I’ve spent the last month working my butt off. I have a part-time work-from-home gig that I do a few hours a night, in addition to my full-time job, so most of my time has been spent in front of the computer. But I’ve still found time to read a bunch of books, visit the State Fair with my sister and brother-in-law, go out a few times and do the usual. I’m actually enjoying my 6th day of a week’s vacation (from the full-time job, anyway) and boy, am I loving the break. I’ve got something like 160 hours of vacation left, and dangit, I may just have to schedule another week off before the year ends. I didn’t go anywhere, but honestly, it’s nice to just hang around the house sometimes. Yes, I know, I do that every single day, but it’s nice to not have the obligation to get up and do anything.
Today was leisurely enough. Alex, Jason and I went over to my parents’ house for dinner and cooked out on the grill. I came home about 8 and did a little work, then freshened up Casey’s lion cut. A few months ago I decided that $65 per groomer visit gets a little spendy, and after his last professional haircut, I purchased a clipper because I figured it’d be simpler to maintain the cut he had. I did a pretty darn good job, too, especially considering it was only the second time I’ve done it. Not to mention that Casey, though an incredibly patient and all-enduring cat, tends to get pretty antsy when stuck underneath the clipper for an extended period of time. I managed to complete the task in about 40 minutes, and now he’s back to his freshly shorn self. I’m a little undecided about whether to keep it for winter, though he is an indoor cat, but he just does so much better without the fur. Maybe I should just keep him buzzed short for the winter months.
So, tomorrow will likely be spent sleeping until noon and then, ironically enough, probably spending the evening getting a head start on the workweek. I haven’t opened my work laptop at all during my time off, but I have a feeling that the week’s work is going to be waiting for me upon my return, and I’m only going to have one day to get it done otherwise. Ah, well, them’s the breaks.
It’s August already! Summer’s almost over, and to be honest, I’m about ready for some cooler weather. Even a nice rainy day would be a good break. I remember when it being hot and sunny every day was a treat, but damn. I don’t even have an excuse this summer, now that I have a new A/C unit in my apartment, and a new car that has A/C. On the other hand, maybe that’s why I’m so spoiled this year! I took this Thursday and Friday off, so I’m enjoying the long weekend--by spending most of it on the computer anyway.
I’ve been working my ass off all summer. Work has picked up and I’ve been assigned some projects in addition to my production work. It’ll look nice in my porfolio, but it does add some hours to my day that I wasn’t necessarily looking to be filled. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. In addition, I picked up another gig that I can do part-time: working as a guide for ChaCha. ChaCha’s a mobile phone service where people text and ask a question: 411 information, movie times, how to apply drywall tape, and a lot of silly chat from obviously bored kids. As a guide, you log into their web interface and answer the questions that come in, and you get paid per question answered. I’m using the extra money to pay my car loan off early and have some extra spending cash. I did buy a new laptop a few weeks ago which I *love*--4 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, 2GHz Core Duo processor, all the bells and whistles I could want, and 3 lbs lighter than my old laptop (which I sold to a friend of mine). This thing SMOKES. Don’t worry, I already paid it off. :D
I also broke up with the boyfriend about a month ago. It was a hard decision because he’s a great guy and we had fun together, but I recognized that the relationship just didn’t have any long-term potential due to significant lifestyle differences. I felt it was best to just acknowledge that before getting too involved, and to allow all parties to move on to greener pastures. He still hangs out with my brother-in-law now and then, which is fine with me.
AND THE NIN CONCERT I HAD TICKETS FOR TODAY GOT POSTPONED! Grrrr! It got rescheduled for November 25th! That’s nearly 4 months away! Well, it’s better than being cancelled outright, I suppose, and honestly, I can’t feel *too* upset about being able to spend today being lazy, but damn. I’m really looking forward to the show.
And that’s all that’s really new in my world. Time to go for a bike ride and then hit the grocery store, do some chores around the house, do some ChaCha-ing. Another day in the life.
I got a 2008 Nissan Versa SL with power everything, sunroof, 6-CD changer and so on, with 9400 miles on it. It was a corporate-owned fleet vehicle and in virtually perfect shape. (There’s a tiny scratch on the front bumper, that’s it.) 30-33mpg too! I’m really excited.
As I’ve posted before, I formerly owned a black ‘99 Dodge Neon that I bought new, also loaded, and drove the shit out of for the 9 years that I owned it (it would’ve been exactly 9 years on June 24th). Mechanically, it was very sound and never suffered any of the problems that commonly plagued Neons. Body-wise, I wasn’t so lucky--two accidents, one where I slid on a patch of ice into another car (which got fixed) and another where someone T-boned me coming out of a parking lot. I didn’t fix that one because I was laid off at the time, so I used the insurance money to pay the car off instead. The down side was that the front passenger door would not open, and the back passenger door wouldn’t shut all the way, due to the body damage. Not a huge deal about 90% of the time since I drove alone, but when people wanted to ride with me, it was a pain.
