Who knew the cyber-world of blogging would prove so fraught with difficulties? It's an adventure, and we all know how those work. Phil's and my move out here was an adventure (and yes, as per various requests, I'm planning to post those moving updates here sometime soon-- I just want to figure out where to put them so they're out of the way for those of you who have already savored every brilliant bon mot). Adventures are tricky things, and usually wet and uncomfortable. This one has proved especially tricky, as the Internet and unfamiliar software are wont to do. I won't bore you with the minutiae, much as I'd like to-- suffice it to say that Blogger was seeing fit to hide my posts, and your comments, in a secret location known only to it, but I have now rooted out what was lost, and it has seen the error of its ways. We are now communicating clearly, or at least I think so. Only time will tell, of course, but if I'm wrong about our new relationship, I have nefarious plans to take my brilliance somewhere else, so Blogger can just watch the hell out and do my bidding if it knows what's good for it.
Onward. I was agonizing over what, precisely, I should plan to post here. I mean, god knows I have enough diatribes and complaints stored up to fill endless posts. But that seems so banal, so expected, so done, you know? The very thought of writing all that whining filled me with ennui, and I can only imagine what it would inspire in you. But then, while cruising around on Highway 101 (a surprisingly fertile place for new thoughts), it occurred to me that I also have a mental storehouse just full of Things the World Needs to Know, and now, with the sometimes-recalcitrant Blogger.com, I finally have a place to put them, thereby forcing my own point of view on the world, where it belongs. I'm planning for a Hall of Fame, ongoing Reviews, and, probably, in spite of the above, a few well-crafted Diatribes-- but I'll at least commit to making those entertaining and readable, and as generally applicable as I can manage. Of course, I am convinced that anything important to me is generally applicable, but I'll try to curb my ego and limit myself to things which you might think are valuable. We'll see how that goes.
First up is the Hall of Fame. It's occurred to me that memory is an important thing, and cyberland provides perhaps the best universal memory ever. Who knows what happens when we die? Do we go on to something better, evolve instantly into something completely different, or just fade to black once and for all? Every possibility I can think of has its own very big pros and cons, and the bottom line is, we don't know and we can't plan. But what we can do is collect the past, and pass it on while we're here so that it's not lost.
The most important part of our past is its denizens. In the Hall of Fame I'll be telling you about a few of mine. I'll work my way up to the scary ones-- those people who have changed me against my will and in ways I wouldn't have signed up for if I'd had a chance-- but we'll start with the easy stuff. First up is my beloved ballet teacher, Maggie Banks, and for those of you who are groaning and rolling your eyes, just shut up and read it when I get it done, because she was a great lady and had a world-class story of her own. She conquered ABT and Hollywood, and kept Frank Sinatra from killing Elvis Presley, so there. Details to follow.
Stay tuned. The glitches are worked out, and more wordy brilliance is on its way. Blogger has succumbed! I am triumphant! Rejoice and sing hallelujahs!
Onward-- tallyho!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Saturday, March 17, 2007
The Job Slog
My, what long time it's been since I posted. I didn't intend that, life just got away from me-- as it does. More specifically, I started working temporarily at Phil's office to bring some cash in, and help solve a little not-enough-hands-on-deck-in-the-middle-of-a-hurricane crisis there. The work has been just fine, thank you-- equal parts data entry and customer service, which translates into entering people's subscription orders into the computer, and then sometimes calling them up to ask just what the hell they actually want, since what they've written makes no sense at all. Given that the average age of a theatergoer in this country is somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and three, this makes for some long, unpredictable conversations, and I've learned more about various people's daughters in Fort Worth, and the history of Menlo Park, than I ever thought there was to know. But that's what I'm being paid for, and I must say that the patrons of TheatreWorks are a good deal nicer and easier to deal with than the nasty coffee addicts of Manhattan, and in any case they're on the other end of a phone line, which makes the whole job pretty damn easy.
But I digress-- which may be the point of a blog, but I'm trying to be focused. Today's official subject, now that we've got the preliminary update section out of the way, if my job search. I'm told by others (not immediately involved in it) that it's going just fine, but the whole thing seems to me to be roughly akin to an endless slog uphill in knee-deep semi-frozen molasses. In other words, it's slow.
