A good chunk of Sunday is dedicated to email, I’ve decided. I had two friends mail me today asking if I was OK because they hadn’t heard from me in a bit. I need to be a tad more attentive, I guess. But for some reason, I’ve been even worse than usual with the electronic correspondence lately…

For the record, I’m fine, thanks. Had birthday dinners with Dan on Thursday (his official gathering) and Friday (his actual birthday). Jamie came over tonight for pizza and Earthquake (we cheered when Charlton Heston was swept away to his death). And I still may make a quickie road trip to Sacramento tomorrow, assuming I get an early enough start. It’s only supposed to be 81 there; this may be the best time all summer to do it…

Now, however, I’m gonna sleep. It’s rather comforting to know that people would clue in pretty quickly if something horrible ever happened to me…

Mark is here for a few hours for a job interview (which may get him living here even quicker and more seemlessly than originally planned). He’ll also get to go to Dan‘s birthday dinner tonight before driving back to Fresno. I’ll finish up some work later this evening. And then this rather hectic week will be over and I’ll have three days to answer about a month’s worth of email…

Keep in mind that if you happen to be in SF next Saturday night and have no other plans, you’re invited to watch me turn 38…

So yes, the dreaded summer cold DID arrive in my life on Friday, but fortuntely it was accompanied by my first birthday present of the year (from Duncan) on Friday afternoon and by the arrival of Mark on Friday night. All in all, it was bearable, although I’m sure I wasn’t terribly exciting company this weekend…

So about that Gilroy Garlic Festival: we tried to attend. We really did. Mark drove patiently through the hell which is everything south of San Jose, and I killed off a box of Kleenex in the process. We were motivated, dammit…

About 45 minutes after we’d originally planned to, we arrived in downtown Gilroy and started following the signs (and the hoardes of cars) to the park where said festival was to be held. I’d mention the name of the park, but I have no idea what it was; after moving slowly in a line of cars to the point where (a) we were on the verge of running out of gas, and (b) we still had no idea if we were within ten miles of the damned place, we gave up and headed back north…

The lack of planning was stunning. The festival is apparently held in some godforsaken park in the middle of nowhere, with only one road in or out. Any other roads which may (or may not) have led to it were blocked off. There is no indication of how far away you are and the traffic is astounding. Just plain idiotic; if they want people to get so frustrated that they just give up, they’ve found the perfect MO…

The day was saved somewhat by dinner at the El Rancho Steakhouse in San Jose and by catching Superfluid Helium 3 in the Mission (which turned out to be far more car-friendly than suburban Gilroy). Jamie met us for the show, Mark drank, and I ate carrot cake. We were happy, even if one of us was a bit sniffly…

The cold seems to be going away now, or at least moving deeper into my chest, which is good. I think. Mark’s gone away too, which is not so good. But it leaves me the rest of Sunday afternoon to watch movies and drink Diet 7-Up and avoid leaving the house and having to see the lukewarm leatherettes who have overtaken my neighborhood as part of the annual dress rehearsal for the much bigger naugahyde festival in September…