Court Circular

[OK. You're right. A post is criminally overdue. There's been almost too much water under the bridge to write coherently about the past few weeks' events. You know what that means...]

[1. California counties traversed since the last day at The Place Where I Used To Work: Sonoma, Marin, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Alameda, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Fresno, Kings, Kern, Los Angeles. In the last month and a half, I've driven every inch of Interstate 5 between Vancouver, Wash. and Sun Valley, Calif.]

[2. Movies seen: No Country For Old Men (with Jessica and Bob in Hollywood), Sing-along The Sound of Music (at the Castro with Mom and Annabelle), and Darjeeling Limited (with Chris and Bree at the Embarcadero). That's more cinema than I'd taken in the previous three months.]

[3. Males kissed: I think five. Most of them were the other night while cheering up Allen in the Castro with Sean because another of A.'s relatives died and he has to go back east for the second time in a month. No, none of the kissees was Allen. Or Sean. But one of them was the "DJ" at the Edge, whom I bribed in a most direct way to play my requests on the iTunes he was operating while sitting at the bar.]

[4. Drunken screaming matches initiated in the Avenues, finished in the Haight: One. (Sorry for the noise, Elisabeth.) Chastity isn't the only inhibition alcohol erases, sadly. Must work on this.]

[5. Cool jobs begun: One. Turns out that all my co-workers are NOT women or gay men as initially thought. Close enough, though; Violet has definite ideas about the kinds of people she wants to hire.]

[6. Trips to Traintown with Niece Audrey and various other family members: One.]

[7. Intense sessions of Play-Doh engaged in with Niece while Sis and Bro-in-Law assemble hideous-yet-compelling dining table inherited from great-grandmother at their house in Alameda: One. (Niece kept making me punch out Play-Doh "agillator." Perhaps she will become reptile biologist.]

[8. Dinners had at massive Russian Hill apartment of Friend of Mom who's going with Mom and other assorted cronies on Panama Canal cruise, thus drafting me to house- and cat-sit starting this Friday: One. Dinner was rollicking, and included F.o.M's downstairs neighbor, a courtly septuagenarian gentleman whose 40-odd years in San Francisco have done nothing to erase his native South Carolina accent. I forgot old people could be so engaging. (F.o.M. is 81, but has got all her marbles... and new dishwasher, massive ice-making refrigerator, the affectionate Cat Hedwick, and sweeping Bay views.)]

[9. Hanukkah parties at Maison le Trou discussed in casual sort of way with flatmates: One. It's next Saturday, and all "we've" done so far to prepare is send Evites (Chris), begin painting water closet in London Blitz theme (Chris, though I will be contributing R.A.F. logo clock bought in Covent Garden in 2003), and buy one bottle of Absolut (me). Eh; it's just a party. It'll be fine as long as Chris and I remember not to fight.]

[10. Number of Nick Twisp books by C.D. Payne read: 2.5. They're hilarious tales of disaffected teen sociopaths. I don't know what I was doing when I was fourteen, but it sure wasn't blowing up cars in the Berkeley hills, absconding with my pregnant girlfriend to Europe, or having plastic surgery in Ensenada to evade local, state and federal authorities like the main character. When I was that age, the only scandalous thing I did was mess around after school for a couple of months with one of my best friends, and make my mom come pick me up afterwards. Comparative chicken feed, really.]

[OK, I think that about covers the highlights. Off to shower now to get ready for second Tuesday at new job. The site has soft-launched Beta, which means lots of bugs, and invitations only to investors and authors for the moment. That gives you time to write to request one, and still get in on the ground floor.]

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