Month: December 2009

what we’re doing for our octolunaversary nye

Largest Man-Made Mountain Could Rise Above Berlin’s Skyline

We fly to San Diego tomorrow, late in the evening, arriving at eleven. I write the words, I say them, and they feel like myth, like a story I might tell a child. We will pack today, wake up tomorrow, make breakfast, make love, do all the things we do in a day, then get onto one of those roaring machines in the sky and step off in San Diego in time for an incredible party for New Year’s Eve. How… How… fictional!

Today I’ve been figuring out the last pieces of our San Diego itinerary – where we’ll be staying on which days, how to get to Evolve from downtown – and having a surprising amount of fun doing it. It helps that Tony and I have similar tastes, and while it’s going to be incredible swanking it up in the luxury of the Hilton, we’re also excited about the The Dolphin Motel, where we’re staying tomorrow, which looks like it fell out of a snazzy movie set, (check out that neon!), and The Balboa Park Inn, right across the street from the San Diego Zoo, where the fiction and wonder continue, as we’ve booked… the Orient Express Theme Room! Swoon. SWOON.

Our trip is going to be so very transcendant, it’s surprising my head hasn’t fallen off.

This evening we’re gearing up by sorting out laundry, packing and electronics, and glueing long iridescent feathers to my purple hat. We still need to work out schedules with friends in L.A. and check the local weather and all those responsible things, but so far we’re doing pretty good, having settled in to wait for the dryer with West Wing, bowls of steamed vegetables, a saucer of fruit salad, and pumpkin cake with caramel sauce. Tomorrow we’ll look at what we’ve accomplished, shake our heads, do a bunch more of it, then pop out for last minute essentials, like matching bindi decorated with sequins, glass beads, or rhinestones from the Indian shop on Broadway for our dress up on New Year’s Eve, because we can’t be all rational thought and action.

A giant “digital cloud” tower structure that would “float” above London’s skyline has been outlined by an international team of architects, artists and engineers, which also includes the writer Umberto Eco

We’re spending New Year’s Eve in California.

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2010 starts this week. Sweet. Weird, yet sweet.

THIS IS OFFICALLY THE FUTURE.

Again.

Current itinerary: Fly to San Deigo on the 30th, dance ourselves dead at EVOLVE, stick around until the 4th, visit the zoo, maybe ride a gondola, then take the train up to LA, visit with Antony, Crunchy, and Kevin, then fly out of LAX on the 6th. Holy mercy, do I love California. I swear I’m going to go lick the first palm tree I see.

like hearing that pitter pat after a dead line of silence

Happy Holidays!
Enjoy yourselves, whatever it is you’re doing!

I have to admit that this December wasn’t looking very good. Bad luck was piling on bad luck, until I felt like I had somehow started an invisible count-down to an early grave. It seems, however, that everything was just clearing out of the way, leaving space to celebrate new, better foundations. There has been a bright side to every disaster. Because I was let go, I’m able to spend the holidays with Tony, who’s been saving up his use-it-or-lose-it Microserf vacation, and go with him to San Diego to see our friends, Mutaytor, perform with Rabbit In The Moon on New Years Eve at Evolve. Because my life crashed down all at once, I have been surrounded by love and care and support beyond my wildest dreams. I’m currently wearing a little silver frog ring and a pair of swooningly soft groverskin socks from Karen, for example, who sent me such a beautiful treasure package that I came down with a mild case of the weeps as I was carefully opening all the enchanting layers of ravishing colour and glee.

Thank you, my loves, my friends, my acquaintances, and you strangers. Thank you for everything!

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There has been scheming afoot. Mad, mad, undeniably wonderful scheming. Ray, mostly, though with some other people, like James and Nicole and Tony. Scheming, I might add, to replace the sadly lost camera. (If you wish to be part of this crusade, I can put you in contact with him.)

To this end, Ray has been doing some rather serious research, and has presented me with a rather serious question, which I have seriously researched, but have been too overwhelmed to immediately answer in reply. (How could I, considering? Wow. Just, wow.)

So I turn to you, dear internet, to help sway me off the fence of panicked indecision before the nondenominational shopping glory of boxing day passes. In your so humble opinion….

a run down of doom

Enter Thursday, December 10th, the day I officially come down with death flu, when Tony leaves his backpack on the bus and loses his laptop, which contains all of his writing, pictures and video of the last four months, our Montreal trip, etcetera, and his camera. We are, understandably, not feeling terrific.

Enter Friday, which spits on Thursday, calling it names and degrading its mother, declaring itself far more bad ass. I go into work and am promptly fired, as the bosses wife, who believes she is the reincarnation of an Atlantis princess and has a giant painted portrait of her idealized past self as Crystal Princess Barbie hanging in the office to prove it, has taken over my job. My bank account has been at zero since the 1st, because they’ve been with-holding my pay so they could get it all over with at once, but even with that plan they failed to have my cheque ready, so they fired me with nothing and gave me nothing. I’m contract, too, which means no severance. As part of cleaning out my desk, I go to unplug my various electronics and get such a nasty shock from the power bar that my hand spasms shut on the cord, and I lose the tip of a fingernail to scorch. Let the day’s twitching commence.

The bright side of being let go is that I am free to leave early, and so, with absolutely no time to spare, I run for the two:thirty Grayhound while Tony scurries to buy me a ticket long distance. The Grayhound, which I catch, then catches fire on the side of the highway just on the other side of the border. A shock had come loose and had been dragging under the bus, sending sparks up into the machine. Someone driving behind us, noting this and the subsequent tiny flames which started, called Grayhound, who then called the bus driver, who then pulled us over and put it out with an extinguisher. During the hours of waiting for the repair people, a fever develops, and I begin to see tiny hallucinations around the edges of my vision. To cheer myself up, I text back and forth with Tony, telling him that I’m not even sad about being laid off, as it means I finally have time to devote to photography. The repair people, coming from Canada, take so long to arrive that by the time we’re all patched up and on the road again, the next Grayhound bus was arriving at the stations the same time we were.

Enter Seattle, a city I am always glad to see. The bus pulls in and I am a rocket, clattering off the bus and through the station with unmatched speed, flagging down the first cab I see. Get me out of here! Get me home! I am silent for the ride, too spaced out for conversation, barely able to concentrate on the texts Tony is sending me, though I note the driver, a dark thin man, smells of sweet incense and has pretty hands. Finally I am home! Another text comes in as I exit the cab, and in my haste to reach my destination, I skip my usual taxi double check, I do not even look up from the phone until I am at the front door, and do not realize that my camera bag is behind me, driving away, fallen to the floor of the car.

Everything that could be done to get it back has been done, and failed. The taxi people do not have it, Craigslist does not have it, nor do any of the pawn shops. To make it worse, it seems that not only did the bag contain the camera and memory cards, (containing all my pictures since leaving Montreal), my arm warmers, and a roll of film I had shot as a gift, it also contained my credit card, which today, after more than a week of searching, I finally have to cave in and cancel.

On the up, I am with Tony for two weeks, and out of Canada until 2010, which is maybe the best gift I ever could have. He is a beautiful, wonderful creature, and he makes my life better absolutely every day.