It will pass away like a slow parade
It's leaving but I don't know how soon.
And the world's got me dizzy again.
You'd think after 22 years I'd be used to the spin.

Bright Eyes, "Landlocked Blues"
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I want to offer a quick apology for those of you whose routine included checking out my blog every morning at 9am. Since my release, my schedule has, um, shifted a bit, and so I'm not posting with the same regularity. Things will hopefully resume, but in the meantime, please bear with me.

I'm looking over the Dinner Post that I wrote on my cell phone while I was at Michael's, and I came to realize that a detailed account of what I ate for dinner really wouldn't be that interesting. I'll just say that I had the chef's tasting menu and a truckload of wine. Michael's, by far, is my favorite restaurant in Los Angeles, and I would be quick to recommend anyone to go there.

The next day, for Super Bowl Sunday, I rode out in the rain from Santa Monica to El Segundo. For the most part, there exists a bike path, but there's a stretch along Marina del Rey where I had to pedal down the sidewalk, which normally wouldn't be so bad, but the flooding on the sideewalk had me worried about the integrity of my electric bike. Everything worked out in the end, though, as I made it to the other side of the Ballona wetlands and found the boardwalk again.

Dale and Marie made a surprise visit (well, a surprise as far as I was concerned), and it was great just to be surrounded by familiar people. Around my college buddies, I let my guard down completely, not really in a vulnerable way, but more in the manner that eases a burden. We had lunch at Main Street in El Segundo (where the $30 total bill compares nicely to the $200 I spent the evening before), and proceeded to munch all day long at Liz and Matty J's pad during the game. Hack even managed to hobble his way to The Gundo, where I stopped caring about the game after I had won $7 in the office pool for getting the digits correct at the end of the 1st quarter. Of course, the excitement continued as I also won the 3rd and final quarters as well.

I spent the evening there, and took a bus from El Segundo to Culver City, then from Culver City to Malibu. My bike got a lot of attention at the Malibu Starbucks, and it took the whole tank for me to get from the bottom of the canyon to Calabasas. In the end, it was nice just to be back in familiar surroundings.