And here's the thing that makes this job slog particularly frustrating: as I learned in Chicago, the business community seems to have a very hard time, these days, thinking outside its own boxes. It's very hard to get considered for anything unless you've already done that exact job before, preferably in at least three world-renowned companies for at least five years apiece. Now, my resume, as anyone who knows me might guess, is pretty damn eclectic. Even since I quit dancing, I've managed coffeehouses and an off-Broadway revue, toured with a one-man show, run Real Pilates, worked freelance doing graphic design, web design, and marketing consulting... it's all related, and every part of it has evolved naturally from the previous credits, but what it adds up to is an extremely broad range of skills and expertise, not a neat, focused, single job description. That sort of broadness seems to leave recruiters and upper level managers scratching their heads and then looking up at me with furrowed brows, saying, "But you haven't done this job before," to which I always want to shout, "Oh course I haven't done it before, you dingus! Why would I want to do it now if it was just some retread of something I'd already conquered?" Honestly, I like to learn and be challenged-- am I the only worker out there who feels like that today?
I wonder if this all points to a more disturbing issue, though. Business, in this day and age, seems to be a very peculiar creature. What I mean is, the actual daily practice of business is essentially practical. You're either selling people things, or staying behind the scenes and planning to sell them things (which is more or less what people like marketers and advertising execs do), or perhaps staying really far behind the scenes and advising other people how to sell things better (consultants). But in any case, what you're talking about is a practical activity, and the pragmatic issues which affect it. But given that most of business today is run by MBAs, who have a sort of pseudo-academic patina eggwashed over their nuts-and-bolts outlook, the whole business universe seems to have become extremely muddy, weirdly ritualized, and, let's just say it, insane.
I remember my father, a career academic, decrying the rise of business schools in the early 70s (if I'm recalling aright.) The story seems to have gone like this: because the business world began to pine for some increased respectability in the 60s and 70s, or else because various universities wanted some easy access to the cash held by the business world outside their gates, or because of some combination of the two desires, business colleges began to appear. They are utterly professional in scope and focus. Think about it-- understanding the history of literature is vitally important to an English teacher, critic, or writer, but knowing the precursors of modern business practice is just a waste of brain space for Donald Trump (who has precious little to spare). However, in order to fit into the university system, these business colleges and programs had to create a kind of spurious, quasi-academic superstructure on which to hang their more practical instruction. In other words, selling people things suddenly became (supposedly) theoretical, governed by immutable laws of psychology and sociology (fairly spurious and unreliable disciplines, themselves). The intent was to release a bunch of super-educated business professionals into the world to kick up efficiency, explode sales, and create forms of exploitation barely dreamed of by earlier generations. Let's not question the morality or horror inherent in those goals this time around-- let's just look at what's really happened.
Well, what I seem to be finding is that the whole thing has devolved, not surprisingly, into a sort of particularly banal mysticism and cliquishness. In Chicago I found myself faced first with a string of people who couldn't see that my skills did, in fact, add up to their job descriptions, regardless of how I'd acquired them; and later with bosses who spouted ideas about shopper psychology and environment creation without showing any signs of understanding the reality behind those theories, let alone the steps necessary to translate them into a real world setting. Now I'm facing Problem A again, and have thankfully-- after obnoxiously forcing my way into one temp agency office-- been offered some tips on how to restructure and restate my resume so as to convince understanding-impaired readers that I can actually do what I can do.
