Hell, when i left California, it was fall, almost summer weather.

Now i come back and it’s freezing – literally. That is a cruel trick to play on someone who’s been wearing a kikepa/pareo and flip flops and nothing else for most of the last three weeks.

brrrrrr!

And yes, that means I’m home. More to say, and pictures, as soon as I get time.

i did the usual fall back thing this morning and went out with my watch wrong, and got myself confused because the place i went opened at nine and my watch said nine. Though of course here in the real world it was only 8.

It’s only an hour, yet a disagreement between internal and external clock somehow tilts the axis of the universe just slightly, so that everything looks the same but feels in a fundamental way wrong. Like everything in your house – walls, floors, roof, and everything your house contains – has just been moved an inch to the left. It all looks exactly the same; yet in some fundamental sub-sensory way, we feel it to be wrong.

It isn’t, though, the satisfying temporal displacement of travel and jet lag. Because that means we’re somewhere, somewhen, and have a reason to be out of sync with the air around us. We have the thrill of difference, and a different sun rising and setting at a different time, the fatigue of travel, soon solves the problem for us, for good or ill.

Here, home, we’re simply knocked out of balance, like a tire hitting a pot-hole. We spin a bit off-center for a time until we again find equilibrium.

But you know, at least now the clock in my Jeep – a clock that requires some elaborate vulcan-neck-pinch of buttons to set, and for which I last saw the manual around the turn of the century – is once again correct as it is half the year. So that’s something.

I decided to try something new at work today.

Not turning on any IM client.

I know. Radical. Weird. Crazy Talk. But I’m just that livin’ on the edge kinda guy.

I just had this insane idea that maybe, just possibly I’d get some work done.

Crap. I spent an hour this morning writing something about nightmares and – nightmarishly – i nuked it somehow rather than saving it. I was just going to finish it up and post it and — nothing.

I can’t even begin to describe how much that irritates me.

On the other hand, I saw a baby great white shark today at the monterey bay aquarium. So you know, it ain’t all bad. And damn, it’s a cute lil’ thing.

I can’t say for sure when this was. Obviously it’d have to be the 80s, but given that I’m clean shaven, i’m thinking early 80s. Last time i can recall having that hair and no beard would have been about 85, but we could go a couple years either way from there.

See? I told you Kiefer got his look from me.

The other thing that’s really funny is the arms. I recognize that face. I don’t know those bare arms.

Anyone out there in the San Diego area?

I’ve need of a little, you know, covert action, kind of a black ops deal.

You know, black ops:

(No, I’m not above stealing a graphic from Dave Navarro)

Drop me a line if you’re ready to, y’know, go undercover.

I started with a new therapist this week.

I don’t know why I’m saying that, other than that it’s true, and that it’s the sort of thing I tend not to ever say in a public forum. for some reason it seems like a good idea, though, to simply say it.

It’s not the first time I’ve done this; I’ve tried a couple times, with varying degrees of success. So far, I guess, so good, I didn’t feel any immediate desire to take this latest head-shrinker out with an angel/24 style head-twist-neck-snap move, which is what happened the first try. Well, ok, I didn’t actually do that, but I sure thought happy thoughts about it. The second try, last year, was a bit better, though I think these things have a shelf-life and I stopped when the cons began to out-weight the pros.

But you know, sometimes the loose bolts in one’s head need to get screwed back on and tightened down.

I feel incredibly exposed talking about this. And odds are I’ll take this entry down in only minutes. But it just seems kind of important.

When you finally get ready to buy your hello kitty guitar, here’s how you’re gonna pay for it.

Because you know, debt and bankruptcy are so adorable!

(props to boingboing, i guess, though I’m a bit queasy from all the sugary-sweetness)

I keep figuring I’ll get some time, soon, to get progress on blog entries.

And now, I’m starting to think that’s not true and i’ll never have anything to say ever again.

I’ve got these entries started on movies, teevee shows (and why 24 went from best to worst between seasons two and three). On books and the new rings I just got from the brilliant Julian Lamb that I need to review. On tattoos (wanted, gotten), on guitars and my desire to start taking lessons again (so that I will have an excuse to buy a new guitar).

Seems like I ain’t gonna get that time i keep thinking I’ll have, not in the near future. Today i managed to grab an hour sitting in a bar reading a greg rucka novel and and sipping a guiness, and it felt, for a little while there, like i was on vacation, just having time utterly to myself. All too soon though my phone rang and it was time to go pick up my daughter.

On the other hand, I’m making serious progress on a blog template i’m co-designing with another blogger, so it’s not like it’s all work and no play (because i’m geek enough to find that entertaining). So it’s not like my entire output of energy is being sucked down a black hole. Not every ounce of it, anyway.

Pleasure in the small things, I keep thinking, and eventually this gets better. I’m hoping.

Right?