I told Tim about the idea of carrying around all purpose protest signs. Mine, of course, would say "Damn the Man!" Tim suggested both "Stop the Madness!" and "Eat Babies!" Since we are the twisted sort of people who make jokes about going to the Church of Christ for dinner and ordering our Jesus medium rare, "Eat Babies!" swiftly became our running joke for this vacation.

Syncronicititally (which may or may not be a word), we drove by a protest on Saturday. From a distance, we couldn't tell what they were protesting. We saw a bunch of American flags waving, and figured it was some election thing. "The flags are upside down, though," said Tim. "Oh, wait... no, only one of them is upside down." "That's Bob. He's confused." "Yeah, I bet that's the new guy."

Once we got closer, we saw that they were Shrubya supporters protesting the recount. "Boy, are they in the wrong city," said Tim, as our fellow passengers made thumbs down gestures and booed at them. I oppose the protestors on general principle, but I appreciated their signs, which ranged from brilliant to monumentally stupid. The best one said, "Gore is a chad molester!" which just cracked us up. A chad molester!

The most inane one said, "A Vote-o-matic a day keeps freedom away." Huh? I don't even know what that means. What the fuck is a Vote-o-matic? And how is that pro-Bush? I think that guy is new, too. Or maybe, like us, he just has a sign with a random slogan on it and goes around inserting himself into protests. Only he has a specialty; he's the random political protest protester.

I bet we could have joined the protest with our "Eat Babies!" sign, as long as we stood next to the Vote-o-matic guy. He would have flummoxed observers so thoroughly with Vote-o-matic that, by the time they got to "Eat Babies!" they would assume it all made sense. We would have fit right in.

I am suffering from post vacation malaise; my room seems empty now. Tim and I must be great friends, because normally, I'd be ready to kill someone after four days in their continuous company and be glad to have them gone. (I say that as if I'm surprised, but we have a history of spending insane amounts of time in each other's company, and the pleasure of being together never seems to diminish.)

Being away from him has made me even more appreciative of what we have. I mean sure, it's not always perfect, but we love each other, we respect each other, we rise to each other's intellectual challenges, and we take genuine pleasure in each other's company. Regardless of frustration and complication through the years, we are still, and I hope always, the best of friends.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is a chronological narrative of the week

On Wednesday, I acquired Tim from the airport, and we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Berkeley. We used our old standby method of picking restaurants, which is: Drive Around Until Something Looks Good Or Until We're So Hungry We Don't Care Where We Eat.

This method struck gold, as it sometimes does, because we had a wonderful meal. I ordered a glass of wine with dinner, and Tim surprised me by suggesting we just get a bottle. I love the idea of ordering a bottle of wine with dinner; it seems decadent. He's always been very anti-wine, but he enjoyed the (excellent) Pinot Grigio that we picked out.

I think it was over dinner that I mentioned the existence of this journal. I've been reluctant to mention it for fear that he'd be angry. (He gets angry rarely, but it's not always predictable.) I'm not used to keeping things from him, though, so it is a huge relief. And he had the typical response: he is intrigued, and he hates his alias. Everyone hates their own alias. Now, I'm torn about showing him the journal. Half of me wants to show it off, and the other half is afraid of what he might think when he reads some of this stuff. We'll see.

After dinner, we rented a DVD: American Psycho. It was... well, it was flummoxing. This didn't stop us from arguing about how to interpret it, but the argument kind of fell apart. After a while, I had no idea what my point was. I think we may have been agreeing argumentatively rather than arguing, because we looked at the production notes on the DVD, and each of us used the same quotes to buttress our own arguments.

Our conversation was like, "He was hallucinating, nothing even happened." "No, he wasn't hallucinating, he doesn't even exist!" "What about the blood across the floor?" "No, it was just a fable. He doesn't exist." "No, it's a fable because he does exist." "Wait, what?" "Oh, I don't know."

