Who blogs these days, anyways?

I'm sick. Hooray for that. Started hitting me last night around the six o'clock news hour; in fact perhaps the cold is less a virus and more a virile reaction to the excessive Republican National Convention coverage. Whatever caused it, I am far from impressed at this cold's attitude and style. Sore throat, general nausea, solid headache. Minor body aches, but they're on the rise and I am not so stoked about the next 24-hours.

Little wonder I have a cold. I have averaged maybe 6.5 hours of sleep for the last, eh, five months. It's not Emma, or work stress even, just staying up too damn late then getting up early to catch up on life (gym time, Boise rental, all sorts of crap). Chronic lack of sleep fed perfectly (in a sinister sense) into a weekend blast back to Boise to host an open house and attempt to find new tenants for our home. The open house was a bust, and being back in a community of comfort flooded me with more emotional energy than my weakened immune system could handle. So, here we are. Sick.

Back in Santa Rosa now. Playing hooky from work today, sort of. There was a huge R and D function at work, where the company rented three greyhound-style buses to cart the department down to an Oakland Athletics baseball game. Sounds fun enough, but even last night, before the cold hit full-force, I was considering bowing out. Something about drinking all day, gorging on corn-dogs hot-dogs fill-in-the-blank-dogs and (above all) being surrounded by workmates for nine hours, returning home at 6PM already drunk then sober then hung over and bloated... eh, pass. Still though, awesome gesture by the company management. Pretty sure my absence will go unnoticed among the hundreds of engineers present. Hopefully...

Gotta tell you that I am confused about life, which I guess isn't much deviation from the norm for me. As last reported, things are working out well here in California but Lauren and I definitely feel the pangs of missing family and community in Boise. My mom drove up from Elko for the weekend in Boise, and I got some solid time in with Greg, G and T. I think sitting on G and T's back porch, sipping decaf and absorbing the sounds/smells/temperature of a typical late-summer Boise evening, G and I settling right back in to the genuine connection we've shared for the last five years... Even the morning of the (failed) open house was too much to handle. Ironic that a typical Idaho morning, 55-degrees of dry summer air, large cup of Joe from Dawson's downtown, maple-bar donut from DK's, and a dozen hot air balloons in the crisp blue sky can make you bummed out!

Still, though, there's a lot to enjoy down here, hence my total confusion and discomfort. Ambivalence, true binary this-side-that-side-of-the-fence ambivalence, is torture for me. If nothing else is gained from this period I life I think I'll be forced to let go of the obsession to have things 100% mapped out and secure. Such structure is impossible, and longing for it now is pointless.