Social Commitments

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My brother is getting married to a very smart young lady he met in high school, close to ten years ago. That is, of course, delightful. His future parents-in-law are throwing a lovely dinner for them tonight, which is, of course, also delightful. My presence has been requested and required, and my brother and I are close, and I will, in a little under an hour, wrap up my own delightful fiancée and set out for what will, I’m sure, be a perfectly wonderful evening.

Except that I hate dressing up, hate going out, hate meeting new people, hate seeing the old people I already know, hate going to dinner at new restaurants, hate going to dinner with more than three other people at any restaurant, hate driving, hate parking, and hate everything else about virtually any social activity you could name. It has always, always been that way.

My long-tenured friends of long suffering understand this, at least academically, and when I don’t see them for weeks, in some cases months, they don’t take it hard. They know that I attend or fail to attend events as I am able, and that my ability to be social ebbs and flows according to no known calendar. I turned down an invitation to a housewarming party a month ago with no other explanation than “I can’t be in a house with 70 people right now.”

But I know that I’m missing out. When I see my friends, I have a good time. When I meet new people, I make new friends. When I force myself to go out and be social, I’m generally not leaving important projects undone. I’m not skipping out on anything more important than sitting in front of the TV, or reading a book. I’m not missing anything I’m going to regret. I’ve forced myself to be social before. In 2006 I had a chicken fight with some of my friends, seeing who would be the first to back down from a schedule of going out every night. I had the money to spend on the project, which gave me an advantage, but my friends didn’t have the crippling anxiety, which I felt evened it up nicely. My recollection is hazy now, but it was either 13 or 14 consecutive days that we saw each other. 13 or 14 nights that I didn’t spend alone.

In 2009 my lovely fiancée Katie moved in, so of course my nights have ceased to be nights alone, but if anything, that has weakened my resolve to go out and see people even further. I simply don’t get lonely. And the second half of the year especially, I’ve lived that way. I’ve seen my friends a few times, and I’ve seen my family a few times, but I’ev spent most of the year indoors, at home.

And it creates a kind of momentum that is difficult to overcome.

But luckily there are the holidays.

Thanksgiving got us out of the house, if only to go as far as to see my family, and after that had come and gone, Christmas pulled us together for the same. Then of course, we had a family dinner to spend some Christmas money, and finally, on Thursday night, we had a New Year’s Eve party to spread the love around to my friends.

And so tonight I will be going out with my fiancée, and my parents, and my brother and his fiancée to dinner, and yes, there will be some people there I haven’t met before. And in fact they are people who will one day end up on my family tree, so I should get used to the idea. Feelings are feelings and I will admit that I feel nervous and would just as soon not go, but I am going.

So wish me luck.

Trips in July

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Fourth of July in the Keys
Fourth of July in the Keys

On the fourth of July, I was in the Florida Keys. That's me there, after fishing for three hours in 95 degree heat and considerable humidity. It turned out that the whole point of the trip to the Keys was fishing, though at the time Katie and I went down there, we thought it was just a family get together. Her brother Adam was there, with Kasie and Dylan and Sean, and her parents. Everyone backed out but me for the first fishing trip, so it was me and Katie's father, which was alright. I'm a city boy and  college boy, so the prospect of undertaking a big traditional man activity with my future father in law was daunting, but it ended up ok.

I don't really understand, though, how anyone lives in the Keys. The heat was oppressive, the humidity mind-boggling, and though the hotel was air conditioned, the air could only just keep up, and plenty of the stores we passed on the road were big open air affairs. I'm used to the kind of heat you can escape by standing in the shade, but that does very little good down there.

The American flag shirts were our cult identifiers that day. Katie's mom bought them for everyone on the trip. I was the last one to change out of mine.

The next weekend Katie and I drove up to Washington for Shannon's wedding, just outside of Longview.  We lost a tire just south of Mt. Shasta city, and put the donut on in some very small neighborhood where only three cars passed us in fifteen minutes. We ended up replacing the tire at Mt.Shasta tire on Mt. Shasta Blvd, but as a result we didn't get to our motel in Longview until about 11.

