He’s the Sheik of Araby (without no pants on!)

My father has finally finished his two-month, four-continent adventure he has termed his "victory lap around the world."  He retired from his job of drudgery as a database programmer at a California hospital back in April, and has since been traveling to various states and countries to visit family and old friends before settling for good in Bangkok , Thailand.

I have been in contact with him on and off for much of his travels,  but I couldn’t be able to do justice to the many stories he has from his trip.  He was thinking about starting a blog (yes, I told him, blogs are awesome!), but I think he was so busy experiencing these crazy things that he didn’t really have time to document it.  Most likely he’ll have something to show soon, maybe on his site .

In the meantime, I know that some of you are actually following my blog, not because you know me at all, but because you’re friends with my dad, so I’ll fill you in with some (highly abbreviated!) stories that he told me along the way.

His trip across America was quite tiring:  a lot of driving, which he wasn’t so thrilled with.  He called me from New Orleans, where it was raining and the Jazz Festival was going on.  He turned out to have a pretty good time there, although when he talked to me on the phone, he was pretty disappointed with the Jazz Festival in general.

When he arrived in NJ to visit me, we had a pretty nice time together, if I don’t say so myself.  He dropped off a truckload of boxes (mostly old books that he didn’t need in Thailand), and we drove to Long Island to visit the Long Island Montalbanos.  My brother joined us for that leg of the journey.  Then he stayed in NY at my brother’s house for a week, visiting friends in the city.

He next called me from Oslo at the house of a guy for which I have very fond memories.  Drew had rented a room in our house in San Francisco when I was very young (I must have been 4?  Maybe 5?).  He and I used to play pretend all the time (this made a big impact, because my dad never liked to play pretend), and I have so many great memories of climbing into the recliner and pretending to blast off into space.  Anyway, he teaches in Norway now, and the last time I saw him, I was 9 years old, the summer that I spent with my dad on the Norwegian Star .  Drew had picked me up from the airport in Oslo (I was an unaccompanied minor) and let me stay in his guest bedroom until my dad’s ship docked.

I say all this because it was such a thrill to actually see Drew for the first time in way too many years.  My father’s laptop had a webcam attached to it, and since I called on Skype , the webcam automatically let me see both my dad and Drew as I talked to them.  Alas, my computer does not have a webcam, so they couldn’t see me…I may just have to remedy that soon.

The next call I got was from my dad in Nice .  He was bummed because his laptop had been stolen a few days prior at a busy train station in Barcelona .  So, not only did he no longer have his fancy (relatively new!) laptop with all his information and documents, but he also lost all the pictures that he had taken up until that moment!  Of course, if he had been writing a blog this whole time, he would have had the pictures somewhere in the blogosphere…but I digress…

After Nice, he had traveled to Sicily to jam with Giuseppe Montalbano (no close relation, that we know of anyway…) and his band .  Then it was on to Egypt , where he stayed with an old Peace Corps friend and her husband.  On his way to Cairo, Egypt Air lost his luggage, so he had to delve into his friend’s husband’s closet.  He sent me this picture, with the following caption (he’s the guy in the middle, in case you can’t recognize him):

"Ever since I arrived in Egypt , I’ve realized I have always had a mission in life, and it must be to struggle for the One True Way, and the One True God. I know you will follow me in this quest. Meet me at the second pyramid on the left. The Sphynx has a riddle for you."

Those of you who know my father will appreciate the humor.

I just heard from him yesterday, and he told me that he was safely ensconced in his new home in Thailand.  If you wish to contact him, send him an email (no, I’m not going to broadcast his email on this blog!  What kind of a dope do you think I am?) or give him a call…his old cell phone should forward to his new international phone.

Daddy Dadaism

Last night I had the most bizarre conversation with my father. I’m still not sure what happened during the phone call, because I think I was transported to an alternate dimension. What I thought was going to be a linear conversation about the logistics of him coming over for Christmas turned into random allusions to the Gila Monster interspersed with Thai epithets. I spent the evening really confused. I suppose I’m used to being confused, but I guess this came at me sideways. My family is really crazy. I’m serious. They’re crazy.

The Weekend

So I visited my stereotypical Italian relatives this weekend…my brother and I went to Long Island to visit our great-aunt and various and sundry cousins. It was fun, mostly because they LOVE to talk. Seriously stereotypical, but very fun.

