I'm pretty sure with a little work and little luck, this guy will be the president next year.

That'll be cool.

(secred culture decoder ring here)

(On the other hand... heyo! It's a win/win primary, as far as I can tell.)

Well I'm back in the Bay Area for a couple weeks. It was a beautiful windy drive through the flourishing greenery of springtime Nor*Cal. Wine vines are just starting to get rolling and all the hills are blowing up with new life. Radiolab kept my brain active for a few hours, its infectious spirit of inquiry lingering after along with some good music. It made for a nice mood to see the sights.

When I can give it a whole afternoon, I really do love that trip. Everything down to Cloverdale is a series of bucolic treasures: the rich north coast flood-plain bottoms, the redwood curtain through to Willits, the northern Russian river watershed and wine country. It's a great stretch of county, and feeling more and more like home these days.

Last night we held a great dinner party w/family of the Girth, uncles and cousins and all that jazz. Good excuse to break out the china, scotch, etc. There was a great spread of chicken and pesto and salad and bread.

This week should be busy busy bizzy. Making it come together never comes easy, and it keeps coming (and it keeps coming; and it keeps coming) until it stops.

Flashing through the accumulated images of the past week, it's a heady mixed bag. Trying to work my way from being a direct-actor to a manager. Trying to get ahead of the curve. Trying to continue my studious avoidance of all feminine diversions. Trying not to get boring as I get old. Trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Trying to communicate. Trying to love. Trying to speak correctly. Trying to listen. Trying.

And a few things occur to me.

In the smear of pint-night down at Everett's, veterans of the military and Gillman st telling stories early, Kelly and Zya creating interpretive dances to Neil Diamond, then the kids coming in as the evening sets in; there emerges a ray of light in shiny blue tights, sheer brilliance, such as to make me avert my eyes. She looks pretty good at the coffeeshop usually, but this is another level, enough to make a man reexamine his beliefs. It occurs to me that my "my head's not in it" excuse for studious avoidance of such is a self-fulfilling prophecy with real limits in its utility. Something's got to change, but for the moment, hey, at least you've got a collectable pint glass to duck into.

And from this, a potential remedy for my romantic listlessness, a possible self-concept, an avenue of habitual action. How does "power-dating" sound? It's more applicable than my retired manslut persona non grata, and it could be useful to get me out there in some way. It ties in with ambition and other shadowy forces that need outlets. I don't know how it squares with living half-n-half between here and the Bay -- where exactly do I set my sites? both? -- but it seems worth trying.

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.

The taxman cometh. I just forked over about 52% of my total take-home income from the past year to the federal government and state of California. This is where having a business that works out becomes painful, though I can't help but think that a more devious accountant (yes, more devious than a ninja) could have done at least a little bit better.

In many ways the deck is stacked against us entrepreneurial types. We're taking advantage of the simplest and most flexible business structure, the LLC. We still pay self-employment tax, and our desire to build up the business and hire people means we're leaving money in the bank that we could be taking for ourselves, yet the IRS considers that as profit from a business and personal income whether we draw it or not.

So in an effort to expand we knock ourselves up a couple tax brackets without increasing our take-home pay a cent. I've been saving for it since last fall, but it still feels mightily deflating. No refund for me.

Oh well. First-world problems. If you're on the other side of the great class divide and wondering what to do with your Bush Money, here are some neat ideas.

I don't foodblog very much, in large part because I never got into it, and because while I've got some kitchen skillz, I don't get to exercise them all that often. I make myself a lot of quesadillas, and still eat out fairly often (though not nearly as much as in NYC, natch). Bachelor kitchen.

However, I had a little BBQ with my prospective employees (eep!) up here on Sunday, and pulled out an old favorite for the occasion. It went over well, so I figured I might as well share my method.

This recipe comes via Ms. Julia Henning, who first cooked it for us up here in Westhaven about a year and a half ago. She served this with a delicious jicama salad, which I have no idea how to replicate. However, I did get the details for the sauce and meat parts, and since then I've been noodling with it on my own:

Grilled Skirt Steak w/Chimmy Churry Sauce

Skirt Steak is the ultimate grill appetizer meat, imho. It's tasty, bite sized, and cooks in a matter of three to five minutes on a hot bbq. The genius chimmy churry sauce makes a perfect dipping compliment. In keeping with my style, all measurements are approx. Use your best sense and taste lots!

First you'll want to make the chimmy churry, which is like a pesto, and needs to sit for at least a couple hours before serving so the flavors can permeate. Overnight is even better:

• 1 bunch fresh parsley
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 med size onion
• 2 to 3 jalipeno peppers
• Canola oil
• Olive oil
• 1 lime
• Rice vinegar
• Salt/pepper

Chop up the onion and garlic and jalipenos and put them into a blender. Depending on your taste for heat (and how hot the peppers actually are) you might want to use two or three, or even one.

Next you want to chop up about 2/3 of the parsley bundle and toss that in the blender too. You may add more, but it's best to do it by taste.

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)

...But I'd give up my soul for just one of them now...

It's been a packed week down in the Bay. Wheeling and dealing, painting and sanding, whooping and shouting; the whole nine yards.

Went and saw The Avett Brothers on Friday night. They're pretty great showmen as expected, and I got me a t-shirt -- a much more effective way of supporting working musicians than paying for their music, btw -- but I felt the concert could have been more. Slims is not my favorite place to see a show, and the crowd vibe was a little off. That and I had great expectations, which is generally unfair and I try not to do for the sake of giving artists a chance, but c'est la vie. That's what you get for being real good.

They were touring on 2007's Emotionalism, which is a great album, the first one I heard -- coming via Pickathon and Chelsea late last summer -- and probably the most natural cultural fit for SF. But having been exposed to their entire catalog, I celebrate the mo' twangy stuff a bit more fully than that which leans indie. The crowd was on the other side of that leaning, didn't seem to know a lot of the other/older stuff, and just wasn't as lively as I'd hoped.

I suppose I was looking for something really wild and free, like when we saw The Devil Makes Three at the Starry Plough last month. That was hot and packed and foot-stomping scream-along-singing until you got light in the head and then another song would start up that was even better and more worth jumping around to; lather-rinse-repeat. By contrast, the crowd's energy at this gig made it tough to even break a sweat. I also felt the encore was a bit too scripted, and there wasn't sufficient demand in the room to draw out a spontaneous second round.

Fuck. That was lame. My hosting provider hosed my server, and because I pay not so much money, it didn't really get resolved until just now. Email is piling up and whatnot, and I've failed my three and a half loyal readers yet again.

On the upside, the server is all clean. I aught to do a redesign.