I do not mean to be nastier than necessary here, and I also don't mean to encourage any horribly negative perceptions (either in myself or in anyone else) about these people with whom I hope to be interviewing. But I question the environment that encourages this sort of narrowness of perception and total lack of imagination. There was a day, I believe, when a strong general education was considered the best possible preparation for a professional career. The idea was that, if one had well developed universal skills (the ability to write and communicate clearly, a basic understanding of logic and reasoning, a level of comfort with current technology) one could attain the specialized expertise of any particular workplace or industry. But today I seem to be finding almost the opposite-- a reverence for specialized knowledge in the form of jargon and entrenched ritual, and no acknowledgement whatsoever of universality, let alone its obvious value. If some potential employer had said to me, at any point in this process, anything like, "look, you just don't have some of the skills we're looking for-- you can't do A or B or C, and your experience with D is fundamentally unlike what we do," that would make sense. Then I would have the choice of finding some training to get my AB&C skills in shape, or else looking elsewhere. But the only thing anyone has ever said to me is, "You haven't done precisely this before," which seems like another way of saying that I'm not a member of the right club, rather than that I can't do the job. This is disturbing, and not encouraging for the future, either mine or ours as a culture.
So that's my diatribe for today. I have some better thoughts for how to develop this blog, by the way, and you'll be reading those-- if anyone is still reading at all-- next time. I'm picturing a Hall of Fame and various other fun stuff-- fun for me, at least, and, I'm sure, future generations who will recognize and revere my brilliance. Meanwhile, does anyone know anything about forcing tulips? I have a jar full of wilting stems at this point, and I'm not sure how to store the bulbs or what to do next.
But I digress-- which may be the point of a blog, but I'm trying to be focused. Today's official subject, now that we've got the preliminary update section out of the way, if my job search. I'm told by others (not immediately involved in it) that it's going just fine, but the whole thing seems to me to be roughly akin to an endless slog uphill in knee-deep semi-frozen molasses. In other words, it's slow.
And here's the thing that makes this job slog particularly frustrating: as I learned in Chicago, the business community seems to have a very hard time, these days, thinking outside its own boxes. It's very hard to get considered for anything unless you've already done that exact job before, preferably in at least three world-renowned companies for at least five years apiece. Now, my resume, as anyone who knows me might guess, is pretty damn eclectic. Even since I quit dancing, I've managed coffeehouses and an off-Broadway revue, toured with a one-man show, run Real Pilates, worked freelance doing graphic design, web design, and marketing consulting... it's all related, and every part of it has evolved naturally from the previous credits, but what it adds up to is an extremely broad range of skills and expertise, not a neat, focused, single job description. That sort of broadness seems to leave recruiters and upper level managers scratching their heads and then looking up at me with furrowed brows, saying, "But you haven't done this job before," to which I always want to shout, "Oh course I haven't done it before, you dingus! Why would I want to do it now if it was just some retread of something I'd already conquered?" Honestly, I like to learn and be challenged-- am I the only worker out there who feels like that today?
I wonder if this all points to a more disturbing issue, though. Business, in this day and age, seems to be a very peculiar creature. What I mean is, the actual daily practice of business is essentially practical. You're either selling people things, or staying behind the scenes and planning to sell them things (which is more or less what people like marketers and advertising execs do), or perhaps staying really far behind the scenes and advising other people how to sell things better (consultants). But in any case, what you're talking about is a practical activity, and the pragmatic issues which affect it. But given that most of business today is run by MBAs, who have a sort of pseudo-academic patina eggwashed over their nuts-and-bolts outlook, the whole business universe seems to have become extremely muddy, weirdly ritualized, and, let's just say it, insane.
I remember my father, a career academic, decrying the rise of business schools in the early 70s (if I'm recalling aright.) The story seems to have gone like this: because the business world began to pine for some increased respectability in the 60s and 70s, or else because various universities wanted some easy access to the cash held by the business world outside their gates, or because of some combination of the two desires, business colleges began to appear. They are utterly professional in scope and focus. Think about it-- understanding the history of literature is vitally important to an English teacher, critic, or writer, but knowing the precursors of modern business practice is just a waste of brain space for Donald Trump (who has precious little to spare). However, in order to fit into the university system, these business colleges and programs had to create a kind of spurious, quasi-academic superstructure on which to hang their more practical instruction. In other words, selling people things suddenly became (supposedly) theoretical, governed by immutable laws of psychology and sociology (fairly spurious and unreliable disciplines, themselves). The intent was to release a bunch of super-educated business professionals into the world to kick up efficiency, explode sales, and create forms of exploitation barely dreamed of by earlier generations. Let's not question the morality or horror inherent in those goals this time around-- let's just look at what's really happened.
