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On a lighter note, we had a very nice dinner tonight at Dick and Jenny's to celebrate our friend Tyler's birthday.

And, satisfying my inner geek, I set up my Airport so once again I'm on the Net wirelessly.

Am I Bad For This?

I think I mentioned in my first post that I was laid off in April 2000, eight months after D and I'd moved to San Francisco and six months after we'd moved into our horrifically expensive apartment. I'm now approaching 11 months of unemployment. I've been draining my life's savings for 11 months. I've sent out at least 150 resumes looking for work without success. I've questioned everything I've done for the past five years, wondering whether I could have avoided this situation had I made different decisions. I've wondered whether I could have done anything at my former employer to avoid being laid off. And of course, I've cursed the bastards who laid me off many, many times.

So today I found out that the fellow who laid me off was himself laid off two weeks ago. And I was happy to hear it. Am I bad for that?

Closer to Legitimacy

I'm now the proud possessor of a 504 cell phone number and, I guess, closer to becoming a real resident of New Orleans. I haven't gone so far as getting a LA driver's license and my (newly washed) red Miata still has its CA plates, but I guess that'll change one day.

After getting my hair cut at Head Quarters (loved the Marilyn Monroe posters on the ceiling), I met D and Mae-Z at the Pub for a drink. They had said they were going to give up smoking during Lent, but that lasted as long as a Krispy Kreme doughnut in a Metairie police car. While I commend their attempts, nothing in New Orleans tops giving up booze during Lent, which I've done. Do you know what it's like sitting in a New Orleans bar drinking O'Doul's while everyone else is sucking on Absolut/tonic or Dewar's on the rocks? The only thing worse than O'Doul's is its web site. I get to stay cold stone sober while everyone around me gets stupid. You know you don't fit in when you've exhausted the bar's O'Doul's supply after drinking two cans of the stuff (happened last Sunday at Oz during their sleazy boi dancer show).

Ending the day watching the Grammy's. Am I the only one who thinks Nelly Furtada's acceptance speech was stiff and phony? And who asked that stiff to spout the RIAA party line?

Thoughts on Big D

D (not the above-referenced "D") and I went to Dallas this weekend to pick some items we'd left in storage when we moved to San Francisco in 2000. I don't think I've mentioned in earlier posts that we lived in Dallas for seven years before moving to San Francisco. Well, we did. We left a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house with a two car garage and a pool located on a pond that supported 5 species of ducks to move to San Francisco. Did I mention 2400 square feet? But I digress...

When we left Dallas, we knew that whatever we rented in SF would be smaller than what we had in Dallas, so we left a few things in storage in Dallas under the assumption that we would use it to furnish our future vacation condo in New Orleans' French Quarter... The irony is simply too much. Now that we're a bit more settled into our new apartment in New Orleans (believe it or not, smaller than our gorgeous apartment in SF), we flew to Dallas to pick up the items in storage and finally close the Dallas chapter of our life.

This was the most significant amount of time I'd spent in Dallas since we left. Not much has changed in the past 18 months other than modifications to the North Tollway and more portions of the George Bush ("41") Parkway have been completed. My time in SF and New Orleans did give me a new perspective, though.

I'd forgotten how easy life is in Dallas. Parking is easy. You never have to parallel park. Anything you can possibly want is within a 20 minute drive. You never have to look over your shoulder. Thanks to D/FW Airport, you're four hours from any point in the US.

Dallas is a wealthy town. Dallas is the embodiment of American consumerism. The Whole Foods Market we went to in Plano (a city north of Dallas that, in my mind, is simply an extension of Dallas) is as large as the largest supermarket in SF or New Orleans. Aisle upon aisle of healthy, organic foods. Lots of gluten free products for D. There are lots of new cars in Dallas, all of them clean. Not a dirty one in the bunch. The roads are smooth with few, if any, potholes. Huge stores dedicated to household goods such as The Great Indoors and Home Depot's EXPO Design Center, where you can buy $10,000 chandeliers and $20,000 front doors. I kid you not. Stores New Orleans would love to have and SF refuses to allow. I once read a news article which stated that Dallas has more retail space per capita than any other city in the United States. I don't doubt it.

Of course, it isn't all guns and roses in Dallas. The summers are gawdawful - one summer the temperature exceeded 100°F 29 days in a row (and my Miata's top was down on every one of those days, too, thank you). Standing in the breeze reminded me of being in a hair dryer. The good museums are in Fort Worth. And then there's the overwhelming religiosity of the place.

This combination of rampant consumerism and religiosity makes for a curious mix. I don't know how they're reconciled, but Dallas is able to make a go of it.