Lovers in a dangerous time.

So on Saturday, after helping set up equipment for a community-based leather party, going home, voting for the beleaguered local candidate (Memo to [Unnamed political party]: when Mr. "Nelson Mandela is a Terrorist" MP sends me a piece of [Unnamed political party] propaganda using his free mailout paid for by [Unspecified Calgary Riding] taxpayers to me six months before an election - well, that pisses me off, son), heading back downtown for the AGM of said organization, then heading back South of the Fraser for a friend's birthday party, I somehow got elected to the board of directors of said leather organization.

Time will tell if this is a good idea or not, I suppose. But they need bodies, and as C said Friday night, what's more important to your future? And since that epiphany at Rascal's a few months ago, it's been clear where the future lies, one way or another.

More later. I need to haul a dresser over to Value Village while the sun shines.

***

I didn't go in to work yesterday at all, though there are a few things left to do - there is simply no rush. My South African quasi-replacement (doing the work of three people) radiates a fearsome competence and is sure he can handle everything. Well, who am I to tell him no? I'm just spending a few days cleaning up the home front, putting L's art in storage.

-Any prospects yet? Teak asked on Saturday.

Haven't looked, really, I'm taking a few days to shake the panic out.

-Well, you're very employable.

***

Driving home from the storage locker, I get to Cambie and pause for a second as the advanced Green Turn left arrow ignites. It's physically difficult not to turn left, head east, to the office and/or the many domestic oriented megastores there - IKEA, Home Depot, Staples - as I have done easily hundreds of times. All over now. I shake my head and head straight, an angry and aggressive Richmond Driver already swerving around on my right to speed southwards at top speed, the delay of perhaps 3 seconds utterly intolerable. You go, buddy. The decaying leaves on the recycle bin outside my place formed some kind of burgundy paste, and I note my arm is now covered in wine coloured stripes, along with my shirt. The setting late afternoon sun is golden, dying,wabi-sabi, as I think about taking the long way home. But no good reason to, nothing to do and nowhere to go, so I wend my way back to the place, picking the indirect path required by this city's strange variations on a grid layout.

***

Get home, dive into the cleanup and at long last find my phone, in a place it could not possibly have been that I have looked in several times already. The Republic is saved. Then, remember too late that the 2nd Obama/McCain debate is tonight, catch the last few minutes then dart to the store for cheap Chinese before it closes. The post debate analysis is reassuring, it was hard to tell much from my limited slice. Finally can phone a few folks who have been concerned about my well being, start job hunting in earnest. Mom has been having kittens, in her way. Time to call her.

***

The conversation is smooth enough, but I'm getting tired. We won't do Thanksgiving. Or maybe we will. Fall asleep watching Colbert. No outrage left. Trying to arrange things with L, who wants to send money and hadn't heard anything about anything (Par for the course in her family, so obsessed with secrecy) and wants to know the story but I have no strength for the telling. Safari keeps dying as I compose. why? Exhausted. Barely able to rise at 4 AM, shut off the infomercials, andf the lights, and stagger to bed.