As you may be aware, I have been spending more and more time with a certain special lady, including travels to London and Brazil. Things have been going really well, I think. Since one of the purposes of ye olde blog is informing people in my weakly-tied circle of cohorts of life-update kind of information, this warrants a long-overdue post. Read on for the romance report.

I'm off to Brazil! A new nation, a new language, sweet escape from the Northern Hemisphere. It's been a nice stay in NYC. Snowpocalypse meant more quality time with my mom and my sister vs. socializing with friends, but that's not really a bad thing. I'll be offline for the trip; books but no laptop; looking forward to the recharging mental space that brings. I'll be back at it in SF come Sunday the 9th, so watch out then!

Reading Red Mars, sociological sci-fi, gets me thinking about life in all its rich variety and how we never really know what's coming. The patterns that have led me to where I stand now, the wider world around me, and where I (and it) go next.

I've been writing online at a relatively enthusiastic (if occasionally uneven) clip for nine years now. A lot of things have changed in all those days, and renewing my effort means taking a trip down memory lane to remember why, exactly, I started all this in the first place.

First week in the UK has been good. I've been finding a good groove of productivity in my timezone-offset haven, and enjoying the quasi-domestic ease of staying with Rina; cooking and cleaning up and stuff. Rina/Josh deathwatch day three: all quiet on the Western (London) front.

Brilliant wedding goodness out on Staten Island last night. Snug Harbor is a historical site, formerly a home for "old decrepit sailors" (literally, that's what the stained glass says) and now a great place to get married. It fit quite well with the signature style of Rachel and Jeremy; nautical themes, painted ceilings, and then finally a gorgeously art-deco ballroom for dinner and dancing. Very Gotham.

I know I don't blog very much that's exciting any more. In the nine years I've been writing here, my life has become significantly more routine. While I still find my own existence endlessly fascinating -- nobody ever went broke betting on narcissism -- I'm well-aware that these chicken scratchings have a limited audience.

But to the extent that this informational outpost serves a purpose of spreading news and rumor, it's a special pleasure to track the progress of my friends in life.

These kids are great together. Good things in their future, and good to see all the folks coming back together to send them off.

Oh and also, Nick Capodice is married, and his wife is a producer for RadioLab! That gave me a little celebrity thrill/crush.

I really enjoy Vancouver. To me, it's like NYC and Portland had a really polite, clean baby. They have a thing now (leftover from the olympics) where they close one of the main downtown streets to cars and leave it for foot traffic. Also, poutine.

The conference has been great. Excellent job organizing from the group, and a lot of fun and good vibes all around. I got to have a pretty good rockstar moment — being "edgy" while talking about "the enterprise" — doing the Sunday morning keynote address.

I wish I could stay longer. Got to watch the 4th quarter of the Ducks game at the bar and that was fun, and people seemed to be surprised I was still out at 11:30 with a presentation to make in the morning — which I found amusing. I would have stayed out later if I could.

So, here's hoping I can make it back sometime soon with a more relaxed agenda. I seem to be saying that a lot lately, but c'est la vie I suppose.

I've been blogging about politics a lot lately. Must be an election coming up or something. For all my griping, you gotta vote. For serious. These people are crazy, and if you're in California you can vote to "legalize it,"* with local control for the details, so it's not even a corporate takeover. So seriously, though I gripe, don't take a pass.

But my purpose here is to throw out the rest of my worldly details. So here goes:

• Spent a week on the Road up to Oregon, saw my parents, then back to Humboldt where I got the old house pretty much to myself for the weekend to pack and enjoy. It was a good decompression. Long drives are relaxing to me now, and I feel grounded to have seen my people again.
• Going to the dentist tomorrow. First time in over five years! (eeek!)
• This coming weekend is Vancouver for the Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit
• The following weekend, visit with The Robinses in San Louis
• The weekend after that, wedding of the Nice Lobster and her thoroughly likable Ken Barbe of a man, up in the Sierras.
• And the weekend after that there's the Slusarz/Erlach nuptuals back in NYC
• And then I'm off to the great metropolis of London for three weeks of experimental domesticity w/Rina. :)

In and around that I need to launch my new business, find a way to keep hitting the gym a couple times a week, plan another Houseku dinner party, and handle a few other issues.

It's going to be a pretty packed month.

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*There's a great add running in Savage Henry up in the HC: "Vote No For The Status Quo". The "industry" as-is is worried about prop 19 being the end of the marijuana bubble for sure. I'm voting yes anyway.

Starting to settle into the new groove. I took the temperature of the neighborhood last night, a little solo wandering. I haven't lived in the Mission for nigh on five years, and it's definitely changed. Gentrification was well underway when I arrived in '03, and has continued apace in my absence.

For instance, there are coteries of "pretty people" who I don't really think are all that pretty, but do make me feel underdressed. This reminds me of North Brooklyn in its heyday, and in the way of all NYC-to-SF comparisons feels a bit like being sent back to the minor leagues, but on the other hand this is where most of the good art comes from so you have to take the lumps with the cream.

Somewhat less pretentiously you can run into this action at a sidewalk cafe:

This band is really good live, reaffirms faith in humanity via Korg and wail, etc.

A quick look backward. Nine years gone. What a fracked up time that was. I still take it somewhat personally, viscerally, being in New York City and living through it first-hand. So, for the day, some old links of what was in my mind then.

I still feel the stinging injustice of what our leaders ended up doing with via the manipulation of that raw emotional wound. I still believe what the day taught me about the fundamentals of life. I'm still grateful to have sparked a political awareness as a result.

And I honestly hoped we'd get over ourselves and see "9/11 the Musical Comedy" rather than it becoming an anniversary for pumping up hatred and intolerance. But that wasn't in the cards, I guess.

In many ways watching how Estados Unidos has processed the past decade has been an embittering and disillusioning experience, doubly so as a participant. I thought we were better than this. On a good day — and today is definitely a good day — I still hope we can be.