Well, feather2pixel tip-riders, it’s vacation time. Thank god for that. Actually, the party kind of started on Friday. I gave every member of the Instrumentation class a pop quiz stapled to a $1 scratcher (or as Dirty Jay calls them: Vallejo City Bonds) and we were off to the races. This was question number two:

Given an instantaneous, sustained Vin that occurs at t=3 in the form ΔV(t)=2cos(ωt), please sketch a portrait of the instructor below:

Click here for a collage of the highly disturbing results.

I will come clean and admit that it’s actually Sunday night–the party’s been on for quite a while. If you want to call it that. Mostly, I have been catching up on some much-needed rest. I don’t remember the last time I slept in.

Some mildly interesting things happened this weekend. The most unexpected of them happened yesterday in the middle of the night. I was stumbling down Valencia street and who did I run into on the corner of 22nd, but Williams the Border Collie. Williams was a co-worker of mine at the Exploratorium for a year and a half. She was the warmhearted Field Trip Explainer. We rode bikes together and generally got on well. After the work year ended, though, nobody ever heard a peep from her, despite several months of voicemails. After a while, I didn’t know what to think and kind of gave up. I was a little pissed.

But there she was before my eyes. It’s extremely hard to get Williams’ attention, but when you do, you get a lot. I don’t think I have ever met a more compassionate person.   Her face lit up and she walked home with me. We sat on my porch, talking for a while and it made me feel a little crestfallen to think that so much has changed for both of us since we last spoke. The world of Field Trip Explaining feels like a long lost childhood.  We walked to a cab at the corner of Mission and I told her I missed her. I do. Right before getting in, she gave me a big hug and you know what? It’s been a long time since I got a real hug.  It’s something I don’t think about that much.  I think really needed it. Thanks Williams.

My roomates three want to hire a maid. A maid! Don’t they understand that I already work a semi-professional job, commute to work, and have a retirement account–any closer to the precipice of middle class hypocrisy and I’ll fall right in.

But there is dust in the corners and I’ve been the least active member of the autonomous cleaning plan. I am not in a position to make a big fuss. To be fair, though, I always clean up after myself and there’s been no formal system for anything beyond that. So we are getting maid.

On the plus side, this will double the number of Latino people I interact with in the Mission since right now it’s just the guy that rolls my burrito at El Farolito. True, this could start to get weird. Luckily, there is plenty of Noam Chomsky in the living room bookshelf. If I start feeling like the politics of my own life are a little off, it will be easy to remind myself where the real problems are situated: with those individuals not associated with the American progressive movement. Can’t do shit about that, can I?

It freaks me out how long you can go before you catch on to people. Especially when you want them to turn out to be a certain way. How exactly does one determine that somebody is a not good person? I’m not talking about a bad person–that’s easy. Just someone who doesn’t particularly care about other people. That confuses me. Everybody wants to appear like a good person and plenty of people are good at being friendly. Some people are exceptional at it. Maybe this is all just a matter expecting nothing from people.

But enough of that. Hip hip hooray for seventy-two hour weekends. When I was working at the museum, every weekend was this long. Man, that was a another life. These days, I wake up at five for a commute to an office where I am three months behind my grading, which is impressive in light of the fact I have only been working there for two.

Today, though, I got to escape reality at the end of the continent with the Bulldogger. We met up for a simple breakfast in the Mission and then we were off, traversing through the park and whatnot. That’s been my weekend life for the last few months, but I’m not used to having company. It was interesting to have a companion.
Looking ahead, I’m hoping I can hop skip and jump my way through this week and towards nine whole days of Thanksgiving break. I can’t fucking wait. Danny was supposed to make his way over here for the holiday but apparently the people who do things like buy Danny’s plane tickets couldn’t find a deal. A shame: I know he would have been up for football on the beach and midnight movies.

I think plan B is to accompany Jenny down south to where the air might not be so clean but I can think everything over in the sun. I actually haven’t been down to L.A. since I moved West and this is my forth year here. I have been so lost in this city that I’ve barely scratched California’s surface.