Music...Makes the People...Come Together

Sorry it has been so long. The family reunion left me in a fog for a while. No really, I am not kidding.

So I made the trek east. JetBlue was great, I hope they stay in business. Compared to any of the majors, they rock; leg room, DirecTV, A320 service, that is all I require. Syracuse, NY... Hmm. I cannot be politically correct in this circumstance. It is a hole. It was boring and economically depressed. There were a lot of bugs. There are some very nice things about summer in New York State; beautiful lakes, roadside farm stands selling fresh corn and tomatoes, and lots of historical red brick buildings. Sadly, I fear the bad outweighs the good. It is always good to see my immediate family, but my parents still think it is an acceptable idea to attempt to house twenty five people in a three bedroom home. When I do not visit for two or three years, the unpleasant memories fade and I think, "Oh, it won't be that bad." Hmm, yeah. Not having a bed is that bad. Especially when you are burning vacation time that you might rather spend elsewhere. If this situation rises again, I am going to bite the bullet and stay in one of the nearby motels of dubious quality. (The majority of them use the Beverly Hillbillies as a decorating template. Lest you forget, cell phones still do not work in this part of the world.)

So NY kind of blew...as in chunks. It was a lot of fun to see my brother though and his family. I spent the last couple of days in D.C. with them. D.C. is a such a cool town and they are always building new stuff. I spent an afternoon at the new Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian which was really cool to see. They have exhibits dealing with native peoples from Alaska to Argentina, so it was cool to see an American institution taking a more regional view of things. I also got to see the new aviation museum near Dulles which is nicely laid out. Some of the exhibits include an Air France Concorde, the Enola Gay, and one of the first prototypes of the Space Shuttle. My brother and his family are living in rural Virginia now after relocating back from a work assignment in Japan. It was great to see them and I hope to get out to visit more often now that they are living here in the U.S.

So I am back in the Bay Area. We are experiencing our short few weeks of summer right now and enjoying every moment of it; warm days, slightly breezy accompanied by non-chilly nights. September is a magical month here.

The saga regarding my condo continues. The short sale agreement expired around August 1st with no news in sight. In the past couple of weeks, the other realtor has been dangling the promise of news on a pending agreement in front of us, but nothing has come through to fruition. I was going to begin the search again for other possible properties, but the market has begun to heat up again and the low lying fruit in the market has been pretty well picked through. I have been holding out hope that this short sale will come through. Once again, the realtors say we should be hearing something this week. On average short sales have been taking four to six months out here in California, so the timing is not unusual. Rather it is an inconvenient truth. (Pun intended.) If the bank approves the offer, then it is going to be a race to close within thirty days.

Classes started a couple of weeks ago. The next few semesters, I am wrapping up my gen ed requirements in anticipation of attending Cal State next year. This semester, I have a literature course which is so pretty cool and a philosophy course involving ethics and critical thinking which is proving to be my gouge my eyes out course. It is a requirement, so I am hopeful that I can simply get through it. College truly is proving to be a bunch of hoops that you have to jump through. Over the summer, I completed my Math course and MacroEcon with two A's unbelievably. (I did not expect to get an A in Math and the college had lost my pass/fail form, so I was confident that the 4.0 streak was going to finally going to be broken.) So now I am predicting my Ethics course will break the streak. At this point, the continuing tension of the GPA is causing my OCD streak to spike. Once I get less than an A, I feel like the whole college experience will be a little more fun and I can relax a bit. All this for a degree that I will, in all likelihood, not use in a professional capacity. Good times, good times.

It is going to be a busy next few months. College football season is here, so I end up working a bunch of overtime for Stanford football games. I have a couple of trips planned, one to Seattle for a shaman workshop and then one to Vegas to re-celebrate my friend's birthday which got ruined in July when she contracted swine flu. Finally, a couple of trips to Hawaii and Mexico before the end of the year if the timing works out with school. Throw in a condo purchase and a move and the beat goes on.

One last rant, the dance radio station Energy 92.7 in San Francisco (with a strong gay following) switched formats last week to a Top 40 radio station under new ownership. Even though Energy did play the same twenty tracks repeatedly, it was a really cool station that was locally owned and was always sponsoring community events. The highly rated morning show staff of Fernando and Greg were laid off as was the entire station staff. Even though this is inevitably the way changeovers happen in radio (no warning and mass firings), it is still a sad time for what many of us felt was a great and unique addition to our city. Energy had won a bunch of awards over the last five years for being one of the best stations in the world and we all miss it greatly. People are putting together online protests and petitions, but it is doubtful these will have much effect. Thank you for a great five years Energy staff. There is a great big void in Bay Area radio now and we can only hope to have a station in the future that was as much a part of our city as Energy was. RIP.

Hope you are all doing well. Cuidate.