(My Neon, in front of the Neon factory. This was taken back in 2003.)
So it looked like shit, but it ran like a champ. The A/C died about 3 years ago (the summer after I returned from Florida, actually--guess the Florida heat was too much for it!), and I replaced the radiator last year after a cooling problem. Apart from that, and the issues with the doors, I had virtually no problems with the car the entire time I owned it. I really lucked out. But three weeks ago, the car developed a bad hesitation problem, sputtered, knocked and wouldn’t accelerate for shit. It happened right after I filled up my gas tank, so my original thought was that I’d gotten some contaminated gas. But emptying the tank, refilling it and using fuel system cleaner didn’t resolve the problem, and I had to make a choice: take it in and suck up what could be an expensive repair on a car that is admittedly near the end of its life, or get a new car.
I decided to just bite the bullet and get a new vehicle, and I’d been wanting a hatchback with good mileage for a couple years. I’d been shopping around for a few months, and after attending the Auto Show back in March and checking out the offerings, I’d decided between the Versa hatchback and the Corolla sedan for my choices. Above all, I wanted a car with good gas mileage (at least 30mpg) and it also had to have a sunroof and be an upgraded model with power windows, keyless entry and the like. It didn’t have to be new--in fact, I wanted a used vehicle because I didn’t want to take the depreciation hit, though I wavered a lot between buying a newer vehicle (1-2 years old) and spending more money, or buying an older vehicle and spending less money, but taking more chances on reliability. I really liked the Versa for its interior, mileage and options, but it’s a new model and very difficult to find used, whereas there are a million Corollas on the road and I knew I could find one fairly easily in any price range I wanted. Not to mention that Corollas (and Toyotas in general) are very reliable, and that was a selling point.
So, I’ve been browsing the car sites for a couple months, and happened to see two loaded, 2007 Versa SLs on Autotrader.com that had extremely low miles, in exactly the color I wanted. Aha! And they were both corporate fleet cars, even better, and one of the two had the sport package, which was exactly what I’d hoped to get. They’re really hard to find used because a) it’s a new model and b) hatchbacks with good gas mileage are all the rage right now, and they’re even hard to find NEW with the sunroof package because not a lot of dealers are carrying ones with extra options in their inventory. There were literally only 3 within 200 miles of me, and two were at this dealership.
(The photo is of the car I bought, but it’s a dealer photo. I didn’t take it.)
So, Chad and I went down on Sunday afternoon to take a look at the actual cars. The dealerships were all closed, but I wanted to see them for myself without a salesman hanging over my shoulder. I wasn’t disappointed, both were in outstanding condition. My only concern was that the sticker advertised a 60-day limited warranty, as opposed to the balance of the manufacturer’s warranty. Did that mean the car didn’t come with the balance of the warranty? Also, the sticker price on the car was $500 more than the Auto Trader ad. Being Sunday, I couldn’t ask anyone about those issues, so I resolved to get my questions answered and if it was favorable, take a test drive. I sent an email to the salesman’s email address about the warranty, then spent the rest of the evening getting pre-approved for a loan and crunching the numbers on the insurance.
At 9am on the dot this morning, I got a phone call from the salesman, and he confirmed that it DID have the balance of the warranty, hurray! I told him I’d be in that morning for a test drive, jumped in the shower, and then got all my paperwork together--my insurance cards, the application ID for my bank loan, the Auto Trader ad--and went downstairs to take all the stuff out of my car, because I knew that if I liked the test drive, I’d be buying it. I stopped at the bank and received a print-out of the rate they’d approved for me, then drove to the dealership. My poor car sputtered and hitched the entire way, and I wondered if, were I not to buy this car, I’d even be able to make it home! Poor baby!
The test drive went swimmingly, and the salesman treated me well, didn’t pressure me very much about extras, and didn’t stack the purchase with any scam items. It was a no-haggle dealership (admittedly, I like that) and they were transparent about all the costs I was paying. They also honored the Auto Trader ad and gave the car to me for the lower price. (Glad I brought the print-out!) After a phone call to my insurance agent to start the new policy, going through all the paperwork, and approving financing (Nissan actually gave me a better rate than my bank), at 3pm I drove off the lot with my new car!
I admit that POS though it was, I misted up at finally saying goodbye to the Neon. Hell, I’m misting up right now. I loved that car. It was my first new car, and I put nearly all of the 147,518 miles on it myself. All the pictures you see in my gallery, of Northern Minnesota, Florida, Canada, even a spur-of-the-moment trip to Denver for a weekend back in 2000, were all taken while driven in that car. Even banged to crap, it was a loyal mechanical friend and it never gave up or let me down. I’ll always have fond memories of driving it.
