I have had occasion to mention here the band Super Duper, which is fronted by a man with whom Iʻve been friends since the [...]]]> Iʻm going to Flagstaff, Arizona instead.

I have had occasion to mention here the band Super Duper, which is fronted by a man with whom Iʻve been friends since the sixth grade. (The co-founder and bassist is one of my housemates, a friend of the front man since college; we were introduced a good decade ago, before the older friend had relocated from New York to Los Angeles.) As was probably inevitable, Iʻve been adopted by Super Duper as an unofficial auxiliary member. Iʻve looked after the merchandise table at a couple of shows, and I took it upon myself to bring a bit of sales panache to the proceedings, by poly-bagging nicely folded t-shirts, employing a trio of cardboard t-shirt display easels, and generating some new signage. I am also at work on a video project for the band about which I donʻt think Iʻm at liberty to say anything in particular at present.

And tomorrow night Iʻll be triggering samples for exactly two songs during the set that Super Duper is playing in Flagstaff.

Never mind why weʻre all driving nine hours into the snow to open for another band. Nobody involves thinks this is particularly smart; mostly it just promises to be fun.

So I wonʻt be spending my Saturday afternoon in the tea room at Zenshuji Soto Mission in Little Tokyo, as I did two weekends ago. That was my second encounter with Yamashita-senseiʻs Urasenke group, and it handily undid the disappointment of my first visit. I actually met Yamashita-sensei–a real cut-up, a Japanese woman gone Yankee–and made tea, and ended up staying for a good five hours when all was said and done. It hardly bothered me that I drew appalling blanks at several points in my simple temae. It was just good to be back.

Work has been great: so much more than I expected when I resigned myself to the job search last October. Just this evening I submitted my last time sheet; come Monday Iʻll be a regular salaried employee at Acme Archives, with health insurance and everything. My performance on the job has been quite satisfactory, I was informed over a lunch of Thai food that the bosses treated me to, and my employers mean to start to involve me in the marketing side of the business in the near future. What a treat it is to have a job, and to like it, and to be liked by the people at it, and to be good at it, and to reasonably expect that itʻll only get better. The only complaint I might raise is that the preparations for this summerʻs Comic Con–also a treat–will prevent me from attending the Midorikai alumni reunion in Honolulu. Quite the disappointment, that, but thereʻs really nothing to be done for it. My only hope is that, if some of my old classmates will be traveling from afar to Hawaii, they might be persuaded to make a stop on their way to or from the reunion to catch up with me here.

The blogʻs sidebar doesnʻt lie: itʻs been nearly three months since I did any work at all on the book I still insist Iʻll finish some day. I think Iʻve given up, though, on re-posting the whole of the Midorikai blog; doesnʻt seem as though anyone is still interested.

Iʻm still not quite used to being as busy as Iʻve gotten–and as I expect to remain. But itʻs good for me, Iʻm sure.

I feel like there are all sorts of other things I meant to mention here at this sitting, but they elude me now, and lots has to get done yet before bedtime, which ought to be reasonably early, as the caravan to Arizona will hit the road early tomorrow, through rain into snow for a night of rock ʻnʻ roll.

Maybe some of those things Iʻm forgetting to mention will come back to me later and prompt me to post here more frequently. But letʻs not hold our breath.

In the company of my girlfriend, Jillian.

Many of you will long since have divined that [...]]]> I ended 2009–the year of my emotionally devastating return from Japan, subsequent wandering in the (literal and figurative) wilderness, and final settling in an unexpectedly wonderful job and housing situation–with a Duraflame fire and a box of frozen ranch-flavored chicken fingers.

In the company of my girlfriend, Jillian.

Many of you will long since have divined that my life has not, of late, been quite free of romantic entanglement. Now it becomes a matter of public record. Why it was secret or semi-secret before is a long and boring and occasionally sad story involving, among other things, the third point of a tra-la-la-la triangle to whom I almost feel I owe an apology, though I didn’t knowingly do any wrong.

How long a story? There are a few points we might consider to have been the real beginning of the relationship, but even counting from the latest of those would make it a year that we’ve been, in some sense or another, together.

We met in Japan, studying tea. We had what we both assumed was an overseas fling. And then the fling followed us home. We’ve been in close touch since she returned to the east coast and I to the west. We met once in late summer, and now again over the holidays.

