As I write this I'm sitting in Coffee Society, in what I call the Second Room -- 'cause it was added on to Coffee Society a couple of years after it opened, natch. The Second Room was key to icing Coffee Society's popularity in this area, because there are wall outlets available all over the place. This is Silicon Valley; people have laptops; people drink coffee; often, they like to drink coffee whilst using the laptop. Coffee Society encourages this. It's totally amazing, and its clientele are quite loyal as a result.
The lady sitting next to me also has a laptop, though hers has the dreaded INTEL INSIDE logo on it. She seems nice enough, however, but then, don't they always? She's probably burning to ask me how I can still be using a (my-PowerBook-beats-your-Windows-piece-o'-crap-anyday) toy.
With my PowerBook and an iced latte, things are pretty good. Escape Velocity, the premier time waster of all time for Macintosh computer game players, did not crash once on me during the hour I played.
The only thing that keeps nagging at me is the one of the last things Darin said before we left the house this morning. We had spent the morning getting the month's collection of bills done (ugh) and we decided that I'd drive Darin to work, which allows us to spend a little quality time together. (Until such time as there are Internet connections in cars; goodbye, relationships with physical people!) I commented on the fact that last night I had driven Darin's car, the Cush Mobile, which was remarkable only because Darin had to move the driver's seat so far back.
"When you're visiting up here from Los Angeles, you're going to drive this car a lot," he said. "And I'm going to drive yours a lot more down there." Pause. "You know, we better make a list of all the things you have to do to move down there, like getting an apartment and an internet service provider." (Hey, he has his priorities in the right place.)
So I have to make lists. When was the last time I moved to a new city? Or, more precisely, when was the last time I moved to a completely new region of the country? (Reportedly Los Angeles and Northern California have the same governor, but there is quite a bit of debate about the veracity of this information.)
I'll tell you when: twenty years ago. There was an ice storm in Connecticut, and everything -- roads, trees, children -- were covered in the glassy cold. My mother said, "Enough." And we moved to San Francisco, California in August of 1976. Since then I have moved to: Stanford, Menlo Park, Menlo Park, San Francisco, Mountain View, and Cupertino.
There's a reason eighteen year olds pack up and move far away from home to go to college: they don't know any better. This move is scaring me to death. For the first time in a long time, the majority of the people I know and love are not going to be within an hour's drive of my home. (This, by the way, includes the people I know in Los Angeles.) I'll have to learn where the Ralph's is nearby--Ralph's being Angeleno for Safeway, who the cable service "provider" is, and what the freeway lingo on the morning drive show means.
Most of all, I'm going to be by myself when I come home at night, and this scares me. There are certainly plenty of times when I want to have my own room, a sanctuary in our house that I can call my own. (I especially need this space when we have lots of guests over for days and days at a stretch.) But I've gotten very used to sharing my time and daily experiences with Darin, and I've especially gotten used to sleeping with him. No, no, I don't mean that way, although that's a nice feature as well; no, I mean the actual presence of another person in the bed. Often I can't fall asleep without knowing Darin's nearby, whether right next to me or somewhere in the house puttering around. (Often I can't fall asleep when he is there, because he snores, but no setup is perfect.)
The less-than-amusing of my friends out there have suggested that my being married should be no impediment to recreating this sleeping situation in Los Angeles. I usually thank them for their suggestion right before striking their names off my Christmas card list.
In my apartment in LA I'll have control of the TV remote. It sounds so amazing -- especially given that I lived by myself quite happily for a number of years before moving in with Darin and I used to tell my friends all the time that
Boy, and look at me now, worried about what I'm going to do with myself on those (hopefully rare) evenings I'm not out studying/ writing/making student films/doing deals. Ack. I haven't become a dependent female, have I?
Okay, so here's my list:
Feel free to let me know any other things you think I'll have to do: diane@goonsquad.spies.com.