. Asleep, I’d moved back there, began checking in with all my old buddies (never mind that one of them lives in Portland, now) and was reveling again in all the natural beauty that, after a while there, I’d been taking for granted. I miss the hell out of that place, even though I’m glad I’m here. I’ve got the day off today, and man it’d be nice if I could hop in the car, drive for twenty minutes, then strap on my board and take some turns. Oh well. It’ll also be nice to have a college degree.

In memory of sleepy ski-town livin’, I put up some old pictures of my Colorado commute.

The Office of Undergraduate Advising – Academic Progress
date Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 3:55 PM
subject Your Application for Readmission

Dear Mr. Baldwin:

Welcome back to UC Berkeley!

Your application for readmission to the College of Letters and
Science for the Fall 2008 semester has been approved. Please review
the information below carefully and contact the College if you have
any questions.

Took some pictures this weekend while exhausting myself at Heavenly. It reminded me that I haven’t taken hardly any pictures since I got back to California – the last picture I have of myself I still have long hippie hair. This makes me sad, since I really enjoy having pictures of stuff – with my awful memory, it’s good to have a back-up of my life lying around. I shall endeavor to take photos more frequently.

This morning marked my first real foray into academia in damn near ten years. I was pretty nervous, afraid that I’d show up and the lecture would start and I would be lost immediately. Still, I was excited to start some sort of exercise regimen for my brain, so I threw on some ridiculous socks emblazoned with the South Korean flag that my brother gave me for luck, and headed out.

It went splendidly. The material all makes sense and is interesting so far, my professor is super nice, easy to understand, and makes really dorky jokes. I have high hopes for this whole “learning” thing.

The one thing that really struck me, though, about the whole experience, was this: they sell condoms in the Men’s room. I mean, really? I understand it when it’s at, you know, a bar, but a community college? I’m trying to picture the situation where that’s necessary. “Man, that remedial English quiz was hard. So hard it made me . . . horny! Wanna fuck RIGHT NOW?” Weird.

And now? Homework. D’oh.

Today was weird. I went out to my car and it wouldn’t start, so I got a ride in to work from my roommates. I was a couple minutes late, and I tried to call to let them know, but the line was busy. So I raced in the front door to find . . . that they had no idea I was late. Because the power was out.

Other than some cleaning work, we had a remarkably dead day. It was like a vacation at work. People would come in for something hot to drink, but other than a couple of batches of coffee that our store manager brewed himself by hand with the last of our hot water, all we had were pastries. I felt like the rebellious McDonald’s owner from the Mitch Hedberg joke. “Happy meals? Nope. We got spaghetti!” Other than that we just stood around and b.s’d.

Walking a mile and a half home from Caltrain in the Tsunami that Sunnyvale had become was unpleasant, and I got soaked head to toe. Fortunately, I’m still in a good enough mood that it didn’t get me down. That’s right, who got promoted yesterday? Oh – it was me.

I have had bestowed upon myself the title of Shift Lead, and all the perks it affords and the respect it commands. The commonfolk I supervise will tremble before my iron fist of . . . so I get another buck an hour, and I have to spend less time on the floor. Sounds good to me. Not bad for three and a half months in.

Other than that, I’m bidin’ time until school starts, and I have to think about math more complicated than the cost of “fries with that” for the first time in a lotta years. Yikes. Kicksteart my heart? Jumpstart my brain, please.

Christmas occupies this weird place in my life, in my head. It doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, in one way – my family is neither traditional nor close-knit enough for it to be a big deal, and I’ve been poor enough for the last few years that the consumerism aspect of it has been pretty minimal for me. But the season still triggers something in me, the romantic aspect of it, thoughts of togetherness and warmth and love amongst people.

Tonight, Christmas Eve, I went with my father to Christmas Eve service at Stanford’s Memorial Church, something I’ve never done before, just for the experience. It was nice, and all, but it mostly felt touristy – almost everyone there for the same reason as I – for the spectacle, no real idea what was going on. It was nice but hollow, and now that I continue my loneliness at home (my roomates off visiting family and the house to myself) I think back to recent Christmases past. Last year this time I was throwing a party at my new house in Colorado, having invited over all my friends who were similarly without family to have a Christmas celebration to make up for the ones we were missing. We drank Brazilian cocktails and wore Santa hats and did some blow. The year before, it was boxed wine and Veronica Mars and the dread of waking up in the morning to operate a chairlift.

I’m still, as happy as I mostly am, a bit lonely here, a bit out of place.

I live on a fairly busy street. While I’ve re-accustomed myself to locking the front door (which I spent the entirety of my stint in Colorado not doing), I’d been frequently leaving my car window rolled down while parked in the driveway. After 15,000+ miles of roadtripping in the past couple years and my general tendency to treat my car like a large trash can that I don’t have to empty very often, it could use the fresh air, and I figured I had nothing worth stealing to worry about. The problem, though, was that I was using my own standards of “worth stealing.” It turns out that someone else decided that the approximately $3 in loose change in my ashtray warranted theft – not just of the coins, but of the entire ashtray.

So I took to locking my car up tight. Well, perhaps as some sort of repentant act by the thief, perhaps an unrelated benefactor, perhaps my roomate messing with me, but for whatever reason, I went out to my car today to find, propped up on the driver’s-side window, a single arcade token. I don’t know what it means, other than I kinda want to play Donkey Kong.