hott in 2006!

Mattyk’s hott in ‘06
Written in December ’06 but posted one year later, here it is: the year in brief!

I am often amazed by how fast my life changes. I’m not the kind of guy who sits around reflecting his days away; in fact, I’m very much the opposite – enjoying moments as they happen, without any concrete expectations of the future, and who certainly does not spend great quantities of time fixated on the past. It is only when I realize that something has actually ended, that I register the impact it may have had on me.

That is how this year started, and so many opportunities have come and gone since, that it seems much has changed. Yet, here I am, preparing for yet another new adventure immediately, still another in six months time, perhaps another of more recent interest to be eighteen months from now, and more still as the post graduate school plans begin to take shape. It is the life of a very fortunate mid-20s thrill-seeker, always managing to find adventure and to avoid the greatest buzzkill of all time – boredom. This year, the craziest yet, was anything but boring.

The year got off to a tumultuous start with a twist and a pop on the shores of beautiful Lake Merritt, in Oakland, California. The morning was difficult, the brunch in Berkeley excellent, and the following two days brought the first of many fresh starts, the first being in the area of relationships. January brought continued fellow bonding at my fake New Years party and the Governor’s crowing of infrastructure in the political event of the month, his State of the State speech. I perfected my skills at political espionage, sneaking into his budget release in order to purloin documents, and returned to the skies as I began traveling again after a brief hiatus the previous fall. A relaxing weekend at home, a Sharks game with the Committee on Hot, a fellowship recruiting adventure that reopened a past relationship, took me to hear the stories of my grandmother, and to do some actual recruiting before departing that weekend to cement something new with a very special friend in New York, as well as a great play, some tasty dumplings, late night hamburgers, and a brunch to remember. In the midst of it all, I sent off graduate school applications, crossed my fingers, and promptly tried to forget the whole ordeal.

I returned to see a coldplay concert with the COH, departing the following morning for February’s first adventure: regional conferences for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security. Wild adventures ensued, featuring the hunk next door in the hotel, C&Os, and of course, one friend’s misadventures attempting to wrestle her coat back from an angry lesbian coat-thief at Rage. I headed home the next weekend for lunch on the Sonoma Square and wine tasting with Arti and friends, and attended Anu’s superbowl party in my first year in recent memory to not have been on a plane during the game. Na’an came to visit me the following week and February 10th was the day that both opened the XX Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, and simultaneously saw me on a redeye to Washington for a lovely weekend and DC’s only major snowstorm of the year. I saw the crew and met some new folks while I was there, returning just in time to spend a lovely Valentines day at the crab shack in Sacramento with my favorites. I glued myself to the Olympics, took part in a UCSA reunion, and then left for a weekend in Carmel during which I lost a memorable bet and proposed to AI.

March turned out to be a month of reckoning. An old friend came to visit and spent the weekend with me in Sacramento. John Vu came up, as did Betty Feng for some Coro adventures. Anu came by, and that was all in the first week. I flew to Tucson for the weekend to continue January’s fun, completed my full immersion in public policy at the budget project conference, and then few to Chicago for a wild weekend with Cyndi and Stephanie. A great museum, some good food, a day of fun and afternoon tea with some little ones, combined with a fantastic night out with Oscar and Kim (that left me with a sprained thumb) made the trip a highlight of my ’06 travels. I was given a new mentor at work in March, and was pleased to have a return visit from Robert towards the end of the month. Midmonth I received my first acceptance notice to a graduate program, and my plan of attending whichever of the amazing programs I applied to might accept me gave way to the luck of being spoilt for choice. I attended my first recruiting event in March, when NYU rented out a restaurant in San Francisco to woo the locals toward making the commitment back east.

The pressure to think about my future seemed to climax in April. After attending opening day of the Oakland Athletics with the capitol crew, I boarded a plane for a wonderful whirlwind of cities beginning in New York (where I got tipsy at the reception and lost my way back to Mr. Pe’s, nearly missing my flight from LaGuardia), Chicago (which featured lunch in a gothic building with amazing future colleagues, an architectural tour of an amazing campus, a delightfully intellectual conversation at a campus coffeehouse, catered adventures at a hamburger joint bowling alley, and a dj, bar, mcdonalds, and late walk home), and finally to Washington, where a fantastic dinner party at Linda’s made my personal life interesting again. I returned to Sacramento and then promptly departed for Easter weekend at home, reflecting on the difficult choice I had to make. I left again for DC for admit day at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and knew immediately what my choice would be. The curriculum, the caliber of student and faculty, the past CIA director who came to speak on his life as an alumni widened my eyes to an amazing array of possibilities. Upon my second return to Sacramento I narrowed my choices to two, and spent the weekend that followed drunk at the Chipotle in Davis with Adama and Catherine on picnic day. I submitted my decision on Wednesday, April 26. That weekend, the California Democratic Convention changed everything.

