Last night on Telegraph I was walking home past three gutterpunks (trustifarians, whatever...) and just after I pass them one of them calls out:

"Hey, y'know that game where you make a circle and if the other guy looks at it you have to punch 'em?"

Without thinking (dorm habits die hard), I reach behind and make an 'a-ok' with my hand on the back of my head, not looking back. They all laugh.

I guess that means I should've gone back. After all, I owe'd 'em a punch, right?

I am Kevin's Sony miniDV PC9, trundling cross country from NY to SF.

I am Kevin's impatience.

Came home from work about 7 on Monday. Picked up my mail and hopped in the elevator. On the way up I went through the envelopes, divining the contents: Bank statement, election propaganda, 'have you seen me?', and a thin envelope from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hands full, i had to wait 'till I could dump everything in my apartment before opening the envelope.

To give a little background, my dealings with the DMV usually consist of me getting a registration renewal notice, putting it in a pile somewhere, and letting the due date go by, getting a second notice with late fees, trying to pay online, finding out I need a smog check, to pay an old ticket (or tickets), or both, then going in to the DMV in person to pay. My car's registration expires in April. Last year I didn't end up getting my little blue sticker until September.

I got this year's renewal notice about three weeks ago, and promptly went online and paid the fees. My sticker came in last week's mail, and it's now sitting happily affixed to my car, two months early.

This only added to my puzzlement over the envelope I clutched in the hand that wasn't unlocking the door. Did they make a mistake? Did they want more money? Did they want to give some back? It's been known to happen.

After dropping my backpack, coat, keys and energy inside the door, I open the envelope, extracting a single-sheet, block-type missive with "NOTICE" emblazoned coldly at the top of the page.

I read through the page, finding that it was a notification that the DMV had, based on my car's license plate, given my name and address to an attorney who was pursuing litigation against me. They went on to say that they only release addresses to licensed attorneys and only if the attorney requires the address in the course of a civil or criminal action.

They also included the attorney's name, address, and telephone number, helpfully suggesting that I get in touch with the individual to find out more.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuckitty-fuck-fuck-fuck.

I try to remember (as if I'd have forgotten) if I'd possibly damaged someone's car, or been a witness to an accident somewhere. If it were something like a red light or bridge toll (neither of which had I remembered running or evading, mind you) the state would have access to my address already, without having to go to an attorney to get the info from the DMV.

Could I have cut someone off without realizing it? Was their quick notice of my distinctive license plate the tie that brought this letter to my rapidly moistening hands? Could I have seriously hurt someone, or worse? Could I go to jail, my liberty forsook in an unknown moment?

I say again, for those who missed it: Fuck.

Then I think: I have only one plate. My front plate was stolen almost six months ago. I assumed it now adorns someone's cluttered dorm room or frat den, but maybe it's affixed instead to another person's car, and who knows what kind of red-light-running, demolition-derby-loving, hit-and-runner now wields my identity? Am I about to get a sense of exactly what kind of malfeasance he's been dishing out?

Still, there's work to be done. I have a name, and I have a phone number. I hop to the net.

A google search for the attorney's name turns up a handful of links, mostly to the odd East Bay court docket here and there. There are a couple links to conference guides, citing my personal Inspector Javert as a guest speaker, an expert in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder litigation. Did I cut someone off, and now I'm going to be taken to the cleaners for their resulting stress?

I've found pretty much all I'm going to, so I make the call, doubtful that 7:30 in the evening would find anyone in the Walnut Creek law office. Dialing... Busy.

I try again: Busy. Wait 5 minutes, dial, busy.

Okay, whatever. I don't think there's anyone there, and I know I won't be able to sleep with this uncertain fate looming over my head, so it's to Yahoo's People Search, to find a home number. Ahh, a single match, in Danville. Dialing...

"Hello?" The voice at the other end of the telephone couldn't have passed the bar, unless she had a few years head start on Doogie Hauser.

"Is Robert home?" I ask, polite. None of my trepidation showing through. Whether talking to him or his daughter, I know that lawyers can smell fear, and often mistake it for guilt.

"Yeah, just a second. Who is this?"

"Kevin Fox" Like the name will mean anything. He didn't even know my name until the DMV handed it to him. I'd have a better chance of recognition if I told her "Grr, Arg" was calling, but somehow I'd probably have a smaller chance of actually getting Robert on the phone.

"Just a minute..."

And then I had a talk with Robert...

...

I'm tempted to end the story there for a few reasons:

• So the reader would share some small idea of the suspense I felt throughout this eternal ten-minute ordeal.
• Because if I don't finish the story I don't have to look stupid at the end of it.

...

Yes, there was a 'civil action' being taken against me. Would I be going to jail? Would I have to spend my dotcom-hundreds on attorney and court costs, fighting a bitter battle for liberty? Um, no.

