My friend Ashley always was really good at getting us to explore the desert (and beyond) while she lived here, and the same holds true for her desert vacations now that she lives back East again.
Today started out with one simple mission: visit the Integratron for a sound bath.
But lunch at Pappy & Harriet's also sounded like a good idea. (Most of us hadn't yet been to either high-desert landmark.) And so did a trip to Pomona for the L.A. County Fair.
So thanks to Kate's late-night invite, I spent 12 hours day-trippin' around with adults Ashley and Kate in the front of her rental car, while Colin and I played the roles (to a T, if I do say so myself) of the kids in the backseat.
And by the time we made it back to Palm Springs, we had someone new in the car — Kickapoo Rex. Yep. He's an inflatable dinosaur. That's how we roll.
Today was one of those days when I realize how much I love being a journalist.
It wasn't because I got to today's big story first. (As best I can tell, that was KPSP, though KESQ says they broke the story.)
And it wasn't because I think I wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning story, though I think it was one of my better ones.
No, today was great because I felt like I was finally firing on all cylinders while covering a big breaking story.
I developed this metaphor a while back to describe what I needed to do better on stories where, say, I shot photos with my camera but didn't get any with my iPhone to send via TwitPic... or I got photos but not video... or I phoned in details but missed the opportunity to get things out quicker via tweeting.
Granted, I had plenty of time and a fairly captive set of sources with which to pull off this feat, and the balance of things could've been tweaked, but it was nice to use nearly all my different reporting abilities on one story.
And even though I was using a bunch of different tools today, I was focused on reporting all day, as opposed to Web producing.
I love both aspects of my job, but it's often tough to shift gears during the day or to try to do both simultaneously — and really well.
So all of today's activity, ironically, also provided a nice bit of oneness to my workday.
Left entirely to my own devices, I doubt I'd wake up at the crack of dawn every morning. But being on a relatively consistent shift that starts at 6 a.m. for almost two years now has made me more and more of a morning person.
It's to the point now where the only reasons I won't wake up sometime before 9 a.m. on any day of the week are a) if I've been out too late with friends the night before or b) I'm trying to sleep in on Saturday so I can stay up until my weekend shift ends at 1:30 a.m.
I've started to make it known around the office lately that I'm ready, willing and able to ditch my crazy late shift in favor of five weekdays on the crazy early shift. If the staffing stars ever align and that happens, I'll not only have a normal weekend, but perhaps more importantly, I'll have a much more consistent daily rhythm.
But one thing I'd leave behind is the joy of having Mondays off. Lately, I've been doing enough crazy swings from morning person to night owl toward the end of each week that, by Monday, I'm wiped out.
But today was one of those rare Mondays when I was on an even keel, woke up in the morning, got a lot done and had some fun along the way. These are the kind of Mondays I'll miss.
Today, I...
stopped by work to catch an hourlong presentation from some Facebook folks who stopped by Corporate
got gas and did grocery shopping
made a delicious dinner in the Crock-Pot
ran into co-workers everywhere
scavenged for books and toys at the soon-to-be-shuttered Borders and Toys "R" Us in Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert, respectively
read a little of one of those books, both at a park and with my feet in the pool at home
rediscovered the world that exists east of Date Palm Drive
saw the Sundance favorite Another Earth, which is now also an Indy favorite
and picked up one more book at the mall while I was there.
And as impressed as I am with my solo version of Monday Shenanigans, I also realized that almost all of these things could've been done instead on a Sunday. Maybe someday...
The episode aired on bio. last weekend, but since I don't get that channel, I got my first look at the episode this afternoon when a DVD copy arrived in the mail.
In fact, I've only had two sketchy experiences in all my walking around town at all hours of the night.
One was surely more than a year ago, on a late-night walk to Spa Resort Casino for some delicious Asian food at the Noodle Bar. I walked past some guy standing in the entryway to the Town & Country Center (after Zeldaz had moved out, as I recall) who grabbed his crotch and semi-crudely asked if I wanted to give him a BJ. I declined without skipping a step, and he pleaded a bit more, but soon I was out of earshot. Total sketch, right? But also total anomaly.
Tonight marked the second entry in this series, though.
I was just on my way home from accompanying Stacy to her apartment complex from mine, and thank goodness I did.
For on the way home, while strolling down Arenas (which, for the uninitiated, is the gayborhood in Palm Springs) I was approached by this guy who asked, "Do you have it?"
Instead of busting out my best sassy-black-woman-style "Mmmm-hmm!" and tracing my body, I smartly said something like, "Um, I don't think so."
But this guy followed me all the way from just past Encilia to Indian Canyon, telling me that he just wanted 60, not a big buy, just a little bit... and that he knew me, he knew I had it, he knew I had worked with so-and-so and so-and-so-else before. All the while, I kept trying to tell him that he had the wrong guy, but he was convinced that I was his drug dealer.
"What do you even want?" I finally asked. "Because I'm pretty sure I don't have it."
"Tina," came the reply. Seeing as how I couldn't even remember what that was slang for (meth), I assured him that I had none.
But he was so sure that he had seen me a million times, blah blah blah.
"So what's my name?" I asked, hoping this drug dealer didn't also happen to be named Brian.
"I don't know because I always go through..." Fuck.
Finally, after turning him down a half-million times, he exasperatedly asked, "So you've never done drugs, or what?"
"Dude, I haven't even smoked weed." True story.
And with that he backed off as I walked on to cross Indian, saying something about how I was uncannily just as good-looking as this drug dealer, which I just took as a compliment.