The fellowship had begun as a wonky opportunity to immerse myself in developing policy, but the convention began my major involvement in the other side of government – politics. The primary election heated up in May, and politics took center stage. People took to the streets to demand action on immigration on May 1, and after a quick trip to LA we kicked off summer with a Cinco de Mayo celebration at my house. Paschal and I threw a debate-watching party, and my parents moved out of their house and into mine while they finished their top to bottom home renovation. Kim and Arti came for a weekend-o-fun, and I traveled to LA to celebrate a good friend receiving a well-earned graduate degree.

By the end of May, I was well into a transition plan from Sacramento back to Washington, initiated in early May and to be concluded sometime late in July. Mom and I took off on Memorial Day weekend to go find me a new home in my old neighborhood of Dupont Circle, and returned precipitously empty-handed. A fellows barbecue began to wind down our iron grip over the Sacramento social scene, I spent an interesting night with a new friend, and my life changed over the ensuing week as I took time off to work on the campaign, drive in the motorcade, help arrange travel, and following our dramatic primary night victory, fly with the victors the following morning to Los Angeles, San Diego, Oakland, ending with Speaker Nunez telling Schwarzenegger jokes over beer while flying between Oakland and Sacramento, and followed by a tasty cheeseburger with extra drama. It was still early June, and anything seemed possible with neck-and-neck poll numbers between Phil and Arnold, and the summer just getting underway. An offer was made and I could only accept it, suddenly choosing to defer graduate school for a year, end the fellowship, and move to the Angelides campaign. The decision would be the best one I made during the year, second only to what I hope is the best decision of a graduate program.

June was, of course, full of parties as well – a fake birthday for me, a fellows night at hangar, going away parties from the STO and welcome bashes at Angelides 2006, taco nights at my house, advancing events in the dog days of summer, high fives at Bret Harte Elementary School, my first tastes of staffing the boss, and beer golf.

As the campaign picked up, the days at work became longer and the wild adventures wound themselves in and ceased to stand out as discreet events in themselves. We took shots of water at the watercooler, spent mornings at N Street, had the regular lunches at Jack’s, Pronto, Crepeville, and later Chipotle. There were the evenings with my midtown friend(s), a fourth of July spectacular at Conn’s, the San Francisco symphony with the Feng, Chris’ summer pool party, the legischool interns, a minivacation to San Diego full of fun times and good drinks, and some random nights breaking into Faces with Monica and Daniel, drinking at Streets of London with Sack and Hirsch, and turning face to face with the Governor at our end of the year reception. With a trip to UCLA, a tour of the Central Valley in 113 degree heat through Bako, Visalia, Fresno, Merced, Atwater, Modesto, and Stockton (Jerry Angelides was a trooper in the heat, my first dinner with the candidate and his family after the “briefing fiasco” and only Ed Emerson would smoke at a townhall on children’s asthma), a trip to meet Tony Blair and the annual dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, it was clear in those last few days leading up to what was supposed to have been my first day of graduate school that I had made the right decision. Rob left for Argentina, and we had a great talk before he did, and Gayvid’s boyfriend Ryan came to visit while he took the menacing California bar exam.

August began with a bang, hanging out with President Clinton and Phil at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. I took over some advance responsibilities and for a time became the volunteer coordinator as well. I slept in some swanky hotels, attended some kick-ass rallies done by John and his team of misfits, and ran a much smoother (and cooler) tour of San Bernardino and Orange County. We rolled out the middle-class tax cut plan to little ado, and as both the campaign and I began to run out of steam I moved out of my apartment and into a house. We did a third, coastal, tour of southern California, and I began spending time in earnest with the candidate.

Labor Day weekend brought the Sacramento Greek Festival, the State Fair, and a Labor Day flyaround in a hot plane with a lost van full of labor leaders and a crazy beginning to the month of September. We did a luau, John Edwards came to a rally, I partied with the old Berkeley crew, got drunk with the coworkers in SF, and stumbled onto a redeye to DC to celebrate my birthday with the crew. I spent the day with Feng, and saw all of the regulars at a superfun birthday dinner at Raku. I hopped on a plane the next morning, back to work in time for a birthday lunch at Paesanos with the campaign crew, and a wild night of drinking ending in serious talk over serious hookah. The vipers were formed and began their misadventures, and I got involved with the UCLA Alumni Association. I had a housewarming party, we did some rallies about Iraq to stimulate interest, I met a ton of rich gays, and ended September on a warm Friday afternoon with Al Gore.