Things between us just keep getting better, the fact that a continent still separates us notwithstanding. I’m not making any bets on the future, but I think that there will be more to this story.

And that’s all I’ll say about that for the moment. Truth be told, I’m finding it a little difficult to write about Jillian after so much practice not writing about her. But I imagine that she’ll earn mentions here with some regularity from now on, at least until she gets uncomfortable and asks me to cut it out.

So New Year’s Eve and the week that followed were happy days of vacation and overeating, short shifts at work followed by evenings with the best of company, and much motoring in and out of the valley on my scooter, which is a whole lot of fun to ride with a pretty girl on the back of it.

Now it’s business as usual: Jillian back to the east, and me back to work.

Today I was to have resumed, at long last, my tea study. It very nearly happened. I went to the the place in Little Tokyo, and I met certain members of the Urasenke group there, and I had a bowl of tea and a sweet while trying to explain absolutely everything in about twenty minutes to a group of visitors. But after the demonstration was over and the visitors left, things got quiet and a little awkward. Lots of conversation in Japanese that I didn’t understand. Seemed that people believed the teacher to be on her way, but nobody was quite sure. An hour and a half after practice was to have started, I apologized and left. Not a particularly auspicious beginning to my tea life in Los Angeles–but I’ll go back. Of course.

Also not auspicious was discovering, last night, that the first tea bowl I every bought, a cheap but attractive and functional little kyō-yaki number from the dōgu shop across the street from the women’s dorm, got chipped at some point in the not too distant past.

And while I’m whining about tea stuff: last night I followed a link to an album of Facebook photos by a student who just finished her first semester in Midorikai. It was awful. All the familiar places and and activities and clothes and teachers, but starring a crowd of strangers. It felt like my memories had been tampered with, like someone had stolen my past and pencilled me out of it.

Enough, enough. I had my time, and it was good, and life is good now.

Yeah. Life is good now.

I worked about 50 hours last week. This is not impressive by the standards of some. It is mighty impressive by standards of mine. As is the fact that I went in to work today–Sunday–just to get caught up on things that should have been done earlier but weren’t.

Something that happened on Friday [...]]]> This and that:

I worked about 50 hours last week. This is not impressive by the standards of some. It is mighty impressive by standards of mine. As is the fact that I went in to work today–Sunday–just to get caught up on things that should have been done earlier but weren’t.

Something that happened on Friday that cut into general productivity but was cool nonetheless: I got to visit Cartoon Network HQ in Burbank to help host a sale of our artwork for their employees. Didn’t get much business, but it was fun to get out of the office and see a place that I suppose not many get to see.

I did not make it to the gym even once last week. Back to it tomorrow morning. I hope.

I’ve put 115 miles on my new scooter since I bought it a week ago yesterday. I love it. I’ve been riding it even in nasty weather and enjoying the heck out of it. Happily, the nastiness ended last night, and we’re back to the December mildness that contributes so mightily to Southern California’s appeal.

I am riding my new scooter only semi-legally. I caused a small-scale manhunt on Tuesday morning by disappearing to the DMV without letting enough people know where I was. Now I have my California driver’s license–again, finally–and a motorcycle learner’s permit, which allows me to operate the scooter legally during daylight hours, which at least covers half of the time during which I actually operate the thing. This week I’ll take a three-session riding course, the successful completion of which will get me my honest-to-goodness motorcycle license.

My mother came down from Ventura County on Saturday with all of my possessions in the world that weren’t already here or in semi-permanent storage in the family house in Washington. They stack very nicely in one corner of the living room. I live a pretty stripped-down existence still, I’m happy to be reminded. I was to have started tea practice with an Urasenke group in Los Angeles at long last, but I was feeling overloaded and wanted to take full advantage of Mom being in town, so I ditched the practice in favor of shopping and eating and visiting. I found, with the help of Yelp, a very well preserved mid-century eatery called Frank’s: original signage, booths and floors. Pristine. We braved the Saturday crowds over at Media Center and wandered around IKEA, where I did not find a bed I liked enough to buy on the spot. But Mom and I bought a hazelnut chocolate bar and shared a 50-cent hot dog. Then to Target, and then to a local Chinese restaurant that I’d known I had to visit since first spotting it a few weeks back–because it’s called “Joy Feast.” The food was passable, but I’ll probably eat there again just for the name.

