Pere[grin]ation

Unbelievably, rush hour traffic asserted great diplomacy, delivering me to my doorstep no later than 5:30 PM. This is, my dear friends, a very rare and beautiful thing. Thrilled at the new prospects of lethargic self-indulgence now afforded me, I slipped through the apartment, shedding life's accessories in my wake.*

*This includes, but is not limited to: iPhone, keys, security badge, and sweater.

Juggling grape soda, trashy novel, and unlit Parliament like a Cirque alum, I porch-perched and sighed happily at the little patch of sunlight creeping towards my toes. She-Who-Shares-My-Living-Quarters soon paid me a quick visit in the outdoors, letting me know that she would be leaving to run a brief errand. I bid her farewell and returned to blissed-out post-work mecca.

Not long after, a chill crept about the space, and after several yawns and a gratuitous stretch of the back, I attempted to re-enter my home.

To no avail. Space-Mate had locked the door fast, apres our chat. Similarly, the front door turned a deaf ear to my pleadings for entry. Dejected, I returned to my stoop and dedicated myself to completing a book I have yet to take seriously.

Fence took on the role of post-modern sundial. As the light that climbed through its hatchings grew greyer and crept and crept, Agitation descended into the scene. Book quickly ran out of pages and exited. Two hours had now passed, and I feared that Space-Mate was gone for good, ne'er to return until the arrival of Day-Next. LandLord, I soon learned, was visiting family in another state.

I do so love to camp. However, my porch can and will not contain the prostrate form of a gangly female, and the concrete slab floor would offer little respite from the impending night's chill. I urged all 68 inches of self into verticality, and began an epic, stiletto-ed trek down The Way of the Kings.

Walking inspired blistering of the feet. Blistering inspired increased agitation. Increased agitation decreased self-composure. Soon, I was stumbling and fuming down El Camino like a drunken and rejected prom date. I can't say for certain, but I feel sure that I must have been muttering to myself, skirt balled helplessly in my fists. I apologize to unfortunate commuters-home who witnessed this, as it no doubt brought up repressed childhood memories of at least one unsettling episode of The X Files.

Directly betwixt my own domicile and that of Nicholas (Knight in Shining Jaguar), She-Who-Shares-My-Living-Quarters flew past, somehow failing to witness my manic eruption of arms and legs and everything flailable.

Well, friends, I turned around. My blistered feet and my bedraggled soul trudged and trudged. Mourning the loss of my entire evening, an evening which had (at first glance) appeared to be a bastion of lethargic glory, I passed another 30 minutes before trip-grunt-toppling through the door marked "3."

I've never hidden a key outdoors, for fear of masked vigilantes - dashing men with pillage and plunder in their souls, who could daintily pluck said key from its Nook of Secrecy and do all manner of untowardly deeds. My tendencies may, however, have been swayed.

Interpret the following statistics as you will.

Masked Vigilante Count (as of 8/14/08): 0
Impromptu Homelessness Count (as of 8/14/08): More than 0.

Medium.

Today,  Conceptual Reception has been born in the form of Blog. (This choice is, of course, in opposition to my earlier, and rather grandiose, aspirations towards Delicious Zine-Distro.) In addition, my dear new blog also lends itself well to rapid disguise amidst corporate goings-on. Caught at work with blunt Crayolas in hand no more! The Mighty and Reductive Left Click shall, in dangerous circumstances, render my expository shenanigans well-nigh invisible.

I will now pander to my own need for Artificial Narrative Structure. Yes, that's right: I am a slave to life's little parentheses, and perhaps guilty of creating them where they have not voluntarily appeared. However, another gleaming quality of the Blog Realm is its patience with self-indulgence, and I would feel lax in avoiding this generous opportunity.

1. End College/Ejection
   
• 1. Freshly-printed diploma in hand, bearing some capitalized letters that mean important things to people with their own staplers, I made a research-free decision to move to the California Bay Area.
  
• 2. Studio Apartment (-$1000/mo) +Professional Acting/Touring Career (+$HORRIFED GASP/mo). I traveled the West Coast this way, performed in a different city every day, acquired five shiny new stitches in my chin, and learned to live out of a Swiss Gear Backpack for two weeks. Valuable? Yes. Exhausting? Mais OUI.
  
• 3. In mid-November, I proved video-game nay-sayers wrong, demonstrating that Tetris teaches some innordinately valuable life skills. I also discovered that somehow:
  
  Two Suitcases + One Backpack + Six Months = HUGE Amounts of Accumulated Knick-Knackery
  
  
• 4. Who would have imagined that, in the process of moving one mile down El Camino Real, a rented vehicle would manage to find its way into a crash? This magnificent moment served as the hallmark of my second relocation in six months, and excitedly I strode forth into my new shared-apartment life.
  
  
  
2. The Proverbial "Pair" Is Grown
   
   • 1. Sure, we all fly off the handle when we're worked 80 hour weeks and not compensated for it. The key is in the Marketing. (Here, of course, I refer to my continual insistence that ending my Children's Theatre stint was not due to an incidental moment of wrath, but rather to my evolved self-awareness. This slightly-fictitious entity told me that being able to afford food would be okay.)
     
   • 2. If there's one thing I find delicious, it's an impromptu overhaul! I danced my last
     witchy dance across a stage in Northern California, frolicked my way through the
     turning of 23 years, and dove into a solid week-point-five of Consideration. Here again we see a few guest appearances from Frosty Glass of Gin.
     
   • 3. RECEPTION! (Yes, we've reached the apex!)
     In a very grown up list entitled "Things I Like," I was startled to find appearances by: Food (And Eating It When I Am Hungry), Shelter (And Being Able to Pay for It), Books (And Stacking Them/Rolling Around in Them/Buying Them More Friends)...
     
   • 4. I sought and found a job that would let all of these things CO-EXIST! (I, too, bore a semblance of shock.) Despite the raised [perfectly waxed] eyebrows of Life's Voice-Over Commentators, I skipped through the doors of my first Silicon Valley Software Company and planted my excited butt right behind the reception desk.
     
   Two months later, I now begin my Compendium of Reception Knowledge. Hang on to your monogrammed mugs....