On the eve of October everything seemed to be going well. The adventure level was up, I was making great new friends, and while I was enjoying a well-earned evening off having sushi with Anu and Jeannie at the Monsoon Grill on third street in Santa Monica, across town at the Beverly Hilton the meltdown was happening. We saw remnants later in the evening, and I spent the weekend doing my best in a tough situation. I spent the first of many Saturday nights in LA, hit some churches in Oakland on Sunday, and grew weary of it all by Monday. I went to the wildest house in Sacramento (Mort and Marcy Friedman), and got used to spending time on the road with Megan, Christina, Leo, Ricky, Keith, Gary, and the big guy. Exactly one week after the now-infamous meltdown, I was put into my own shock and awe a few hours before the debate. In a well-documented exchange, my role shifted. I ran the candidates movements behind the scenes at the gubernatorial debate and we left on a statewide bus tour the following morning. LA to Bakersfield to Fresno to Merced to Modesto, it was adventure and good times until the Stockton bus hijacking the next day. I got a lovely tour of downtown Stockton from Keith’s CHP car, and luckily we made it back to Oakland then San Francisco then burgers with the CHP guys back in Sacramento. My mom had a nice birthday, we went to the Cal-Washington game, a bunch of barbecues and Disneyland, some good fundraisers, a fateful John Kerry event, a Halloween reception on a fun night for different reasons, and I met, flirted, dated, and chilled out with a cute boy from Los Angeles in Sacramento.

As viper lunches ticked off the weeks toward the end of the campaign, November approached and the campaign heated up. We saw Bill Clinton again, but only by chasing the CHP in a 12-passenger van on the slick streets of San Francisco at 100 mph. The final days were a whole set of hot adventures unto themselves: hot dogs at Pinks, drinking with labor, lunch at Farah Fawcett’s restaurant in Carlsbad, Roscoe’s chicken and waffles with Maxine Waters, Oceanside with Barbara Boxer, Van Nuys, Dim Sum with Mike Eng, and a night in a corner suite of a hot hotel overlooking San Diego on a three hour conference call to make the end come together. I did not lose Barbara Boxers luggage, nor get to ride on Dick Blum’s plane, but I did put Speaker Nunez on Eleni Tsakopoulos’ plane (which did not have a flight attendant, as George Marcus’ plane did), and helped Dianne Feinstein get to where they needed to be. I did think we were going to have three planes for the last leg when, in fact, there were only two (good thing the seats worked out!), and I did get to make it back for the best hometown rally on the night before the election. I chose not to fly back to LA, but spent election day in Sacramento dealing with issues that had come up, had lunch with the Angelides family, and preparing to keep the mood high on what was sure to be a rough night. I was there for the private dinner in the suite, the vip reception downstairs, the concession call, the concession speech, the speech to the staff (and come to think of it, so was Cruz), the cell phone call from Bill Clinton, the late night tv in the suite, our wild election night bash in the Presidential Suite, and put the family in their car at 1:00 AM, ending the adventure.

It felt like on the day after the primary I had hit the pause button on my life, and the days and weeks after the election were filled with reconnecting, phone calls, visits, and reemerging back into society. I went to Target, the grocery store, back to the cleaners, wrapped up things at the office, Thanksgiving came, I went to Las Vegas twice, once on a great trip with the vipers and once on a needed spa trip. I went to LA a couple of times, but only for play, and had to choose again between Sacramento and DC. Phil made the right offer, and I committed to stay until June ’07. We had some great post-election lunch parties, nights out in Sac with Fernando and Francis, another wild night in San Francisco with Oscar, spent some time in Oakland with Na’an, and got bored so I decided to take the GMAT. I did a study-a-thon, went to my first kings game, had Viper Chipotle happy hour night that ended better for me than Daniel’s leg, and reconnected with some fellows at Adama and my holiday parties. As December continued we finally met up for a great reunion of the 02-03 Rieber RAs, and following that and Christmas, I hit the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco before heading off to Boston to close out 2006 in the same way it began: with a pop and a toast with a very special small but exclusive group – for the fifth time.

It’s been an amazing year, full of diverse adventures, wonderful friends, and without much time to sit around overanalyzing, but rather spent out living life to the fullest. There’s so much out there to see and do, and I’m so appreciative to the great friends and colleagues who have made 2006 the best so far. You know who you are, and we better keep it up. 2007 is shaping up to lead in new directions with new adventures, but regardless – no matter if I’m at a firehouse in Bakersfield or the Governor’s office in Sacramento, at the biodome in Tucson or a hometown restaurant in Boston, a beach in Miami or nightclub in Chicago, shopping in London or tea in *****, the best part is always just being there.

Happy new year, and bring it on, 2007!