Dream On

This morning as I was getting up for work, Agnes rolled over and told me in a groggy voice filled with concern that she hadn't slept very well. The following conversation ensued:

Paul: Why didn't you sleep well?
Agnes: I was having some really bad dreams.
Paul: Oh really? What did you dream about?
Agnes: I dreamed that your mom died, and then we went out to dinner, and over dinner you told me you were a transvestite. And while you were telling me, the waitress told us that our car had been towed.
Paul: Don't worry, honey, two out of three of those things never happened.

Relieved, Agnes rolled over and went back to sleep. And I slipped on on my favorite pair of fishnets and stilettos and tiptoed out the door to work.

(Okay, that very last part isn't true, but the rest happened exactly as I described it here. Oh, and instead of "transvestite", she said "trannie")

Moving On

Last week, after a magical year in Sausalito, we packed up and moved south across the Golden Gate Bridge to the city. Like many moves, this one came with mixed feelings. We love our new place in San Francisco, but we already miss our sleepy little town. I miss seeing the sun creep up over Angel Island as I get ready for work, turning the bay from silver to gold. And I miss watching the the evening fog spill over the headlands, tumbling down the steep green hills and getting tangled in the trees above our house. But I don't miss spending $4/gallon on gas and filling up the car every week!

Do You Know This Man?

We just got back from a quick weekend getaway to the beach to meet up with family. Highlights included flautas, a long bike ride with Nathan along a 60-mile section of the Tour of California route, hanging with Nathan and Marian, freezing cold ocean water, hearing about GK and Susanna's New York adventures, racing Maisie on the beach, and of course, this dude on the left.

This is Paul, and we have the same name. Other than a professional baseball player that I found when I googled myself (come on, you know you've done it) he is the only person I have come across with my same name. His parents took a gamble by giving him this name, because besides meaning "Little One," it can carry a lot of baggage. But Small Paul has transcended all that, and at one month shy of his fourth birthday, is much cooler than I'll ever be. I won't claim that I'm his very best friend (according to Paul, that title belongs to the starfish in the red bucket he's holding) but we are pretty good buddies.

Tour of California

Last week, the Tour of California, the biggest bike race in the country, rolled through our town. Actually, it started in our town. We spent the morning walking around checking out the action. To be more specific, Agnes followed me around while I gawked at the awesome bikes and at the famous racers who warming up on our street. At one point, Agnes asked me if I ever wished I was a professional bike racer. I guess the fact that I took over 200 pictures that morning answered her question.

There Will be Blood

A couple of nights ago, my wife, Agnes (not her real name, but since she has banned me from mentioning her by name on the blog, this is her blog alias) and I were winding down in the kitchen late on a Saturday night. We still hadn't cleaned up from Christmas and Agnes accidentally swung her hand directly into the broken bulb of a battery-powered Christmas candle which had fallen and broken a few days before. I had picked it up off the floor and put it on the shelf, planning on throwing it away later. Unfortunately, I never got around to it, and the jagged bulb sliced deep into her left hand. By the time we got to the sink to wash it off, she was bleeding bad and it was obvious she needed stitches. It was almost midnight when we wrapped her bloody hand in a dish towel and sped to the hospital.

We got to the hospital, checked in a couple of times (this ER had a multi-stage check-in process for some reason) and waited for about 30 minutes before they took us down the hall past two sheriff's deputies and into a room. It turns out our new neighbor was a prisoner from San Quentin. He moaned and screamed for the next 2 hours as we sat and waited for a doctor to come stitch up Agnes' hand. After a while, an orderly or a nurse or a hospital technician (I'm not really sure if those are even real positions in the ER) came in and prepped Agnes' hand, brought in some supplies, and warned me that I was more likely to faint than Agnes was. We laughed at that, because you would have to be pretty lame to faint in the ER.

