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Okay, I'm bad. I'm a native Californian, a Northern native at that and while I love my state and I love seeing all of it, I'd never been to Yosemite. Just as the post on Friday was saying I would be doing, I made it there and I saw it finally.       It really is a gorgeous place and word has gotten around about this as you hear a language other than English spoken most of the time. It's kinda like San Francisco in that, except in the woods and no cable cars.       You don't really get a feel for what it's like until you get back and look at your pictures to see how amazing it really was. Admittedly, a bit of it looked a lot like the Northern California I've always known. But so much was unique to just there in Yosemite Valley.       Anyways, I'm not going to gush on and on about it, but I want to go back and do some of the hardcore hikes. If you haven't been and can, then go!

So here it is, as you read this, I... am in Yosemite National Park. Oh yeah, big whooping deal you're thinking. You're totally a Californian dude, you've been there like a million times, done the bong thing like up on top of Half Dome and all that. No, no I have not. I've never been to the park before. Sad? Yes.       I have no good excuse. It was a bit of a drive from my hometown, but not that bad. I don't really have a fear of bears, or the outdoors, or deer, or wolves, but yet, I've never been. I suppose it is all just a weird confusion of things that has led to it never happening.       I've been to plenty of parks in CA before, just not this one. I'm not sure what I'll get out of the trip other than seeing what it's really like when tourists stank up a national park as they do. But, it will be good to see the place and just do it. Unfortunately I will not be doing the Half Dome hike (all 17 freakin' miles of it) because there just isn't time. But, the park isn't going anywhere and there's always next year or just about anytime except when it snows. You're not really going anywhere up there when it snows.

You hear it often. Rrrrr, rr, rr, rrrrrrr...rrrrrr. It's a tough sound to write in text, but it's the sound of the diesel bus they run on the Muni Number 2 line past my house sometimes and it is dying.       Usually, you just get that whirring sound as the electric busses cruise effortlessly up Sutter Street, only sometimes interrupted by a, "Please hold on..." or a "Please reserve the front seats for people with disabilities or lazy folk..." Every so often this dying beast comes floundering up the street though. I equate it to what it must have been like in the first evolutionary trials of animals going from sea to land. Such a sad, overused diesel engine. And I'm sure it keeps getting kicked around the fleet once a driver has just had enough of it and tenure be damned, it's either him or the bus that need to go.       I had to ride it once and it coughed and sputtered its way up and down the hills. It was sad. You could tell the driver was coaxing it to get all he could from it, but once we turned right on to Masonic, he pulled up next to another driver who was waiting at the same light, opened the door and yelled out with a laugh, "I hate the bus. It's sooo slow!" The other driver smirked, offered waning condolences and sped off in her electric steed.       Someday, one driver will get wise to it and pour some form of silicate polishing compound in to the motor oil to firmly put the damned thing out of its misery. The only noise along Sutter you'll hear that day will be a unanimous sigh as we who are residents will hear the dying autobus no more.              In case you're interested, go to Muni and find a spot to take the 2, to share in the glory of this bus. Trust me, you'll know it when it comes.

Good lord, I couldn't believe it. On Monday, I had to run up to Pacific Heights for a quick gig and I was running late. As I hit Van Ness, I thought, sure let's take the bus. It's let me down oh so many times before, but let's just take it again and see if it will be the abusive lover it usually is. Amazingly, it freakin' worked! It was faster than walking and I got to my appointment on time.       For those in that blessed state of existence where public transportation tends to work for you, let me put you in my shoes. You see, I break public transportation. Everything in a system will be running fine and then I meander down to the platform to have it grind to a halt. I'm sorry to all of the rest of you, I really am. I can't help it, but I really wish I could. I don't want to break something that I feel we need so badly, but it appears it is my magical power to jam Muni train doors, de-cable the cable cars, kill the buses, and stop the Bart. Amtrak I take no responsibility for and honestly, neither do they. It's the Union Pacific ownership of the lines they run on that cause all the problems and another reason why our rail needs to be nationalized.       Anyways, I just had to share this moment with you, so we can all remember it together. Now Europe on the other hand, I am the saint of the rails and everything works when I'm there. Maybe this is telling me something?

I didn't really set out to paraphrase and requote Sideshow Bob, but the heat does funny things to you. For me, it's made my head kind of split apart and make one of those big, "pfffffft" sounds like a deflating balloon. Needless to say, I don't do well in warm weather.       Thankfully for those of us on the coast, fog, blessed fog has been rolling in a little bit and cooling SF back down to liveable terms. I assume and hope it will stay around for some time. As do I hope that the cooling trend they're forecasting (ah, the black magic of the five day forecast) will indeed come about and my trip to Yosemite next weekend isn't going to give me heatstroke. Because if my heatstroke looks anything like my breaststroke, there's going to be a lot of flailing and flopping with little forward progress.       Also, I'd just like to say to all the heat junkies out there, "piss off". You are all moping around about how much you love the heat and how great it is and why oh why does San Francisco have to be so cold (you chose to live here I might add), but now that we got heat, you're bitching about how hot it is. It seems like most of you have a five degree band where you like it to be, somewhere from about 75-80F and anything above that hurts. Yes, I bitch about the heat too, but I hate it, which is why I live in San Francisco and I love the fog and the cold and the grey days we have. If you really like the heat, go to Oroville. They were a brisk 115F last Saturday. Tasty, no?