Well, what I seem to be finding is that the whole thing has devolved, not surprisingly, into a sort of particularly banal mysticism and cliquishness. In Chicago I found myself faced first with a string of people who couldn't see that my skills did, in fact, add up to their job descriptions, regardless of how I'd acquired them; and later with bosses who spouted ideas about shopper psychology and environment creation without showing any signs of understanding the reality behind those theories, let alone the steps necessary to translate them into a real world setting. Now I'm facing Problem A again, and have thankfully-- after obnoxiously forcing my way into one temp agency office-- been offered some tips on how to restructure and restate my resume so as to convince understanding-impaired readers that I can actually do what I can do.
I do not mean to be nastier than necessary here, and I also don't mean to encourage any horribly negative perceptions (either in myself or in anyone else) about these people with whom I hope to be interviewing. But I question the environment that encourages this sort of narrowness of perception and total lack of imagination. There was a day, I believe, when a strong general education was considered the best possible preparation for a professional career. The idea was that, if one had well developed universal skills (the ability to write and communicate clearly, a basic understanding of logic and reasoning, a level of comfort with current technology) one could attain the specialized expertise of any particular workplace or industry. But today I seem to be finding almost the opposite-- a reverence for specialized knowledge in the form of jargon and entrenched ritual, and no acknowledgement whatsoever of universality, let alone its obvious value. If some potential employer had said to me, at any point in this process, anything like, "look, you just don't have some of the skills we're looking for-- you can't do A or B or C, and your experience with D is fundamentally unlike what we do," that would make sense. Then I would have the choice of finding some training to get my AB&C skills in shape, or else looking elsewhere. But the only thing anyone has ever said to me is, "You haven't done precisely this before," which seems like another way of saying that I'm not a member of the right club, rather than that I can't do the job. This is disturbing, and not encouraging for the future, either mine or ours as a culture.
So that's my diatribe for today. I have some better thoughts for how to develop this blog, by the way, and you'll be reading those-- if anyone is still reading at all-- next time. I'm picturing a Hall of Fame and various other fun stuff-- fun for me, at least, and, I'm sure, future generations who will recognize and revere my brilliance. Meanwhile, does anyone know anything about forcing tulips? I have a jar full of wilting stems at this point, and I'm not sure how to store the bulbs or what to do next.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Ta-da, the Penninsula
Well, here we are. I'm in Mountain View, CA, and you're wherever you are, and having survived the official Worst Move Ever and settled in to our tiny little corporate apartment with the cats and Phil and about 1/100 of our personal belongings, I am entering the Brave New World of blogging. Not such a new world, at that, but new to me, and a place I haven't even been all that aware of until recently. The reason I'm doing this is because 1) I am always looking for any opportunity to get my words out there, in any form and by any means; and 2) I am dearly hoping that, having gotten my words out into the world in some sort of semi-public way, they will then get noticed by someone, somewhere (perhaps because one of you lovely people will send them along somewhere interesting and useful) and I'll get published, or at the very least solicited to share more words somewhere else more public, and even more official; and also 3) because I am planning to overthrow and destroy the publishing industry, at some point, and I thought it might be a good idea to start firing up the website I'm planning to use for that; and finally 4) because my friend Doug sent me the link to blogger.com, which makes the whole thing so easy. Doug did this, for the record, in response to my email newsletters detailing the Worst Move Ever, and since I got lots of other positive reaction to those from other friends, as well, just as I have for other, similar postings and emails and weekly paycheck memos, well, I thought what the hell, why not take the plunge.
So there you go, and here we are. Of course, at this point I feel horribly trite and uninteresting. If you're still reading, we'll assume you don't agree with that, and I'll imagine you cooing, "No, no, you're brilliant!" and forge ahead. One imagines that an initial posting of a new blog should perhaps contain chirpy predictions about what's likely to appear there in the future, but I can't think of anything drearier than chirpy predictions, so we'll skip that. Suffice it to say that you'll read what I post, and be happy with it. I'll try to keep the enraged ranting to a minimum, or at least be entertaining about it. You catch more flies with honey, or in this case, a silver tongue, if catching anyone is the intent (and that sounds rather deliciously kinky, doesn't it? Oh good-- we've hit annoyance AND sexual innuendo in the first two paragraphs! Off to an excellent start!)
