jay | lots of bridges

Thursday... Proposals... skidding in just-in-time, made the FedEx pickup in Mountain View with 4 minutes to spare. There were about 85 total submitted, they'll fund about 25-35. Lovely languid Italian dinner and meta-conversation with the lovely squirrel, afterwards in Berkeley.

Friday... clean-up at work, travel arrangements, calling airlines. Saw "Rent" with

patgreene, who is a great movie-watching companion... not just cuddly, but practically a walking IMDB. And okay, perhaps the movie isn't as striking as the stage production, but I've never seen the latter... the songs and material were all completely new to me. And had an impact... strangely hopeful and depressing, all at once. And I did not cross any bridges.

Saturday... skating with Kevin, then across the bay over to Hayward in the afternoon with James to help

princeofwands,

karenbynight and

sarahh move... we loaded one truck. Then while driving back across the Dumbarton Bridge to their new place (Cupertino) to unload, I was ticketed for speeding by the highway patrol. 82/65... driving the van. Considering the number of times I've hit 90-100 cresting that bridge in the Mustang, I got off comparatively easy, and was arguably overdue anyway.

Then unloaded, then rushed home, cleaned up, and drove *back* across the bay again for a Caribbean dinner with

tenacious_snail and

inflectionpoint, with various interesting, er, twists and turns as the evening unfolded. Including Pat calling and telling me I could just stay over if I was too exhausted to drive back home at 2am... ;-). Which I did... had to borrow a contact lens holder and a clean shirt, though.

Yesterday... arrived at church at 9:20 (as Pat had requested), then took her and the kids to brunch at Hobee's... more travel fuss, then back across the Bay again to

dawnd's holiday Jam in San Leandro. With David and Kevin... the latter was fine, but the singing of carols raised an aversive reaction in David (reminding him of being thrown out of Ragazzi). He acted out several times, and I spent much of my time there kid-wrangling instead of singing. I let him talk it out... let him express his anger, even to squeezing me as hard as he could... finally mentioned that it would make me happy if he'd come sing with me. He refused... he'd said last month that he'd never sing again. But later... he went in and joined the singers, and me. Yay! Hopefully, he will reclaim his voice, now. Back across the bay again to go home for dinner.

And yesterday evening, went back to Cupertino and spent a couple of hours unloading a hot tub and another truck there... good exercise. Rah. :) Off to work, now.