Wednesday night, I piggybacked on an offsite with my wife’s company. I sat in the hotel bar of the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, drinking 15-year-old Laphroaig and watching the fog drift in over the Pacific. (Okay, there wasn’t any drifting in – it was there from the moment I arrived.) I had fish and chips and a free bottle of red wine and vanilla-laced creme brulee for dessert. I got to sit by the firepit outside our door and just unwind and do nothing. It was beautiful. Actually, though, almost as good was the next day, taking a drive up Skyline with the fog barely above the roof of the car. And then I got to work from home for the afternoon…so really, I was only 4 hours away from work, and yet it felt like I got the whole vacation I missed having company here all week through Memorial Day.
And then tonight I got two pints and a curry for half price at the Saint (that plus the wife’s gardenburger added up to a slick 16 bucks) and am now relaxed on the couch watching Coupling, and the new Graham Norton starts tomorrow night, and dammit if I’m not having a great time. It’s like somebody threw a switch. I think it’s the old “mutually-reinforcing traumas” – when you have guests for a week, you need to go to work to get away…but when you’re getting pummelled at work, you need to get away at home. To get relief, I had to get away from both.
So as I play Suggs’ show back from this morning, I’m thinking…I need to start blogging more. However, I need to see what the tradeoff is in the Valley between anonymity and hire-ability. After all, I may not have this gig forever…