And so it goes, to quote Linda Ellerbee, who is decidedly worth quoting. I am off to feed the cats, having vacuumed and now succeeded in posting. Whoo-hoo! Life enters a new phase! Blogging Central! Watch out, Random House!
Or something like that. Stay tuned, and tell your friends.
So there you go, and here we are. Of course, at this point I feel horribly trite and uninteresting. If you're still reading, we'll assume you don't agree with that, and I'll imagine you cooing, "No, no, you're brilliant!" and forge ahead. One imagines that an initial posting of a new blog should perhaps contain chirpy predictions about what's likely to appear there in the future, but I can't think of anything drearier than chirpy predictions, so we'll skip that. Suffice it to say that you'll read what I post, and be happy with it. I'll try to keep the enraged ranting to a minimum, or at least be entertaining about it. You catch more flies with honey, or in this case, a silver tongue, if catching anyone is the intent (and that sounds rather deliciously kinky, doesn't it? Oh good-- we've hit annoyance AND sexual innuendo in the first two paragraphs! Off to an excellent start!)
And so it goes, to quote Linda Ellerbee, who is decidedly worth quoting. I am off to feed the cats, having vacuumed and now succeeded in posting. Whoo-hoo! Life enters a new phase! Blogging Central! Watch out, Random House!
Or something like that. Stay tuned, and tell your friends.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Tales From the Road (Part III)
We're here, we're queer, we're... more or less vertical. Actually, a lot of the time since we arrived in our new home has been spent supine, or walking around running into things-- each other, the cats, the walls... This trip took it out of us, and we've agreed that it truly earned the title Worst Move Ever. The cats agree. In any case, just to finish the story, here's what happened since the last update I sent out:
We got stuck again, in Salt Lake City. We tried to get out, we really did. But the Fates were clearly against us, and much as we fought them, those bitches are just too strong for human beings, and in the end they won. We got up early, thinking that we could beat the worst of the snowstorm that was predicted and get into Nevada, where the weather was suppsed to be clearer. But the snow came early, and by 6 am it was already falling steadily. We dithered around for an hour, then decided to head out anyway, because we were getting conflicting reports about what was happening to the West, and we thought we might get stuck for good if we stayed. I figured the actual conditions would probably be less dire than the drama queen SLC news anchors were saying, and that even if we had to pause in Wendover to wait for a couple passes to get cleared or reopened, we'd still get through to Reno without too much trouble. Just exactly what we'd do with the cats if we had to wait around was an open question, but still, I figured it was better to bash on through than to wait around to get buried in Mormon slush.
But as it turned out, we had other problems to face before the slush even had its chance at us. When we got outside, we found that two idiots had parked directly behind our truck and trailer, completely boxing us in. What were they thinking? Or were they thinking at all? We'd gone to some trouble to park out of the way, just as we had everywhere on this trip. But these two wahoos had pulled up right behind us, either assuming they'd be leaving first (why? they'd certainly arrived much later!) or else just not bothering to think at all. The front desk clerk managed to track down one of these stupid people, who did come out to move his enormous Lincoln. But we still had to take ten minutes to maneuver around the other car and get out of the lot. Argh!
Next problem: the moment we pulled onto the highway, the real snow started coming down. Fat, wet flakes just on the point of freezing covered our windshields and built up on the road. Within minutes, my windshield wipers had turned into great big popsicles with all the clinging snow. The bumper to bumper traffic slowed, and visibility reduced to the point where all we could see was the cars directly in front of us. Phil needed to get gas, and we'd planned to do that as soon as we hit Highway 80 again and were headed out of town, but the exit he chose had no gas stations, just lots of hotels, and then it turned out to have no re-entry to the highway, either. At this point the traffic had gotten better, but the visibility had decreased to just a few yards, and the snow was falling faster than ever. I pulled up behind Phil in an empty parking lot where he'd gone to turn around and try to figure out where to go next, and just said, "Okay, we're staying, I'm going to call around for another hotel." And that's what we did-- we found a much nicer LaQuinta north of SLC (if anybody's traveling through there, go up to Layton rather than any of the in-town places-- much nicer area, much nicer people), checked in, got upgraded to a suite by the lovely lady at the front desk, whom I'd talked to on the phone, hauled the cats inside one more time, and headed off to find breakfast at the Cracker Barrel across the street. All of which was lovely, reassuring, welcoming... and then it stopped snowing and the sun came out, so we both felt guilty about not driving on after all.
