"and then we grew up"

Just returned from the Bay Area and a romp of a reunion. So keynotes.






There's something amazing about having a jeep load of sundrenched folks who are related to you who you haven't seen in years, pile out on an ordinary starry night and realize pictures didn't do them justice. (Nepotism is an easy sell when all your relatives are really. good. looking.)

And then realizing that adding a new wing or chapter to a story is easy as love. I am not a romantic person. But I cried. A lot. Especially when my cousin Stephie gave a hysterical and really terjerkery speech that was punctuated by "and then we grew up...and then we grew up some more". Congratulations Catie & Cent. Thank you for being a real beacon about the good things and random adventures of this life.

Tacos, lots of tacos. Tacos from a taco truck. Tacos from a taqueria. It's like it satiates ancient screaming molecule deficiency in me. Tacos with friends fill friend and taco deficiency.

The Revolution Cafe was hysterical fun, despite some technical snafus that left it completely unplugged, but the advice from various crowd members was "just sing it out." One by one displaced friends from back east filtered in. Halfway through a friend from New York showed up, and ended up playing tambourine during Oh Mary Don't You Weep.



What was even more fun was the impromptu neighborhood tour around Dolores Park from new friends and old friends. Talking about music I know, music I don't, clicking with people in an instant and walking through a beautiful but foreign neighborhood (Dolores Park!). Later heading around Oakland and San Francisco on a borrowed bike, drinking coffee in hole in the walls like I would anywhere else, but different, but the same, talking about life. The weekend was some of the best and most unexpected traveling I've done.

The weird thing about meeting old friends in new places, people you knew once somewhere else, it is a context shift, in many ways it is that old familiar. For me it completely redefined certain definitions of home.