But I tell you, getting into that new car smell and having everything work smoothly and comfortably was priceless. I did the rounds to show it to my family and SO, and the fact that for once, they could actually OPEN the front passenger door and sit inside like normal people, was awesome. And believe me, they appreciated it even more than I did. And the A/C! I finally have air conditioning in the car, for the first time in three years. And I still have my beloved sunroof. No busted taillights, no silly cut corners like only having power windows in the front seats, and no 3-speed transmission. (I think the Neon was one of the last cars to be made with a 3-speed, come to think of it, not that the car lacked for zip.) The Versa is super-quiet and drives as smooth as glass. Woohoo! I’ll be more than happy to spend the next several years in this car.
It’s spring. And that means it’s time to shave the cat.
He doesn’t look like he loves it in that picture, but trust me, he does. He spent all day today curled up next to me, where ordinarily he’d get too hot and spend some time on the balcony or in the bathroom sink. Not to mention that he doesn’t have a constant runny nose anymore. I swear this cat is allergic to himself.
The last month has been simultaneously boring and exciting. Exciting, in the sense that I’ve accomplished a lot, but boring in the sense that my accomplishments have all been in areas only I would care about, like my finances and work.
Let’s see. I last reported that I paid off my last credit card, and how happy I was about that. Well, the final step in that particular arena was to pay off the student loan, part of which depended on whether I would receive a performance bonus that our division at work had been striving toward. If we got it, then I would apply that money toward my student loan in addition to any other payments I was already making. As it turned out, we did achieve it, and each of us received a $1000 Visa gift card as a bonus. HELL YEAH!
After a little finagling, Googling and number-crunching, I determined that I could do better by selling some stock (which has been essentially holding steady for the last few years) and cashing out my Visa gift card (which you can do for a $15 fee, I discovered) and using that money to pay off my loan, so I decided to do that. The end result is that in 10 days, I’ll make my final payment on the loan and be 100% debt-free. I’ve commented previously on what a relief it is to see those bills finally fall by the wayside, and I can’t help but compare where I am now to where I was several years ago. As we apparently teeter into another economic trough, I feel incredibly grateful that of all the goals I’d hoped to achieve over the past few years, the financial one was the one at which I succeeded first, because times like these are when it counts the most. It feels amazing to know that I’m finally on solid ground.
So, what’s next? Saving some money, using the relatively frugal habits from the past few years to my advantage, and securing my position.
A few days ago, I also made another life-changing decision: I applied to college again. ($100 application fee! *choke* I hope I get in.) After listening to a good friend of mine describe his search for a good online Master’s program, I sat thinking one evening. “Wow, he’s such a self-starter. What a good idea, to look for an online program. I wonder if there are any good online programs in my field?” After extensive Googling, I actually found a program that had promise at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. They offer an Associates, a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in a major that’s right up my alley: Computer Arts and New Media. It’s a robust curriculum that offers all the classes I want to learn, and best of all, their online classes for that major are FREE! Yes, free!!! Considering that most art schools cost about $600 a credit (including that one, actually, for their on-campus classes), that’s a hell of a deal. I spoke to an advisor and requested a catalog (which is humongous), checked out their student gallery and verified that they are, in fact, an actual school on the Department of Education website. And Saturday night, I finally made the decision to apply.
Since my work offers tuition assistance, and since I’ve actually reached a good point in my own work process where I can actually accomplish my weekly work without having a crazy schedule, I figure that this is as good a time as any. Certainly can’t beat the price of tuition, and though it may take a few years to finish the major--well, those years are going to go by anyway, aren’t they? Now I just wait to find out whether I’ve been accepted. *crosses fingers*
In other news, we had the basketball tournament snowstorm, and I got some great pictures of that, which I added to the gallery. Of course, that snow didn’t last a week (thank God) so it’s all melted now, hopefully to remain so until next winter. Now that it’s spring, it’s time to break the bike out again (had a gorgeous ride on Saturday when it was nearly 60, and a damn chilly ride this afternoon when it was 34) and get Casey’s fur shaved off. Muahaha!
I just made two payments, one each to Mastercard and Discover, both of which will result in zero balances by the end of today. My God, I can hardly believe it. The Mastercard was the card that held the last of my long-term debt, whereas the Discover is used for monthly bills and expenses. It took me nearly 3 years of revolving through 0% interest rates on various credit cards to get through over $13,000 worth of debt--but as of today, it is officially done. May I never get into such a high level of debt again.
So, what’s next? Well, I was focusing on paying off debt so I didn’t have a 401K plan (I know, bad idea, and in retrospect I would’ve signed up for the matching, at least, but what’s done is done). Now I’m contributing 10%, plus I doubled my stock purchase plan deduction from $50 to $100 per paycheck. Additionally, I’m tripling my student loan payment from $150 to $450 per month, because if I do that, I can have that loan paid off by the end of the year at the latest.
