Working Boy

After a relaxing month off, I’m back to work and spending a lot of time in airports – you wouldn’t think the smell of one person’s refunded lunch could permeate an entire terminal at LAX, but you would be very wrong. Vomit aside, with Audrey out of town I kind of like the travel since it forces me out of the house and off to new adventures, even if adventures in the extreme heat of San Antonio tend to be limited after a long day of work. Anyhow, here’s the update since last time:

• After the road trip I visited Audrey and the family in the Bay Area, then returned to LA for some lounging about. The last week of May, and my last work-free week, I made another trip up to the Bay as a way to force myself to shower, shave, leave the house, and take a break from writing manifestos.
• Aaron sold his place in Livermore and bought a place in East Sacramento, so I went up to see him, sit around his backyard firepit, eat fancy breakfasts, and ride beach cruisers. All told we covered about twenty miles on bike through Sacramento, hitting the Capitol, stopping for the famous banana cream pie at the city’s finest Chinese restaurant, enjoying floating beverages at the Virgin Sturgeon, and generally behaving like two mature gentlemen in their late-thirties should.
• After leaving Aaron I spent an hour trying to cross the Bay Bridge to meet Audrey after work for drinks, and then the following day took her to Bodega Bay and Muir Woods. Shockingly I’d never been to Muir Woods, and have thus missed out on this tiny paradise north of the Golden Gate.
• The next day we visited Ma & Pa in Concord. The Skipper’s preference is to limit himself to one activity per day, so after he had gone to church and then spent an afternoon at a barbecue we crashed into him like a tornado, dragging him off to the dog park for a walk and then fiddling with the TV setup (something both Ma & Pa fear to their very core) so that they would be able to watch Netflix on demand.
• The next day was a return to work, this time on a project for the HEB grocery chain, based in San Antonio. The current project is a reunion with Khalid of DirecTV fame, and Joe, one of three partners at Commerce Architects. The first week was spent working from the CA office in Berkeley, and the following week saw three days in the HEB office in San Antonio.
• Of special note, Audrey has a friend who works at Pixar, so during the week I was working from Berkeley, and after many years of stalking the perimeter of the Pixar compound in Emeryville, I finally got to enter the gates. It was by far the nicest work environment I’ve ever seen, and while my skillset doesn’t really match anything they would need, if they ever decided to lease office space and I was tired of working in my pajamas in the kitchen, Pixar’s campus would be an ideal spot to toil.
• San Antonio is another place I’ve never visited, and while the weather is a bit like living on the surface of the sun, once the evening arrives and the temperatures dip into the nineties, it’s kind of a neat place. Joe and I watched game three of the NBA finals (Cavs won?!?) from a bar in the Riverwalk, and I went for a run along the river and past all manner of historic structures. Given the near-weekly visits for at least the next two months, there should be plenty of additional opportunities to explore.
• Last of all, Audrey was home this past weekend to sing in a concert at Disney Concert Hall. Around 200 choir members and the booming Frank Gehry-designed organ amidst an awesome venue was not a bad way to spend a Friday evening.