july 4th weekend

Instead of making the road trip down to Southern California, my dad decided he wanted to stay home for the July 4th weekend. I was disappointed at first because I'd been looking forward to San Diego beaches, but I had a good time anyway. My oldest brother, from New Mexico, came home. I love spending time with him because he's the most laid-back person in our family. We went to Napa Valley, where my dad blatantly offered me wine in front of the bartender who subsequently went ballistic. We didn't bother explaining that we used to manage a wine store, that I've never been drunk in my life, or that wine is good for you. Anyhow, it was beautiful. As much as I love the ocean, if I absolutely had to choose, I'd take the hills.

On another day we went to Monterey and Carmel, and took my parents on the 17-Mile Drive, where I visited Pebble Beach for the first time. I love the tacky names people give their houses on the shore and cliffs: "Sand and Sea," "Seahorse," and the like. There was one, though, that I really liked that was less obvious: "Periwinkle." I wish I could remember if I thought that word was cute before or after I knew what the color looked like. If it was before, I'd finally have a word to use as an example during the times that I think that the feelings we associate with words can just come from pure sound and aren't necessarily a result of what the words describe. I guess, though, that periwinkle could be associated with wink, twinkle, and other words that have "cute" connotations. I'm giving this way too much thought.

Anyway, driving around NorCal made me realize again how much I love it here. I've wanted to live on the East Coast for the longest time, and now I have, and I enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but I can't really compare it to home. And I know, everyone is attached to their hometown, but I honestly think that even if I had grown up somewhere else and then come here to live, I'd still feel it was the best area to live (at least for me personally). It has the laid-back environment characteristic of California, without the superficiality also associated with the West Coast. It has the intellectual atmosphere of the East Coast without its stereotypical boarding school snobbery.

If only it snowed every so often here.

I heard on the radio awhile back that some magazine surveyed 200,000 people as to the "most rockin' city" in the US, and San Francisco was number one. So this assertion has no validity because I don't remember the radio station or the magazine, but I CAN tell you that I agree. And what I like most about the Bay Area is the conglomeration of small cities that are all individually so interesting, all in one concentrated area of California. Practically everything is within two hours or less of Fremont. This isn't as true of the East Coast; though the different states are a close enough drive to one another--which is something I love--they are, after all, different states. But I have to admit that when you've lived long enough in an area, you find yourself loving it for the details that you haven't had the time and experience to find in other places. No one comes to the Bay Area to go to the Stanford Theater, downtown San Jose, or Mission Peak, and those are the kind of things that I've become attached to. I'm sure these details lurk in other places I claim to know but really have only visited. So impossible to see everything, and so natural to want to do so.

Movie update: Spiderman 2 was good. The Notebook was not.

I'm looking forward to seeing Before Sunset this weekend. Like Before Sunrise, it has no action whatsoever, just "intelligent conversation and lovely scenery," which--if you subtract the adjectives--I think reflects real life more than most movies. The more I think about it, the less I view life in terms of plot and more in terms of dialogue and places.

You'd think that with all this introspection that I indulge in, I'd be more pessimistic. Like Aud, when I read over my entries I felt they were one-dimensional in tone, but for the opposite reason. I tend to want to write (at least for public reading) when I'm happy, or when I've reached a point where I feel positive again. I've been telling people lately that I've never wallowed. A part of wallowing is feeling that what you're experiencing is unique to you, so you deserve the right to brood. I just can't think of a burden that any one person could bear that doesn't weigh on someone else, somewhere else. Not that I think people shouldn't wallow; I understand that it's not about actually knowing that you're alone but just feeling as though you are. It's just odd. If I had to say that I was "too" anything, it would be too sensitive. I get angry, upset, and annoyed really easily. But I can't ever seem to let go of that last bit of rationale that prevents my emotions from completely taking over. When I was younger, during the time when the expectation was that I was going to succumb to uncontrollable angst, I was proud of this, of what I thought was maturity. Now I regret that I've never experienced something strong enough to make me wallow.

But as those older than me tell me, I'm only twenty.