Britney Spears gets front page billing for a stage-kiss with Madonna. For all the attention you'd think she was having her baby. Apparently though, Papa don't preach.

Johnny Depp speaks against the US, saying it's a "dumb puppy with big teeth"* and, after backlash, has to recant.

Meanwhile, girlkissy Britney swears she wouldn't kiss a girl again, unless it was Madonna. Then she goes on to wax political, saying, "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that."

Heaven forbid we should think twice about politi-media fabrications like the Jessica Lynch story.

So, with the California recall just a month away, I wonder: If the recall vote doesn't pass, will they publicize the results of the candidacy vote? That is, if we vote to not have a recall, will they tell us who would have won if the recall had been approved?

Snippet from an IM with Karen today:

Kevin: Oh, my new phone number spells some silly things, like 9-woman-8. Still trying to find a good one.

Karen: 9 women dated, 8 still friends

It's funny because it's true. I love my friends. Especially my ex-girlfriends. :-)

Happy Birthday Sister! You make my life brighter! I'm looking forward to our trip so much. I'm so glad I got to go to your party!

On the 'coping' front, every now and then I come across an emotion I'm really not sure how to internalize. I spent nearly two weeks working with Mom and Susie on Dad's house last month, and I got updates every few days from Mom on how things were progressing. Repairing tiles, repainting, fixing a latch, getting an appraisal.

Susie and I both carefully thought it through, and decided that neither of us would be living in the house in any reasonable timeframe and, as fond as I am of the house, I'm in the Bay Area for good as far as I can see, and Sherman Oaks home prices are peaking, especially with rising interest rates. It's the right thing to do.

Even though I've been a part of the process at every step; even though I went through the house to say goodbyes when Ammy and I came to Los Angeles a week ago on the last stop of our road trip, I got a profound pang when I looked up the listing for my Dad's house online today.

While walking though it, empty and repainted, amidst real estate agents scoping it out, I was okay. Somehow I was still protecting it, watching over and cradling my dad's home as I can't watch over him anymore. Seeing it as an anonymous listing on the internet, distilled to a 320x240 picture and a handful of database fields, I just feel like I'm leaving a memory and a spirit naked and unprotected amidst strangers.

...

I need a home of my own. The townhouse I'm moving in to next week reminds me of Dad in a way I can't describe, and a few ways I can. Something about the walls reminds me of the condo he had over 20 years ago in San Francisco, and the flowerpots and drip watering system that I asked the landlord to leve in reminds me of when Dad, Susie and I would go to Grandma's in the Spring and set up tomato plants and drip systems on the terraced steps alongside the house, and when we did the same in my Uncle's backyard years later, bringing forth tiny pumpkinds and zuccini into the world.

I want to make things grow. I want to nurture. I'm really looking forward to unpacking a few of my 'Dad boxes' so I can wear some of my memories externally. My insides are getting a little too crowded, and I need to breathe.

Well, it's the end of week one, and where else would I be on a Sunday afternoon but at work?

No, it's completely by choice. I wanted to get a head start (sooo many meetings last week) and it's always nice to get a little work done when the office is quiet.

In other news, as my Mom has already mentioned in the comments of the previous posts, I got the two bedroom, 2.5 bath townhouse I really wanted. My landlord-to-be bought the place when it was built, and has lived there for the last 18 years, only now his sister and her husband are relocating to Guadalahara for three or four years, for work purposes, and he's moving in to their house, where he just has to pay utilities.

So moving out of his place and renting it out means he gets to live in a million dollar house in Los Altos and gets to collect rent on his own place in the meantime. Quite the sweet deal.

Sweet for me too, since it means I'm living in a townhouse worth nearly a half-million (gak!). It has beautiful new hardwood floors and the place has been kept-up perfectly. I get to move in a week from today!

Last night my cousins Steve and Susan, Jill, and Randy and Debbie were all in town at the same time, like some planetary alignment. (Well, Jill lives in Palo Alto, so that's no huge coincidence.) I came over for dinner and to hang out with the next generation. I was the only one there without kids!