Two nights of good films on DVD, courtesy of the Academy Award screening copies that come to the house: A Serious Man and The Hurt Locker.

I’ve had no reading time, no writing time. But I did spend an hour this morning editing video: still working on my July trip with sister and brother-in-law to see glaciers. And I’ve been designing a set of beer labels for friend-and-home-brewer-of-note Steve, who’ll be sending selections of his brews out to friends and family as Christmas gifts.

I think that’s all. Oh–except for the Christmas decorating. I’ve taken some holiday initiative and strung up some lights inside the house and out. Nobody else seemed likely to bother, but everyone seems pleased with the festive atmosphere. I’m already planning next year’s enhancements. It’ll be festiver. I love being in a house again.

Right, then. Going back under. More will be reported when there is more to report.

Am I the only one who finds it odd that anyone still stops by here from day to day? That Google Analytics-proven fact generates a small buzz of daily guilt in the back of my head. It would be a bigger buzz, I suppose, except that I know that my failure to post new content [...]]]>

Am I the only one who finds it odd that anyone still stops by here from day to day? That Google Analytics-proven fact generates a small buzz of daily guilt in the back of my head. It would be a bigger buzz, I suppose, except that I know that my failure to post new content here hasn’t been a function of laziness; I’m not filling idle hours with non-writing activities. I’ve simply had no idle hours.

I love that I have work, and I love the work I have. But I’m learning the ropes still, and for a variety of reasons—including an online sale over the long Thanksgiving weekend—I’m buried in orders that I’m trying to get out the door in something like a timely fashion. I don’t think I left work before seven in the evening a single night last week, and by the time the bus got me home, I’d have just enough energy to unroll my sleeping bag onto the couch and collapse.

The mornings have gotten earlier, too: as of this Monday past, I start my mornings at the gym up the street. This has given me more energy overall, but does require that I discipline myself to earlier bedtimes.

That long Thanksgiving weekend generated a good bit of fun as well as the backlog of orders. Having stocked up on the requisite provisions, I began the day, as personal custom dictated, with a ritual viewing of the Macy’s parade punctuated by trips to the kitchen to check on Chex mix and pie and turkey and the rest. Only one roommate stayed home for the day to join me for the feasting in the early evening, so we both ate exceedingly well and enjoyed leftovers for days afterward.

My parents rolled into town the day after Thanksgiving and spent the night in North Hollywood. We ate and visited and ate, went to the LA Zoo, met a cousin of mine to eat and visit more, and hiked from the Ferndell entrance to Griffith Park up to the observatory on a sparkling clear Saturday afternoon: the view from the ascent stretched from the Hollywood sign clear out to the ocean.

Last Sunday I rested up in preparation for the monster work-week just concluded. Then followed the monster work.

And yesterday I bought the scooter pictured above. Having become convinced, over the last month of getting around town by bus, that a scooter would best fit my particular transportation needs, I stopped by the exceedingly well-reviewed NoHo Scooters, and left some while later with a 2009 Genuine Buddy 150. And some new debt that I prefer not to dwell on. The bike is cute as heck and a joy to ride. It will be even more fun to ride when I can do it legally, which will be in a few weeks, when I’ve gotten my M1 motorcycle license. I expect I’ll continue to make good use of LA’s public transportation system, especially as we descend into the colder and wetter winter months, but it’ll be very nice indeed not to live absolutely chained to the bus schedule and routes. (Which have proven mildly problematic with these late evenings at work.)

Also featured in the picture above is my new home, known to its residents at Casa Lima. I’ll continue to freeload as a couch-surfer for the rest of December; on 1 January I’ll move into a room of my own. I’ve paid my deposit, and am excited to take my place officially in the house.

Is that news enough? Probably doesn’t make up for my long silence—not the one just past, and not the one sure to follow this—but it may be somewhat rewarding for the persistent souls who continue to check in here.

I’ve made incremental progress in getting the old Midorikai journal back online, and no progress at all for many, many days in turning that journal into a (theoretically) readable book. Which I do, I assure you, still mean to accomplish. Time has been short, but January promises to offer some relief: opportunity to make headway on personal projects.

Oh, yeah: the new header photo on this page? That was taken at a friend’s truly memorable fiesta-themed birthday party two or so weeks ago. Wish I’d written about it. Then again, the picture tells you most of what you need to know.

