As my friend Melissa and I approached a crosswalk on campus yesterday, I watched a car drive right through the stop sign without even bothering to slow down.

I made my displeasure known. “There’s a stop sign there, jerk!”

A girl within earshot looked over at me with what I thought was a grin on her face, only to realize that it was probably something more akin to malice, as the car stopped mere feet past the crosswalk and she opened the door and got in.

Three-hour classes are quite possibly the worst invention of all time. Tonight I had my first lecture class of the semester. I managed to stick with it for the first hour and forty-five minutes or so, but it was all downhill from there. Suddenly, I went from writing decent notes to writing thought-provoking notes like this:

Fun question of the night: How do you pluralize ‘epiglottis’?

And when I started writing down how many minutes I had left in class, I knew I was really in trouble.

30 minutes left in class. YAY.

25 minutes left–I’ve already mentally checked out.

And then it got more off topic.

These desk chairs are decidedly not good for me. Ugh.

I’m rather proud of myself–I managed to bring up Bulimia into the lecture. Go me!

Now that’s what I call graduate level work. Oh, and before I forget, I also managed to announce to the girl next to me that that one part of the larynx we were looking at resembled a butt. Because it did, seriously.

Saturday, I made my reluctant, yet still triumphant, return to Los Angeles. I kept note of everything that happened along the way, just for fun. Here’s how it plays out, in real time.

Prologue

Perhaps the reluctance to fully pack comes from the fact that I am not yet ready to say goodbye. Packing everything completely signals that it’s time to go, and for all there is to look forward to, I know how much I’ll miss those small everyday things I’d gotten spoiled with on a daily basis over the summer. Time bests me, and with a heavy heart, I accept that the memories remain, and more will be made, all in good time.

Chapter 11:35am, Mountain Standard TIme

The metal detector beeps as I walk through security at the airport. A high-strung TSA employee orders me to move back and then try again. I oblige, and this time I get through without the glaring beep beep beep. I move forward to await my bag, computer, and lunch. A man stares intently at his computer screen, scrunching his face up in what could be constipation, except it occurs to me that he is concentrating deeply on the orange, blue, white, and yellow images before him. After a solid minute, he lifts up my Whole Foods bag, gives me a suspicious look, and asks if this is mine. I reply in the affirmative, and he proceeds to open it up and remove the children’s meal I had purchased for half an hour before. Apple juice, 6.7 ounces. Apple sauce, unknown amount, but certainly more than 3 ounces. Both are contraband, and because I opt not to have to wait another twenty minutes to repeat the process, they are confiscated.

Chapter 1:30pm, Mountain Standard Time

I board the plane to Phoenix. Despite being in the second herd of passengers, the plane is quite full. I head toward the back in the hopes of finding an empty row with an available aisle or window seats. I spy an empty row, but upon my arrival I discover a child seat in place next to the window. I wait, and a mother approaches with her infant daughter. She smiles and says I’m welcome to sit next to them. The next hour or so is spent chatting amicably and playing with her thirteen-month-old. This surprises me, but very pleasantly so.

Chapter 2:45pm, Pacific Standard Time

After running into a friend I made last semester, I board the plane to Burbank. This time, I secure a window seat in the second to last row of the plane. A haggard old man approaches and decides to take the seat between me and the 6′5″ hulk on the end. This old man is probably pushing 90, and his slightly curved frame makes him appear shorter than he probably is. His hair is white and cut extremely short. He sits down and promptly places his elbows on the arm rests, never to move them for the entire hour and a half flight. He removes from his shirt pocket a book. Judging by its size, I peg it as one of those travel books that shows the highlights of different places. Judging by its red and busy cover, I wonder if it is erotica. I look over his shoulder and see words that talk about Mass and Jesus. So much for first impressions.

Chapter 4:23pm, Pacific Standard Time

My landlord picks me up and drives me back to my new home. My heart races for the next forty minutes as we tear through the streets at 50 and 60 miles per hour, despite the heavy traffic. Relief washes over me as we finally arrive. I reflect on how I’ve never had motion sickness, but that ride certainly could have induced it.

Chapter 5:30pm, Pacific Standard Time

I begin to unpack, happy at least that the traveling is over. I see light glint from the floor. I do not expect this, and then I see the light scurry underneath my bed. I spy more as I look around the carpet. Crickets, it seems. Unbeknownst to me, crickets are pretty common in Los Angeles. Robert informs me that they’re a sign of good luck. This helps, but I still prefer to see them outside.

Epilogue

Fish tacos were the one thing I missed about LA. I have no food in the house, so I go out and get fish tacos. I call my friend and we decide to go hang out, eat, and then go to a pub for beer and live music. We meet odd new people, including one self-proclaimed Casanova who, for every sentence you spoke, would want to bump fists. Then he asked my friend on a date and was devastated when she said “NO, BITCH!”*

The End.

*She was quite a bit more subtle than I just made her out to be.