I was on my way to my SO’s house, and glanced at the moon as I walked to my car. I hadn’t read the paper so I was like, “????? WTF? Is there a lunar eclipse going on?” The eclipse was a little over halfway to totality at that point. By the time I arrived at Chad’s, I yelled out, “I think there’s an eclipse going on!” and borrowed his computer to confirm the information on the Strib. Then I borrowed his digital camera and attempted to take a few shots (note to self: get camera with good nighttime picture capability) and managed to get a couple, which I’ve already uploaded to the gallery. So that was really neat.
I’m taking today and tomorrow off work to burn up a couple vacation days. Ironically, I still spent the afternoon with my team anyway for an employee engagement activity, bowling! Naturally I couldn’t pass that opportunity up, so I went down to play a couple games (88, ugh, and 134, pretty good) and have some free pizza, popcorn and Pepsi. A good time was had by all and now I’m back at home enjoying the remainder of my day off. Tomorrow night, Chad and I are headed up north to Spirit Mountain, where he’ll do some snowboarding and I’ll sit in the chalet. Not being much of a winter sports enthusiast, I have ZERO appropriate clothes for skiing, and can’t really justify buying it at this late date, but luckily Chad’s okay with me pulling the snow bunny routine. (This time, at least.) We won’t get into Duluth until late, but that’s okay! It’ll be a lot of fun.
Hey, look, I’m posting twice in the same month, how about that?
I’ve been percolating ideas in my head for the interface update. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a new design, since the new elements will blend in with what’s already here. I spent a couple hours playing in Photoshop one evening last week, and try as I might, I just couldn’t come up with anything I liked. Maybe this design is secretly perfect, and that’s why I can’t improve upon it. But, I had an inspirational moment while shopping for TP at Target tonight (no, the two were not related) so the next time I have a few spare minutes where I’m not working, playing Tradewinds or reading confessions sites like Cavecanum and True Office Confessions, then maybe I’ll put it into play.
This is something I usually don’t talk about in my blog: relationships. The main reason is because I’m a private person, and since the point of a blog is for people to read about the details of your life and thus become involved in a very indirect way, the potential for drama increases. Now, I believe very much that a key component of a successful blog is to discuss difficult and painful topics, which I believe allows readers to empathize more fully with the poster and generally increase the acknowledgement of the humanity of all of us--especially in an arena where the temptation to act like an anonymous asshole is nigh irresistable. And I won’t lie, I myself am an Internet asshole of erstwhile legendary proportions, so I can’t really point a finger at anyone else for the same thing.
So, what I’d really like to do more this year is get a little more personal with my blog and touch on some topics which I’ve glossed over or omitted in the past. I know this blog has a small readership, and that’s fine--I do this mainly for myself and I don’t care if 5 people read it or 5000 read it. Posting is a cathartic process and it’s nice to have some space to vent and articulate my thoughts. At the same time, though, I value my personal relationships a lot, and I don’t want to post a vent about some petty thing, “OMG, my friend did such a bitchy thing the other day,” or “Christ, my SO was a jackass this morning,” any more than I want to read such things about me from those people, nor do I necessarily want to make my personal life fodder for the peanut gallery. Especially the last, since I’ve found there are some pretty rotten nuts out there, and I’d prefer not to get dooced or held up for public ridicule over personal bullshit.
I haven’t decided how I’m going to accomplish this. Maybe block a few domains (like, say, work), maybe set up the blog so some posts are members-only, I dunno. All of these are well within my blog software’s capabilities, so that’ll be part of the whole experimentation phase. If I do make a members-only area, don’t get upset; I’m not going to start charging or sell your email address or anything black-hat. I just want to have the ability to know who has access to some content. I also have a Myspace account, and I suppose it’s not outside the realm of possibility that I could post some stuff in there instead of here, but that seems like a pain in the tuckus for no reason other than to drive traffic. Well, we’ll see.
So, let’s talk about me. Nyuk.
This year, I am fucking determined to pay off the last of my consumer debt. I’ve been swearing this for the last two years, and despite making remarkable headway, I still haven’t quite gotten there. I’ve gone on a trip, bought new furniture, and had to replace my computer and put in a major car repair, all of which added expenses that, while not disastrous, weren’t planned (well, the trip was, and I paid cash for that) and delayed the goal by a few months. No biggie; I just transferred the larger balance on one card to my other card for 0%, and I figure I’ll use the now-empty card to rack up reward points for typical monthly expenses (food, cat food, gas, etc) while paying off the balance on the other. This is kind of a change in mentality for me, since I’ve spent the last few years under the geis of “Credit card spending = bad” and now need to learn how to USE the card as I would use my check card--meaning it’s money out of my pocket and I still need to think of it that way. Guess I’ll find out how well that works out. But my parents do this with their Discover, and it seems a handy and useful way to track spending and earn rewards for money that’s going out anyway, so I suppose this is the real lesson of how to manage money wisely. Gulp.
