How is “The Real Nuns of New York” not yet a reality television show??

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So get this, Detroit wins at airports! Basically the whole airport is one shockingly long hallway with planes parked on either side. Simple! The gates are numbered and in order. Easy! Seriously though, this is probably the longest building I’ve ever been in. It’s like magically long. Like almost impossibly long. Like can’t see one end from the other end long. Curvature of the earth long. So long it has a train inside of it long!

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According to this photo, there’s a positively huge spider in my kitchen doorway.

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Not even the very serious medical-type students I work with can pass up a good skeleton gag.

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It’s been raining for like four straight days, then suddenly this afternoon, it stopped.

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How weird is it that the President of the United States of America wouldn’t even be able to work in my office?

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Turns out I can take the bus basically from my front door to downtown Monterey and back (free with my staff ID) and so please stay tuned for my new podcast: Drinking on Patios on Sunday Afternoons.

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There is no free bread at my laundromat this morning, but there are cookies and free coffee. This is basically a magical laundromat.

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At a staff retreat today we all had to pick our “core values” from a stack of cards and I think I was the only person who picked “challenge/risk” as a core value and I’m sure that caused much discussion, but I didn’t notice because I was busy having a knife fight with a rabid flamingo on the back of a motorcycle that was on fire! HASHTAG risk

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This morning one of my brothers and I had linguica with breakfast at a place that reminded me of the old Denvers on 41 (but coastal) where I spent a lot of my childhood learning how to play dice with the old bearded farmers. And it made me think: how great is it to be alive in the world?!?

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So I’m having a pretty fantastic weekend. How are you doing?

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Street Painter #1: Did you bring the stencils? Street Painter #2: I brought the P.

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Look at these redwood trees I found! They’re gigantic! Do people know about these things?!

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My new local laundromat has free bread! They’re just giving it away! For free! I’m sitting here doing my laundry, eating a pretty decent baguette, and just enjoying being alive.

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Not pictured: the shockingly empty apartment behind me and the air mattress I’ve been sleeping on.

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HEY EVERYBODY! I’m happy to report that I’ve accepted a staff position at CSU Monterey Bay. I started this week and it’s pretty awesome. I don’t yet really have furniture, but I do have a guest room, so that means you (yes YOU!) have a beach house now (it’s a mile and a half). Start planning to come visit me.

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When you’re racing the sun into the western horizon but you don’t own prescription sunglasses.

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This plane is all WiFi-ed up which means I am now instagramming from the sky! I am a sky-grammer! Basically I am from the future. I’m like a future person who lives in the air. What’s it like down there all you plebeian ground people??? Do you like your dirt and snails? We have none of that up here in the atmosphere where civilized future people live.

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Stuck on the tarmac. I just did the math and my carbon footprint this year is disgusting. Let’s plant trees next year!

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So like a compass in a snowstorm, I found a dive bar (shocking, I know) and the drunky couple next to me is (lovingly but unprovoked) whisper-singing old Oasis songs to each other and it makes me think, maybe that’s what life should be, you know?But then I also think, Oasis??! Really? Maybe what’s important in life is to find ways to connect to other humans without vanity, but also maybe what’s really important is to only ever connect with other humans who understand that Oasis really only ever had two good albums and even then, “good” is debatable. #truelove

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My occasional hobby of sneaking into really fancy places using nothing but my white privilege proves to once again have zero consequences. Funny how that works. Unrelated: anybody want to buy some really fancy flatware?

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I think I got off the bus in the wrong place ... this does not look like a college campus ... oh well, guess I’m walking. Good thing I wore shoes today.

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Look at this ocean I found! Did anybody even know this was here?!

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‪Just had a boarding gate bar chat with a boozy South African woman from New Jersey whose daughter was in Tucson competing in an Irish dancing competition. I don’t seek out this level of cosmopolitanism folks, it seeks out me.‬

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I learned today that if you just type my name into the google box it says I’m an “author” and this is maybe the most affirming thing that’s ever happened to me!

