Garlic Festival: It's On

Have you noticed that people rarely really take advantage of the neat crap there is to do in their area? As soon as we were certain that we were moving to Santa Cruz, Becky and I were intent on doing as much central coast neat crap as possible. Today, we fulfilled a major goal: we went to the Gilroy Garlic Festival (with our homies K and L) and had garlic ice cream. It was a triumph:



The ice cream itself was really good; kind of like vanilla with a nice strong garlic zing.

(Note to Tweak and Goat: Gilroy was everything we dreamed it would be. Whether it's buying a McMansion for 800,000 dollars in a piece of desert or getting some hot new prep gear at the outlet stores, Gilroy has it all.)

Also, please to be noting that I have updated my flickr page with some additional shots from the mighty voyage to the northwest.

Malingerers

Ok...watch this:

movie

(This was brought to my attention by one of my classmates last term.)

To me, this commercial is a brilliant, accidentally-ironic critique on the information economy. We make everything faster and better-connected, but with every increase in efficiency, we undermine the necessity of there being people there to work in the first place.

It's been on my mind lately because of, well, how utterly, desperately bored I've been at work for all the years I had computer jobs. It was either a crisis or a long stretch of utter tedium at any given moment.* My current position is less of that, but there are still a lot of slow hours during which I sit at my desk feeling guilty enough to make a half-assed attempt to look like I'm working.** I don't have much in the way of insight about this, but I do think it suggests that the American obsession with working hard all the time is not only a stupid waste of your life, but is ultimately counter-productive.

It's a horrible, repugnant fact that there are over a billion people alive who are extraneous to the global economy.*** Following Marx (this is one of the things I think he got right), the goal of any given capitalist is, and in a sense has to be in a competitive economy, to reduce his need for his own workers. Thus, in a way, we do ourselves a favor by not working hard all the time: we perpetuate the need for there to be workers at all.

Clumsily phrased, I realize, but do you guys buy it?

* This is a condition really endemic to IT. It's like being a fireman waiting for fires to put out, only unlike firemen, management frowns on IT guys hanging out and playing video games when there aren't any fires.
** Because I'm still so friggin' grateful to have the job in the first place.
*** I base this on Mike Davis's Planet of Slums, which made a big impression on me.

Home State Blues

Much to my delight, it rained almost the whole time we were in Oregon and Washington. A few beers in, my homie L* and I were standing in the muddy parking lot during BF-G's wedding reception laughing about how people from the Pac Northwest rarely own things like proper boots, rain jackets, or umbrellas. We just pull on sneakers and sweaters and stand around in the rain. Drunk.

So here's my dilemma: I had too good a time in Oregon. 90% of the people I really love are in the same 100-something mile stretch off of I-5 up and down the Willamette Valley. As we all get older, more and more of my formerly nomadic friends congregate in Portland, which remains the Best City on Earth. The grit, the cold wind, the beautiful bridges over the Willamette, karaoke bars and cool apartments for 650/month, all of it makes me really, truly homesick. Now both of Becky's brothers have moved to Portland, which means that most of both of our immediate families is up there, compounding the whole issue.

That all said, I've always been snotty about people who never leave their hometown. How the hell can you accurately judge things if you just stew in your old familiar surroundings your whole life, vacations and trips notwithstanding? My attitude is particularly acute because of growing up in Eugene, where so many people try to move away but just end up slumping back a few months or years later, feeling defeated.** So, basically, I feel like a wimpy sellout wanting to go back, that I should stick to my guns and live all over the place.

That said, I think one of the most wonderful things about getting older is giving less and less of a shit about proving yourself. I've spent my whole adult life trying to live up to some imagined standard of ambition and achievement***; what perverse principle makes me think that living in my favorite place with my favorite people is a Bad Thing just because it happens to be where I grew up?

So: Santa Cruz. Love it. Great little town full of attractive, brilliant historians-in-training. Academia: still into it. I doubt that I have the pedigree to succeed, but I'm going to get my PHD and play the job game regardless, at least one time through. But the way Becky and I are feeling these days, unless some kind of blessed arrangement drops out of the clouds ("Dr. KFR, we'd like to offer you our special 'Real Ultimate Power' tenured chair in intellectual history...") when I'm done with this, we're going back to the Beaver State.