The wedding was lovely and I got to see some old friends, and generally drank and had a good time. I didn't bring my camera because I am bad at camera ownership. On the way back to San Jose, we took Barbie in our car and generally drove in a convoy with the others, and got home again at about quarter to 11. So 26 hours on the road in three days, and this morning was the first chance I had to sleep in, in my own bed, since July 2nd. Naturally it makes me feel a lot more human.

Memorial Day Weekend

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Lombard St.
Lombard St.

On Saturday, I took Katie and her mother Cary up to San Francisco. Cary was dying to see Lombard Street, and I had never driven it before. So we waited in line with all the other tourists and drove down the street, and then got out at the bottom and took pictures. More are on my flickr.

After that we went to Fisherman's Wharf, and I simply don't understand the appeal of that place. Sure,you can get seafood, but it's not like they have some kind of new, exotic seafood that you can't get everywhere. I guess Dungeness crab is less common in East Coast markets, so Cary was excited about that, and sure enough, she truly enjoyed hers.

The next day we had lunch with my parents, both of whom were under the weather. My mom had pneumonia last week… and I guess still does. Since pneumonia is a condition and not a disease, when do you stop having it? My dad just had a regular cold, and the rest of us were ok. Still, the lunch date went off a lot better than when my mother had lunch with my brother's future mother in law.

Muir Woods
Muir Woods

On Monday, we went to Muir Woods, up across the bay. It was packed for Memorial Day, so we took the shuttle in from Mill Valley. It was cool and shady, and pleasant, but there were so many damn people there. The best thing about walking around in a redwood forest is the quiet and cool, and time to think, and you just don't get that here, at least not on a weekend. We saw a cute little chipmunk, though.

The Stand Ins

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The Stand Ins
The Stand Ins
Okkervil River

So I guess it is a thing now to record a bunch of extra songs when you go in to make your album, knowing full well that you're going to make the crappy songs into a follow on album? Is that a thing? Sufjan Stevens is doing it, and now Okkervil River has done it twice. I guess in the past all of that music would have sat around on master tapes for years, until anthologists resurrected it to put on greatest hits records as the "never before released" tracks, and I guess that always sucked, if you were a hugs fan of a band, but by and large, people are releasing records that don't come close to the maximum run-time of a CD, so you have to figure the stuff that doesn't make the record is probably better off unreleased.

But anyway we have this thing now, and I blame the internet for it, and here is Okkervil River's latest record, The Stand Ins. In discussions with other Okkervil River fans, the words "5th best Okkervil album" have been bandied about, which is not how they would like to bill the record, I am morally certain. I think that's not true (I think it's probably 3rd best), but I also think that's not fair. This is a record that should be compared with one and only one other Okkervil River album, and that album is Black Sheep Boy Appendix. And in that comparison, I think The Stand Ins is the clear winner.

So, highlights:

"Lost Coastlines" is the real intro to the record. I always like Okkervil's up-tempo work a little more than their quiet songs (notable exception is "A Girl In Port")

"Starry Stairs" is the follow-up to "Savannah Smiles" from The Stage Names, which I think benefits from a little interpretation. If you don't know what these two songs are about, they are less remarkable, but once you do a little reading, they make a lot more sense.

"Pop Lie" is another good up-tempo number.

Major disappointment:

When I saw that Charles Bissell (of the Wrens) was credited for guitar on "Singer Songwriter," I was excited. Listening to the track was a big let down. I assume that Charles Bissell is playing the obnoxious guitar sting in the verses, but that's unremarkable at best, and the song is one of the worst on the record.

Overall: You'll like it if you like Okkervil River, but remember, these are the songs that didn't make the cut for The Stage Names.

Terrible Things from History

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Today’s Pictures for Sad Children is about Ben Franklin:

Pictures for Sad Children

This is what he does, so be cool about it, ok?

About Pictures for Sad Children:

John Campbell’s MWF comic is about many things. Sadness, happiness, having a dead roommate but not knowing he’s dead, when a heavy thing falls on you, and occasionally, running for ghost.  The archive is big, but you should still be able to work your way through it if you feel like you need to start right at the beginning. Not surprisingly (stick art being what it is), it is the writing that makes this comic such a winner.