Some comics I make.

To finally conclude the countdown I began so very long ago... Here it was. The open road:



Yay. Take off successful.

Yeah, it's been a while... been having some trouble loading and updating Xanga with only free citywide internet to use at my parent's home in Santa Clara. An awesome thing for a city to provide, don't get me wrong, but dial-up like speed makes Xanga a bit of a doozy. Why you got to be so difficult, Xanga? So now I'm giving the public library internet a go. Crossed fingers as I punch "Save Changes"...

What's happened in the meantime.. lessee. It's been five weeks since the initial arrival home, four weeks since going on rainforest adventures with my friend Wendy around Seattle, two weeks since chilling with my pal Kim in Sacramento. Now it's one week until I head down to Simi Valley and then Los Angeles and two weeks till I fly out of LAX to Tokyo. That's about as much chronology as I can muster at the moment. This waiting/transitioning period has otherwise been an amorphous blob of days and evenings filled with checklist type activities. Unpack boxes, repack suitcases, sort papers and e-mails, study Japanese. Check, check, check, check. Not too exciting of an entry, I know.

However, the satisfying part about taking the month "off" has been the time I've been able to spend with the family. I guess it's been a while since my parents have had both kids at home, so our July 4 family outing to San Francisco seemed to catch them in unusually high spirits. We just walked down the same piers and bought the same chowder bowls as always. Yet they couldn't be jollier. My little brother, at 21, has also magically transformed into this rather
mature adult, even though my mother still fails to register me as one despite the fact that I've lived on my own for the past nine years. I'm figuring out the realization is never going to happen. Oh well.

Been catching up with friends I've known since high school too. Dog bless old friend status and the fact that even six months to a year later, you can still pick up a conversation right where you left off as if it never stopped. Nothing like that magical formula of beer and nostalgia to paste the times together. I look forward to more pasting with folks from college next week... (so if you're in LA and available next Wed or Thurs, please let me know).

Have to admit though, with all the constant moving around, I'm looking forward to a return to some structure and a steady paycheck. I think after I get back from Japan, I'll be willing to stay content with walking down a street and knowing it's my neighborhood and exactly where I'm going, so all I have to wonder about is what to make for dinner, or whether a friend from Chicago's going to leap out at me from the next CarQuest I see, in a reference that mainly he will understand.

You ever notice that CarQuests are everywhere? It really would serve as a great teleportational nexus point. I need a simpler way to travel around too.

So, what are you suppose to think when you're walking downtown on a Thursday evening, and you see a bunch of men, twenty or so, clumped together smoking and chatting, all with shaved heads, trimmed beards, and strapping S & M black outfits? My friend Austin and I brewed that question between ourselves on our first pass past the Hilton Hotel. Upon second crossing, I couldn't help but watch curiously as these men gave each other noogies and checked out one another's cowhide pants as only tender thugs might do.

I finally stopped a guy heading towards the hotel, also dressed in uniform, and asked him, "What's that gathering over there?"

"International Mr. Leather," he replied.

Seems like they've got a full line-up of events this weekend. Man, if I could grow a beard and look half as good as those Leathermen, you'd totally catch me swinging my hat (and I suppose other things) at the opening ceremony.

Early rising chaps in chaps walked by again this morning as I headed to work.

City life.

Countdown: 12 days till roadtrip.