In the end, it turned out we'd made the right choice after all, because the storm was raging off and on all across Nevada-- Reno got six inches of snow, and Donner Pass, where Highway 80 goes West of Reno, was closed or required chains all day. So we couldn't have gotten anywhere anyway, and meanwhile we had a great place to stay and a day off to rest again, which was a godsend. I slept, Phil worked remotely for TheatreWorks, and in the afternoon we went down into SLC to see the Mormon Temple and downtown and a few other areas. Very strange place- lots of impressive buildings (the convention center attached to the temple is pretty spectacular), and lots of oh-so-perky young ladies in long skirts very eager to tell us all about every building and also, by the way, ask if we were familiar with the Church of Latter Day Saints. To which I could honestly say, "Oh yes, I know all about you," and make a quick exit. The downtown area outside of Temple Square seems to be dying-- I remember it as being pretty vital and lively when I drove through with my friend, Keren, a few years ago. But maybe that was just left over from the '02 Olympics, or something, and now it's all falling apart. In any case, once we got away from Mormon Central there were lots of empty storefronts, and what shops and restaurants were still around looked pretty unimpressive and seedy. We headed back up to Layton and had dinner at the Olive Garden (I know, I know-- the Depths of Suburbia, not to mention the ultimate in Corporate Food, but it was fine, and the service was very good, and besides, Phil, as a good Italian boy, has always felt some sort of weird responsibility to experience Olive Garden once, and this seemed to be the perfect time and place.)
The next day there was a little snow over a couple passes, but nothing that slowed us down too much, and we breezed through Nevada and I felt very at home again, what with the vast desert distances, the bare and craggy mountains (beautifully picked out in snow, which certainly shows them to their best advantage), and the slot machines at every truck stop. Ah, Nevada, spiritual home of all things slightly sleazy, with no apologies or embarrassment.
And the rest of our trip went more or less as planned. We had dinner with my family that night, and admired the results of my parents' latest redecorating projects (rebuilding their house has become an ongoing, never-ending thing for some reason. They used to only do it in honor of special occasions, like when my sister got married, but now it's constant. I'm wondering if this is what my future holds-- of course, I'll have to actually own a house, first. Or else just spend my days constantly repainting a rental. Yippee skip.) We also did a mini-tour around downtown Reno on the way back to our hotel, and stopped by the Grand Sierra (which is still the MGM Grand to me, site of my first dance job and a huge part of my history) which made me feel sort of sad and old, and where there's far too little left of what the place used to look like. I didn't get to see any of the friends I'd hoped to meet up with, because we were just too tired and useless by that point. And I don't think either Phil or I was able to appreciate all the stuff I'd looked forward to for this part of the trip, like the beauty of the mountains west of Reno, or the snow, or any of my own good history there. When we left in the morning (after an hour or so of last minute panic, because there were chain requirements over the pass AGAIN!) we realized we were into our 8th day of moving-- EIGHT DAYS, people, which is about four too long, in my book, and two more than we'd planned for when we set off!-- all we could do was keep going without thought or any wasted time. Enjoying the drive and appreciating its beauties was far beyond us.
