Vacation in two days. Open road. Car singing. Ciggies and diet cokes. Stinky rest stops. . .

Oh yeah, my brother-in-law is going to barbeque. . .it'll be like Mayberry. Was Mayberry in Michigan? God, Aunt Bea is going to be there and Barney. . .

enough of that.
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Had a reunion dream last night that the reunion was held at this really great house in New Mexico. The house was this open floor plan, rough hewn wood, ranchy style place that spanned this canyon. While we were there, there was this storm with lightning that sent these two rock pillars crashing into each other. There was a flash flood in the canyon beneath the house and watching the water rush at the house was like being at universal studios when they unleash the wall of water at you for the fake flash flood. The house was owned by this guy who was a serious dork in high school and I can't remember his . .oh yeah, Rick O----. Anyway, in the dream I was really excited to see everyone and Michelle was there and she was excited too. But then they all showed up and there was really only about a handful of people and they were all bitching about the food and Steve T------ was like, "you should have listened to me about the food. I could've told you what to bring." So I was trying to make the best of it and I was being my adult, social, best-that-I-can-be self and it just fell flat.

So the handful of people loaded up their paper plates and took off. The whole thing lasted about twenty minutes. So Michelle and I were just kind of hanging out, a little disappointed, and then somebody yelled, "hey, we're all downstairs, where is everybody?" So we went downstairs and there were the rest of the people (people I kind of liked) all hanging out, playing pool, watching dvds and crap, and they were asking us "What were you doing up stairs with all those lame people?"

So it turned out okay. I have yet to deconstruct that and figure out what it means.

Here it is at last. The U.S. Expatriate handbook.

Hurry. Get the hell out before it's too late.

Although this is bogus:

The US generally taxes its citizens on their worldwide income, regardless of their country of residence or source of income, subject to tax treaties. Additionally, US citizens pay Federal Estate Tax on their worldwide assets, without regard to the location of such assets reported by The Tax Adviser.

Bummer.

Is there no relief from the Bush!!!!???!!!??
---

My family was bickering this weekend, making me really excited to drive out and spend time with them. And not to mention pile the too most bicker-y ones into a car for a three day road trip. Fuck.

Gotta get to twork and finish the Yahoo feed.

another email excerpt to start off the blog:

so Shawn sent an email and said everyone was looking for Scoones. She had signed up for classmates.com and I had emailed her and she never responded. She has now mysteriously disappeared from classmates.com. . . as if she would not like to be contacted.

I've been doing my sleuthy best but I can't find her online. I can't even find any directory listings for her family. I tried to search through her brother and found a few online crumbs but nothing that leads anywhere. What a mystery!

The ghost of a '69 Chevy Malibu playing "The Song Remains the Same" just drove by. . .

this is an old email about a trip to Key West but I thought it was worth preserving because it sums up how I still feel about the place very succinctly. . .

HEY! got your message from the other night when I was in Key West. I was trying to catch you guys while you were at the Zeitgeist. . . hope you guys had a good time!

I actually had to cut the vacation a week short becuase I ended up getting ripped off at the youth hostel where I was staying. Believe it or not, it was a blessing in disguise because it really put me face to face with some of the weirdest, most intense glimpses into the human condition I have ever seen. I was befriended by this crazy group of homeless guys who had this incredible code of ethics. . .one guy gave me his last three dollars, another gave me his winning scratch ticket so that I could buy water and believe me, I needed it. I ended up hiking two and a half miles across the key to the open Western Union office in the BLAZING tropical sun w/o sunscreen (thief not only lifted the cell phone, credit card and cash but my 30 SPF sunscreen as well.) Without the money that those guys kicked over, I would have collapsed halfway there, and of course, I didn't have money for a cab so there weren't many options. They also had this crazy barbeque that they had rigged to the back of a bike so that the could make money by BBQ-ing hot dogs and selling them to drunk tourists. Those guys made sure I had food, water, shade and safety. So weird. I kicked them back money as soon as I had it because I swear, these guys that were spending every other month in jail for vagrancy, were the most decent people I've ever met.

As far as Key West, don't bother. It's a beautiful, rotting paradise with a legacy of piracy and larceny. I mean, historically speaking, it's no surprise that I ended up shipwrecked there. . .it's woven into the fabric of the place. It's a complete dead end, literatively and figuratively and people just go there to drop off the earth. Maybe that's what Hemmingway found interesting but I found it disheartening in a way. It took the worst aspects of North Beach and New Orleans' French Quarter and shoved into a half mile of debauchery and scams.