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Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the moral ambivalence of late stage capitalism.

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The most recent episode of CrashCourse (on the Enlightenment) explains Rousseau and Voltaire as 18th Century “influencers” and I think that’s both funny and actually a really helpful way of understanding history.

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Shadow selfie? I had (another) interview today for a really cool job. Please continue to keep your fingers crossed for me until instructed otherwise.

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I enjoy the part of boarding when - as a poor person - the poor people get frog walked through the first class cabin because that’s when I like to shout, “CLASS WARFARE!” and “BOTH MY MASTERS DEGREES REQUIRED ME TO EXTENSIVELY STUDY MARXISM!” The crowd always seems to dig that, if by “dig that” we mean ‘gaze silently’

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Finished my interview! I think it went well, but I’ve learned I have no sense of these things. Am back at the airport and waiting for some hand cut sweet potato fries. Life could certainly be worse.

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PRO TIP: On Fishermans Wharf you can just go from restaurant to restaurant slurping up free samples of clam chowder like the whole place is a damn Costco.

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I have made it to Monterey! My job interview has been rescheduled for tomorrow morning! My suit-in-a-backpack plan seems to have produced only minimal wrinkling! This has been a good day so far!

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Got stuck in Phoenix overnight. About to board yet another airplane and try leaving again. If it doesn’t work this time, then I am DEFINITELY in Purgatory.

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I was supposed to be in Monterey an hour ago. I have a big job interview in 12 hours and I’m stuck back in Phoenix and @americanair is not handling this well so far.

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My already much delayed flight out of PHX was IN THE AIR when they turned us around and diverted back to PHX. This trip is not going well so far.

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My much delayed first leg flight, for which I arrived 2 and a half hours early, will last approximately 23 minutes (TUS to PHX).

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This brave little 23 liter backpack is packed with: A 3-piece suit, dress shoes, dress socks, dress shirt, a tie, a pocket square, an undershirt, boxers, my Dopp kit, a laptop, laptop charger, phone charger, 2 pens, a small notebook, a book, an extra phone battery, a phone charger, earbuds, a passport. In a few hours we’ll know if my elaborate suit packing system works!

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In a couple days I’m going to California for a couple days for a job interview. This is a picture from the last time I went to California for a job interview. That interview was on a pirate ship and while I have extensive buccaneering experience, my pirating experience, they said, is limited. Everyone always thinks their own profession is so specific and special. Anyway, wish me luck.

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Without any internet radicalization at all, I somehow managed to convince myself that the Subaru Baja is the perfect automobile and then the other day one parked next to me at work and I was able to take this Sears-Portrait-Studio-quality photo of one in the wild.

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This is what the actual sky actually looks right now. Turn the brightness up on your phone to increase the weirdness.

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I went to the rich people mall to get my phone worked on (my battery was trying to murder me) and they had one of those binocular telescope things like on every pier in America, but this one was TOTALLY FREE and I just thought to myself, “Man, I bet the rich people don’t even know the rest of us usually have to pay for this.”

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Today I had an interview for a very cool job that I would very much like. The interview included giving a lengthy presentation. This is not a photo from my presentation. This is a photo of an insect I met before the interview.

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This is from the actual website of a real-life company that found my resume online and which I will not be emailing back. Ever. Someone please explain to me what that caption means.

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From the brain-meltingly good “American Nations” by Colin Woodward.

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Next week I have two separate in-person interviews on the same day (2 hours apart), so today I’m doing some pre-interview reconnaissance.

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HOW DID I NOT WRITE THIS?!?! What have I even been doing with my life??? I am so angry at myself right now.

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On today’s episode of “Jamie’s Life is Very Confusing Based Solely on His Social Media” I drive across the Arizona desert at sunset.

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It is 107 degrees here right now and as I crossed the parking lot at work I’m pretty sure my actual eyeballs dried out.

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It’s pretty wild looking in this parking lot right now.

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