Out Of Oakland
Monday. OK, up at seven, taking the sister and family to the airport at ten, but first a quick drive to Starbucks for a paper and a cafe latte because this is my habit and habits are hard to bend. The sky is clear (for some weird reason, perhaps that goat covered in peanut butter and Crisco we sacrificed last night in front of a stone pagan statue actually had an effect) and there will soon be sun. For sun one can be driven to extremes. But a new week, this first week of house sitting in Portland, today the airport, tomorrow I'm on my own (with camera in hand). The look on my face could best be described as, well, lost in a fog expectant, ready to exit a comfort zone without exactly caring which one.
Back from the airport, sister and family checking in on a flight to Frankfurt, then to France to stay with my brother-in-law's mother in Nice. Nice. Life is nice.
I note Mr. Amaya has posted another Membrane (the dread number 13), seventeen years after posting his last. Something about “fixing up his house”. Incomprehensible at my age. I'm lucky if I find the vacuum cleaner to attack the rugs (the rugs started glowing in the dark last September), let alone paint, modify and plumb. He didn't say plumb, but plumbing comes to mind. Sheet rock. I'm sure there was sheet rock involved. Running Ethernet cables to each and every room no doubt. My mind goes numb as has his babbling on as he does about being born in 1957 and it “makes me very old”. He says he has memories of bomb shelters. Bomb shelters? You don't need no stinkin' bomb shelters in your basement until you turn sixty (if your diet has consisted primarily of cheeseburgers and curly fries) and seventy plus (I'm told) if you held the curly fries to major national holidays and the odd every now and again weekend. Worth downloading and listening, though. For a now turned fifty guy's effort it's got a beat and you can tap your cane to it.
Later. A run to something called WinCo just down the way, a grocery store cross between a Costco and a Safeway. Food by the pallet. None of the dozen stores they have in California are anywhere near Oakland. The place packed, bumper car head on collisions between shopping carts, food in packages so large they will last you a life. (Be careful with the curly fries.) I am now provisioned for the coming week. It turns out a young lady friend of my nephew's is staying here at the house to take care of the dog and my sister's cat, so I pretty much have free run of the state. Well, Portland. Portland and the coast. Now to think where to start. Ms. Emmy was transferred this morning to the master bedroom from the smaller guest bedroom and now she has plenty of room. She hates me, of course. Taking her out of Oakland.
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