In a New York City, and presumably other big cities, one builds a vital sense of community out of the people with whom you have regular pattern overlaps: fellow commuters, the workers at the coffeeshop when you like to go, the corner deli staff, one or two people in your building you see often. Otherwise, you're awash in strangers, and points of familiarity tend to be a welcome surprise and a comfort, even when they're discovered through the mediation of customer service.

In the HC, you've probably seen everyone before, several times, possibly even picking up enough information along the way to form opinions about these people even if you don't know their names. Unfamiliar faces are rare and precious, and people often use the mediation of social roles -- again customer service comes to mind, but there are other examples -- as a means of creating pseudonymity where none actually exists, a way of escaping omnipresent social information or obligation.

Clearly these are generalizations, and deeply colored by my own bias. Still, kind of interesting.

It's a fantabulous day here in the HC, going beyond the beauty of sping and offering a legitimate preview of what we enjoy come Summer. The sun is hot and the breeze is fresh. I spent the first half of the afternoon lazing about the plaza at the farmers market. I was hoping to score some organic cucumbers (for to make deliciously infused gin) but it's too early. Most people are just selling plant sprouts, herbs and gourds and leeks and salad greens.

But it's still a good place to hang out, to see and be seen. For instance, I ran into Aaron from Green Wheels, who's sort of a socially entrepreneurial peer for me here. He put a quote from me into his quarterly newsletter. I may try and help them out with the Drups on their website, etc. It's all part of putting down my own roots locally.

Farmers market is also a nice place to people-watch; solar power demos and pretty ladies. Nothing much happening there, just some hippy guy catching paper on fire and me lurking around, watching for beauty. Pretty cool though, and important for me to get out in the world. It's gotten to the point where people in #drupal tell me to "go meet real girls" (I'd said I had "a date with some javascript this weekend"), and it feels a bit like I've entered into a situation comedy based on how often people seem to want to fix me up. Not that I mind that, but it's definitely a new phenomena. New can be good though.

Anyway, I'm not stressing it. Someday I'll find a nice girl who'll talk nerdy to me and things will just click. The flutter will return. I feel pretty confident in that, even if the meantime is a tad lonely.

Well, I'd better get back to that javascript date, and my taxes. I want to wrap it all up and go see a play!

(Photo by Hamed Saber)

After a late-night drive I've returned to the HC, home of struggles over code enforcement and many other great things. I got out to a late start, but it was allright since there isn't any traffic in Santa Rosa at 8pm and I got a tip to check out Radio Lab, which provided great entertainment for the first four hours of the trip.

I woke up this morning and noticed how quiet it was. Contrast is nice.

Lots of goings on around here. Always more to do. It looks like I'll be burning the candle at both ends and also melting into it from various points in the middle between now and my 29th birthday (May 10th, also the date for the Country Soul Carnival!).

I'm hoping to have the time and energy to get my writing back into gear also. It may not happen, but I'm hoping my high-functioning nature continues kicking and I just operate at more RPMs rather than getting burned out and overwhelmed.

We'll see.

(Photo by Lynda True)

Not much going on 'round here. I have become infested with the Humboldt County Crud, which will hopefully pass soon. On the upside its a winter wonderland here (rare snow) and we replaced our broken dishwasher, raising the Westhaven standard of living by 3.35 points in a single afternoon.

Since I've been sleeping and laying in bed more, I've been thinking about what kind of life I want to lead, trying to let my mind wander, entice the possibilities. It's been a year and a half since I relocated to this little slice of earth. Time flies.

After a busy-as-all-hell week in SF (note to self: this is what happens when I don't set foot in the office for two months) I've returned to the welcoming arms of Westhaven. It's nice to be back in the land of hot tubs and bonfires and cookouts and such. We also have some old and new friends from Portland and New Zealand visiting this weekend, so it's been a fun-time party.

Yesterday we hit up the shooting club and fired off a few rounds w/Capn. Frank's shotgun. It was just my second time shooting and the first for some of the girls we brought, which was fun. By the third round of traps I was actually correctly aiming (or as our elderly sweat-pants and tie-dye range guide called it "pointing") and able to hit two out of three targets. It's nice to know how to safely handle guns; makes them less alien and frightening.

I hit the skate ramp too. Our 6-year-old former roommate Wiley has been working his skills and just learned to drop in, and was egging me on to do it with him. I have yet to put in the hours to even learn basic side-to-side balance, but for Wiley's sake I made four or five attempts. Two of them were actually correct to form -- putting the nose down; not what your instincts want you to do -- but all resulted in total wipeouts, which is part of the whole thing after all. It's a lot of fun to have kids use the ramp because A) it's very cute and B) our neighbors really really hate the thing, and having a bunch of kids and toddlers playing on it makes it sort of invincible to criticism.

A mishmash of things this fine Friday morning:

• Congratulations Al Gore. If it was good enough for Kissinger, I supposed it's an ok second-prize. Shoulda been da president.
• I happened to watch The Daily Show last night, and John Stewart took Washington Post media critic Howard Klein to the MF woodshed. The interview itself is Stewart at his sharpest, but what you miss in the web-replay is that he preceded the actual one-on-one with a whole segment devoted to skewering Klein's central assertion that "media coverage has turned Americans against the war." Devastating.
• I also went out last night to the Redwood Tech Consortium mixer, both because I'm curious about the recent internet outage and what can be done about it, and as part of my ongoing program of getting out on the scene. Last week, theater; this week tech. It was a good little crowd at a mexican joint in Eureka where the margaritas packed a punch, and I finally met up with Aaron from Green Wheels, who'd contacted me before about Drupal stuff.
• Next week I'll be hitting up SF, spending a week in teh office, doing a bunch of meetings, and hanging out with LGD and the Girth I imagine. I've been back here long enough that I think I'll enjoy a little outing to the citay.

