What It Means When Your Butterball Farms Turkey Comes Pre-Packaged And You Insist On Cooking The Giblets While Everyone Else Looks At You In Disgust, But You Redeem Yourself By Driving to The Butcher For A Can Of Forgotten French’s Fried Onions

There were several good things about this week:
Justin’s mother, Julie, putting together an incredible Thanksgiving dinner, and it was good to spend time up in crisp mountain air under a blanket of stars with the one I love.

Justin and I bumming around the endless highways of Tonto Basin in Julie’s Toyato Yaris, listening to whatever strains of The Doors or Death Cab that the weak radio signal could muster.

Shopping for French’s Fried Onions at a grocery/diner in middle of nowhere northern Arizona that looks like it came straight out of “Secret Window.”

Cold Arizona mornings that require an overcoat, and amazing blue and purple and magenta sunrises with clouds that look like they came straight out of Seattle. Death Cab’s album, “Plans” is the perfect accompaniment to my hot green tea on the morning drive.

Catching up with an old friend, Brenden, as he shows me the new place he just purchased with his boyfriend. His downtown Phoenix loft would put Fraiser Crane’s dwellings to shame. Then, catching up some more and discussing life while wandering aimlessly around Encanto Park for hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Finding my new old favorite place to spend time at when I’m not writing — a bookstore with a coffee shop, and I sit there with a $1.82 brew while browsing periodicals and books for free.

Spending nearly $40 on cold medicine on a biting Thursday morning, but being okay with that, because in the car is my Brand New cd, and the lyrics tell me that this is the season “for colds, and overcoats.”

Soon.

East Coast Winter, Part I

We arrive at ASU early in the morning and park in the overflow at Gamage, and make haste towards Tenth Street past the ghosts of Mill and turn right towards the Nielson Arts Center and walk up and down the cold concrete hallways into the Galvin Playhouse. An enounter with a Starbucks customer from days past that we both know who is actually a Cronkite professor, and within minutes we are sharing a winter morning’s Sumatra brew and a raspberry scone backstage with the guest of honor. Seven minutes to speak briefly with Tom Brokaw on the topic of Israeli-American politics and the subsequent difficulties of an American-backed democracy in Lebanon whilst the Americans are allies with the Jews, and we then take our seats in the second row.

The nuances, self-important techies, and the rampant ASU-ism that could so have spoiled such an event are ignored by the attentive ears of Justin and myself, and we are caught by a Republic reporter on the way out of the restroom at the morning’s end, and we are both quoted as being journalism students (and we are not, yet).

Forty minutes later we exit the 143 and leave the shadows of Camelback Mountain behind us as we stand at the airport gates. Six hours later, our bellies full from a native crab and lobster dinner that would put San Francisco to shame, the Atlantic wind fights against our lit Camel Turkish Golds as we stand atop the Prudential Building.

“I knew I would fall in love with an east coast winter.”

With a returned accent befitting, somehow, of both Rhode Island and Boston, he tells me, “I never had any doubt about that.”

As we stand and listen to loudspeakers that choose to soothe the City of Boston with Don McLean’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” we watch the dusk lights illuminate Chelsea to the north and Quincy to the south, and all the little islands in the Essex-Suffolk Bay in the middle. 

We walk back down the Cobblestone Streets of the North End and then round the corner to State Street and consume more black coffee at a little shop across from the Old South Meeting House. 

This is all old to the Americans. But to me it seems new. I have seen older, the oldest, and recently, but it’s still not without its emotions and charm. I am a westcoaster, and I wouldn’t trade my Los Angeles or Seattle or Portland for anything, but, still it seems a bit quiet and right for me to walk along the streets of this city and to do so now with the person I love now, and have it all feel as if it was the only place to be.  

Cronkite & Brokaw @ ASU

This Tuesday @ ASU, The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications will be holding a student lecture by Tom Brokaw at 8:30am at the Galvin Playhouse.

Brokaw is in town Tuesday to recieve the Cronkite Award for Journalism Excellence later in the day at a ceremony with Cronkite himself at The Arizona Biltmore. 

The ASU Community is invited to the Galvin Playhouse event.

If you are lucky enough to be an ASU student this semester, you may also want to take part in Cronkite’s special lecture to journalism students this Monday at 11:30am in Old Main.

More details on all the events can be found here.  

Chipotle

Chipotle has provided free lunch to everyone in our building today. Currently, the managers are all at the front desk scrounging for our team’s food boxes … this is the most exciting thing to happen to University of Phoenix in quite some time. Honestly. This is more exciting then the rename of the UoP Stadium. Really.

Fall

One week post vacation time and I get a text from a Seattle that is in Yuma pasing through on his way to the east coast, now one state to the right of the west. I tell Seattle a visit is still warrented but time taken off work for the event and the visitation of mewithoutYou is now no less then nine days post-dated and work and school obligations have abounded and made Phoenix, potentially, that much less entertaining. No words were returned, but I figure it is all well, that perhaps Puget Sound owes this Angelino a no-call no-show, after the debacle of last Spring.