You know, that’s the funny thing about adulthood. As a child, I always figured that adults knew what they were doing and somewhere there was some big font of wisdom telling all adults everything--like where to get your brakes fixed, how to report your lost luggage at the airport, what the difference is between nice furniture and crappy furniture, and how to save hundreds a month on your car insurance. Turns out, adulthood is essentially childhood without the training wheels--we still don’t know any of that shit, and have to go around looking it up and asking each other for advice, and more often than not, holding our noses and diving in while hoping for the best. Of course, now that hypothetical great font of wisdom has a name, the Internet, and now we can all be grossly misled about the real world starting at a much younger age.
Anyway, back to my life.
One of the things I have yet to talk about in my blog is the existence of an SO and the daily goings-on involving such a person when present. Generally, this usually isn’t necessary because I go multiple years between relationships on a regular basis, so there’s nothing to talk about. This doesn’t bother me, truly; I am, by nature, a solitary person, and I’m lucky (or eccentric) enough to enjoy my own company and feel that while the presence of an SO is a bonus, the absence of one does not indicate a lack. I’ve always been that way, never been big on relationships, and where some women seem to have their “dream wedding” all planned out from roughly age 19 on--dress, ring, guest list and all--that kind of crap makes me want to pound myself over the head with a frying pan. I’ve essentially pictured my adult life as being an adventure of web design heroics by day while spending my vacations travelling to exotic locations, and generally being that somewhat mysterious, lone wolf whose life always seems awesome, yet somehow remote and unattainable. Sort of like the movie character who takes a break from their mystical existence to come down from the mountaintop, sarcastically deride the protagonists into saving the day (which they couldn’t do without him) and leave. “Who was that masked man?” (Or in my case, woman.) I feel like I’ve made pretty good headway into accomplishing that goal, actually. But every now and then, I stumble across someone who causes me to think that there could be room for one more in the pack.
This is Chad.
He’s a cool cat. He’s 35 and when not engaging in cube heroics by day, knows everything there is to know about music and the local spoken-word scene. Speaking of tough topics, he not only doesn’t avoid so much as mentioning them in his blog, he actually puts them into artistic format and recites pieces in front of total strangers. “So, poetry? .......” You ask, letting the ellipses express volumes involving every topic imaginable without actually saying anything. Yep, and I won’t lie, I was leery at what I might find at one of these performances, envisioning a cross between the ear-shattering, talent-free delusion of American Idol tryouts, and the emotionally overinvested pretentiousness of your average Macalester student.
But I’ve been to a few performances, and I’m pleased to have deduced the following:
1. There are actually a bunch of talented people at these things.
2. It’s a lot harder than it looks. I sure couldn’t do it.
3. You get a pretty entertaining variety of music, singing and spoken word.
Remember when you were in college, and people would randomly congregate somewhere and suddenly, a cool thing would happen where there’d be good conversation about politics and philosophy, maybe someone playing the guitar, and it’d just be this neat little vibe that went on for a few hours? It’s a lot like that, only without the huge tuition bills and slightly fewer dreadlocks. Roughly the same amount of flannel, though. (Apparently the ‘90s didn’t end, they just dispersed into the coffee shops of Minneapolis.)
Anyway, so that’s what Chad does in his free time, and he’s really pretty decent at it. I’ve accompanied him to a few open mikes and had a lot of fun listening to him and the other artists perform. He’s even gone so far as to write me a few poems, which my modern-American-woman brain has a hard time even processing that such a thing was actually done. (I know most men have this constant fear that women see these things done in chick flicks and the Lifetime Channel, and end up expecting men to actually be romantic. But honestly, I think most women would agree with me that we would no more expect someone to actually write us a poem, than we would expect to look out the window and see Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck take the space shuttle to blow up the killer comet before it hits Earth.) Needless to say, being completely romantically deprogrammed (and a Best Buy employee), I can only respond to this emotional largesse directly by way of electronics, like a cat bringing a dead mouse to the feet of someone it wants to impress.
Suddenly I think I understand my dad a little better.
The oddest thing about all this is how it got started: in, oh, 1989. We went to high school together. Didn’t have the same friends, didn’t run around in the same social circles. As a junior, I was a cheerleader for the athletic team for which he played, though, and we did have a study hall together when I was a senior, which basically involved hanging out in the library for half a semester. To be honest, I don’t really remember it beyond some impressions and associations which always remained pretty vivid: he was a genuinely nice guy. Always had a big, cheerful smile. Funny. Cute. Well-liked. In high school, I was one of those people whom funny, cute, well-liked guys avoided like the plague if it were at all possible, and in fact I spent the majority of my senior year trying desperately to avoid daily ridicule and harassment, and generally enjoying a typical miserable, angst-ridden era of being loathed and loathing myself common to 17-year-old nerds everywhere.