I ate at this Echo Park joint on Monday night before the Fanfarlo show. Though lightly hipsterized in recent years (on account of having become a favorite with hipsters), Alexander’s Brite Spot is the real deal: a well-preserved mid-century diner, a piece of older LA.

It has its own label on the Google map of the [...]]]>

I ate at this Echo Park joint on Monday night before the Fanfarlo show. Though lightly hipsterized in recent years (on account of having become a favorite with hipsters), Alexander’s Brite Spot is the real deal: a well-preserved mid-century diner, a piece of older LA.

It has its own label on the Google map of the city, actually. When navigating my way to Echo for the show, I saw the name and saw, in its spelling, a lot of potential. I was happy not to be disappointed by the corresponding brick-and-mortar reality.

The seats in the booths were red and sparkly. The waitress appeared to have been original to the restaurant. The food was plentiful. And a good rock show followed.

A lot has happened between my last update and now, and any amount of it was well worth writing about, but I’m afraid that I’ll have to just have to give it all a miss this time, and start fresh.

There could hardly be a [...]]]> No, I haven’t written anything in a long while–not here, not anywhere.

A lot has happened between my last update and now, and any amount of it was well worth writing about, but I’m afraid that I’ll have to just have to give it all a miss this time, and start fresh.

There could hardly be a better point for a fresh start.

I am employed: the first full-time job I’ve had (if we don’t count the summer stint working the graveyard shift at Target) since 2003.

Over the course of two weeks last month, I responded with resumes to eight job postings on Craigslist. (To which, for reasons having to do with my own eccentricity, I had decided to confine my job search.) One turned out to be a fraudulent listing. Six yielded no response. Exactly one resulted in an invitation to schedule an interview.

Happily, the company that contacted me was the one that I’d been most excited, by far, to send my resume to; the nature of the job description and of the business genuinely appealed to me, while most everything else I’d applied for had fallen into the “may be able to tolerate for a while” category. And I’d wondered if I’d hurt my chances by accidentally emailing, owing to an Internet glitch, four copies of my resume at once. I’d followed up with a brief note of apology to assure the recipient that I wasn’t a spammer or just plain obnoxious.

I spent the night before the interview with friends in Burbank, just down the road from where I understood the company to be, rose early in the morning, and left the house with what I expected would be plenty of time to spare. It turned out to be just time enough.

Google had instructed me to take one bus a certain distance before transferring to another. But at the transfer point, I could find no signage showing me where to board the second bus. A passing Metro driver was of no help; I discovered later that I was to have transferred to a bus in the local Burbank–not greater Los Angeles–transit system. But according to the map, I wasn’t such a long walk from where I needed to be, so I proceeded on foot, despite the too-loose dress shoes that were already blistering my heels. I got to the road I thought I was supposed to get to with plenty of time still–and saw that the addresses were several thousands of numbers smaller than what I was looking for. And they didn’t grow very quickly as I made my way north.

Suddenly, what had been a surfeit of time became a deficit. In the beginnings of a mild panic, I took off the uncomfortable shoes and began jogging up the street in my socks. I was in an industrial zone near the Burbank airport, where it seemed that nobody went unless they had business to do–and with the day’s business hours begun, the streets were dead: no cars, no buses, no convenient taxis broke the silence.

My panic was on the verge of becoming somewhat more than mild as I contemplated the possibility of showing up late to my first job interview in years, to the only job interview that eight resumes had netted, to the interview for a job I suspected I really wanted. And then the street addresses skipped several thousands of numbers, and I saw that I might yet arrive on time. Minutes later, I’d reached the 7500 block I was looking for, and I slowed my pace to read the numbers carefully. 7574…7576–but I wanted 7575! Normally in a case like this, I’d look to the other side of the street. But the other side of this street featured only a chain link fence, and beyond that, train tracks.