Today, Thursday, marks six weeks that I’ve been in Albuquerque this second time around. It’s been a pretty awesome time, sort of to the point that I’ve started to take roots here. Doubtless, Robert considers this an understatement. This could be because I’ve taken over the dining table and converted it into my laptop desk, replete with pens, coins, receipts, and the like. And maybe the way I’ve unceremoniously tossed everything I have with me on the living room floor, in front of the television.

Of course, since it has been six weeks that I’ve been here, I’ve ended up accumulating a rather shocking amount of things. There was the initial purchase of more clothes in order to not offend my gay sensibilities, of course. But in addition to that, I’ve managed to acquire some six CDs, nine books, ten DVDs, and a pair of flip flops. All of which I could no longer live without, and therefore had to purchase.

The challenge, I suppose, will be packing everything into my single suitcase and shoulder bag. Because, as I just noted, I can’t live without any of this stuff, and so must bring it all back to California with me. Friday will be an interesting exercise of suitcase-packing mania. Probably I’ll start packing and then get completely distracted by all the cool stuff I got, since despite my 24 years on this planet, I’m still not quite ten. And yet, if I really was ten, I’d love getting up super early. Take my word for it, but my 5:30 am zombie face is anything but youthful. It’s more like 5,000-year-old rotted mummy.

Under the glossy veneer that is my big, gay exterior, I’m pure thug. Never mind that I’m so white, either. The mailman didn’t.

Mailman: Hey man, how’s it going?
Phil: Pretty good, thanks.
Mailman: That’s good, bro.
Phil: Um, so… did I miss the outgoing mail?
Mailman: No, man it’s still right here.
Phil: Sweet. Thanks.
Mailman: Have a good day, man.

I suppose now would be a good time to point out our respective attire. The mailman was bedecked in standard mailman drag, replete with the blue pants with the dark blue line down the seam. He was sporting a poorly trimmed beard and the usual mailman cap. Oh, and he was whiter than I am. Cut to me, styling it up in white shorts and a bright red polo shirt, going for the win with the high-tech sunglass covers for my glasses.

Because Mr. Mailman made sure to emphasize every single “man” by drawling it out a good three seconds, I’m left forming one of two conclusions. 1.) He thought I was gangsta. 2.) He wanted me to be gangsta. Either way, he was hoping to prove that he could keep up with the best of us, even if the “best” turned out to be white, gay, and the only gang he could make it in would be the Big Gay Mafia.

In the spirit of stream of consciousness, I offer a list of things that fall into no category in particular.

• I watched the final swimming events this evening, including the historic eighth gold medal event by swimming guru Michael Phelps. I’ve gotten so into the swimming events that I’ve made sure we’re home by 8 o’clock every night just so I could watch my swimming. I feel like I should state that, for my own record, I watched history happen. I watched a guy win the most gold medals in one week, ever. And I watched a 41-year-old woman race against teenagers and kick some serious ass. I was jumping up and down maniacally during several of the races tonight, though trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake my slumbering honey.

• I finally got to see The Dark Knight today. I enjoyed the heck out of it, but it did make me really sad because it reminded me how much it sucks that Heath Ledger is no longer with us. His performance was even better than I had imagined it would be.

• As my poor partner found out tonight, I have lousy vision in low light, and even when moving slowly, I can be a deadly weapon. Trying to be helpful, I was fixing the alarm clock as Robert arranged the pillows on the bed, and as I turned around, he was in the process of leaning over the bed to climb in when my moving elbow met his chest. While Chuck Norris or Steven Segal might have been proud, I didn’t have such sentiment. It was unfortunate timing, to be sure. But if I ever DO have to defend myself in a fight, I guess I have a good new karate move at my disposal.

The mountains stand out in the distance, a brilliant shade of deep blue. The sun tries to peek above the tip of the mountainous skyline. The air is cool, a dewy humidity competing with the dryness. Clouds that only hours ago lazily floated high in the air have lost altitude. The sky is a sheet of glass, glinting playfully with the rising sun.

The mountain range towers less than usual. Clouds have descended upon the peaks, covering the range from north to south. Having blocked the rising sun, they appear puffy, a light shade of blue. A light breeze passes through continuously, smoothing the surface of clouds. A wave crashing over rocks, moving in slow motion.

The sun persists. Shimmering rays appear, taunting the clouds and daring them to relent. A tiny crescent of the great star emerges. Though small, it reaches far and wide. In both directions, clouds are immediately lined a brilliant color palette, alternating gold and silver as the rays of the sun play off the clouds and misty air at the high altitude.

The air is crisp and still. Time slows down and falls away. Calm. Peaceful. Beautiful.

If you ever come across one of these delicious buildings, I highly recommend you bite, and go inside. Upon seeing the Toll House store whilst wandering Albuquerque Uptown with my friend Dr. Vina, it was all I could do to not lick the bricks of the building right then and there.

The overpowering smell of cookies was enough to make us decide to spoil our impending lunch a little bit by ordering what looked like harmless little snacks of mini chocolate chip cookies with white stuff and mini M&Ms surrounding them. And at a mere 99 cents each, said truffles seemed easily as harmless as a stick of celery. Maybe I’m exaggerating.

