Dear Lord, I am hating the commute to the new office.  It’s anywhere from 40-50 minutes each way, depending on traffic, and a good portion of that is spent either sitting there going nowhere or moving at the increasingly aggravating speed of somewhere south of 20 mph.  And once I get to the office, there’s a chance that there may not be parking available for me — the building lot doesn’t have enough room for everyone’s car, so they stationed a building attendant at the top of the garage, and if you come in too late, they’ll take your car and basically park it wherever they please when something opens up.  For someone who absolutely hates valet or turning over my car to anyone, it’s almost enough of an incentive for me to get my ass out of bed a little earlier in order to make sure I get a spot.  Plus, there’s not much in terms of places to eat around here — it’s been a little bad since I am trying to kind of watch what I eat, but the closest places are a 7-11, Fatburger, Burger King, Bob’s Big Boy and Numero Uno.

I will admit that the view from the giant picture window behind my monitor is amazing.  For those of you familiar with L.A., I look out on Hancock Park, and my completely unobstructed view stretches from Park LaBrea immediately to the west all across the Hollywood Hills with downtown Hollywood right in front of me.  I can see the Hollywood sign directly in front of me, and Griffith Observatory is off to the right.  I keep forgetting to bring in my camera.

In other news, earlier this week, I got one of the most creative excuses postponing a dinner ever.  I was supposed to meet up with a friend for dinner on Tuesday night, but he called and asked if we could reschedule for tonight because he didn’t have any pants.  Excuse me?  My friend lives down in Irvine, but is doing a rotation up at Children’s Hospital here in Los Angeles, and he’d gone home the previous night — when he drove back in the morning, he was wearing scrubs and didn’t have any actual pants with him.  With that kind of excuse, how could I not give him a break?

Farewell, 41st Floor.  We’ve had some really fun (and some really not-so-fun) moments over the past two years, but it’s the end of an era now. 

As I write this, my office is making its third move in 5 years — and we’re leaving Century City after 30 years.  This building was by far the most fun… the workspace was great, the commute was easy, there was delicious coffee-for-a-dollar in the basement, the farmer’s market was right there on Thursdays, and there was lots of convenient stuff within walking distance, including a halfway decent bar/restaurant and the Century City Mall food court.  (If you haven’t been to the food court there, go — it’s worth the trip.  Seriously, it’s like the Food Court of Tomorrow™.)

So we’re leaving that all behind for a new place that’s going to be halfway across town.  I hope there’s some decent stuff within walking distance, but the view from my new office will never rival this or this.

People are self-centered assholes.

Exhibit #1:  The idiot in the Mercedes who was paralleling me down Olympic Boulevard this morning.  We approached a construction area.  His lane was narrowing.  A non-self-important Mercedes driver would slow down so he would fall behind me, allowing him the room to cross briefly into my lane and avoid the construction zone.  However, this inconsiderate douchenozzle not only tried to force his way into my lane (making me split the difference between me and the lane next to me), he began blowing loudly on his horn because — naturally — it was my fault that I didn’t realize that since he was in a Mercedes, he obviously had right-of-way. 

Exhibit #2:  The idiot who casually disregarded the — not one, but two — “monthly” signs over my entrance to the parking garage and who tied up traffic, backing up a dozen cars and forcing us to wait while he kept punching the button over and over for a ticket that would never come.

So I haven’t been around much.  Honestly, I haven’t been around my own life much lately.  I… well, I’ve been dating someone for a while now, and the squee period appears to holding pretty steady despite the length of time we’ve been seeing each other.  After all this time, it’s a little odd for me to refer to someone as “my girlfriend,” but I think that’s just a matter of my own personal calendar taking a little while to reset itself.  We’re both pretty smitten with each other.  And I’m learning that a good relationship doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have metric assloads of things in common (although we do, despite a few personal interests that don’t match up)… it’s little things, like me surprising her with flowers she likes just because, or her leaving coffee for me on the nightstand this morning so it would be there when I woke up while she was in the living room. 

On the flipside, after two years in a great location, my office is finally moving this week.  We’re heading to an area of L.A. that is definitely not as nice as the one we’re in now, plus this move more than doubles my commute (I’m looking at 45 minutes to an hour each way now), which I’m really not happy about.  We’re all going to be crammed into tight quarters and most of us will be in cubicles, which will be unpleasant especially considering I like to play music and my writing partner and I are also a bit loud.

So it’s a matter of riding the rollercoaster.  This week will be up when I’m with The Girlfriend and down as I’m packing for the move.  But I suppose the universe needs to even itself out somehow.

I’m a fiercely proud Mac owner — I’ve never owned a Windows machine in my entire life.  My family’s been on Apple computers since I was in the 6th grade.  And finally about three years ago, I moved from desktops to laptops, and I’m never going back.  The prospect of being able to take my computer with me wherever I go is much too alluring, and it also means that I can work from anywhere, given an Internet connection.