One morning about five weeks earlier, I neglected to leave a parking permit on my dash at the emeryville Amtrak station. This inaction set the wheels of litigation rolling so that Ampco, the private parking lot management company contracted by Amtrak, could mail me a ticket. "You'll be getting it within the next few days. You may have received it already." Yes. Yes I did a couple days before. I never thought about how they got my address.

I apologized for bothering him at home. Apologizing all at once for his good nature about being bothered at home by a stranger, apologizing by karmic proxy for the dozens of people who probably call him each month or year, terrified, irate, or both.

With a good-natured goodbye, Robert wished the DMV gave a little more detail about why the person wanted the address. I agree that would be nice, so that I wouldn't interrupt his dinner, and so I wouldn't lose an appetite for my own. G'night Robert. Have a good evening.

Then I went to the Starry Plough to dance it all off.

(Yet Another Blogging News Article)

Not bad though. Reminds me of a post I didn't write about the dotcom bomb being the best thing that could have happened for web journalism and small-scale innovation.

Anyhow, life mayhem, many posts actually written, but I'm saving them up. Not really intentionally, just turning out that way. I'll start posting again tonight.

Tell your friends! While all your favorite bloggers will be whooping it up at SXSW, I'll be here, keeping the content flowing. If you're not lucky enough to attend SXSW yourself, jusdt keep hitting Fury. I'll be doing double duty, with posts several times a day to help you make it through an otherwise blogless (or at least blog-dearthy) week!

Yes, that's right: contrary to popular belief, I will not be going to SXSW this year, and the Iron Webmaster competition will be emceed by the ever-capable Ben Brown. If you are going to Austin, be sure to check it out. It's sure to be a hoot, if not a holler as well!

"Hi, I'd like to cancel my order."

"Why would you want to cancel your order, sir?"

"Because it's been on backorder for seven weeks."

"Oh. Okay."

---

Anyhow, I bought my miniDV camcorder at J & R Music and it'll be here by the end of the week or early next.

Ooh... Video...

My god. It's been days!

Well, at least they've been busy days. I've been writing, and I'll be posting more soon.

I'm even trying my hand at fiction. I can't tell you how hard it is to write a few thousand words and not immediately post them to fury.

Soon, though.

This weekend looks great. Great weather, almost nothing on the agenda, just me and my myriad thoughts, churning away in sunshine.

Self-imposed writing exercise: Write a self-contained short story between 2000 and 5000 words.

Time limit: 3 days.

(okay, so maybe time 'limits' aren't the way to go, but it's a goal. Heck. I might just write it tomorrow.)

I'm not promising it's good. I'm not even promising I'll post it, but I probably will...

What does a year look like to you? I'm a very visually-oriented person, and many abstract concepts find a spatial representation in my minds eye.

An hour looks like a clock face with a sweeping minute hand, and parts of an hour slices in that pie chart. A day looks different depending on the day, thinking about it now. It's as if every day is a path, and that path looks different depending on the things I'll be doing that day. The path usually heads southwest though.

The weird one though is a year. As far back as I can remember I've had a clear idea in my head about how the months relate to each other. I don't know if this will make sense to anyone but me, but months seemed to have relationships with each other, a years journey followed a constant path, and more importantly, at every given moment I always view the year from my perspective on the present point on that path.

I've never plotted it out outside my own head until this morning, but here it is, a sort of downward path with a lilting jag in the summer. What I want to know is if this makes sense to anyone? Do you have a representation of what a year looks like? Does it look anything like this, or is it completely different?

Thinking more about it, I'm realizing I could probably do the same thing for a decade (or at least ones that have passed) and maybe as little as a minute (returning to the clock face).

Part of me wonders if this is what astrology is about. I was born in July and you can see that this is where the big jag starts. What could it mean if other people have similar perceptions of their year-path (whether represented spatially, emotionally, by color, or whatever synesthetic oddity), with a significant change around their birth-month? How could this affect how people act over the cycle of a year?

True to form I left home late again this morning, too late even to likely make it to the Hayward station before Amtrak. Clipping down 880 I called the Amtrak status line to find that the train was running 2 minutes early, while I wouldn't get to the station until about 5 minutes after the train should have left.

Approaching the exit ("A Street Downtown") I contemplated driving in to work. The train was surely past, and heck, if I drive in, I could leave at 5 and actually get home earlier. Anyhow, thinking back to yesterday's (err, posted today) post about personal power, I decided to drop off the freeway and check Hayward station anyhow.

Sure enough, the train hadn't arrived yet, stuck behind the delayed schedule of the northbound train, waiting in a passing area for the tardy sisten train to pass by.

The train didn't actually leave Hayward until 15 minutes after I got there. I could have stopped of for chai after all.

I double-snoozed today and didn't actually get out of bed until 6:40. I told myself it was okay because I was driving to Jack London Square to catch the train, which usually means I can leave about 10 minutes later than my 6:55 deadline.

My shower is a time vortex.

