Where the heart is.

I'm alone in the house tonight. It's been a few months since I've been alone. ladymondegreen and akawil are off to a convention. I didn't think taking another week off work was all that good an idea, so I stayed home. It's, I think, the second time in almost a year I've been alone, in the sense that no one is going to come in. It's the longest I've been alone in that time too.

It's interesting, the ways in which I've gotten used to living here. I'm not mentally settled. Then again, I'wasn't mentally settled in SF for a pretty long time too. I think of NJ/NYC as home, but I also have tics, and quirks of mind that make Calif (LA/SLO/SF) home too. It's hard. The rythmns here are differnt. The weather isn't the same. Memory plays tricks. I lived in Calif. for 35 years. Some things (like snow) are buried in my memory, and take no getting used to; because they were discrete from the Calif. I lived in.

Other things, like humid days where the sweat in my shirt doesn't dry when I take my knapsack off, those aren't things I really recall.

Rain here is odd. It's softer, and it doesn't last. Those are stranger to my mind than the regular ways it shows up. The ways in which plants run riot is different. The slower pace of vegetal growth, and the different amounts/types of seasonal vegetables and fruits (the farmers' markets have just restarted. They don't have much variety yet, and the numbers of vendors is a lot smaller; at least here in NJ. I might be wrong about the greenmarkets in the city. If I were more clever I'd have thought to check them out sooner. Perahps next week).

I've done a poor job of integrating myself into the community. There are lots of local restaurants. I've barely tapped the potential. Spending my money in other ways and not wanting to spend that sort of time away from home (because ladymondegreen can't really share more than table space with me at a non-kosher restaurant.

I'm working on becoming a bit more of a regular at the local equivalent of Lucky Baldwin's (in Pasadena). There isn't a place like Howie's Pizza, in Palo Alto. SO I'm trying to have a lunch/snack/drink there about once a week. ladymondegreen and I spoke of trying cocktails there, we should perhaps make it a once a week sort of thing, on her way home. An aperitif, as it were.

I am happy here, but it's been a dislocation. I've not found decent riding areas (And I've been lax about tracing a minor oil leak. I think I found it yesterday. I need to check that; which will require running the bike on the center stand for a bit, after I've washed the front of the engine. If it's what I think, it will be an hour or two to fix, and I can do it with the oil change that should have happened over the winter).

Then I need to get an EZ-Pass and spend some time looking at the highways and by-ways. Toronto is only a days ride away. Stratford is two (or a single long day, if I were back in the sort of condition I was in at the tail end of The Big Trip.

This has been one of the easiest, and hardest, things I've ever done. The decision to come here was one of the easiest choices I've ever made (for all that it was heart-wrenching. Distance is a bitch, and there have been [and will be] things I wish I was in Calif. to be able to do). I am, by virtue of both my disability compensation, and a job which I could move to her, self-sufficient, enough that I don't feel myself to be an unreasonable drain on my partners. They support me, in so many ways, but I can stand on my own.

This hasn't always been true (and but for the help of friends, at various points, The Dear only knows where I'd have ended up; here is not that place. Thank heaven for them; not all of you know you you are, and many of those who read this have helped, in their ways, the least of those kindnesses is worthy of being counted among the sheep; at least by my judgement).

So, for all the little moments I suddenly feel I'm back in Rotterdam I am home here.

Sartory

I like kilts (and linnes). They are comfortable, and they don't make me feel I angular twigs for legs; which is why I don't wear shorts.

But I am slight of build. I can't order a Utilikilt to the measurements I think I am without paying a premium. When I tried on a 29 it fell off my ass. I suspect this is because they don't think men have the small rump I do; since I am a 28" waist.

But in Stratford Ontario we saw a scottish shop, and went it. They had a Black Watch in a 30". So I tried it on. It fit. The extra dimension seemed to not matter (I suspect because it was a more trad style than modern kilts, and the drag of being all the way up my waist kept it in place).

I didn't have an adequate belt, so I bought one. I need to get some sort of reticule/sporran (right now I'm using an old army ammo pouch). A couple of days later I realised I'd left my belt behind (I'd grabbed my trousers, but forgotten I'd pulled the belt to see if it would work). They had set it aside, and shipped it to me, gratis. So allow me to say that MacLeod's Scottish Shop (www.kilts.biz) are swell folks,and their trad casuals (what the clerk seemed to call a "drinking kilt") are decently priced.

The next three days were hot as blazes, and I was damned glad of having it. ladymondegreen found another place that has some decent looking (including a modern) for a decent price. I might order a 50/50 wool in a saffron (looks more like camel hair on the screen), and I've ordered a US Army tartan, and a plain black, from a place which is having a sale (so it was a bit more than getting one kilt at list).

The weather today in NY was awful. I was commenting about wanting to wear one at work. My manager said, "there's nothing in the dress code against it, so long as it comes to your knees". If the AC is out when I go in for a training session on Tues, I'm going to wear one on Thus.