Anyway, so the next 17 years went by, and I attended a couple reunions and got older and mellowed out and ended up turning my nerddom into a profitable career, morphing into the charming, dulcet creature of the blogging world that you see today. *heh* And then one day, roughly mid-October, I had a dream that I was dating some guy that I’d graduated with umpteen years ago. I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking what a friggin’ random dream that was. Seriously, WTF? I hadn’t thought of him in years, and except for one momentary glimpse at my gym, hadn’t seen him since my senior year nearly two decades ago.
“Jeesh. Huh. Wow. So I wonder what he’s up to these days,” I thought, sitting in front of my computer at two in the morning because I had nothing better to do besides Google someone I used to know as a teenager. Nothing came up but an old link. How about the other 21st-century solution, Myspace? Bingo, there he is. (Spoken word artist? .......) Oh, what the hell. Clicked “Add”. Went back to bed. Dreamed about nothing.
I’ve got a few other classmates on my Myspace friends list, and generally speaking, the drill is the same: they find you, or you find them. You add each other, maybe you exchange a message or two to get the dirt about each other, maybe not. If you’re really hitting it off, you meet up in person before going back to your real life, never seeing them again except perhaps at the next reunion. If you happen to be planning the reunion and someone on your Friends list opts not to show up, maybe you rant incomprehensibly at them about their slight and then delete them. (Not that I’m thinking of anyone specific, ahem.) So, really, I had zero expectations beyond maybe adding him to my collection of fellow graduates. I hadn’t sent a message, figuring one of the following would happen:
1. He wouldn’t remember me and thus would deny my request.
2. He would remember me, and thus deny my request.
3. He’d think I was a porn bot and thus deny my request.
4. He’d accept my request and be part of my collection, otherwise vanishing once more into the ether.
5. He’d accept my request and exchange the quasi-obligatory, “What’s up?” messages before vanishing once more into the ether.
As it turned out, he didn’t remember me, but suspected I might not be a porn bot when he recognized a mutual friend on my Friends list. I mentioned that we had indeed graduated together, provided some identifying characteristics (name, sibling relationship), the usual paragraph describing What I’m Up To Now That We’re Grown-Ups, and pretty much left it at that. To my surprise, not only did the dialogue continue, but he suggested getting together for coffee. I thought, “Hey, why not? He was a cool guy back then. Seems to still be one now,” and cautiously set a time for the Monday after I was allegedly going to finally receive my couch. (Remember that fiasco?) I did receive my couch, which seemed like a positive omen, and met for coffee on Monday evening.
After spending an enjoyable couple hours chatting about the usual various, I fully expected that the ethereal vanishing would commence forthwith, and was completely floored when he suggested getting together again. I was like, seriously, why? We met for coffee. You came, you saw. Your obligation is at an end. You don’t have to do this. We can go back to living our lives. Hell, I was three weeks away from another holiday season at work, already psyching myself up for two and a half solid months of 12-hour days on the laptop, sitting slovenly in sweatpants and only seeing daylight from my living room window, much less other humans--not that I would be fit for company by Christmas anyway. But no, he persisted. And despite my reservations--embodied largely by the mostly-blocked-out memories of the jackass I last dated, which had convinced me that the next relationship should take place in roughly 2012, if ever--I said the three fatal words that sealed my doom: “What the hell.”
Luckily for me, that meant that I failed to miss out on what has truly been a delightful experience thus far, poetry and all. He takes risks a lot of people wouldn’t take, not just in poetry but in his personality. Not foolish risks like not wearing a seatbelt, or daredevil risks like skydiving, but the kind that challenge one’s character, by being open with people even about subjects that are difficult to share and express. I admire that a lot. It’s challenged my character and made me realize that I could stand to take more risks myself, in confronting my own boundaries especially. Not to mention that having the story start with an actual dream sequence is entertaining, to say the least.
To be honest, sometimes it’s still a little surreal. When I look at him, I can still see the teenager, which makes me a little nostalgic. At the same time, I’m glad to have had the opportunity to grow up first and be able to present a more well-rounded and complete person. Not that the reclusive wallflower of my high school days isn’t still lurking under the surface, oh no. Still there, a bit. Just like the obnoxious college student is still there a bit; the rabid Nine Inch Nails fan; the super-depressed 23-year-old, trying like hell to get out from her parents’ thumb and not end up a failure despite dropping out of college. The PVC-wearing 26-year-old; the arrogant 28-year-old. The constantly-laid-off 30-year-old stuck living with her parents again and wondering if she might not end up a failure after all. I was myself all those times, and I wouldn’t be myself now without them, but I feel like now is the best ‘me’ that I’ve been in a long time. I guess time will tell. All I need to do is take a risk.
This is going to be quick, because I’m tired and I’m going to bed after writing this.
