I just got back from a short stay on the West Coast. I was showing Liz around for what was her second visit to California, the first of her adult life, and her first-ever trip to southern California. Highlights were plentiful, but I think the most relevant tale to tell here has very little to do with anything:

My mom made us a delicious apple pie, but she didn’t have any vanilla ice cream to go with. She’s sort of lactose intolerant, so there wasn’t even milk in the house to drink with the pie. Being my mom, she offered to run to the store to get some ice cream for us. Being an adult, I ignored my burning desire to eat a whole tub of ice cream and told her that such a trip was unnecessary. She joked that she had some Klondike Bars that we could eat with the pie, and I called her bluff. I grabbed a steak knife and sliced the chocolate shell off the vanilla ice cream and voila-la-mode! It was pretty great, because then we had all these chocolate flakes to eat too.

Back in Chicago, I have a lot that I am about to start working on and I’m very excited about it all, but I don’t want to forget about the Limited Edition prints. I spent enough time making ‘em for “Christ”‘s sake. I think if I was ever in a real band, I would not like touring as much as recording — once I finish a project, I am fully satisfied with my accomplishment and ready to move on. That attitude is good for the ego, bad for the wallet. The call for a part-time Baskauskas publicist remains open. If you start working now, I will guarantee 15% of art-based income for the rest of our working relationship, as well as free entry and cheese at all art events involving me forever. Incentives will be offered.

Tomorrow: Part I of my futuristic sci-fi utopia tale!

This montage goes out to all my homies not in California who haven’t seen the sun like this in a while. I had a great time in the Golden State; over 4 sun-shiny weeks all said and done. This blog post is also dedicated to all the friends and family I spent time with, and their furniture. What follows is a brief tour from the sunny San Francisco Bay Area down south to balmy San Diego, then up to tropical Los Angeles. It concludes with my lovely train ride back up to the Bay, where I spent my last week living with rainbows and unicorns.

Some pics from last weekend. If you’re looking for shots of people having fun (which we did), well, I think those are boring.