I have noticed, however, that in recent years, Apple has become slightly more Microsoft-ish in its ways by putting out software that is kind of buggy.  It’s kind of sad now that every time I notice that a program or the OS has been upgraded, I have to go online to a bunch of Mac fan message boards to see whether I should actually apply the update or whether it hosed several people’s computers.  But what I don’t get is why people feel compelled to announce that they’re about to upgrade — every time I check the boards when there’s a big update, there’s at least three pages of posts from people saying things like “Okay, here I go!” or “Hope this works!” or “This sounds great, I’ll let you know if it works when I get back to my computer!” WTF?  Do I really need to slog through all that crap?  I need information about the update, not useless blather about what you’re going to do later.  They might as well tell me, “While I’m updating my OS, I’ll be watching Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? and here’s what I’m wearing and here’s what I’m eating...”

In other news, I’m very much pro-the new Amy Winehouse album.  Definitely check it out.

Oy.  A week out on the road (well, in the air, as it were) with no sleep and lots of alcohol and rock ‘n’ roll means I’m ready to get home and spend a few relaxing nights in my own bed, watching my own TiVo/cable, eating a little better and getting back into my routine.  It’s nice to get away and break out of the routine, because it makes you appreciate the familiar a little more when you come back to it.  And I have to admit that the overall situation was a little intimidating to walk into, since I knew practically no one here when I walked in, pushing me way outside my comfort zone.  I like to have at least one person I know to hang around with, and this time, I was totally on my own.  But I made it and have been social to the point where when my friend Myra came by the hotel this morning to take me out, I kept saying hi to people on my way out and she thought I was showing off.

Despite the lack of initial comfort and the fact that my liver probably hates me right now, I’m really glad I got the experience of coming up here.  I met a lot of very cool people, I finally got a chance to see Toronto, I had some cool experiences, and I made a lot of professional contacts that will help me as well.  But I have to admit that I’m a little scared by the fact that they have women’s hockey here, and curling seems to be on TV all the freakin’ time.  Seriously.  At 3am last night in the bar, curling was still on the TV!

Yesterday, I met up with the guy who runs The Edge, the big alternative station up here (and for you Canadians, the guy who does The Ongoing History of New Music), and he took me up to the station to show me around.  Plus, Johnny Rotten (formerly of the Sex Pistols) was coming in to their studios to do an interview.  My new friend told me, “I’ve had this poster on my wall for 11 years” — and points to a Sex Pistols poster signed by the three other members of the band… with an open space where Johnny’s signature should be.  He took the poster off the wall, unwrapped it and took it down to the studio, where, after the interview, Johnny finally signed it.  After 11 years, the poster’s destiny has finally been completed.  I felt like I was witnessing history.

This morning, I finally got a chance to break away from the convention to see the aforementioned Myra, who took me out for brunch and then we went up to the CN Tower, which is the tallest freestanding structure in the world.  On the observation deck, there’s actually a section that has a glass floor, where you can stand on what’s basically a window between you and the ground several hundred meters below.  It’s a little freaky.  It was a little hazy and cloudy today, but the financial district was right there.  Also, we were able to go up to the Sky Pod, which is, as it says, the world’s highest observation deck.  In a twist of technological geekery, we were so high up that I actually got a Verizon Wireless signal from the U.S. all the way across Lake Ontario — my cell phone has been roaming for the past few days.

Tomorrow, I head back to L.A., where things are not in metric, and there is no curling.  But I hope to come back here someday soon.

The first leg of Operation: International Incident is complete — I have conquered Denver and have moved on to, well, international territory.  Greetings from Toronto!  It’s a wee bit cold here — for us Americans, it was around 20 degrees when I got in this afternoon, though my brain said “whaaaaaa?” when the pilot announced it was -7 as we were landing.  Go me with the lack of metric conversion.

So, Denver.  Got to see my best friend again, which always rocks my face off, although the details are a little fuzzy since we went out and got rather blasted — I took down 5 drinks & 3 Jager bombs with a bunch of radio and record label people, and I’m running on only 4 hours of sleep.  I got to meet the boys in OK Go and Snow Patrol, and I caught a lot of sass (which was to be expected). 

The drinking and hilarity continues through the end of the week with Canadian Music Week.  I’m actually wondering if I’m going to be able to survive the week… when radio people get together, we drink heavily.

Kathy Bates was sitting at the next table over from us at dinner tonight.  She looks great.  She’s also short.

You will totally thank me for this.  Remember this number:  466453.  Yes, it’s Google… and it responds to text messages. 

If you text it something like “drugstore” and your ZIP code, it will send you a text message back with the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the drugstores in the ZIP code you specified.  If you text it with the name of a specific restaurant and city, it will text you back with the restaurant’s info.  And here’s the coolest part — if you text Google the phrase “driving directions: [address 1] to [address 2]”, it will actually text you back with driving directions (it may send you back more than 1 text).

This rules more than I can possibly describe.