Chaos Attraction

Second Bay Area Commute Drive

2013-03-04, 4:27 p.m.

It was a very cool weekend.

On Friday, I went to an author signing. This is an author that I've really liked, and since she lives in my town, I kind of wished I could meet her. It turns out that one of my coworkers knows her and had a lot to do with the new book that just came out, go figure. So I went to the signing, and the author was very nice and funny.

I can't help but think that it would be really cool to be friends with some authors. Actually, I'm gonna rephrase that: published authors--since I have/have had writer friends, but nobody's been mass market published as yet. Which is to say, I've made dedication pages, but nobody knows about it! There are other authors I think would be awesome to get to hang out with....but yeah, that is unlikely to happen once you are no longer on the same level/in different locations/you didn't know them Before The Fame, etc, I think. Once it's a question of fan vs. subject, I suspect it's just too weird to go there if you're them, and I can't blame 'em.

I'm aware that fame is mostly nothing but trouble, but I can't help but think that it would be incredibly useful for (a) making money in a creative career, and (b) getting to be friends with The Cool Kids. Honestly, those are pretty much my reasons for finding the idea appealing, since I'm oddly not as attention-whorey as you'd think. Sure, I blab shit online, but I don't publicize, never check web stats if I can avoid it, don't ever Google myself, avoid social media like the plague that it is, and consider myself lucky that I haven't been noticed by most of everyone online for doing something stupid. Or if I have, it hasn't happened publicly enough that I'd notice because it hit the front page of Metafilter or Gawker or something. Whew there.


On Saturday, after actually hitting the gym for a change, I met up with an old friend. A few days ago, I heard from Melinda, who was an old friend of mine way back when I was in my writing group in Sacramento. I had to drop out of that a few years ago after I finally ran out of people to get rides with, so I didn't see her or anyone else in that group any more. In her case, it turns out that she moved to the Middle East for a job(!) and after her contract was up, is now back here again. We arranged to meet up here Saturday afternoon.

Somewhat off topic but not really: I mentioned here that theoretically, I had a moving buddy come this year. However, around the end of January Monica informed me that she was really running out of money and hadn't been able to find a job yet and if she didn't get a job by the end of February and ran out of money to pay rent here, she'd have to move to SoCal early and shack up with her boyfriend. Was I ready to move then?

Uh....no....leases and stuff like that. So I figured I was on my own if I moved. And I still didn't have a car and the idea of moving still freaks me out and...you've heard the whine before. So I didn't think it was going to happen at this point anyway.

THE DAY AFTER I FRIGGING SIGNED THE LEASE, I hear from Monica again wanting to know if we're still on. TOO LATE. I wrote her some very apologetic "I'm lame, I'm sorry, too late now, oh shit" texts while I waited for Melinda to find parking. Monica eventually wrote back saying essentially that she understood, moving freaks her out too but it's about time that she move where her boyfriend is, etc. (She wanted to get together this week, but since I never heard back about that, I am guessing this won't happen. Like I said...she's flaky.)

But then I got together with Melinda. Who is from LA. And said she could help me with various things, such as hooking me up with a boat(!) to stay on that her friend owns, and that I could get help from her relatives--"they're drunk and crazy, but they'll help!," I think is what she said-- and stuff like that. I said I wished I'd heard from her a week or two ago, since I'd flat out prayed for divine intervention/some kind of sign about the lease situation (i.e. LET ME KNOW ASAP IF I SHOULDN'T RESIGN/SHOULD MOVE NOW OR ELSE I RENEW BY DEFAULT, JUST SAYING, GOD/DESS), and didn't get any. She said, well, maybe there was a reason for that.

Good point.

After that, I went home for a few hours, then met up with L for dinner and a movie. We saw the latest Die Hard, which is a big thing in her family. It was okay. I can't claim it was good plot-wise, but it was short, had a lot of explosions, and gave me a lot of laughs. Fine by me for a popcorn flick.


On Sunday, L and I went to a rock and gem show in Newark. She joined a gem and mineral society so she could take classes in faceting, which she loves, and part of the membership is that she has to work at this event, so we went for the afternoon and then she was to do a cleanup shift. Anyhoo, she drove home and I drove there.

This was my third drive from here to the Bay Area, and it went well. I did not freak out at any point, so huzzah there. I had a few slight moments of awkward here and there, which were easily handled, thank goodness. L requested that I drive in the far left lane for most of the trip since the route we took* was pretty well uninterrupted for most of it. I can easily say that this was the fastest I have ever gone on the freeway.

But we arrived okay, though L had to parallel park for me. "You have to BACK INTO the slot," she pointed out upon my not doing so. I'm sure people have pointed this out to me before (in retrospect, yes, that's been pointed out by Elsa, Dawn, Rachel, Mom, etc...) but I think it was the first time it's actually uh, sunk in. Especially since I can usually avoid parallel parking outside of my neighborhood about 80% of the time, and do so. As for my neighborhood, I usually just park in easier slots to get to, like around the block where there are less cars, or next to the driveway, or something else easier than jamming in between two cars in a relatively tight space. I need to practice that more, since my backing up ability is something I consider to be pretty weak. But either way, she said she could have fallen asleep while I was driving, and I found that flattering.

As for the show, I ended up buying a few cheap pieces to try making resin/mosaic jewelry with, some butterfly wing earrings (out of blue morphos found on the ground, I'm told they were "friendly wings) that are probably too huge for daily wear but were gorgeous anyway, and two strands of gorgeous but generally expensive beads that were 50% off. L, who's all about the faceting and lapidary and rock work of late, bought a bunch of slabs and stuff relating to that. Even then, we still finished like an hour before the show ended and then parked in a corner to read and knit. And then we waited around even longer because...well, they'd told L she could take down stuff around 5 and then go home, but in practice they didn't let her start her shift until most of the vendors had taken their stuff down. Kind of annoying when we didn't live in this area and it was a Sunday night and we wanted to leave. Oh well, at least they had free Mexican salad for dinner.

Overall, it was a successful weekend!

* upon telling Mom what route we took--80 to 880--she promptly had a cow and demanded that I should have driven from 580 to 680 to what the hell ever. God, Mom, can't you let anything go?! I got there, okay?! And as far as I'm concerned, the less freeway changes, the better, even if it's a "short cut."


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