On Thursday, we went to Joey's house for Thanksgiving dinner. The food and the company were delicious. We talked a lot of poetry (poor Tim, in a room full of poets) and I had a good time. Deb's boyfriend was supposed to be "militant" and evil (Joey warned me against him) but he seemed fairly reasonable. The only strange thing was when we were watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and he mentioned that Hitler spent five years searching for the Sword of Destiny. "What's that?" I asked. "It is a sword that has never lost a battle." "And it supposedly exists?" "Oh, I know it exists." "How do you know?" "Faith." I can't explain it, but he was scary during this exchange. Grim, insistent, don't-fuck-with-me. The Sword of Destiny?

Also during dinner, a lightbulb went off over my head regarding my novel. I now have a general idea for it. Now I need to do some research on the general idea to determine a specific idea. I'd love to tell the idea, but I can't. Laurie was insistent that I protect myself against intellectual theft and keep quiet. I don't really think you would steal my idea, but it might jinx it all the same.

After the party ended, Tim and I headed back to the East Bay and saw Unbreakable. Another flummoxing movie. It twists your head right around, just like the Sixth Sense. The direction is interesting too except, damn, it is paced slow. S.... l........o.......w. It's Meet Joe Black slow, that's how slow it is. On the other hand, I have to respect Shamalyan for clinging to his own aesthetic and not selling out. Even if his aesthetic is... well, you know. Slow.

So, the movie was rather confusing. And we had just been confused the night before, by American Psycho. As we were walking out of the theater, I said, "I think we need to see a straightforward movie now. You know, a nice simple movie that goes from Point A to Point B. Like Charlie's Angels." "Yeah, but that movie might just go to Point A and stay there." "Perfect."

Friday morning was my first day at work. And I'm here to tell you, getting up at 4:30 in the morning really, really sucks. And since I hadn't gotten much sleep, I felt nauseous for the majority of the morning. That always happens to me these days when I'm low on sleep. And I'm here to tell you, that sucks too.

But work was fun. I need to get used to being on my feet for eight hours a day, but that was the only negative. I got to drink whatever I wanted all day. I learned how to make Frappuccinos, and Tiazzis, and how to brew coffee. I learned how to stock the pastry case, how to mix mocha syrup, and how to make whipped cream. I learned how to grind coffee, how to re-stock the condiment bar, and how to weigh the beans.

I've also been having fun inventing descriptions for coffee. We have to taste all the coffees and describe them, using meaningless words like "earthy" and "full bodied". Tim bought a book on scotch, and he helped me pick out some key phrases for future use, such as "starts slowly and has a sustained development" or "a petal-like, buttercup texture." I love bullshit tasting terminology. My favorite coffee description is my invented description for the Decaf Christmas Blend: "This merry coffee twinkles across the tongue like holiday lights."

I should so be writing their ad copy.

After work, my feet hurt like hell, so I took Tim for a nice, mellow drive around the city. He was surprised that my school was so small (it is tiny). Then we went to a store called "Beverages, & More!" Tim drooled over the rare, expensive (but comparatively cheap) bottles of scotch. He was torn between two bottles (each costing over $100) and he decided to think about it some more. We did leave with a bottle of wine, some beer, cheese, crackers and chocolate. Then we rented Gladiator. I teased Tim all week for a comment he made while watching a preview for that new Meg Ryan/Russell Crowe movie. "For some reason," he said, "There's something I really like about Russell Crowe." Of course he didn't mean it in a gay way, but I contend that it came out sounding ragingly homosexual and teased him about it for four days straight.

So we drank the wine and ate the cheese and watched Russell get all sweaty. Tim liked the Reisling I picked out, and he decided that he must like my taste in wine. The only wines he's ever liked have been the ones I picked out. He also agreed that next time he visits, we'll go wine tasting (whether it be with a group or just he and I). I am so excited that he's willing to do this with me. There's nobody I'd rather go tasting with.