Life is good. I sent out some snail-mail yesterday and caught up on some e-correspondence too, keeping up connections. I'm sort of digging my own existence again, feeling the potential.

Storm's a'comin'. Flocks of geese headed down from Oregon signal a turning point in the season. This morning the wind kicked up from the South -- not its usual direction -- and knocked out the county's fiber optic link, which kills the internet as well as most ATMs and credit card machines. Over at Bank of America they were only letting people in and out through the back door one at a time. All systems down. Torrential rain will no doubt follow soon.

Still, I'm feeling pretty good. The loamy smells of autumn and the sound of dry leaves skittering along the ground bring me a kind of nostalgic peace; crisp bittersweet memories of adolescence in Eugene, frozen breath and teenage heart-thobbery. Times of greater purity, back when there were all sorts of things to believe in, peace and prosperity, when cynicism was just a romantic pose.
the other week to describe times when you go out or stay out after your roommates go home.
My hand is still pink and tender (hurts to go into my pockets for stuff) but whole and presentable to the world. I no longer feel freakish about it, and I'm hoping I can regain that sense of momentum I had coming out of Burning Man: strong and sexy and free, walking tall and lithe, without those dark circles under my eyes. The El Sargento Propane Explosion certainly kneecapped that feeling, but I'm optimistic about getting it back now.

To that end, it was truly a Good Thing™ to get out on the scene this past weekend, jumping back into the world of art and theatre vis-a-vis a 24-hour/10-minute play festival in Eureka. These local avant-guardians have somehow occupied a historic movie theater, from the '30s, and are renovating in into a hub of creativity. Much glory to them.

That's the man, back in 2005, about to get told by the Texas law that if he wants to hang out at the Alamo he'll have to put on a shirt. For the past year, he has been under the philosophically heavy thumb of the Germans -- slaving away over a hot data-set at the Max Plank Institute for Quantitative Social Research -- and only just last week returned to the welcoming arms of Lady Liberty. We had the pleasure of hosting a few nights of his re-entry tour this weekend.

Luke and Mark and I have a kind of special relationship, one that we've all made the choice to maintain and deepen over the years. At this point, getting well into the meat of adulthood, it's quite something to have someone who went through your teenage fire and blackness years still be a part of your life. There's a kind of perspective there that just can't be matched. I mean, who else will bro down with you about various international health care administration tactics, and shift seamlessly to baby fever?

Over and above it being really great to see him again and spend real-time together, visiting with Luke got me thinking about the future in a way that I haven't done much of lately. I used to have these outlanishly outsized dreams. We like to joke that "part of becoming a man is watching your dreams die," but it's not so funny when you wake up and realize it's happening.

I wrote before about my trip to Mexico, how it got me thinking about life's possibilities again. This is basically the same thing. The idea of moving to yet another new city, starting yet another new chapter, etc, or even just opening up new avenues in my existing life. Who knows what the next few years may hold, let alone the next decade.

I made use of my health insurance for the first time ever today, visiting the Mckinleyville clinic and getting the thumbs-up (and some American antibiotics) from the docs there. They say everything is looking good, which is a relief. I'm looking forward to being back at 100%, but it's another week at least.

Still playing catch-up on a lot of fronts. Work is drinking from a fire-hose. Some friends we made at Burning Man (girls! oooh girls!) are dropping by tomorrow, which is exciting. Fall is definitely on the way here, with cooler temperatures and windy days and leaves starting to flutter on down. We're going to need firewood soon.

Also, I'm bummed to be missing out on Drupalcon Barcelona. I got a little Skype message from Alex Barth the other night, links me to some photos. It sounds pretty awesome. More than 400 people in attendance, and apparently the conference facilities are primo. Lots of nerdy action reports on Drupal Planet these days if you're so inclined.

I'm back in the saddle. Audentes ortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold. That's Virgil, bitches. Old school.

I'm going to write something good and gonzo exploring the Burning Man experience this year, but that's not done yet. I will start tomorrow, as gonzo works best if it's written fresh and hot, but for now I need to wind down and get another good night's sleep.

Suffice to say, my attitude about the universe is a whole lot better now than it was two weeks ago. There were some dark moments out there -- getting in the groove was hard, frought with weakness and defeat, and exodus was fucking brutal -- but the experience was high, heady, fun and most of all enlightening and empowering. As I said, I feel spiritually cleansed. It turned me on enough to believe in the "next year" dream of really organizing a big expedition, being a camp leader. More on that later.

Getting back into civilization was a long hard run, and the Default World is unquestionably weird, but while playa eyes and a clean spirit do throw our shadows into harsher relief, it's only because they bring a lot of positive light to the situation.

Indeed, it's been nothing but aces since we made the gate. Our Pyramid Lake dirt-nap saved lives. The waitress at the Iron Skillet was a queen. I turned $1 to $40 in the penny slot. Swimming in the Trinity was divinity. Kellymundo deep-cleaned the house while we were gone. Moamar will ride again. I got my passport in the mail. The Girth's would-be lady friend called him back. With the exception of my business partners being stuck in a glass house on the beach in the middle of Huricaine Henriette, everything's coming up Cabeçon.