Besides that, my great-aunt found out that I knit and she offered to take me “shopping” in her basement collection of yarns. It was amazing! All that yarn organized by color and type. I was very excited.

After my visit with the fam, I went to see Serenity. Wow, that was a great movie. I mean, I was a fan because I liked the TV show Firefly, but this was REALLY good. I encourage all of you to go see it now and then see it again. It was really, really good.

Dorms, Boggarts, and Not Enough Sleep

So I finally moved Mikey into his dorm at NYU. He, his mom (my stepmother…let’s call her “StepMom”), and his cousin (”RY”) arrived on Saturday morning at the butt-crack of dawn (they had taken a redeye from CA). I offered them to take them back to my house so they could nap for a little bit, but they were all gung-ho about doing some dorm shopping, so we did. I had printed out a list of things he would need, and over the summer I had been surreptitiously acquiring various items for him, from a fridge to file folders, so at least we didn’t wander around too aimlessly.

We managed to get all our shopping done by 2 PM (well, everything that would fit in my little Saturn, that is). When we finally got home, that’s when everyone crashed…everyone except Mikey, that is. He was still wide awake, and he and I decided to watch the highly appropriate movie, The Freshman. Of course, even I fell asleep in the middle of it, but he stayed alert and engaged throughout the whole movie. Pretty good for someone who was going on three hours of sleep on a plane. Sure enough, though, after dinner, we watched another movie on TV, and he was out like a light before any of the rest of us.

What I enjoyed most about having houseguests was that I was able to cook for them. First of all, Mikey’s a vegetarian too (okay, so I’m a pesco-vegetarian…or, as some people like to call it, a pesky vegetarian, so Mikey’s more strict with his diet than I am), and second of all, StepMom and RY are from the Phillipines, so they’re more amenable to the idea of having the curry I made for dinner. I couldn’t imagine anyone who actually lives in my house (besides me, of course) even touching the stuff. I mean, it’s not meat and potatoes: scandalous! Granted, there were potatoes in the curry, but you know what I mean.

On Sunday, I packed everyone and everything in the car and drove up to New York. It didn’t take very long to unload, but there were long lines for check-in and, more importantly, for the elevator (Mikey’s on the 16th floor). Luckily I didn’t have to wait in line very much since I had to dash to Queens and get another carload of stuff (fridge, microwave, etc.) I had dropped off at a friend’s house earlier. And on Monday, I ended up going to NY again to bring him the stuff that didn’t fit in my car on Sunday.

StepMom and RY ended left on Sunday afternoon, since they both had to be back at work in CA on Monday morning, so I drove them to the airport. I came back to NYU to do some extra shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond with Mikey…they were open until midnight for a move-in day extravaganza, and NYU IDs got you a 10% discount. Discount good. Sale good. Dorm stuff expensive.

Besides a very bizarre lunch with StepMom’s future brother-in-law (I’m really not clear on the details, but I guess her sister has been dating this guy online for a while and he plans on bringing her into the country and marrying her), who brought his mom along for the lunch, everything else ran very smoothly and according to plan. I think Mikey is now well-ensconced in his dorm with a view, and I can get back to my normal, everyday craziness.

Airline Stories

So the trip to California was so much more than I had hoped it would be. Not only did Shirley get married without a hitch, but I managed to squeeze time to visit my brother as well as seeing the old high school crew (a.k.a. The Lizard People).

The flight out to CA was fairly uneventful. There was a 20-minute stopover in Las Vegas, where those of us who were continuing on to Oakland were allowed to get off the plane, stretch our legs, etc., before it took off again. I took advantage of the opportunity to use a real bathroom and ambled around the terminal a bit. Of course, in Las Vegas, they have slot machines in the airport; why would they not? I briefly thought about trying one out, but then had visions of feverishly feeding quarters into the machine as my plane took off, leaving me stranded, so I just got back on the plane. Two minutes later, a gentleman in my same situation also returned to the plane, crowing about how he just won $200 at the slot machines. Figures.

Even though I was in California specifically for the wedding, I was able to spend a couple days with Mikey, which is, as always, such a pleasure. It’s pretty neat how I’ve gone from seeing him once every two or three years to once every two or three months. Again, let me tell the world how glad I am that he’s going to NYU, and that I’ll see him even more often!

I also was very lucky to be able to see the Bride and Groom a lot more than most of my friends, since I got to sing in the wedding. The three of us had dinner the night after I arrived, and then I saw them every day after that: at the rehearsal, at the wedding, and at the post-wedding BBQ the next day.