After a while, I started to get bugged because I forgot a book to read and I had already read all the latest articles on the '08 primaries on my blackberry and Prison Mike next door wouldn't shut up. Finally the doctor came in and she took off the bloody dish towel and started to stitch up Agnes' hand. I stood up to get a better view and was surprised at how ragged the cut was. That's all I kept thinking. "Wow, that's a really ragged cut." After a couple of minutes of watching, a wave of nausea hit me and it felt like someone had turned up the thermostat to 150 degrees. I took off my sweatshirt and felt like I was going to throw up so I sat back down. I started to feel even more dizzy and the doctor stopped stitching and looked over at me to see what was wrong. She told me to put my head down between my knees, and I heard her say, "Wow, he's really pale." I slumped over in my little ER chair but I felt like I was underwater and her voice had a strange echo. I heard the shuffling of feet and before I knew it, my head was cradled in the ample bosom of a large Hispanic nurse, who rocked me gently as she lowered me to the floor. I remember hearing her say "he's going, he's going," in her gravely smoker voice.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor, looking up at a semi-circle of doctors and nurses standing over me smiling. "You fainted," the bosom cradler proudly announced. As she shuffled off to get me crackers and apple juice, I heard Agnes, still being stitched up, ask me if I was okay. They helped me up and put me in a gurney directly across from her so she could laugh at me while they worked on her hand.

When they finished with her stitches, I overheard the doctor tell her two things: first, she couldn't believe my brother was an ER doctor, and second, I wasn't allowed to drive home. So after nearly three hours in the ER, I sheepishly walked out of the hospital and got into the passenger seat so my injured wife could drive me home with her one good hand.

As we drove, I told Agnes that my fainting episode qualified as one of my most embarrassing moments. Funny, my all-time most embarrassing moment was also in a hospital. I was eighteen years old, groggily coming out of elbow surgery, I awoke to a room full of 20-year-old nursing students, who were there to watch and learn how to take out a catheter. Sorry, I'm still not ready to blog about that one.

Identity Crisis

My wife said I could have a blog for Christmas, but this gift came with a list of conditions I had to honor before the blog was born:

1. She would not post, read, be asked to read, be asked to visit, or even be mentioned by name in said blog. So as far as I understand it, this blog is basically the bastard offspring of a cyber pre-nup and a restraining order. Is that weird? I'm sure it will get weirder.

2. The blog must be called the "Hotbed of Genius."

Obviously, wife does not like blogs and has no interest in participating in what she has referred to as "online scrapbooking" or "glorified Christmas cards." But I do have to say that I like the name she gave to this blog. It came from a travel book we read while we were getting ready to go to Scotland in November. The book described Edinburgh as a "hotbed of genius," which we loved. Besides, it is better than the first name she suggested for the blog, which was "Stare hard, retard."

Maybe this blog is a way for me to come to grips with being in my 30s. These days I don't even recognize myself. I am losing my hair at an alarming rate (actually it is just migrating south to my back), I know what a 401K is (sort of), and I read Russian literature for fun. What went wrong?

So a recent work trip to LA only fueled my budding identity crisis. The meetings were held at the Disney Studios in Burbank, and on the first day I drove my rental car slowly through the striking writer's guild and made my way to the security booth. They asked for ID so they could print me a badge. The Disney badge they gave me had a photo and everything, so I was impressed (I am easily impressed). Only later did I notice my name:

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Paul Feorofe. I looked around at some of the other people attending the meetings, and the security guy got their names right, so I'm not sure what happened. And the guy in the booth took my name from my driver's license, so it wasn't like he was trying to read my terrible handwriting or anything like that. Other than the F, the dude wasn't even close. What kind of name is Feorofe, anyway? I think it might be Scotch-Romanian. Or possibly Comanche Indian.

So the next day I was curious if the dude in the booth would get it right. My interest was piqued when I saw that it was a different guard on day two. Would I be Paul Feorofe again? No, even better.

Paul Orekct. There's really not very much I can say about that, except that Paul Orekct is an awesome name. Maybe they were giving me a stage name. After all, I was in Hollywood.

Or maybe Disney just has a really awesome security program that is so high-level that they give you an alias when you check in. I guess it would make sense, most of the Disney guys I met with were former CIA people anyway. But still, Paul Orekct. That is fantastic.

So stay tuned. Paul Feorofe, er, I mean Paul Orekct may have more to say. Too bad Mrs. Feorofe-Orekct hates blogs, she might enjoy this.