For those of you sick of this design, I do plan to alter it at least somewhat this month. It won’t be terribly different, because I’m still feeling the tranquil grey, but it’ll be noticeably disparate from the current design.
At any rate, it’s 2008 now. Hurray! All in all, 2007 was a pretty good year. I got a lot done; I went to Florida and had tons of fun. I accomplished a lot at work. I conquered yet another skin issue (at least I hope I did). I didn’t lose the weight I wanted, but I did engage in healthier habits and made significant progress fitness-wise. And even holiday season at work was less than completely nuts, so I don’t even feel ready for the mental institution now that it’s finally over, like I have in previous years.
Tomorrow is a corporate holiday, and I’m caught up at work, so I’ll actually be taking the day off and seeing the movie “Juno”, which I understand is totally cute. I’m looking forward to seeing it, although there are quite a few movies out that I want to see. I’ll join the other 343463458687930865 New Year’s Resolutioners at the gym (better get that done early, I think) and pump some iron. I cleaned the apartment today, so that doesn’t need to be done. I love days where I can justifiably slack.
Time for bed. Hope everyone had a good year, and I hope everyone has an even better one this year. If you can, take a moment and think of the things you’ve done and the people you were with. Appreciate the good times and try to use this hour to let go of differences, bad endings and past resentments. I know that’s a goal of mine for the future; life’s too short to concentrate on all the shit that went wrong, when there are so many opportunities to clean the slate and make room for something better. So, here’s to something better.
There’s actually not a lot to report, really. I work, I dick around online, I occasionally force myself to go to the gym, I come home, I sleep. Rinse, repeat. This being holiday season, work has been my primary focus, and let me just say now that I’m incredibly glad that Thanksgiving is over. I did take Black Friday as a vacation day, thinking I’d camp out again for sweet holiday deals if a) the weather cooperated and b) there were sweet holiday deals to be had, but unfortunately neither were really the case (at least insofar as anything I was interested in buying), so I just enjoyed the day off. It was strange, though--by Saturday evening, I’d cleaned, done all my laundry and exhausted my few hobbies, so I was at a loss in what to do with myself for the rest of the weekend. It was almost a relief to crank up the laptop on Sunday evening and get a head start on the week’s work. I think that officially means I’m a work-a-holic.
This week has been blessedly slow, a glaring anomaly where holiday has historically been concerned, but I think everyone on my team is grateful for the respite. I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art on Tuesday and enjoyed a tour through the Japanese lacquer and silk-screening display, and the traveling Georgia O’Keefe exhibit. Truly, there’s so much to look at in that museum that I could easily have spent the entire day browsing through each section, but left early in hopes of beating the evening traffic.
Right now, I have a guest cat being housed in my apartment. My parents are on their way to Florida tomorrow morning, and I’m babysitting their cat, Cleo, for the duration. Imagine a white-and-black-tabby, less friendly, even more gigantic version of Casey, and that’s Cleo. He and Casey have hung out before, when Casey stayed with my parents while I vacationed in Florida this summer, so while he’s a little freaked out at being in a new place with a cat already in it, at least they’re both blessedly silent and there’s a conspicuous absence of growling and fighting. Casey’s been hovering in the near background all evening waiting for Cleo to make an appearance from under the bed, and I think he’s hoping to get some buddy time out of all this--part of the reason I wanted to cat-sit, really, because I think Casey could use a pal around the house for a bit. If nothing else, I hope to get some amusing photo ops out of the ordeal.
It’s nearly 2:00 in the morning, and I just finished cleaning up after baking about seven dozen chocolate chip cookies for my work’s Halloween potluck tomorrow at lunchtime. Uffda. It’s been quite a while since I baked that much, and now that the dishwasher is running, the floor has been swept and Lysoled (there didn’t seem to be any sugar spillage, but why take the chance?), the trash has been taken out, and the apartment put back into a semblance of order, I can now fall exhausted into bed and give my achin’ back a rest.
In other news, in sharp contrast to the sofa fiasco, my loveseat arrived on time and with amazing alacrity by the delivery folks. My furniture makeover is now complete! And it’s extremely comfortable. The living room could probably stand to be about two feet longer to comfortably fit everything, but I bought it with an eye toward future residences, not just this one. Besides, it’s great to have a place for everyone to sit, instead of crowding onto the sofa.
I also made an appointment for Wednesday, for my first haircut in 18 months. I *hate* having my hair cut--it’s part phobia and part being a cheapskate. My hair is fine and pin-straight, and is best worn in a blunt cut. You would think it’d be pretty easy to cut perfectly straight hair in a straight line across, but no. Maybe it’s harder than it looks, but nobody in the $25 and under range can ever seem to manage it, yet it pisses me off to pay $50 for a blunt cut and a couple layers. More than that, I just hate having it cut. I always feel like I’m going to request my usual style, such as it is, and the stylist will take it into her head to liven things up, and I’d walk out of there with a pixie cut or soccer mom hair or some bullshit. No! So, I made an appointment with a salon that seems to have a very good local reputation, figuring that it’d be safe enough. My hair is currently to my waist, and I plan to get about 6” off to get rid of the straggles. It’ll still be fairly long, just not as overwhelmingly long as it is right now. Then, sometime around late 2008, it’ll be time to cut it again.
