Nice Thanksgiving playing with the last few Polaroid exposures and mauling the bambino.

Isn't my sister glamourous?

Playing hide-and-seek with his dad.

Ghost Town

It's raining in San Luis Obispo.

I got caught in it trying to walk downtown from Emily's house in De Talosa. At first it was just a few drops speckling my coat as I walked along Madonna, but by the time I'd reached South Higuera, water was dripping off my bangs onto my glasses - turning the traffic lights into festive smears of red and green. I finally reached my destination soaking wet, ringing out my scarf as the good folks as Linnaea's warmed my heart with espresso. Coffee shops were made for days like this; groups of friends chatting over tea lattes while the rain pours down on the grey city and Frank Sinatra croons over the speakers.

I can't help wondering when I'll be back here. But the town is different now, emptier - although I know the void is a lack of friendship and not a lack of humans. Everywhere I see shiny young faces, boring in their unfamiliarity. Driving at midnight the streets are empty.

This empty shell of a town isn't mine anymore, and like Mary Poppins would say, that's as it should be.

I Hate You, Urban Outfitters

It was just a matter of time before word of my (one time) unique necklace reached the head honchos over at Urban Outfitters...


boo.

No matter where I am or what I'm doing, every once in a while I remember, we have a new President. And I can't help smiling.

One of the French guys who own the wine-tasting business next to my work had a baby on the 4th. "I don't know which I cried harder for," he says, "my son, or the election." A new country, a new child, a new life for Luc.

Our regulars have been especially lovely lately. A man offered to nurse our poor bald orchid back to health today. After he had a triple by-pass surgery recently, everyone sent him orchids and he found that the notoriously finicky plants flourished under his care. The secret, he tells me, is to avoid watering it too much. "They don't like standing water."

Honestly, I may miss these people more than a little. The familiar faces break up the workday and provide a short respite from the fake customer service shtick. There's Stan, the lonely middle-aged man with a bull-ring piercing, whose lifelong partner died ten years ago, leaving him a priceless art collection and rare Marlene Dietrich memorabilia; Jonnie, who calls me sweetie and brings me flowers from her community garden plot; and who could forget Charlie, the early 40-something chainsmoking poet with the soul of an ADD five-year-old who works as a clerk in an office to pay for his $400/month shared room but who lives to somehow involve himself in everything else in the city, from radio to making anthologies, to acting in independent movies.

What an interesting time we live in.