I miss California.

I’m visiting the Golden State on a work-related trip. I genuinely enjoy living in the Midwest, and it’s not like I sit around all year in Michigan pining for California. But I’m always surprised, upon setting foot back in my home state, at how much I still miss it even after nearly a decade in the Midwest.

California just feels different to me than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. The trees are different, the buildings are different, the people are different. The hills and rocks and brush are different. The road signs and streets are different. I’ve learned of late to temper my nostalgia with a healthy dose of realism–California is also crowded, hectic, smoggy, and expensive–but being here is comfortable and familiar.

There’s a Santa Ana today, and the sky–beyond the thick layer of Los Angeles smog, of course–is utterly clear.

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Earlier this week, I won a prize drawing.

In my life, I have won exactly two prize drawings (that I can remember, at least). The first was a five-pound Hershey’s chocolate bar, which served as dessert at the Rau household for many weeks, and which definitely answered the question “Is it possible to have too much of a good thing?” And my newly-won prize is… wait for it… a giant bag of hair-care products.

Thinking back to a trip to the barber a few weeks back, I vaguely recall mumbling “yes” when asked if I wanted to enter my name in their weekly drawing. And sure enough, I was the one chosen to receive the ultimate prize.

I hope that I am not allotted a finite number of prize-winnings in my life, because that would mean I’ve burned through two of them on a giant chocolate bar and a bag of hair gel. At least, I think this stuff is mostly types of hair gel. I can’t tell, because instead of labeling the bottles with something easy-to-comprehend, like “hair gel,” they call them things like creme-cire de coiffage (which sounds vaguely dirty), curl life defining system (what is it defining, exactly?), and extra intense conditioner (I don’t want to know).

Unfortunately, the phrase “pearls before swine” springs to mind here, as I really am the last person upon whom you should be lavishing hair-care gifts. As the more fashion-conscious among you have no doubt noticed, I have not changed my hair style since high school, and endeavor to spend as little effort on my hair as is humanly possible. My primary goal upon visiting the barber is to maximize the amount of time before I have to visit the barber again–i.e., cut my hair short enough that I don’t have to think about it for a few months. “It would be impossible,” I always tell the person cutting my hair, “to cut my hair too short.” They never seem to really believe me.

Ah, well. Michele will be back from Turkey later this month, and I’ve now got just the thing to serve as a welcome-home present…

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As some of you may have heard, we spent the first two weeks of October in Germany. Michele has begun posting about the trip, so if you want in on all the grisly details, her blog is a good place to start. We’re also determined to get some of our photos up at Flickr for you all to enjoy.
Our trip began in Berlin; from there, we made our way roughly clockwise around the country and back to Berlin. The bulk of our time was spent in the extremely beautiful southern third of the country, with several days spent in the general vicinity of Munich and several more in the Black Forest region. More details to come, I’m sure.

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We’re off to Ohio to visit some relatives over the weekend. Y’all have a great holiday!

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Michele and I are currently enmeshed in the process of sorting out all of our phone and internet options. It started out as a simple mission–“Let’s reduce our phone bill!”–but it has morphed into a gargantuan research project.
Should we drop the landline entirely and go voice-over-IP? If we’re doing that, should we switch from cable modem to direct-line DSL and get a bundle deal? And while we’re doing that, should we finally cave in and buy cellphones (that’s right, we’ve never owned a cellphone) so we’ll be covered in case the power goes out and we lose VoIP? Or do we dare trust the phone company’s oh-so-amazing DSL-cellular-landline bundle deal, when they’re the ones whose overpriced phone service kicked off this whole process in the first place?
When researching this sort of thing, you eventually reach a point where the sheer number of variables involved–pricing options, extra features, bundle possibilities, terms of service, activation fees–becomes overwhelming. I think I’m about at the point beyond which I simply cannot process any more information on this subject. So if you’re a pushy salesperson and you’ve got a great deal you can offer me on internet and telephone service, now’s the time to call; I’m far too weary to resist.

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Today at work, I did something that made me feel bad.
I got a phone call from a Random Person who asked for me by name, having seen an article I’d written online. He wanted to talk about the article, and to bounce some of his thoughts on the article’s subject off me. Basically, he wanted to chat with me.
I don’t get many phone calls in the course of my job, and I generally try to keep all of my interaction with Random People restricted to email. This is because I dislike talking on the phone, and really dislike talking on the phone with strangers (or salespeople). But I took the call today anyway, not realizing that the person on the other end was going to want to talk with me at length.
He launched into his conversation immediately, and it quickly became clear that the person on the other end of the line was going to be… difficult. I’m somewhat ashamed that my first reaction was “Oh great, I’m stuck in a conversation with a wacko.” I wouldn’t quite label this person a “crazy,” but he wasn’t too far from it. This person, you see, had some very odd ideas about the subject at hand, and hardly gave me any room to speak. I listened as he talked on and on, mumbling the occasional “I see” or “Mmm hmmm” as I tried to think of a way to politely end the conversation as quickly as possible.
Eventually, after about 10-15 agonizing (for me) minutes, he seemed to realize that I was hardly participating in the conversation, and that I was showing a definite lack of interest in talking to him. I politely thanked him for calling me and sharing his, uh, “interesting” ideas, and hung up.
The feeling I had as I hung up, however, was not victory, or elation at being free from the unbelievably awkward conversation, or even anger about the stream of crazy ideas to which I’d just been exposed. I felt… guilty.
Questions are milling around in my brain as I write this–questions about how I should have handled the situation. This guy had some strange ideas, but he was a real person, somebody who took the time to call me up because he wanted to talk to me about what was on his mind. Were his ideas obviously somewhat crazy? Definitely. Was he lacking in social skills? Yes. Was it bizarre that he called me at work to tell me his thoughts? Yep. Was avoiding conversation and essentially hanging up on him a morally appropriate action? I’m not sure it was.
I knew within moments of talking to him that this guy needed help. Not medical help, or even counseling help. He just sounded like he’d been alone for too long, like he’d been cooped up in his house reading oddball websites for too long. At some point in the conversation (and this should give you an idea of the rambling nature of his monologue) he mentioned that he hadn’t been able to find a church home because he felt judged by the churches he visited. But that’s exactly what this guy needed–some friends, some fellow believers, a community of other real people to tolerate him, improve his social skills, and set his life back on track.
I wish I had said something kind to him, encouraged him to keep looking for a church home. I should’ve not let that conversation end with him feeling sheepish for calling me up and babbling at me. I should not have let the excuse It’s not my job to help this guy even enter my mind, much less determine my course of action.
But I did. Maybe I’ll do better next time. And I hope somebody else can pick things up where I dropped the ball, and help this guy out.

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This morning, Michele baked a batch of delicious muffins with chocolate chips in them. They are quite tasty, and presumably intended to be eaten over the course of several days. Then she went off to work, leaving the container of muffins on the kitchen counter.
To make a long story short, I’ve eaten a very large quantity of chocolate-chip muffins today. She’ll be home shortly and will inevitably see that the muffin container is now only about 30% full. She will also want to know why I’m too full to eat dinner.
I think it’s too late at this point to somehow create more muffins to replace those I’ve eaten. Nor can I think of a convincing story to explain the disappearance of all those muffins (the cats, who normally make good scapegoats, have shown no interest in the muffins, so Michele wouldn’t buy that). I might just have to face the music on this one.

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