I’m too tired to think of anything else to write. Night!
I finally have a couch again. And as you can see, Casey’s already getting comfortable.
Honestly, I was half expecting to be ditched once again, but right at 9:05, the Slumberland truck pulled up and my couch was installed in my living room by 9:13. I had time for a two-second test sit before having to run to the office for a meeting, but all I can say is, thank GOD I’m not stuck sitting in my room anymore. Hurray! The loveseat should make an appearance at some point in the next week, so I have a couple days to figure out how to arrange everything before that shows up.
After my couch failed to appear once again despite the printed delivery date of October 11th on my receipt, I called Slumberland again and some lady surlily told me that “they couldn’t even deliver it until next week, and the earliest was Tuesday, and the loveseat wouldn’t even be available until the 18th!” (which I knew about.) I collected my temper for a moment, hung up, called back and scheduled the delivery for Tuesday, feeling that reaming the saleswoman a new asshole, while satisfactory, would probably send my couch back into the ether for another few weeks. Nonetheless, I sent a nastygram to Slumberland via their website. Lo and behold, within hours I had a sincere (-enough-seeming) apology and a very nice woman called me up and confirmed my delivery for 8:30am to 10:30am Tuesday morning. Halle-fuckin-lujah. All I can say is that while I won’t write Slumberland off completely (and really, it’s not like I buy so much furniture in the first place that they won’t have completely turned over their staff several times over by the time I need to shop again), I won’t be shopping at the Roseville store ever again.
So, I’ll finally have a couch. Yay! I can sit in my living room again! I’ve gone through all the stages of couch deprivation. First, it was a novelty. Then, it was a serious annoyance. Then, deprivation and cabin fever because I couldn’t watch TV in my living room and was essentially relegated to one room of my apartment. I’m now at the stage of institutionalization, where I’m so used to only being in my bedroom that I’ll have to gradually acclimate to having more than one room again.
That’s the most excitement I’ve had all week. God, I live a boring life!
Most people who know me fairly well know that my dreams are always very vivid, very memorable, and complete in the sense that time passes, languages are legible, day follows night, people engage in normal body functions (they sleep, eat, etc) and have memories of their lives preceding the events of the dream, and the laws of physics exist (although there are a few extra rules and I sometimes get to take advantage of them). Really, it’s less like having a dream and more like participating in a reality television show where some of the rules of the world are bent a little. At the minimum, my dreams are always entertaining, although upon awakening, there’s usually some confusion as to where I’d just been if my activities for the last several hours were not in fact real.
Sometimes the elements of Dream World are constant from dream to dream. For instance, there’s this gym which I belong to in my dreams. It’s fabulous and makes my real gym look like a piece of shit. It’s about $30 a month, and is located across from Har Mar Mall where currently there’s an apartment building and a few fast food restaurants. It has two and a half levels, three pools, state-of-the-art equipment and huge locker rooms in which towels and locks are provided. And every time I “go to the gym” in my dreams, I go here. I really wish someone would build the damn thing.
Otherwise, I do the same things in Dream World that I do here--read, use the computer, feed the cat, get IMs from friends--and a lot of things that I don’t do here: levitate, travel to cities that I’ve never actually been to, hold jobs I’ve never actually had, hold jobs I HAVE had and don’t really want to be working again, win the lottery, and the usual dream adventures people have.
Today I came home from work, crabby and slightly headachy and needing a nap. I read the last chapter of “The Diamond Age” (Neal Stephenson) and conked out, then found myself caught in a ‘dream loop’. I dreamed I woke up from my nap, decided to go to “the gym” (my awesome, $30 gym), and received two IMs--one from a good friend of mine, and one from a coworker who was talking about an article about science having discovered the weight of the human soul. (Said coworker runs a blog collecting interesting scientific and computer-related news in RL.) I attempted to respond, but my computer crapped out--and I realized I was still asleep. So I woke up and attempted to see if they were still online, but no, that was part of the dream. So I decided to go to “the gym” and in collecting my gym bag and clothes, discovered I could levitate! I was incredibly excited about finally being able to do this in “real life” and went to IM my friend--and then I woke up. I think I went through this loop about four times before finally waking up for real. I can tell, because a) I can’t levitate (and I’m going to have a hell of a bruise tomorrow--kidding!), b) nobody’s online and c) my gym is Bally’s once again, not my awesome dream gym (and I don’t feel like going anymore). Oh well.
But I’m still curious about the weight of the human soul. Maybe when I go to bed tonight, I’ll be able to read that article.
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