A Do-Over & One More Night of Normalcy

This space hasn't been updated for a week, and despite the fact that that might be understandable, there has been enough material billowing around the cloudy space between my ears during the past week to occupy a dozen posts. So...without further ado, I'll get to it.

First, Kaia and I had, as per usual, what amounts to a great couple of weeks. We had fun over New Year's Eve and subsequently enjoyed the next eleven days. We got to see my sister on her birthday and thereafter, and we also got to spend time with a bunch of friends, albeit we missed -- yet again -- hanging out with a friend of ours who neither of us has seen in person in what seems like ages. So we agreed that the next time Kaia hits the city, hanging out with her will be on the top of our list.

In between dinner, keeping warm in a chilly-overheated apartment, sharing the Body Pillow, movies, TV, some (ahem) private time, and the usual running around shopping, spending time in the City, and just enjoying being together, we managed to smile, laugh and, as per usual, wonder why 3,000 miles are still geographically between us. I think we'll have that question wrapped up sometime over the next few months, once job, financial and situational constraints are addressed. The nice part is that once all the reality is handled, we'll be fine -- it just seems that most of what we do, no matter who we're with, where we are or what we're doing, we're laughing together. It's a nice way to spend a week or two or a lifetime.

I'm not delving too far into the minute details of our travels over the past couple weeks; we did manage to hit most of our usual haunts, see most -- but not all -- our friends, and do most of what we're accustomed to doing. We did Dos Caminos with a couple of good friends, and we managed -- the next night -- to spend time with another friend of ours also in from Cali at Kanvas (an uber-hip lounge in Chelsea). After that we wound up at Mare, a seafood restaurant we hadn't visited before (Kanvas is worth the trip, Mare isn't).

We also managed to (mostly) get all our work done; I happened to do more than I expected, and started getting to work an hour earlier than usual, a habit I'll happily continue observing. Kaia, however, had a small accident with her notebook that left her hard drive unusable, which not only left her without all her data, but with little or no means to get her work done. She got a new drive Fedexed to her but piecing together all her prior deals and data on the fly was a bit too much to ask. She's accumulated some of it, but until the high-end data recovery people get to it and see what can and can't be recovered, she's in PC limbo. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

On top of that, we scored some good tunes while she was here. A friend of ours, DJ Lui at Lounge in Soho, plies us with house discs (some pre-fab, some homemade by Lui himself) and a variety of acid jazz, club music and over-the-top mixes. Most of it isn't bad, although I managed to grab some tunes of my own: Dave Matthews' Best of What's Around (a two-disc set I got for Kaia for Chanookah), a copy of the brand-spanking-new Beatles disc Love, which is the first new Beatles thing in decades -- literally -- that is worth the price (and then some) of admission. And on top of that, U2's 18 Singles is a redux of yet another greatest hits with a few new things tossed into the mix. More importantly, we got ahold of the Ali G movie (Ali G In Da House, from 1999) and loved it in its simplistic stupidity. No, we never got around to seeing Borat in the theater; once we're under the same roof, I think we'll be more willing to see movies, but until we do, seeing movies when we could instead be actively doing something together seems to be relegated to the back burner. We had a blast seeing The 40 Year Old Virgin on Union in San Fran, and I think we'll always share that memory -- not just of the movie but the experience of being together in that theater, on that night -- but we have the rest of our lives to go out to watch films instead of watching them in bed on the shiny new Aquos.

To wrap this up, I'll just say that Kaia got in safely -- after missing her flight yesterday -- which was actually sort of fortuitous. We got to spend another night together, and I got to say goodbye to her again. Normally, that's the last thing I would ever be willing to do once, let alone twice; but getting the chance to re-do our last night and our last day together was a nice, if bittersweet, surprise. Bitter because watching her cab pull away is an awful experience; but sweet was seeing her at my door, smelling her perfume and knowing we had a few more hours before she was back on her way to Cali.

There's lots to discuss in the "real" world, but for the time being, that's all I can really process, so I'll promise to keep updating this space (and more frequently). I think, for the most part, it's hard to express angst, displeasure, criticism and dissatisfaction herein when she's around me all the time; I'm far too happy to be bothered.

I'll make a better effort next time; hopefully that will be soon. In the meantime, however, that's about as good -- and honest -- as it gets.

More later.



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"Indeed, a surly salad dressing plays pinochle with a carpet tack inside a grand piano."