That last day of travel is probably worth a travelogue all on its own, because it starts with one of the most spectacular drives you can do on any major highway, and ended, for us, with a cruise through a fabulous, and fabulously weird, area of California that I hadn't seen before-- sheer, vertical green hills with towering windmills lining their backs and ridges, their vanes rolling steadily and ponderously atop their hundreds-of-feet-high stalks. But honestly, it was all too long, tooooooo looooonnnnnnnnggg to be dealt with, and when we turned up at Phil's office in Menlo Park, I know we looked like roadkill. We left the truck at the office, installed the cats at our corporate apartment (where they are finally calmed down and no longer hanging from the ceilings in hysteria), and collapsed. And then the next day we got up, unloaded with the fabulous help of a last minute crew thrown together by one of Phil's staff people, returned the truck and trailer, and collapsed again. And yesterday, we began to feel like human beings again-- finally! Today, Phil's at his first full length work day and I'm starting the process of looking for work and settling in. Oh yippee. Keep your fingers crossed, and wish me luck in this, please.
Attached is a final picture of Bob the Truck, returned to the others of his kind in the Penske lot. You will probably be hearing more from me in the fairly near future, because some of you have suggested some projects that I want to try, and I'll be looking for an audience. Stay tuned. But meanwhile, we're here, we're settled, and we even seem to be liking it. We're looking for rentals, and hoping for the best-- keep sending those good thoughts, y'all!
We got stuck again, in Salt Lake City. We tried to get out, we really did. But the Fates were clearly against us, and much as we fought them, those bitches are just too strong for human beings, and in the end they won. We got up early, thinking that we could beat the worst of the snowstorm that was predicted and get into Nevada, where the weather was suppsed to be clearer. But the snow came early, and by 6 am it was already falling steadily. We dithered around for an hour, then decided to head out anyway, because we were getting conflicting reports about what was happening to the West, and we thought we might get stuck for good if we stayed. I figured the actual conditions would probably be less dire than the drama queen SLC news anchors were saying, and that even if we had to pause in Wendover to wait for a couple passes to get cleared or reopened, we'd still get through to Reno without too much trouble. Just exactly what we'd do with the cats if we had to wait around was an open question, but still, I figured it was better to bash on through than to wait around to get buried in Mormon slush.
But as it turned out, we had other problems to face before the slush even had its chance at us. When we got outside, we found that two idiots had parked directly behind our truck and trailer, completely boxing us in. What were they thinking? Or were they thinking at all? We'd gone to some trouble to park out of the way, just as we had everywhere on this trip. But these two wahoos had pulled up right behind us, either assuming they'd be leaving first (why? they'd certainly arrived much later!) or else just not bothering to think at all. The front desk clerk managed to track down one of these stupid people, who did come out to move his enormous Lincoln. But we still had to take ten minutes to maneuver around the other car and get out of the lot. Argh!
Next problem: the moment we pulled onto the highway, the real snow started coming down. Fat, wet flakes just on the point of freezing covered our windshields and built up on the road. Within minutes, my windshield wipers had turned into great big popsicles with all the clinging snow. The bumper to bumper traffic slowed, and visibility reduced to the point where all we could see was the cars directly in front of us. Phil needed to get gas, and we'd planned to do that as soon as we hit Highway 80 again and were headed out of town, but the exit he chose had no gas stations, just lots of hotels, and then it turned out to have no re-entry to the highway, either. At this point the traffic had gotten better, but the visibility had decreased to just a few yards, and the snow was falling faster than ever. I pulled up behind Phil in an empty parking lot where he'd gone to turn around and try to figure out where to go next, and just said, "Okay, we're staying, I'm going to call around for another hotel." And that's what we did-- we found a much nicer LaQuinta north of SLC (if anybody's traveling through there, go up to Layton rather than any of the in-town places-- much nicer area, much nicer people), checked in, got upgraded to a suite by the lovely lady at the front desk, whom I'd talked to on the phone, hauled the cats inside one more time, and headed off to find breakfast at the Cracker Barrel across the street. All of which was lovely, reassuring, welcoming... and then it stopped snowing and the sun came out, so we both felt guilty about not driving on after all.