We probably really should have ordered celery, or at least that weird grass drink stuff some of those smoothie places sell. Despite my fairly sweet tooth, I bit into my little cookie sandwich and was met with a whipped cream that was so sugary it nearly killed all my taste buds upon contact. So while a ten-year-old might relish the intense feeling that is whipped cream instantly turning to butter in your mouth, it was way too much for me to handle. I think that spike in my glucose level should be my last such spike, preferably for the rest of my life.

The lesson to learn here: when you do go, don’t do what I did. Stick to a regular cookie or maybe some ice cream. You can thank me later.

I’ve always been something of a night owl. This generally isn’t too much of a problem, though, as I’ve somehow managed to finagle my schedule so that the earliest I ever have to be at work or school is 9am. Of course, I’ve been bitten by the Olympic bug this year, and while it hasn’t had me training like mad, I have been flopped down on the couch in front of the television every single night, unable to move from the screen.

This week, Robert has returned to work. My philosophy for work is that even if I’m tardy, at least I’m there. Read: mornings are my mortal enemy. Conversely, Robert likes to arrive to work nice and early. And, he likes to have plenty of time each morning to get ready. This is what my schedule has been like so far this week:

8pm: Watch Olympics
11:30pm: Finish watching Olympics and think about going to bed.
12-12:30am: Go to bed.

Sleep

5:30am: Feel a hand reach out and shake me around, and voice say “Phil, it’s time to get up.”

And then it takes me half an hour to drag my near-lifeless ass out of bed, staggering around and moving with Lego-man precision as I stumble through my morning routine.

After I dropped Robert off at work just before 7am, I headed home with an urgency that only the sheer desire to crawl back under the covers and sleep can muster. Naturally, it took me an hour to fall asleep again. I had to set my alarm, as I wanted to get up by 8:45 so I could get some things done at home and then meet some old work supervisors for lunch.

This is where cell phones come in handy: they have alarm clocks. I set my cell phone alarm, and opted for a random ringtone to wake me up. One I hadn’t yet listened to. One that started off with an odd little bass riff, followed by a few guitar notes and some drums. A tune that, even to my sleepy ears, struck me as more than a little suitable for a porno film. I didn’t realize this at first; it wasn’t until after I’d hit the snooze, five minutes had lapsed, and then it thumped again, that it hit me. Talk about a weird thought to wake up to. Oy vay.

During this election year, I’m finding that I’m learning a great deal about the rest of the world. Aside from traveling, I think one of the best ways in which to accomplish this is through stories. In my case, I’ve been hankering after memoirs.

A while back, I picked up a travel memoir by the inimitable J. Maarten Troost. His time spent in the South Pacific resulted in two books, The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned With Savages. I picked up the latter after randomly finding it in a bookstore and reading a few sentences.

Sometimes when I find odd books in stores, or books of which I’ve not yet heard, I forgo reading the back cover in favor of reading a few paragraphs or pages from the first chapter, in order to get a feel for it and see if it draws me in. Getting Stoned With Savages succeeded, big time, and as I’m now in the middle of it, I’m getting more cultured by the second.

Aside from the joys of reading how the residents of Vanuatu handle government coups and general political upheaval by getting stoned, there’s also the joy of the “savages” part of Vanuatu. In order to encourage you, dear reader, to drop everything immediately and go read this book, I offer a few favorite parts that had me in fits of laughter.

First, there’s the part where Troost tries to figure out exactly how cannibalism in the area was not out of spite or necessity, but out of custom, or enjoyment:

Typically, the men of a particular village ambushed the men of another village. The goal was to capture one man, who would then be triumphantly carried back to the attackers’ village, clubbed, and chopped into pieces. Good manners dictated that an arm or a leg be sent off to a friendly village. Again, here I sputter in disbelief. Imagine receiving such a package. “Oh, look, honey. Bob and Erma over in Brooklyn have sent us a thigh. So thoughtful.” Of course, now you are obliged to reciprocate, and so you gather your friends and off you go, hunting for a man, and when you capture one, you will thoughtfully hack an arm off and send it along to Bob and Erma, together with a note–Thinking of you.

As if that wasn’t enough, Troost expounds on some of the history of the islands:

When Westerners began to arrive in some numbers in the nineteenth century, they too found themselves participating in Vanuatu’s exciting culinary world. John Williams, the very first missionary to arrive in Vanuatu, landed on the island of Erromango on November 18, 1839. Sponsored by the London Missionary Society, which had considerable success in converting much of Polynesia to Christianity, Williams stepped ashore, no doubt confident that very soon he would be breaking bread with the islanders. Within minutes, he was dead, killed by a fusillade of arrows. And then he became lunch.

Perhaps it’s morbid fascination on my part, but with every page I turn, I become increasingly more fascinated. It’s certainly nice to read a book in which the author draws you in to the point that you may as well be living next door. So what are you waiting for? Get started on your vicarious trip out to the South Pacific. I’m going to keep enjoying mine.