Carburetors, Man - That's What Life is All About!

The great attorney Vincent LaGuardia Gambini once said, "You know, when you rebuild a carburetor, the first thing you do is you take the carburetor off the manifold? Supposing you skip the first step, and while you're replacing one of the jets, you accidentally drop the jet, it goes down the carburetor, rolls along the manifold, and goes into the head. You're fucked. You just learned the hard way that you gotta remove the carburetor first, right? So that's all that happened to me today. I learned the hard way. Actually, it was a good learning experience for me."



That pretty much sums up the past several months. I didn't really know what I was doing when I opened up the hood and started messing around with things, but I saw possibilities and just went for it. I'm not saying I regret it - not all of it anyway - but there are consequences to that learning style. I've got some parts I have to repair or replace in order to get back up and running reliably again, but I'll get there. Now I know where I'm going, and having this really great destination in mind is the best motivation to just keep at it, even when the wrench slips and leaves me with one more thing I have to deal with before I can sit back and call it a job well-done.

I guess this is my roundabout way of announcing that I'm not going to be staying in California much longer. I'm not saying I regret coming here, but it just turns out that it's not right for me after all. There are people I love here - friends who have stepped up and stuck by me and shared good times and hard times alike, but this isn't geographically where I need to be. I didn't end up finding a job, and the pace of life just doesn't agree with me in the long-term. I'm going back home. I miss my family and lifelong friends, I need to recover financially, and there are a few other things that'll agree quite nicely with a return to the east coast.

I can't tell you at this moment exactly when I'll be moving, but if I'm given my druthers, it'll be in about a month. There's a contract job I can do if I can get there, and a friend of mine is getting married, so both of those are motivating factors. There's more, but I'll wait until things are a little more certain before I elaborate. Suffice it to say that while I will miss the people I leave behind, I'm going to find it extremely hard to contain my excitement in the coming weeks, and I'm hoping to have some extraordinary things to share to balance out the recent negativity.

Home Is Where Ed Is

In the past decade, I've been sort of nomadic, living in various places in Virginia and North Carolina. Each time I move, I have to take Ed - this giant, autographed poster of Ed Kowalczyk, from when Live did their Throwing Copper tour - off the wall and to my new residence. Upon seeing this thing for the first time, people's comments range from "um, that's interesting," to "wow, that's really hideous."

Ed currently resides (off-center, I know) above my bookshelf

When I was first given this poster, by Joe (who got it from Jake who got it from Josh who got it from Jimmy... or something like that), I was a pretty big fan of the band, so it made sense. Now, I still enjoy their music, but probably wouldn't hang up a poster if it hadn't become this integral part of what home means. I'm not exactly sure why I keep taking it with me and hanging it up again when I move to a new place, other than because when I see Ed screaming down at me from a wall, what he's really saying is "you live here."

I've been thinking a lot where I'll go next, where Ed will hang on some wall in some room in some new place. I don't know exactly where or when it'll be, but time for change is coming. I can feel it.