* Or "Ol' Elephant Ears," as we like to call her.
** I called Eugene "The Vortex" growing up. It's impossible to escape.
*** One with zero financial benefit, I might add. Good job, me.

2120 Miles

We totally made it back. Huzzah!

P.S. Nothing could make me more nostalgic for Oregon than that trip, but I have to say: Cali has really nice rest stops, while Oregon's are just terrible.

OK, Fine, Not Immune to Jinxing

Full post to follow with exciting, even titillating, details of our Odyssian journey when/if we make it home and I get more than five hours of sleep.* In the meantime, here's me in a rainy parking lot outside of a Sears auto place in Lynnwood, WA, after our right rear tire took itself out on I-5:


Here are some fun facts:

• Tire places aren't open on Sundays, so if you get a flat, you have to go to a mall and hope they have a department store with a car shop.
• If you're lucky, nice people at the customer service booth in a completely different store across town might help you find one.
• I made it almost 29 years without having to change a flat tire. It would have been pretty ugly if Becky hadn't been there.
• If it sounds like a helicopter is landing on your car when you're driving down the highway, it's probably your tire.** Keep that in mind.
  

So...I don't know. We're officially jinxed. We took off this morning like clockwork, packing everything up and getting on the road by 7:00am. What was supposed to be about a 7 hour drive and an afternoon in Eugene became a long morning at a mall in a suburb***, reconfirmation that Washingtonians are god-awful drivers (but, I'm sure, very nice people), and utter, blithering exhaustion. Theoretically, we'll be back in Santa Cruz tomorrow night after another 600-something mile drive.

* It was totally awesome. Portland: awesome. BF's wedding: awesome.
** Unless it's a helicopter landing on your car.
*** We totally went mall walking.

Actual Vacations

Actual vacations result in feeling considerably more tired and battered by the time you get home than you did when you left. That's a sure sign of successful out-hanging with your homies.

This picture bears comment:


My brother in-law, with whom we stayed in Oregon City, has two rambunctious wee childrens who demand 100% attention, 100% of the time. In order to be able to work (he telecommutes) from their new place, he has "converted" the tool shed in the back yard to be his "office." If by "converted," you mean "has a phone and a laptop in there."

The trip has been pretty awesome so far. A lot of croquet and food-eating went down in Eugene, then we had a very fun visit with the kids-who-never-get-tired and their folks in Oregon City. I discovered that my 5 year-old niece is a badminton prodigy. Then, yesterday, we arrived in PDX and joined our beloved homies Br+Cr at La Maison des Pantalons. After B took off to hang out with her brother, an elite cadre of kids was assembled for purposes of karaoke. I was dumb and forgot my camera, but rest assured: I sang a Human League song with Ransom and we all drank our weight in beverages.*

Despite the slightly damp conditions in Portland this morning, the party continues!

*Not unlike hummingbirds who happen to live on beer.

Flickr: About Damn Time...

A quick one: I finally set up a Flickr account. If you're on there and you're pretty,* add me as a contact and we will take over the internet TOGETHER.

*Remember, I only spend time with pretty people. So, ipso factso quid pro gravitas decorerum, if we're friends, you're pretty.

Edit: Right now I'm just uploading pictures I'm taking while in Oregon + Washington. I'm not sure if I'll go back and upload albums of earlier stuff or not when I get home. Knowing how much I enjoy futzing around with my computer: probably.

Beaver State Redux

The last time I got seriously choked-up was when I was in the Uhaul about a year ago and I drove past the "thanks for visiting Oregon" sign and officially became a Californian. I had been so worried about being a lo-fidelity truck driver and dealing with all of the logistical headaches of the three moves in two months that I hadn't anticipated what it would be like to leave behind my home state, a place for which I have some pretty fierce pride and affection.

Anyway, here's a shot of how the visit has gone so far:


Not bad.

A few highlights and thoughts:

• Eureka, CA, is a shithole. We've decided never to stop there again when we're driving up. On the wall of the gas station restroom: "Die, Towle-head, Die!" In my book, when your bigots are that illiterate, you lose your incorporated status.
• Becky purchased a rather fetching black polo-style shirt at the Target Boutique yesterday. She will sexy-up the joint when we get to Portland in two days.
• My mom: croquet champion.
  
• Still to come: eating lots of food with Good People.

I'm already sad that each stage of this trip is only about two days long, but two days beats the crap out of zero.