Spending time with them, I felt closer to them than in a long time. I'm absolutely going to make a point of spending more time with Jill and the kids, in addition to driving down to LA more often.

Stuff stuff stuff stuff. So come Sunday I'l have the keys to an empty living space, and I'll need to fill it. My stuff from Pittsburgh should be in a truck and on it's way before the end of the week, but in the meantime I have a two-bedroom apartment's worth of stuff in storage in Berkeley, and here and there in a few friends' houses. I'm going to take a look at getting a U-Haul to trundle the furniture and boxes down from Berkeley to Mountain View, or I could hire movers. I've got to go to the space and do a little accounting of what I have, what I want, and what, if anything, I'll need to leave in storage a bit longer.

Then there's the stuff in Los Angeles. The ten days of going through Dad's house with Mom and Susie has yeilded about 10 boxes of 'near-term' items I want to incorporate into my own life, as well as a few more 'long-term' items for when I end up getting a house of my own.

Luckily, the townhouse has a garage that's longer than a car, so I may have some room to put things. Or there's always storage.

This morning was more hangoutage with the cousins, and this evening is friend hangoutage and spaghetti dinner. I meant to get a new cellphone today, realizing that both my phone's form factor (bar of soap) and service provider (T-Mobile) are ill-equipped to serve as my mobile communication solution. I'm interested in trying out the Treo 600, but it doesn't come out until October at the earliest. Now that I'm working full-time again, portable IM and email aren't as important as they were on campus. AT&T has one of the best coverage blankets in the Bay Area, and I'm thinking of the Nokia 3650 or the Ericsson T616. They both have bluetooth, and both have cameras (yeah, a gimick, I know. That is, until I set up the phonecam-to-weblog gateway and can blog pictures on the fly).

I just want a phone that fits in my jeans pocket, and though none of them approach the sveltitude of my old Nokia 8290, that phone only works on Cingular and T-Mobile, both of which share the same spotty network in the Bay Area (unlike in Pittsburgh, where T-Mobile covers you like a bolt of wool!). I'll take a look at the phones in person and give one a 30-day trial. It couldn't be worse than the Sidekick, which dropped my call no les than 5 times in 90 minutes while talking to Rachel today.

Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow is the one-two punch of Plough and Death Guild, which Karen says is okay because everyone expects you to come in bleary-eyed on the Tuesday after Labor Day.

I hope everyone has a nice, calming, fruitful month in September! Don't forget your 'Rabbit, rabbit!' tonight, if you're a latenighter, or in the morning otherwise. You'll thank yourself for it!

Oh yeah, and tomorrow I'll write in and tell you about my unexpected dental visit on Friday, and my plan to save a cherished tooth through sheer will.

So I'm wearing my "Mars Attacks!" T-shirt today, in honor of Mars's closest approach in 60,000 years.

So far nobody at work has noticed, or at least they haven't said anything if they did... Drat!

Random question for the day: When you read the subject of the post, did you think 'content as in satisfied' or 'content as in stuff'?

Suffice to say, Google is as or more wonderful than everyone has led me to expect. Truly, the best job I could have in the entire world right now.

Still ramping up and crazy busy, but I can tell that I'll attain cruising altitude within another couple days. Before that I hope to tell y'all about the fabulous place I'm moving in to in a week and a half, and catch up with the rest of the thigns that have happened, and will happen, with my life!

Douglas Adams Explains It All For You.Don't miss the animation explaining why it's imperitive to put the milk in the teacup before putting in the tea.

So in a half day I start my first day at Google. So much backblog stuff to write about: the road trip, my sister's birthday party at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, coming back home, apartment hunting (sooo excited now that I have a rental application in at a 2 bedroom townhouse in Mountain View that I'm highly enamored of), house painting at Karen and Crystal's brand new house (they got the keys Friday!) (Crystal just said, apropos of nothing, "We're not just talking about house. We're doing house!") They're incredibly excited, and so am I.

We painted two rooms today, and painted clouds in one of them. It's a fun place.

Okay, now off to dancing, then sleep, then Google, then to see a cottage in case the townhouse doesn't go through, then Plough (more dancing), then sleep, and repeat!