Matt was concerned that I was spending too much time on Cindy Sheehan and not enough time telling people what's been going on. So I'll depart from politics and talk about me.

Going to Denver, San Francisco

In June, I had applied for several jobs in the Mentor area and not gotten them. I decided to move out to Denver, where my dad lives. He had said that I could come and live there if I wanted to, and I thought it would be a good change of scenery. Mentor is nice and all, but after living there for ten years, I wanted something new. Plus, since the summer of 2001, the only times I've seen my dad are Christmas Break and Thanksgiving Break. He's a stand-up guy and I feel like I should spend some time with him before I go out on my own.

I found a listing on craigslist.com for a job teaching the SAT in Denver for the Princeton Review. I jumped at the chance, since auditions weren't that far away. This was the reason for my hasty departure from Mentor: I had to get to Denver in time to audition for the job. (When you're applying to be a Princeton Review teacher, they make you "audition" by teaching them something non-academic, like wine-tasting, kickboxing, or in my case, how to stand on your head.) I drove to Denver in two days with a stop in Blue Springs, Mo. Since there were about two weeks between the audition and the time when I'd be told if I had the job or not, I thought I'd visit Elizabeth in San Francisco. She had been living there for only two weeks at that point and she didn't know anyone. I spent many a night on the phone with her for a few hours because she was lonely. So I thought I'd visit her.

On June 23, I drove to California and got there a day later after a stop in Winnemucca, Nevada. We spent the next week and a half doing the "touristy" things in San Francisco -- visiting Chinatown, Alcatraz, and the Exploratorium -- because Elizabeth didn't want to be one of those people that lives in New York all her life and never visits the Statue of Liberty. I also went camping for the first time in my life, on Angel Island, an island in the middle of the bay. It was what they call "ecological camping," which means it's you and a pit-toilet. And we had to hike about two miles uphill to get to our campsite. Nothing difficult, but it was no KOA campground.

As a note to Scott, yes, I know where Emperor Norton I is buried. It's quite literally in Elizabeth's backyard. In the part of Daly City where she lives, there are about a dozen cemetaries, and he's buried in one of them. But curse my feeble brain, I was halfway to Sacramento, on my way back to Denver on July 5, when I realized I never got a photo of him. So Elizabeth told me she would take one.

Photos of San Francisco will be on Yahoo! as soon as I can sort through them all and put them there.

Princeton Review training

Training to teach the SAT for the Princeton Review consisted of spending three weekends essentially learning the course. From 6-10 PM on Friday and 10AM-6PM Saturday and Sunday, for three weeks, I listened as Amanda taught the course and as we did "teachbacks," where we get up there and teach some of the material back to the other trainees.

The rest of the time, I hung out here or visited the city of Denver -- which is interesting -- or the city of Boulder, which is an awesome hippie college town.

From July 27 to Aug. 3, Cathy came to visit and to babysit the two girls, since my dad and stepmom were spending the weekend at a Nestle retreat somewhere in the mountains. We saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I'm happy to report is great.

By myself

From Aug. 6 to Aug. 14, I was here by myself, since the whole fam-damily went to Utah for a week. Fortunately, Brian decided to drive out to visit and stayed from Aug. 6 to Aug. 9. We stayed up late playing Perfect Dark on the old N64. At its height, my accuracy was 49.9%.

During this time, I applied for two jobs: one as a "junior webmaster" and another teaching Spanish at a Montessori middle school in Golden, Co. Both jobs interviewed me, but neither job hired me. So it goes. I'm still looking for jobs to augment The Princeton Review.

On Friday, Aug. 12, Katie Spurrier, Jessica Jewell, and Steve came to town for Katy Gonzales's wedding. It was good to see friends again. Katie was supposed to stay with Jess and Steve in the Cherry Creek Hotel, but their room had only one bed, so she stayed at my house, instead. We had some good conversation.

On Saturday, before the wedding, we visited the Coors brewery in Golden. It was awesome! We learned how beer was made, why Coors was better than everyone else, and then we got to have free beer in the visitors' lounge! I'm happy to report that Coors regular beer is great, but Aspen Edge -- Coors' low-carb beer -- is abominable. Then we went to the wedding, which was great. Drew, Josh, and I were after the Kristoffersen sisters, but I don't know how that went, since I went home at about 1:30 AM, since Katie had to go to the airport fairly early in the morning. All I know is that Caroline Kristoffersen is a Hotty McHotterson.

Life goes on

On Sunday, my friends left, my family returned, and I was kind of depressed, since I still didn't really know anyone here. During the first part of the week, I was heartened as I got three tutorials to teach for The Princeton Review. (A tutorial is when you go to a kid's house to tutor him one-on-one.) This will provide a great augmentation for the SAT course I'm teaching. They also might be my only tutorials for a while, since August and September are our hell time, as kids prepare to take the Oct. 8 SAT. Things slow down in November and December, then pick up again a little in the spring. In September, they're offering training in the GRE, which I'll probably do so that I can teach more stuff. The training will be done by Amanda, which is awesome, since she's a great trainer.

I had put a personal ad on craigslist.com in an attempt to meet people and I got some replies. One of the reply-ees, Beth, invited me to go to a comedy club downtown to go to open mic night. The next night we went to see Grizzly Man at the local indie theater. It's a great movie about an amateur naturalist who wants to live with bears, ending with the bears killing him and his girlfriend. This interaction has proven interesting, so much so that details cannot appear here.

And that's what I've been doing.