I guess today or tomorrow will be considered the practical date for Mandy and I breaking up. Officially, last Saturday was when we made the decision, but being in San Francisco without anywhere else to go and things to be wrapped up, today is the last day of our current dating reality. We finally both communicated to each other where our emotions have been for the last six months, and that clarity will make this transition a little easier. I am loading up my car and emptying as much from my storage unit as possible and leaving for Texas in the morning. I’m not quite sure where we will go from here, but at least we have made a solid decision and can move forward from this day on.

…can’t be wrong. There are an awful lot of love songs out there whose lyrics truly don’t take your heart and mind for a trip until the situation fits the mold of the songwriter’s empathy. I guess I should say un-love songs, those heartbreak and tearstain melodies that explain the situation that you are in perfectly, and of course have explained that same situation that perfectly for thousands upon thousands of other listeners over the songs’ existence. Whether it has been Wilco’s “A.M.” (which I had listened to many times before now without the emotional connection) or Led Zeppelin or whatever tune the radio serves up, there just seems to be an inordinate amount of coverage of downhill rolling, lost belonging. Or maybe I am just listening to what I want to hear.

Must stop eating fast food. The first year in California, when I actually lived in San Francisco proper, those quick and greasy meals were few and far between. Few in number per capita, fast food restaraunts were easy to avoid and small, locally owned eateries were abundant. After moving to Alameda I began to slip. A little KFC here, a little MickeyD’s there. Now that I have spent a couple of months in Texas, I am participating fully in the fast food culture that I enjoyed abstaining from only a few short years ago. It’s the convenience, the ease, the price (dollar menus rule!) that seem to make this habitual. Time to convince myself that I don’t have to have it my way and that america’s drive-in will survive without my patronage.