If, when nearly the age of thirty, you learn anything, it's that when you've got a head-splitting, body-breaking, death-feeling hangover, it's that you just need to go with it and not fight it. If your body says, "Sleep damn you.", just sleep. If your body says, "Yes, there is no food in us, but we need throw up anyways.", let it go nuts.       Fighting any and all of this will have unwanted results, like the infamous two-day hangover. Those suck and pointedly let you know that you're getting older and no, mixing four different kinds of booze the night before is not a good idea.       Why am bringing this up? One word, "wine". It's great to have over guest and to share Croatian wines with them to help them explore what the region has to offer. What's not great is not eating enough because you're being the busy host running around and chatting with everyone. Whites then reds, then back to whites plus no food will do you in everytime. Oh well, at least it was a fun night. Fun enough that I never got around to taking pictures...

So, I figured that we might as round out these themeless week in Hudin land with a little bit of fashion, what's up with that?       I must mention what I have term to be the "shants". What these are, are these shorts/pants things that the ladies have been wearing around a lot these days (also called the "cropped pant" by the retail shops.) Essentially some idiot fashion designer high on coke realized that these were in fashion a long time ago and that they must absolutely be brought back because idiot fashion designers think of nothing new these days. The only problem is that no one really seemed to understand how to bring them back.       The old ones looked like golfing pants and were somewhat reasonable on the right girl if she kind of had that naughty librarian out for a picnic sort of thing going on. There were all these accoutrement that were needed to pull this off though, such as the scarf, the right shoe, some kind of legging thing, and a whole bunch of other crap I'm not really too up on. Regardless, it worked. The girls that wore these and wore them right were sexy and I liked it. I liked it a lot.       Here we are today and all the girls seem to want to try and do these things without all the other parts you need to make it work. They're wearing t-shirts and high heels with them for instance. One girl I saw was wearing knee-high boots and she looked like a GI Joe action figure because where the boot stopped and the shants began looked bizarre.       So let me just say as a boy who really, really likes the ladies, these are doing nothing for y'all. I don't care how much money you spend or what kind of figure you have, these things look damned silly and just off balance. Girls can look great in shorts (especially tiny ones), capris (especially leggy ones), and in long pants (especially Italian ones) but these bastard things are just hell. Stay away ladies, stay the bejesus away.

So here's one for you, to break the literary slog I seemed to pop in to... Why is a package coming from China sent to Kentucky before sending it to me in California? And let me emphasize that there are three major airports and two major ports within an hour of where I live.       Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just the way things are, but this isn't good. I wouldn't care if it ended up in Las Vegas or Portland or just anywhere near the West Coast. It seems like an inordinate amount of wasted fuel and time to send something completely across a country before sending it back.       By the way, this is just a laptop. I had no idea it was coming from Hong Kong until I got the notice that it had been shipped. 'HK'? What the hell is 'HK'? Oh yeah...       Anyways, just a random musing for the day. I'm sure it will get here soon. This cross-continental trip hasn't really slowed it down that much. US Customs on the other hand has different ideas as to when something should be allowed in to the country.

I was cleaning up my apartment and purging myself of the unwanted items in life, when, as I was going through my books, I came across Hemingway's, "A Moveable Feast". Naturally this did not get tossed, but it reminded me that I had never finished reading it. I realize this is something of a crime considering that it's regarded by many to be the author's greatest work.       When I sat down to read some of it later that evening, the receipt from Moe's Books in Berkeley fell out. I glanced at it and was bemused at the fact I had purchased this used copy July 8, 1999. So, here it is, nearly seven years to the date that I start to read it again. Ironic really that the time matched up so well, but as is such, things like this tend to happen.       I have realized one of the reasons I didn't get through it was that I was far too young (22 actually) to appreciate it. A funny thought, since Hemingway at was 21 at the time the events took place in Paris, although he was writing it much later in life. Of course, this is a man who had been through WWI early in his life, while I was trying to remember to breath during my first year at UC Berkeley.       It also seems that the book makes considerable more sense and has a greater appeal when you've actually been to Paris. Not that the locations of text and reality completely match up, but you do have a better sense of the setting and don't picture the Eiffel Tower and bread, but long winding European streets and a much, much different attitude than the US.

I don't really do book reviews. To be honest, I haven't even been reading that many books since getting my English Lit degree six years ago. The thought of a book being an enemy combatant that had to be conquered (especially with "Enlightenment" Period literature) has seemed to have pickled my mind when it comes to actually enjoying text. I did however read "Wedded Strangers - The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages" by Lynn Visson.       So, why in the hell would I read this? It's not fiction. It seems like a dry subject with little appeal. And most of all, it's just nothing most folks deal with. It was mostly due to the fact that a friend discovered it in a home she's housesitting and lent it to me, since I was in a relationship with a Russian for three years. So, it was more curiosity that brought me in to the folds of the cover than anything else.       Overall, the book brings up some decent points. It only does these after you get past the first 100 pages or so of examples that start out the book and get very tedious. I know that the author is trying to set a subtext and foundation for what she wants to discuss, but it goes over the top and really, she ends up discussing little. The book seems to read a lot like an Ethnic Studies class at UC Berkeley, in that it's very good on citing many, many examples, but heavily lacks any analysis or real point.       There were a few things that the book brought up which were interesting, but that I already knew. Russian and American peoples have very different cultures and that can cause a strain on a relationship. Let's be honest though, relationships are tough. They require a lot of work and sometimes it just isn't enough. This can happen with someone from around the globe or just down the block.       About the only person this book might be a decent read for are the generally curious people out there and the people who have just gotten in to this type of relationship. It provides some markers of things to look out for, but really, everyone is different and the generalizations of the book (which you do kinda have to do in order to write something like this) don't always play out with everyone. For instance, my relationship didn't end due to cultural differences, but because we were just different people at our core. I think we both could have been natives of one country or the other and the same result would have been met. We're still good friends though and for that, I'm thankful.