All that aside, I met some people, others besides the homeless guys, who have affected me deeply and I came away from the place transformed. I really can't describe it.

So there you have it. . .the krixfort travelogue. . .Key West installment.

Hope all of you are well. I for one have never felt better.

I found the area that is perfect for my grandma and mother to relocate to.

It's halfway between my sister and I.

It's affordable. Ridiculously affordable.

It has a thriving economy.

Low property taxes and low utilities.

IT'S. . . Summit County OHIO!!!!

Maybe I'm spilling the beans on America's most perfect place to live. . . but I'm willing to risk it in the blog.

Anywho, I actually been out that way to do work and while I did consider moving there, it wasn't the right time. I would cosider moving to Cleveland after I'm done at NYU. It all depends on where I get a job. If I get a job that pays over six figures then it's worth it to me to stay in NYC and just fly out once or twice a month to see mom and grnadma.

I saw a beautiful brick home in Cuyahoga Falls for $159,000. Ridiculous. I was looking for property in Queens and in Central and South Jersey and what you could get for that kind of money is a real shit hole. I still may look around Philadelphia but my gut is telling me that Ohio is going to be the place. It must be why I ended up there in the first place. That's what the road trip is about anyways. For me to show them other places that are out on this side of the world that would be good for them. I hope Grandma likes it.

okay. I saw it.

I saw the Nick Berg videotape. I'm not going to put a link out because the internet is such a wonderful thing that if you really want to see that shit you can go out and get it.

I have about a gazillion emotions running through my brain right now. His poor family. His poor poor family.

It was a mind-numbingly horrifying way to die and then to have it out there. . .god why did I watch it? What was I thinking? I chose to watch it. I didn't choose to watch the trade center come down.

There was a picture in the NY Times of a jumper from the trade center, falling head first that made me naseous. I feel the same way now. When you're faced with contemplating the death of an individual person it's much more horrifying then say a mass bombing simply because the mass murder is too big to comprehend. Anyone can relate to the individual.

The problem with yesterday and today is that this shit war has been in my face and I this hole that we're in is only going to get bigger and darker. We may never get out.

I've been on right wing blogs and left wing blogs and I hate the fact that partisan politics cloud over the fact that too many lives have been and are being lost, senselessly, needlessly, horribly.

Fucking Bush. Fucking Rumsfeld. Fuck their policy of secrecy and diversion. And arrogance and disregard for the Geneva convetion, the UN and the rest of the world.

AND FUCK the AL Qaeda or whoever was responsible for that beheading. And the bombing of the trade center.

AND Fuck those US Soldiers who participated in the humiliation of the Iraqi prisoners. What the fuck were they trying to prove. The military is just this big machine that trains people to dehumanize other people so that it's easier to kill them.

And Fuck John Kerry for being such a weak candidate with no fucking platform. If he is elected will he be able to dig us out of this hole? At least he's kept his mouth shut and not taken the petty road and used all this shit to his advantage.

I listened to a great guy on NPR last night, Joe Wilson. He had a lot of interesting things to say about the state of american foreign policy these days. He was a career diplomat and was the ambassador to Iraq before the Gulf War. He disproved Bush's claim that Iraq was able to purchase Uranium from an African nation so then the administration leaked his wife's identity to the press; she was an undercover operative.

I can't think about this anymore. I've had enough.

a friend of krixfort writes about the reunion and says this:

I'm beginning to see the potential catharsis of going to this damn thing.
There is so much to heal within myself from that time.

and the krixfort response team says:

Boy I am telling you. I don't know if there was something in the water or what but loathing for that place has festered inside me like a cancer. I can't take it anymore. Have to let it go.

The other day I was talking to my freind Mark and we were swapping 'growing up' stories and I was like 'oh yeah, and there was this one time, me and B--- C-------- and somebody else were driving around in some kind of muscle car and then we bootlegged beer from these pimps and then they told us to get the fuck out of there so then we went to the high school parking lot and drank all the beer and then drove back and then . . .HA HA HA the pimps chased us! In their muscle car. "

And we were doing like 60, on Macadam Road. Drunk. HA. HA. FUCKING HA.

Mark looked at me and said "that's fucked up."

And I said, "Well who else could you get to buy you beer. The hookers wouldn't do it. You know. The hookers were all over. You remember the Green River Killer? That's where I grew up."