I stayed at the house of my best friend from middle school (yes, I keep in touch with many people from my past…I think I may be a rarity that way) who got married several years ago and who now has a two-year-old daughter. I was so busy running around meeting my brother, the Lizard People, and dealing with wedding stuff that it was a good thing I stayed with her…otherwise I wouldn’t have had any time to spend with her, and that would have been a shame.

The trip back to Philadelphia proved itself to be more eventful than the trip there, and not in a good way. It started with a security line at Oakland airport that seemed worse than a line for a ride at Disneyland: the line kept moving, but it went around the baggage area, folded in on itself, went outside and back inside, and the TSA woman at the end of the line announced that it would be a 35-minute wait as I entered the queue. Good thing I got there early. I managed to make it on the plane without much hassle, and I sat on an aisle seat next to a nice woman and her son. Both her son and I were reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so she struck up a small conversation with me. Unfortunately about ten minutes into the flight, her teenage daughter, who had been sitting across the aisle from us, started getting sick and wanted to sit next to her mom. I’m a nice person…many would say TOO nice…so I traded seats with her.

Too late, I realized why this girl was getting sick. She and her brother had been sitting across the aisle, she in the middle and he at the window, and her brother was the fartiest little ten-year-old boy I think I’ve ever met. Besides the fact that I traded an aisle seat for a middle seat, I also seemed to have inherited the spot next to a kid with more gas than Saudi Arabia. It smelled like a combination of rotting eggs, day-old milk, with a slight hint of diarrhea for a good five and a half hours. Believe me, I was counting the minutes until our plane was scheduled to land…only it didn’t land on schedule.

Yes, due to thunderstorms in the Philly area, the Philadelphia airport CLOSED while my plane was in the air. We circled around for a while until we got low on fuel, so we had to land in Pittsburgh to refuel and wait for a go from the tower in Philly. I was not amused. Not only had I been squashed next to Smelly the Fart Monster, but Southwest doesn’t serve meals like normal airlines; they just serve snacks, so my diet for that day had consisted of a bagel I had eaten before getting on the plane, two Oreos, a bag of peanuts, a breakfast bar, and two Graham crackers. And it was dinner time by now. They did let us get off the plane in Pittsburgh to get something to eat while they refueled, but we ended up waiting around for about an hour and a half before the tower let us get back in the air. 12 hours after I left my friend’s house in San Francisco, I finally made it back home. It’s been quite a day, and with that, I think it’s time for bed.

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

Boy, these last few weeks have been busy, busy, busy! I’ve been driving here and there, thither and yon. Ray and I drove to PA to do some repairs on the shop at the Ren Faire. I drove to CT to see my cousin, my aunt who was visiting, and my little baby cousin, Samantha. I got to see my brother briefly as he flew into NY for freshman orientation at NYU. Although he was a little trepidacious before he went in, he was much more relaxed and happy when he left two and a half days later. I really only got to see him on the way to and from the airport, but I was happy to have that time to chat. I’ll hopefully be seeing him much more when school starts!

Well, now that the Lord of the Rings Symphony is over, I’m feeling much less stressed. I had a lot more fun this year than I did last year. I go the solo again, and that made me happy. But the best part about the whole thing is that Ray came to see it. He hasn’t come to see me perform in years (no, the weddings don’t count; he’s there as my date), and he said I sounded wonderful. I felt good about it, which is more than I can say for last year’s performance. And I think a lot of that had to do with Markus Huber, the conductor, who is simply fabulous. He’s a true musician, and though I was a little disappointed that he missed a few plot points from the movie when explaining it to us, he more than made up for it by understanding the essence of the piece. It was certainly a pleasure to sing under his baton.

In the meantime, it’s sweltering hot here in NJ. A thunderstorm the other day took out the electricity in a whopping two block radius, and it took the electric company all night to figure out how to fix it. With the AC off and all the fans not working, even the darkness wasn’t cool enough to keep tempers in check, and it got pretty tense here at Casa de la Maren. A trip to Friendly’s for some ice cream was in order, and then after that a nice, romantic walk along the riverfront in Burlington in front of the gorgeous colonial mansions. It was 11:30 by the time we got back home, but we were both calmer, and I was ready to go to sleep.

