Author: Jeff Tabaco

The frenzy of preparation for our move continues (sorting, shredding, packing, donating to Goodwill or the public library, etc.), but we did make time for a couple of outings in the past few days. Last Thursday, we went to see Assassins at Signature Theatre, whose cast features some familiar players, including our blog friend Stephen Gregory Smith as The Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald. I really enjoyed the show: strong performances, and as always at Signature, innovative staging. The show has been extended and will run through July 23 in Arlington.

Last night at the Warner Theatre we saw Kathy Griffin. Hilarious. I laughed pretty much the entire time. She talked about American Idol, Oprah, Tom Cruise, Scientology, and on and on. After the show, ushers were at the door handing out purple rubber bracelets that say “Help Kathy” and “OffTheDList.com.” I love it. Now if I wear it and people ask what charity or cause I’m supporting, I can say, “Kathy Griffin!” (By the way, being so busy we probably won’t make it to any of the gay pride events in D.C. this weekend, but given the audience last night–lots of gay men–you could say it was a pride event de facto. Boy, does she love her gays.) The next season of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List starts tomorrow, June 6, on Bravo.

We’ve been so busy preparing for the big move to the Bay Area that I haven’t had time to convey a bit of good news: I won’t have to look for a new job! A couple of weeks ago, I told my boss that I would be leaving, and then that afternoon he floated the idea of working from home. I was like, from California? Sure! So thanks to the Internet, I’ll be doing more or less the same job… just on the other side of the country. (It’s all very “knowledge economy,” as Rajani said when I told her about it.)

Speaking of the Internet, I’ve started taking an online class in copyediting from UC Berkeley Extension. The type of editing I do at work is so specialized that I thought I’d spend some time learning additional general skills, and the online format is perfect; provided I have Internet access, I can participate in the class wherever I am, even on our cross-country road trip.

In other news, Thom and I had a nice Memorial Day weekend visiting his family in Covington, Va. It was a little bittersweet, especially for his mom, who was happy for our move but sad at our going so far away. I told her that we’d get in touch more often and that Thom (and probably I as well) would be back for the holidays before you know it. One of Thom’s cousins told me, “You take care of Thom,” which I promised to do, and that made me think of Sam and Frodo. Heh, one day I’ll have to be all, “I made a promise, Mr. Thom. A promise!”

I thought I’d share a bit about where Thom and I will be living. We’re relocating to Daly City, my hometown. In fact, we will be living in the very house where I grew up. When I was in the third grade, my family moved to a different house in Daly City, but they kept the old house and had been renting it out to various tenants over the years. Fortuitously, it’s currently vacant and perfect for Thom and me to rent. (Ah, parents as landlords.)

The house (photo here by Thom) was built around 1955–judging from one of the building permits still posted in the garage–in the Westlake district of Daly City, a residential area just south of San Francisco, full of small houses mass-developed by Henry Doelger in the mid-twentieth century. When I was a kid, growing up in that house in late 1970s and early ’80s, I didn’t think of the area as anything special, but lately there’s been a resurgence in midcentury chic and I was surprised to see a story about the Doelger homes in Atomic Ranch magazine last year. Some of them clearly have modish elements (like slanted roofs and tilted front windows), while others are less distinctive. In any case, with a series of common floor plans and uniform patches of lawn, it’s very suburbia. (The Westlake section of the Daly City History website has some neat information and photos by Rob Keil, whose forthcoming book on Westlake is called Little Boxes.)

A couple of weekends ago, my parents and I took Thom on a walk-through of the house, and he took some photos, which are up on his Flickr site. (By the way, the exterior wasn’t always that color; earlier this year my mom told the painters “sky blue,” and sure enough I think it would disappear against the sky… if Daly City weren’t so foggy.) That day was the first time Thom had seen the house, and I was glad and relieved when he took a liking to it. Last night we were talking about all the yellow tile in the kitchen, and he suggested we get all yellow appliances, like a yellow toaster and so on. “And a yellow KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer?” I asked. “Do me now,” he said. Yes, I think we were meant to be together.

Oh, the shreddage. Yesterday as an initial step in the big move, we went through a lot of our files and papers, sorting and shredding as we went. (Indeed, we’ve found that one of our handiest purchases has been our shredder. There’s something satisfying about not only throwing away some unneeded piece of paper, but also speedily obliterating its sensitive information to bits.) Apparently I had kept every paycheck stub from my current employer, which is almost six years’ worth. I had lots of old bank account, credit card, and telephone statements, which seem so quaint now that I do all my bill paying online.

Going through old boxes, you also find some neat things. Thom discovered a bunch of audiocassettes, including one that his father had recorded of Thom’s 1980 high school production of Bye Bye Birdie, in which he played Albert. We listened to some of that while doing our sorting. Little Tommy, singing “Put on a Happy Face.” How cute! That’s a keeper, of course.

I was being coy in my previous entry and didn’t reveal the results of Thom’s job interview in San Francisco last Friday, since I thought I’d let him blog the news first: he was offered the job on the spot! The details are yet to be worked out, but it looks like he could be starting mid-June, which means for us the next several weeks will be a flurry of planning for the anticipated move out west. More updates as the situation develops, of course.

DALY CITY, CALIF. — What a jetsetting week this has been! Last Tuesday we got back to Arlington from our vacation in London. A few days later Thom flew to San Francisco for his job interview, then that evening I flew out to join him, and we’ve spent the weekend here in Daly City with my parents. Thom and my parents have met only once before, so it was really nice for them to spend some time together. (At one point my mom told Thom he was family, which I thought was sweet.)

Tomorrow it’s back to the workaday grind (if I can stay awake after tonight’s redeye flight). By the way, tomorrow I turn 29… whoa, the final year of my 20s!