All of this contemplated in the early morning in the shadow of a fall sunrise — the fall here not recognized by anyone not a native as fall itself but merely as a cooling off from the heat of the months past. Falls elsewhere are more pronounced. Some friends and I once spent a fall weekend walking the misty streets of Peoria, Illinois, and looking out on Chicago from atop the Sears Tower. That was the fall I loved the most. But the fall of the west is not unpleasent, and can be most enjoyed sipping soy chai and smoking a clove at the Starbucks just up off of Main, twice blocks north of the Pier. Of course, this is new-school fall of the west, Java Jungle holds the hearts of the old-schoolers who always stayed north of Newport.

But now all things well and settled for another season of holidays, a morning visit to my east coast lover who is already mentally drained from the fevor of holiday-season retail, as Beck and The Doors play on the speakers above us. The Doors have always been special to us, playing in just those right moments. Back on the interstate system for a drive to work, and we’ll continue on, and make our mark and make our difference, and we shall be recognized as the dividing factor someday in the books of history.

More Of the Goodness

There were also a ton of other political highlights of the last 24 hours … Rumsfield stepping down, Janet re-elected, Bush recognizing Democrats as they seize control, and the voters sending a massive vote of “no confidence” to Bush’s “stay the course” strategy and the conservative party’s often slippery-slope arugments. All of this deserves great blog commentary, but I’ll defer that all to Zach Lind’s Finding Rhythm blog. I had written, on election day, a rather large article for this site regarding Prop 107, with quotes and links and all that jazz, and my wonderful WordPress deleted it. Luckily, Arizonians voted right without my torch-leading guidance (which makes me happy and sad, simultaneously).

And finally, an unexpected but pleasing defeat: the proposition to award $1 Million to a random Arizona voter just for showing up at the polls. If that is all that was motivating you to vote, then perhaps it’s better you don’t.

An the expected by displeasing win: the smoking ban passed. Sadness. If this ruins my winter nights on the patio at Starbucks or Coffee Rush, I shall … be … upset and carry it out in angry writing and the consumption of red wine while starring into a crackling fire place.

Good On Ya, Arizona!

Props to those Arizonians who actually turned out and voted … beautiful job on defeating Prop 107,  making our otherwise very conservative state the first state in history to reject a domestic partnership/same-sex ban!

Progress. Slow but sure.

Space.

I really would be a more productive employee if I had an office that was outdoors (but only on the nice days, like today). Well, this statement might be entirely false, as I worked outdoors on my laptop most of last week, and was not too productive. I spent more time commenting to myself what a beautiful day it was then I did actually writing or doing homework.

Maybe it was worth it. I did comeback refreshed. Which is not to say I enjoy my job to any higher of a degree, but I am refreshed, nonetheless.

And yes, it is Sunday, at 11:59am, and I am sitting here in my cubicle, doing work. Catching up on work, actually. My penance for gloriously not observing dress code last week, or the traditional hours for enjoying homemade martinis. I have no room to ramble my complaints out, though, as I have two solid working weeks before I enjoy even more paid time off (aka PTO of UOP), up in Payson, at the Anderson’s plot of land.

But today. Today is Sunday morning, coming down, as Johnny Cash tells me. I believe in God, but have not been to Church (the capitalized version) in some time. Nonetheless, Sunday mornings still make me crave some heavily-keyed pipe organ and lunch with my mother and grandmother at El Torito in Garden Grove, or conversations in the lobby of Central Christian with Tom, Jason, and Crispy, before heading off to Mi Amigo’s or Applebee’s.

But that is all I crave of it. I could have a book written with the things I do not crave of it. Just good conversation and good food with the people I like.

But there are so few people I like nowadays.

Maybe you are one.

“Jeff/Will/Nash, you don’t write really personal on your blog like you used to anymore.” Really? I thought I covered that reasoning here. Is this bad? Do people miss this? Because I could swear that when I was writing really personally, I was always very fucking sad, or very fucking lonely. And guess what? I’m not anymore. Not saying I won’t ever be sad again, but let me be happy in this moment, in these moments, alright? If you’re a long-time reader, you’ve seen me down-and-out quite enough. Be happy for me, with me, or quit reading.

So much of my writing on the blogs have dealt with conflict, endings, or travels whilst searching for myself and where I belong. I am not conflicted anymore. I am not complacent, either. I am not content. I am happy — in all aspects of my life, things are progressing rather fucking merrily. If this doesn’t entertain you, find somewhere else to be entertained. And Endings — the painful head of conflicting feelings at the Mill Ave house, the end of Huntington Beach as I recognized it, the end (almost) of living in Arizona before moving to Seattle. Travel — I have not been anywhere out of state for exactly six months as of today. Six months. But you know what? I’m okay with that.

What am I doing nowadays? Working on becoming healthier and finally getting my finances in order, working on a ton of websites, a couple Project Forever ventures, a book, working full time, homework, and enjoying a great relationship with someone whom I love dearly.

So I’m not being quiet, aloof, distant, and I’m not doing bad. I am just focusing for awhile on whom I need to be. Oh whom I want to be. On whom I am. All that inner dialouge and traveling and searching and inner pain the last three years, you’ve read about? Well it went somewhere. Progress was made, is being made. It was all for something. And that something, well, it was not for your reading and musing.