In the end, it turned out we'd made the right choice after all, because the storm was raging off and on all across Nevada-- Reno got six inches of snow, and Donner Pass, where Highway 80 goes West of Reno, was closed or required chains all day. So we couldn't have gotten anywhere anyway, and meanwhile we had a great place to stay and a day off to rest again, which was a godsend. I slept, Phil worked remotely for TheatreWorks, and in the afternoon we went down into SLC to see the Mormon Temple and downtown and a few other areas. Very strange place- lots of impressive buildings (the convention center attached to the temple is pretty spectacular), and lots of oh-so-perky young ladies in long skirts very eager to tell us all about every building and also, by the way, ask if we were familiar with the Church of Latter Day Saints. To which I could honestly say, "Oh yes, I know all about you," and make a quick exit. The downtown area outside of Temple Square seems to be dying-- I remember it as being pretty vital and lively when I drove through with my friend, Keren, a few years ago. But maybe that was just left over from the '02 Olympics, or something, and now it's all falling apart. In any case, once we got away from Mormon Central there were lots of empty storefronts, and what shops and restaurants were still around looked pretty unimpressive and seedy. We headed back up to Layton and had dinner at the Olive Garden (I know, I know-- the Depths of Suburbia, not to mention the ultimate in Corporate Food, but it was fine, and the service was very good, and besides, Phil, as a good Italian boy, has always felt some sort of weird responsibility to experience Olive Garden once, and this seemed to be the perfect time and place.)
The next day there was a little snow over a couple passes, but nothing that slowed us down too much, and we breezed through Nevada and I felt very at home again, what with the vast desert distances, the bare and craggy mountains (beautifully picked out in snow, which certainly shows them to their best advantage), and the slot machines at every truck stop. Ah, Nevada, spiritual home of all things slightly sleazy, with no apologies or embarrassment.
And the rest of our trip went more or less as planned. We had dinner with my family that night, and admired the results of my parents' latest redecorating projects (rebuilding their house has become an ongoing, never-ending thing for some reason. They used to only do it in honor of special occasions, like when my sister got married, but now it's constant. I'm wondering if this is what my future holds-- of course, I'll have to actually own a house, first. Or else just spend my days constantly repainting a rental. Yippee skip.) We also did a mini-tour around downtown Reno on the way back to our hotel, and stopped by the Grand Sierra (which is still the MGM Grand to me, site of my first dance job and a huge part of my history) which made me feel sort of sad and old, and where there's far too little left of what the place used to look like. I didn't get to see any of the friends I'd hoped to meet up with, because we were just too tired and useless by that point. And I don't think either Phil or I was able to appreciate all the stuff I'd looked forward to for this part of the trip, like the beauty of the mountains west of Reno, or the snow, or any of my own good history there. When we left in the morning (after an hour or so of last minute panic, because there were chain requirements over the pass AGAIN!) we realized we were into our 8th day of moving-- EIGHT DAYS, people, which is about four too long, in my book, and two more than we'd planned for when we set off!-- all we could do was keep going without thought or any wasted time. Enjoying the drive and appreciating its beauties was far beyond us.
That last day of travel is probably worth a travelogue all on its own, because it starts with one of the most spectacular drives you can do on any major highway, and ended, for us, with a cruise through a fabulous, and fabulously weird, area of California that I hadn't seen before-- sheer, vertical green hills with towering windmills lining their backs and ridges, their vanes rolling steadily and ponderously atop their hundreds-of-feet-high stalks. But honestly, it was all too long, tooooooo looooonnnnnnnnggg to be dealt with, and when we turned up at Phil's office in Menlo Park, I know we looked like roadkill. We left the truck at the office, installed the cats at our corporate apartment (where they are finally calmed down and no longer hanging from the ceilings in hysteria), and collapsed. And then the next day we got up, unloaded with the fabulous help of a last minute crew thrown together by one of Phil's staff people, returned the truck and trailer, and collapsed again. And yesterday, we began to feel like human beings again-- finally! Today, Phil's at his first full length work day and I'm starting the process of looking for work and settling in. Oh yippee. Keep your fingers crossed, and wish me luck in this, please.
Attached is a final picture of Bob the Truck, returned to the others of his kind in the Penske lot. You will probably be hearing more from me in the fairly near future, because some of you have suggested some projects that I want to try, and I'll be looking for an audience. Stay tuned. But meanwhile, we're here, we're settled, and we even seem to be liking it. We're looking for rentals, and hoping for the best-- keep sending those good thoughts, y'all!
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