In the backyard of a serial killer.

I mean really. The people at the high school weren't any different than any other self absorbed teenagers with their crappy little pecking order and elevated sense of importance. The miserable part was the drugs and the violence and that shit. I feel like I grew up in a war zone. And you were supposed to pretend that it was normal. That was the fucked up part.

Mark's big thing was that he got caught trying to hang a flag that he and his friends created off the town flagpole. And then he got caught by his friend the cop. Who only got mad at him because he could tell he'd been smoking ciggarettes.

I need to go to this thing. I didn't know why at first. But now I think, after this SF trip, that it has something to do with making sure I made the right decisions (even though I know I did.) And I need to get rid of the chip on my shoulder about having a shitty childhood. It's too heavy and I can't carry it any longer. And I need to go and be around these people and be the person that I am now: the confident, funny, and successful one. Not be the person I was then: the shy, introverted, bitter, sarcastic one. But even if that doesn't happen it's okay because at least now, I know who the fuck I am and what I'm about. ANd I need to go just to let the past thing die.

Thank god for Shawn by the way. Someone like A---- H---- or some shit like that was suggesting we have the Friday night get together out at Muckleshoot. MMMMM. Indian Gambling. Good god. What a nightmare. Instead, Capitol Hill and billiards YAY!!! That oughtta twist a few knickers. Please. (eye roll.)

double yikes!

yikes one: there is a new blogger interface and it's freaking me out. Yikes.

yikes two: I just volunteered to create a website for Foster's 20 year reunion. Don't know if they'll go for it but if they do it could be a royal pain in the ass. What have I done. . .????

Okay. In the middle of a work meltdown last night at 2am-ish, I received the best news ever! I logged into my yahoo mail account and GUESS WHAT PEOPLE?

I am officially invited to go to the Jeopardy tryouts!!!!

Must be smart for J. Have to study history.

Also. Must lose weight -- well I'm working on that anyway. I'm back on the no/low carbs thing. I'm also going to buy an excercise bike on Friday. I have 3 1/2 months to get down to a fighting weight. (I'm talkin' 'bout the reunion here. . .)

Now. This is something that has needed to happen for at 7 years. I've steadily gained since my breast reduction surgery in 1993, but I really wasn't uncomfortably overweight until about 7 years ago. I'm not a whale or anything. . .I'm just not at my tip top shape and I really just want to get the weight off and maintain a somewhat healthy lifestyle. I'm having this weird transition right now and I think it got kicked off when the 401k guy came to my work.

Suddenly, I realized that aging is not a problem, but not preparing for the future is. I am now maxing the 401 k, trying to get efficient on the budgeting, etc. and trying to get healthy. I want to be a healthy, stable adult. And I think that is within my reach.

I broke up with San Francisco this weekend.

I still like the little Marina Motel. That place was just as cute as ever. And the weather was as gorgeous as it ever was on the most gorgeous day ever. And hanging with Hoff and his family, and then Kevin was great. After I did those things I went back to the little Marina Motel and was THIS close to skipping the whole North Beach thing. I'm glad I didn't because now I never have to back there again.

I saw a handful of people I knew, ALL OF THEM WERE BURNT OUT. I mean HARDCORE BLOWN OUT. If I had stayed there, I would have turned out exactly the same. . . fatter, drunker, staring off into space, killing the rest of brain cells along with the ability to initiate change. The inertia of the place would have sucked me in. Then I would have rationalized it by saying that it was okay becuase the neighborhood is full of artists and kooks and charming eccentric characters.

Well, it was. . .

I suppose it still is. But I don't see it the same way anymore. The writerly romance of literature and alcoholism has lost it's beauty. It's like the day after a bender when all you wake up with is some sad, old, bald, divorced guy with a beer belly, back hair, and a limp dick. The same guy who was a turbo hottie the night before.

It was like I saw the alternate universe where everything went awry. Like the evil dark side, only everything was bright and sunny. I saw what I could've become and it was freaking scary. Consequently, I feel positively charged since I validated my choice to move three years ago.

It was like a mini-reunion:
I got to go back and confirm that I had made the right decisions.
I was genuinely happy to see some of the people I saw.
I had brief pangs of homesickness that went away quickly because I was homesick for what was. . .not what is.
I got a few good compliments and an offer for some hanky-pizz-anky. Shizzle. I still got it.

It was good preparation for the real reunion.