Shaving, shampoo and conditioning, brushing teeth. These are all tasks I prefer to do in the shower, and why not? The morning shower's primary purpose isn't, as one might expect, to get me clean, it's to satisfy my inner lizard, the one who would lay in sloth all the long day if not for the sun-baked rock that invigorates its cold-blooded body and mind into action.

I have no heated rock, nor even sun at 6:40, but a stream of 120 degree water applied at high pressure to the back of the neck for twenty minutes does the job of warming my blood and hence body well enough. I go in to the shower a sleepy lizard and come out a normal (soggy) human.

This morning my soggy shaven showered self emerged at 7:10. I'd be lucky to catch the train in Hayward, playing catch-up past both Emeryville and Jack London.

Ever a slave to the Net I took a quick peek at reservations.amtrak.com to see if the train was on time. 'Lo and surprise, it's running 14 minutes late! Dressed and packed up to go, I decide to revel in my good fortune and stop in to the bakery on the way to my parked car and get myself a chai. As I'm waiting for the guy behind the counter (when a 'tall' (small) coffee costs $4 you can get away with labeling the person crafting it a 'barrista,' but when it's someone mixing hot milk and syrup for a beverage that costs less than $2 in a hole-in-the-wall bakery then he's 'the guy behind the counter.'), as I wait I think the same thought that hits me idly most mornings while lingering in bed or in front of the computer before leaving for the train: My thought is about the variable value of time, and how five or ten minutes of web surfing or snoozing at home has a certain personal value, of satisfaction or benefit. Then I think about the 10 seconds that so often make or break my morning commute, racing to make it through the sliding steel doors of Amtrak and how those ten seconds (or more specifically, the ten seconds that precede them) are far more valuable than the 10 minutes of snooze, and when traded on margin can give me two hours of writing time on the train instead of riding time in the traffic mess that is morning 880 South. If only I apply that investment wisdom while tinkering with the clock for a few more moments of lizard-coma.

Today I'm cocky and say 'Fuck it. I'm going to make the train and have Chai too.' So mote it be.

Driving to Jack London (as I'm spending some time with Crystal and Karen in Alameda after work), I calculate that if the train's still 14 minutes late, I'm in good shape. I have 5 minutes to spare.

I have just enough time to miss the exit.

The next exit seems soo far away. It was at least two miles, maybe more. Jumping off the freeway, now in danger of missing the train, I bolt back on the frontage road, quickly approaching the Amtrack station. There are the tracks ahead, with the parking lot on the other side.

About to cross the tracks, the crossing signal activates and the arms start to go down. I look both ways and I see one train, my train, approaching the station.

Now I should give a little more detail: The station is about 100 yards before the crossing. I see the train. I see it's my train, and I see the crossing arms descending (not so much like a mother's protective embrace as like the rough bicep-laden mallets of the bouncer stopping you from getting into a fight you can't win) for a train that I know for a certainty will stop at the station, not go through my intersection. I look both ways, I see no other train, I see that there's plenty of room for the agile driver to snake through the arms, whip to the lot, and still catch my train. I put my hands on the steering wheel and...

...sigh...

I mean, how stupid do you think I am?

I'm sure the eighth-to-last thought (ETLT) of half the people who die getting hit by trains in intersections is "I know for a certainty that..." (The ETLT of half the rest is "I bet I can beat that train" and the ETLT of the remaining 25% is "Hmm. I wonder why the car stalled...")

Okay, I wait for the for the signal to be as smart as me and after about 45 seconds it says 'huh. no train, go fig.' and I race out from the bouncer's loosening grip, hitting a quick left and finding a space that some, not so hurried and harried as I, probably judged to be uncomfortably close to a fire hydrant ("There was no parking anywhere... I think that hydrant wasn't there...").

Hop out of the car (chai's all consumed by now), wait for three cars to slowly pass like sharks hunting for spaces, and run across the street to the train, the train with the closing doors, still half a block away.

The train with one door that didn't seem to close right, the black iris of the interior narrowing to a cat-like slit, the tiger focusing on its prey.

Then from the maw emerges Gary who some of you might remember, who waves at me as I pick up speed, jumping into the pit of the parallel tracks to get to the inner platform, as he holds the door open for me (even more incredible for a day when the train is already 1412 minutes late.

I've missed the train a lot since my lucky streak and it usually involves stress and a race to the next station or all the way in to work. Today I just didn't care. At each stage I smelled the flowers, took the deep breath, (missed the offramp), determined that even if everything wasn't okay, everything would be okay.

And it was.

A nice little parable for the week; a week that might hold a lot of changes; a week that I'm ready for. In short, a week where I'm ready to twist misfortune into triumph. And how often can we really say that?

This week I am the master of my fate. Even if it's a bad week, it's going to be good to great because at this moment I am more in control of my own destiny than at any time I can remember.

---

[FYI I wrote this yesterday morning, but didn't have the chance to post it 'till now]