Perplexed, I circled the short block, looking for back entrances or anything else that might suggest a solution to my problem. The neighborhood I was in wasn’t the ghetto, quite, but it didn’t look like the cheeriest place to work: the bluest of blue-collar industrial zones, weathered old brick buildings housing machine shops and fastener distributors and the like. On my second trip around the block, an unsavory looking character smoking a cheap cigar leaned out of a shady doorway and beckoned me with a whistle. “Job interview?” he asked. “What kind of work?” He hadn’t heard of the company I was looking for, and he wasn’t sure about the address, but he suggested I try the other side of the tracks. There are two San Fernando Roads, he explained. Perhaps I’d find 7575 on the sister road of the one I was on. (I’d seen earlier that a San Fernando Boulevard also ran parallel to the road I was on.) “If it doesn’t work out,” he finished, “come back here. We’re hiring.” With some trepidation, I asked just what it was his company did. Tool sales on commission, it turned out. I thanked him for his help and hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

So it turned out that I’d been on the wrong side of the tracks in both the literal and figurative senses. The other San Fernando road was also industrial, but in a new and clean and safe-feeling way. After expecting that I’d have time to kill upon arrival, and then wondering whether I’d arrive at all, I walked up to the door I wanted ten minutes before my interview–precisely when I’d wanted to arrive.

I pressed a button and stated my business into an intercom, and the door was opened for me. And I knew that I was, in every sense, in the right place. I’d visited the company’s website, and knew that they sold fine art reproductions of works licensed by several of the biggest Hollywood studios. But it was one thing to have known that, and quite another to walk into a room decorated with reproductions of vintage Disney production cels, Simpsons posters, Star Wars memorabilia, and crates stenciled “ACME.” I thought that I might have to be dragged out of the place.

My interview went well enough, I thought, though I couldn’t say how well. Nor was I given a precise time frame in which I could expect to hear back from the company. But I felt at least that I’d accomplished something, and I left in high spirits, hoping I’d be able to return.

It was then that I saw the bus stop just in front of the business park I’d found at such length and with such effort. The first bus I’d ridden in the morning would have dropped me off right where I’d needed to be, had I simply stayed on board for another ten minutes or so. I hoped I’d get a chance to put this hard-won knowledge to work.

I didn’t have to wait long, as it turned out. Nor did I receive, precisely, either of the answers I thought I might get. The email I received at the end of that very business day told me that though my skills weren’t necessarily what the company sought, I had impressed my interviewers very much with my other attributes, and they were willing to give me a week on the job as a trial run.

Elated, I returned to my Ojai lodgings for the weekend to retrieve more clothes, and I installed myself in my friends’ place in Burbank on Sunday evening, ready to commit myself to being as impressive as possible for the following week.

I just worked my second Monday at Acme Archives; I am still employed, and expect to remain so for a long while to come. I didn’t fail at my trial week, and don’t think I’ll fail at the rest of the 90 days I’ll have to work before becoming a regular salaried employee with benefits.

My job title is “Distribution Manager,” which is by far the most grown-up thing I’ve ever been called. Specifically, I’m ultimately responsible for getting orders out the door, which entails being more or less in charge of the warehouse, pulling inventory, submitting work orders to the production department to create pieces that aren’t in stock, and shipping boxes to customers. But since the company is a small one, everyone does almost everyone else’s job sooner or later, so I find myself also trimming pieces of art as they’re printed, varnishing canvases, jockeying the inventory database, and processing payments. In the long run, my new employers have assured me, if I prove to be capable and ambitious, I can expect to end up doing a whole lot more.

I’ve never been able to articulate what my “dream job” might be, but this gig is so good that it’s starting to give me that vocabulary. I get to work with a small, close-knit team. I get to do lots of different kinds of stuff. I get to work with my hands. I have real opportunity for advancement. And every day I get to handle wonderful, wonderful things: original animation art from a variety of studios as well as the fine-art reproductions we produce and/or distribute. Last week alone I shipped half a dozen original cels from The Little Mermaid, the film that made an animation/Disney junkie of me. I enjoy going into work. I enjoy being at work. I hope the enjoyment continues indefinitely.

In light of all that, perhaps you’ll forgive my long silence as well as my failure to document the other things that have happened to me since my last update. As interesting as some of them might have been, none holds a candle to this.

What a quick couple of weeks it’s been! Less than two, in fact, since I received the response to my resume. Everything is suddenly very different. I’m gainfully employed, and living again in my beloved Los Angeles. I’m surfing a couch in Burbank at present, but expect to have more respectable accommodations within a month or two.

I’ll try very hard to be better about maintaining a semi-regular blogging schedule from here on out, now that I have a semi-regular life.

But you know better than to get your hopes up too high, don’t you?