All’s well that ends well, though, because sometime around midnight the power came back on, so the AC went back on in our room and I passed out. Ray, on the other hand, was still awake and wandering the house, resetting clocks and making sure all the lights were turned off. I’m not sure he slept very much at all that night, because the next morning, he was dead tired and still a little cranky. It’s just amazing what temperature does to a person’s emotions, isn’t it?

News From the Home Front

Yay! My brother is definitely going to NYU next fall. He was a little conflicted deciding between colleges, but he’s decided to come to the Big Apple, and I couldn’t be happier.

Meanwhile, my Dad’s been in Thailand doing tsunami relief work for the Crisis Corps. He says he’s literally in the jungle where he is, and it rains all the time. I’m so proud of him, and of the fact that while almost everyone has contributed money to the relief effort, he’s doing more than that and contributing his time. He won’t be back in California for my brother’s graduation, but he’s going to fly my brother out to visit him in Thailand after graduation for some scuba lessons. I think that’s a nice trade-off.

Mom’s still living in Hawaii and loving her semi-retirement there. I’ve already promised to come visit next year (hopefully by that time I can gather enough funds to fly out there), so I’m looking forward to that.

Baby Fix

I went to visit my cousin David in Connecticut on Saturday and helped him out in the garden. His daughter, Samantha, turned one last month and she’s so cute! She liked me immediately, which apparently doesn’t happen too often with strangers, so I felt very honored. This was good, because I had to watch her for the afternoon while David and my aunt made dinner in the kitchen (her mom was working). We had a good time, but she had a cold, and she was drooling and snotting all over me, so I was so paranoid about catching something that I washed my hands about 15 times while I was there. Luckily, I didn’t catch anything.

I think I might be starting to hear that biological clock. The nice thing is that if it ticks too loud, all I have to do is take a trip up to visit the Connecticut cousins, and I can play with Sam all I want and get it out of my system. Then I can go back to my life, you know, the one where I don’t have nearly enough money to be able to afford kids.

Now I’m getting ready to do a recording of that Arjuna’s Dilemma with the guy who wrote the music for Sex and the City, Doug Cuomo. It’s such a really cool experience.

Snow

My Christmas was very quiet, as is expected at the Brehms’ place. I ended up making just simple sweet potatoes with brown sugar and butter, and it turned out just fine.

You know, I scrambled so much trying to get gifts out on time, and the only people who sent me any gifts were my mom and my aunt Renda, so I think I need to just plan ahead better next year. I still haven’t gotten Ray’s gift yet, but that’s okay, because he still hasn’t gotten me mine. I want the Treo 650, which is now available with Sprint, but I also want to switch to Cingular, and they won’t actually have the Treo 650 until end of January. So I’m willing to wait. Ray wants a GPS navigation system, and since he didn’t tell me what he wanted until the day before Christmas Eve, I told him he was going to have to wait for it just like me.

Dad in Town

Boy, I have been really putting the miles on my car, driving here, there, thither, and yon. I had rehearsals in NYC all last week for a gig (which was last Sunday, for which I had to zoom from church).

On Friday, I was invited to a party in Delaware (about an hour away from my house), and I traveled through a really scary thunderstorm to get there, only to find out that the electricity had been down in their neighborhood all day. We still had fun, though, and the electricity came back on while I was there.

My dad came into town on Saturday and I’ve been kind of busy cleaning up and hanging out with him. He flew into Philadelphia on Saturday night, and we went immediately from the airport to a restaurant, where I had an early birthday party. That was a lot of fun, but the restaurant was really crowded and noisy, so we all kind of had to shout to be heard.

My dad said that he wanted to come to church with me on Sunday, but since we ended up getting home around 11:30, I figured he wouldn’t want to get up at 7:30 (4:30 California time!) to sit in church, and I didn’t even have a solo. He agreed with me, and ended up sleeping in. Ray drove him to the train station so that my dad could go to DC and spend the night down there with some of his friends. He just got back this afternoon. Unfortunately, I have a rehearsal tonight, so we haven’t really spent very much time together.

That will all change tomorrow, however, since we’re driving up to Long Island and visiting relatives up there. I’ll leave my dad in New York so he can spend time with friends up there for a night, and I have to drive back to Philly for another rehearsal tomorrow night. On Thursday, however, my dad is coming back to NJ to spend Thursday night with me, and then leaving early on Friday morning. It kind of sucks that he’s actually leaving ON my birthday, but I’m sure I’ll have spent enough time with him by then.