So like the absent-minded fool that I am, I left my psychotropic medications in L.A. Because of the terrible, terrible withdrawal side effects, I was compelled to pick them up after finishing work.

The shortening of daylight hours is starting to really get me down. It feels like it was just last week when the sun would set after 8 p.m. Now it’s pretty much dark right after work. What’s worse is that when I wake up, it’s still dark. I’m not even working obscene hours like I usually do.

It took me about an hour and a half to get back up to L.A., despite fighting through the straggling remnants of rush hour traffic. Since it seemed silly to just come home to pick up my meds and then pop back into my car to head back, I hung out with my dad for a bit. (My brother and my sister were both out somewhere.) I also managed to watch yesterday’s episode of “Heroes,” which is starting to infiltrate my dreams (but that will be the subject of yet another blog post entirely.)

After playing with Angel and Pazzo for a little bit, I finally decided to take off around 10:30 p.m., but not before stopping at the nearby Barnes and Noble. There I finally found the book I’ve been hunting for, entitled <p>Mr. Baggins: The History of the Hobbit Volume 1</p> . I had found volume two (entitled <p>Return to Bag End: The History of the Hobbit Volume 2</p> ) at the Borders in Mission Valley a few weeks ago, not realizing it wasn’t a stand-alone volume.

I made it to S.D. a little after midnight, completely wired and unable to go to sleep right away. On the way, though, I had to stop in Santa Ana to get gas because the yellow light on my dashboard (the “out-of-gas” indicator) was making me paranoid.

Apparently I had gotten the O.C. all wrong. There are rather shady parts of this haven for recidivist Republicans, and I knew I had found one of them when I turned right from the off-ramp and found three or four stores selling bail bonds. Just then, a guy bikes past my car. Let me tell you, even though I’m an advocate for the environment and enjoy bicycling (or used to until I turned into a sedentary blob akin to Jabba the Hutt), there is something unnatural about riding a bike at midnight. It’s like flying a kite in the dark.

And finally, the Vietnamese guy who was filling canisters full of gasoline did nothing to allay my bewilderment.

Is it sick and wrong to want to plan my funeral? Every time I go to a wedding, this is what I think about.

As I took the curve from the 134 west to the 5 south, and as I gazed at the glimmering lights of the skyline of Downtown L.A. peeking out from the hills, I thought to myself that I want my funeral to be a cosplay.

Would it be massively inappropriate to make my pall bearers wear plate armor and swords, and have them play the Prologue from Final Fantasy as they carried my casket to my grave?

Even though this is awfully macabre, my iPod also contributed to my brainstorm, playing random songs that would work pretty well, in no particular order:

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How deliciously narcisstic and melodramatic. * * *

Statistically, they say you are most likely to die in a car crash within 25 miles of home at speeds of less than 40 miles per hour. As I headed south on the I-5, this led me to the (probably erroneous) perception that as I neared my apartment, the probability of getting into an accident was precipitously increasing towards P=1.00. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been tempting Fate way too much by driving all the time.

(And yet, statistically speaking, given my co-morbidities, the most likely way I’m going to die is by suicide, although car crash is probably #2 on the list.)

Yeesh. This discussion makes me want to take the train the next time I head up to L.A.

But I always wondered about the “… and back again” part of the equation. I’m not ready for this adventure to end anytime soon, I guess. In the end, I’m ready to keep on truckin’, I guess.