On Saturday, I only had to work until 10:15. We headed down to Pier 39 to go to the torture museum I told Tim about some years back. It was a wax museum depicting various grisly forms of torture through the ages. We were disappointed to learn that it has been closed for a couple of years now. We couldn't go to Alcatraz either, since it was all sold out.

We went to the Ripley's museum, which was mildly interesting, and wandered around the Pier until we had enough of the crowds. The sky was overcast, it was cold, and we had to stand up a lot on crowded public transportation. Suffice it to say that it wasn't the world's most thrilling outing.

After we reached the East Bay again in the evening, we headed to Borders to buy a book about Scotch. Once Tim reviewed the ratings of the scotch under consideration, we went back to BevMo (Beverages, and More!) and Tim picked out the bottle he wanted. It's Auchentoshan 1968, if anyone cares.

We drove to three different movie theaters, and finally found a showing of Charlie's Angels we wanted to see. It was exactly the kind of movie we were in the mood for, and we enjoyed it tremendously. It's such a charming, fun film. (I'm planning to write more extensive reviews of Angels and Unbreakable for my "Mo at the Movies" section. I'll let you know.) I'm so glad we went; it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun seeing it alone.

And this morning, Sunday, I dropped Tim off at the airport. We already know how I feel about that.

The only other noteworthy thing is that we sat next to Frankie Muniz, who plays the titular character on Malcolm in the Middle. I wasn't sure it was him at first (you hardly expect to spot celebrities in the Oakland airport) but he had the Hollywood Reporter in his hand and was talking about how he only had "one scene" to shoot tomorrow. So, there you go. Celebrity sighting du jour.

There was a message on my answering machine on Thursday night from Checkers.

You see, last Tuesday, we had a "Poetry Sham" competition for bad poetry. Checkers spent a week preparing and collecting props, and went around telling everyone (including the judges) that he was going to win. However, Laurie beat Checkers in both "Worst Original Poem" and "Worst Reading of a Poem". She won $30, and Checkers didn't win at all. His readings were funny, but they were overlong and I think he tried too hard.

I don't know how serious Checkers was, but as we were walking back from the BART, he was telling Laurie that he "really needs the money" and was counting on winning it. It sounded to me like he was trying to guilt trip her out of her winnings. Then he said that he "probably lost because the judges could see" that he has "more potential to be earning money" from his writing in the future. (If you'll recall, he's the one who writes poems like "Amma Mamma Jamma went to the wedding Eddie edding and ding mamma he HE he.") And he thinks he's got earning potential? Dream on, buttercup.

We were talking about Checkers at Thanksgiving, trying to explain his personality and his poetry to Tim. So when we got home, it turned out that Checkers had left three messages, babbling for twenty minutes about all sorts of stupid stuff. For one thing, there was a two minute preamble during which he experimented with different ways to pronounce his name and my name. Tim just stared at the answering machine, his eyes widening with comprehension and astonishment as Checkers talked.

Checkers also asked for Laurie's phone number. He said he could not "be-liiieeeeve" that Laurie had won the contest, and he wanted to call her and tell her so, because he thinks she bribed the judges (!) and tried to throw him off the trail (!!) by making sure she tied with somebody rather than winning outright. Again, I have no idea if he's kidding or not. Most of his message simply made no sense. When he was done, Tim said, "Wow. He's a sociopath."

We toyed with the idea of Tim calling him back, pretending to be someone called Mortimer Whipplethorpe III, my "chief negotiator" who would throw coffee tasting terms at him. We figured that we should give him a taste of his own medicine with an utterly nonsensical phone call.

"This is Mortimer Whipplethorpe III, Monique's lead counsel. We would like to inform you to savor the petal-like buttercup flavor. A vote-o-matic a day twinkles across the tongue like holiday lights. Oh, and eat babies!"

"Does Joss Whedon know he has the power to inflict great pain upon me? Joss, take good care of my heart. I trust you."