Manic Monday....Reading The Signs. Updated 6:33 PM (PST)

It's a cold Monday morning! I mean it's not the 45 degrees like up in the Homeland, but it's pretty cold considering the heat wave we just went through the last two weeks. The weekend was full of memories and people of significance in my life, which is not how I thought it was going to go when it start out. Sometimes, I'm uncertain how I should feel about unscheduled time because it can leave me to my thoughts and that can go a lot of different directions! LOL. But, my life is brilliant! So, I try and keep a  routine schedule together so I know what I should be doing next..ya know, eat, morning coffee, emails, phone calls, morning gym session and then whatever till it's afternoon gym time! Hahahaha.

This weekend, Sunday/Monday for me, was a bit different because there was a birthday party I had to help put together as best as one can. I think in the future it might be easier to have events catered versus going to the Costco, find supplies, get food to cook, cook the so called food, and then make sure people know where things are while trying to entertain guests! LOL. In the end, it was good to share a few moments, laugh, eat and be merry. As I spoke with guests and managed people, I thought of a few people that had come and gone over the months of my being here. I sent text message invites to a few people that ended up having plans or were too exhausted from their own weeks or start to their weekends.

At some point, I just worked on my drink wondering where the time had gone....the last four months. I smiled. I likely laughed out loud to myself, made a few inappropriate comments, and ate. Eventually I let the Whiskey lull me to sleep on the sofa with people still all around me. I couldn't help it, she was in my thoughts asking me to come and talk to her. So, I did. We walked along the PCH laughing at how hard it was to run up a certain hill in Malibu. We talked about how her life has been with me being in town admitting it was a subtle comfort after the initial reality of it..."cause I didn't think you were ever going to make it." We looked at the calendar acknowledging the upcoming month, talked a bit more about it and other things, and laughed as we did in days past.

For a few moments we held hand as we both mentioned the happenings of our lives without the other arriving at our Minnesota plated cars. She mentioned I needed to read the signs. I was a bit taken by it as first, but then I was abruptly awakened by the house Mascot jumping off the sofa from next to me. I laughed out loud and went outside to look into the night sky and take in some air. "It was a dream," I thought. Reading the signs, is something I usually only make light of in my story line or in conversation with a few other 'spirit' oriented people, but her saying it stuck with me as I came fully back into the moment, and it persisted into the next day.

What I saw was the signs that the house party was over!! Things needed to be picked up and then a fast-track to my bed!! Hahahaha. Before I got that far, I noticed a bunch of text messages that I had clearly missed in my few moments of passing out. One was from Al as I call her.

Then, Sunday was upon me! I slept till almost 8:00 AM. It's a difficult task for me, but I'm sure the whiskey helped that part of it along. I had totally forgot to get back to the people that had text me the night before and then noticed a number of pictures from the night's event. Another gal from Minnesota was in the house, a couple of gals I knew via my blog and random sumo-wrestling sized men running around the house with their shirts off. Yikes!! What the hell!? I shot a note out to Al about talking through a three-way misunderstanding that had hit a couple weeks back to which she agreed we should do. I smiled because in all of the time I have been here, she was one of the few people that I felt more centered while being around. It was a bit of an early start, but we're early rise kind of people and decided to hit Jinky's. As we talked, Justin Timberlake played in the background, What Goes Around Comes Around. We understood what had happened, and agreed, the time passed slower than usual.."Read the signs," I recalled as we drove back to her place. Eventually, I left her and her teddy to chill or attempt to chill as some of us are hard pressed to just "chill" in general. "Remember, you're beautiful just like that song says,"  LOL.

Before I knew it, I was home, and the weather was getting better by the minute with the development of rain clouds, cool breezes, and rain!! It rained all night, and the fresh smell it had left lingered in the air. It was likely the other contributing factor to my sleep being so long; it was the sound of rain outside the window. It was the beginning of a good "go watch a movie day" but I got a text from the Aussie (Cute blonde in the picture above) that they were going out to watch the game at one of the local pubs and that I should meet them. I figured, "What the hell. I don't have anything better to do." So I went. Unscheduled time for me is dangerous so better that I go and chill a bit and fill it than leave it to chance, besides, it was Sunday, and we all know what I like to do on Sundays if I can manage to get myself there in one piece...karaoke!!

