Fortunate Accident

Today was a good day. You would think that being on a three month vacation, everyday would be a good day. But I am still learning how to not be on a schedule, and some days reek of boredom, and loneliness. The trick, I'm learning, is to look forward to the unexpected, not to shy away from it. Last Friday, wanting to stay out of my apartment, for fear of being trapped by the El Modena High School graduation hordes, a sea of people in cars encasing my apartment pulling along bouquets of balloons and flowers, I reluctantly went to the Irvine Spectrum, and then Laguna Beach. It was a little unnerving, because I had no idea what to do. Doing nothing is a art form. I had 3 hours to kill at the beach, and it was great. I sat in different places on the cliff, explored, read, wrote, listened to the iPod, offered to take pictures of people who where together taking solo pictures of each other. It was beautiful.

Today, I woke up late, walked down to Starbucks for the usual. Ran 4 miles. Showered. Went to the library. I don't have a plan for the books I am reading, it's whatever comes to me. Today, it was Norman Mailer, and Henry Miller. I am trying to learn/read about authors/people that I have heard about, but don't know much about. Then to Barnes and Noble, Kurt Vonnegut.

But the best part of my day, was bumping into Sean. Serendipity. We both somehow ended up at the house at the same time, Chris is out of town with Mel and she forgot to padlock the refrigerator. I am cleaning out the garage, so we spent some time sifting through family treasures. It's amazing how much of your life you forget, but is magically contained on little scraps of paper. We dug through pictures of old soccer teams, progress reports from the third grade, an adorable Father Day card with Melanie's tiny hand prints, high school yearbooks from all four of us, programs from concerts, even ticket stubs from the 1984 Olympics in LA. A million memories, all encrusted in diamonds and spun with gold. I hate to sound like the commercial, but the cost of a program to a Los Angeles Rams game in 1979 was $1 {really}, but the memories are priceless.

After that we walked down to 31 Flavors, and I bought my 20 year old son ice cream. It does not get any better than that.