And I've been drinking.

Counting Crows, "The Rain King"
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As I sit here in my bathrobe, my heating system keeping my house a warm seventy-two degrees, and me trying to decide whether to read Out magazine or a Saul Bellow book, I can't help but marvel at how quickly time alters circumstance. Or maybe it's the fact that circumstance alters so much with time.

Less than half an hour earlier, I was at an intersection, holding aloft a Dallas Cowboys umbrella I just bought as I watched someone rev up and speed through a Thousand Oaks intersection in their Lexus GS. Pete was long gone now, he being the one who dropped me off in the Lincoln Town Car in front of Albertsons. He was Sue and Tony's regular driver and tonight I did something that I should have done a year ago: I called a driver to take me home from Crown & Anchor.

It was Tony's birthday yesterday, but he's been celebrating all weekend long. I biked over to Crown & Anchor after spending the late afternoon at 24hourfitness here in Thousand Oaks. It's only a few blocks away and I lacked the necessary illumination on my bicycle to take me up Erbes. That, and it was pouring like a motherfucker.

In fact, I stopped into 24hoturfitness for exactly that reason, having spent the early afternoon at the Westlake Promenade. There, I bought various magazines, and treated myself to lunch at Rosti and new shoes, too. I promised myself that I wouldn't post another blog entry until I finished Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, so I loitered in Barnes & Noble until that task was complete.

I decided to bike to Westlake because I had been spending the whole weekend holed up in the house, much to my delight. I spent almost all of a Saturday in bed, enjoying the wonder of fifteen-hundred (or, to put it in more ridiculous terms, one-thousand five-hundred) thread-count bedsheets, and a four-hundred (or, to put it in more ridiculous terms, fucking-four-hundred) thread-count down comforter. I actually got quite a bit done, but I can probably attribute that more to boredom. It's amazing what you'll do to kill time. Stuff like errands and chores and paying bills. Simply amazing.

Hack came over that Friday night, and we enjoyed an evening at Chen's szechwan and a recent-yet-decent Woody Allen movie. I had all the acoutrements for an overnighter still in the living room because Ann and Bobby had arrived in town the evening before. It was nice to receive guests on both occasions, and it's helped me to realize that while I am still fundamentally a very private and solitary person, I still require the love and companionship of those close to me.

I spent most of Friday morning in a state- and DMV-required drunk driver class, where I had to excuse myself to pee many many many times. I stressed out in the morning that they were going to ask us to breathalyze (they didn't) and so I chugged about two quarts of water before my bike ride there. I rode the electric vehicle, since I didn't want to get up really really early and catch a bus. There, I learned that as a result of signing up for the class, they would actually forward a copy of my enrollment to DMV headquarters, making me eligible for a restricted license. The whole process takes about three weeks. I figured that I could manage for twenty-one more days.

After the class, I unchained my electric bike and made it as far as Erbes. The rain was torrential all morning long, and I figured (I still haven't determined the exact cause) that something caused the circuitry to short and the battery to drain. The result was that I was left at the base of the Erbes hill with a bike that weighed seventy pounds, a cargo bundled that weighed ten, enough water-laden fabric to add five more pounds, heavy winds, and me still needing to pee really badly for the umpteenth time.