What happened at the pub was only short of ridiculous by a few hair widths. Two Hispanic 'men' walked into the place after a bit that the girls had "kinda" met the night before after leaving the party. LOL. I'm not a judge on anyone's choice of sexual orientation or expression, but having lived in West Hollywood for two years gave me a few skills I keep around of which one of is spotting a closet gay guy when I see one or two!! What was funny, is when I left (cause I didn't want to interrupt the girls' game (even if they wanted me too), the same two guys totally convinced themselves that I was gay. Apparently my fashion, reddish/pink sweater and very clean facial features and chiseled arms make me a gay guy!! Hahahaha. It was at least amusing.

Then gym time finally came but not before I convinced my housemate to hit the newly opened Norstrum's Rack store where I got a call from a man I've not seen in about 10 years. My close confidant and one of my best friends from college, Tim, was on the line. He sounded exactly the same, and as he spoke Wiz Khalifa's song See You Again started to play in the recesses of my mind. He said he was in town till the following morning and had time to meet up with me if I could figure out where he was. Eventually, we met on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. His daughter Eden was traveling with him for his fundraising event at a local church. Tim, like most of the mighty men in my life that are all my best friends, followed family tradition and went into the world relief field full-time leading him to East Africa. Toto's song Africa plays when I think of him and his family. We talked as if time had not passed even though he had a couple of more kids and ten years had passed. That's how it is with some people in my life...timeless...we pick up where we left off and talk about the important things of note, which for me was reading the signs as a back drop to my upcoming book being published. "Reading the signs and showing up!" I laughed with him because it was exactly what I had said in the days we lived together as roommates in undergrad. He was marveled that my old jeep was still ticking at all (259125 miles to date).

I only own two other things that I've had longer than my jeep (17 years), the ring on my middle finger that I wear on my right hand, and my Swiss Army watch (19 years). I took it off to show his daughter the engravings on the sides: Live & Love. "I wear this ring to remind me that I have to love. I also wear it to remind myself that I have to be merciful, kind, understanding, etc. The Bible teaches us these things and many others we don't talk about as Christian people," I said while further mentioning her father's wisdom and poise in the midst of anything. We left school with the proverbial sword of truth. All of us, six men, answering a set of questions in one way or another but essentially the same,"Here am I..send me." to, "Who will go for Us? Who will stand in the gap for the people?"  I admit I learned to have more of it, calm, in my own life because of him. At the end of our visit, we hugged like grown men do from our belief circle, and I walked them to their car. We hugged again acknowledging that it might be the last time we see each other in a long time if at all, but hopefully again. One never knows what the day will bring in Africa or in California for that matter!

It was Sunday night, and it was time to sing a song or two. Eventually, I got to sing a U2 song, With Or Without You, that reached out to the bar people because all of them sang most of it with me. "Read the signs," I thought as I sang and watched the crowd and thought about all of it. The dots had connected again leading me to that very spot where I sang, held a MIC and felt alive again. When it was over, one of the gals came up to me and asked my age. I laughed while informing her. She smiled and later ran into me on my way out with her friends. While giving me her biz card, she asked where I was from as I noticed the 612 number on her card. "I'm from Minnesota..the Homeland!" The sound she made after I said that could only have been out of a movie because it was a cross between pleasure, surprise and victory! "Me too!!" She said virtually pulling me towards her for a hug. I agreed to call her and hear her story as she informed me that she was a "spiritual Christian" and had been following the signs in her life that had essentially lead her to California. I laughed as I turned to walk away. It was time to make the drive home. "Read the signs," she said to me in my dream making me smile as I pulled onto the freeway.