Life and Times

Just hit me while I was out on my nightly walks how many different things I got going on right now.

• New job, in legal support: the kind of job I've been looking for the last 15 years. Now I'm in it, and I've got a lot to learn. Could turn into something full-time, at a decent salary, but it's a government job, and hiring there could be kind of screwy. Good as I may be for the job, and however much I may want it, there's no telling how this will play out.
• The job's got me up at 5:30am, Monday to Friday, and that's an adjustment. My sleep schedule has gone to hell. The insomnia I've had all my life hasn't really acted up--but the thought that it might is disquieting enough to...well, lose sleep over....
• My property manager has been in to do some fixes in my apartment three times in the last week. I try to keep my place in presentable shape, that being one of the advantages to living on my own--given my living arrangements before I got this place (living with Hammerhead, who would do nothing in the interest of the upkeep of the apartment, then insist "We can't have anyone over to visit: look at the state of this place!"). But it feels different if you're used to having an apartment all to yourself, then having someone coming in while you're not there (he's come by while I'm at work). But now I have a living room with very different lighting: he's replaced all the blinds, including the vertical ones for the balcony sliding door. None of them worked, so I was stuck with what light they let in. Now I can fine tune, and the room feels a lot better.
• Just watched MELINDA AND MELINDA, the Woody Allen movie I've had from NetFlix sitting on my TV for the last seven months. Haven't sent a movie back to them since July; at $20/month, I'm their ideal customer. I've had the Neve Campbell movie WHEN WILL I BE LOVED since December and still haven't watched it.
• My best friend left for India on Tuesday; he'll be gone for three months. He and his wife and kid will be studying yoga under an honest-to-Krishna guru. Imagine the contortions. Anyway, that's a pretty impoverished part of the world, and I hope they don't come down with dysentery or dengue fever or anything.
• Got another friend that may be on the rocks with his girlfriend. Got a call from her the other morning, from his cell phone. Asking about his whereabouts on Sunday. I don't dig the whole jealousy bit, but I certainly don't want to ruin things between them by speaking carelessly. Talked to him yesterday, says he's got some things to tell me about. That doesn't sound good.
• My 20-year high school reunion was last Friday. Went down there and crashed it; wasn't going to pay $70 for a buffet and a nametag. Oddly enough, most people recognized me without one. I had a better time than I expected: it dredged up a lot of high school nostalgia, as you may expect. Now, I was never social in high school (which will come as a surprise to those of you who know me...), so making my way around a room like that was a new experience with this crowd. I came into my own in college, not high school like most people, so I remember high school as being a lot of fun but I missed out on a lot. I never thought I'd want to talk to my old classmates after all these years, but I found that that's exactly what I'd like to do: I realize I knew a lot of really cool people that I never fully interacted with. And yet, I left without getting anybody's contact information. I feel like I screwed up all over again.
• I might be getting a roommate soon; since my rent got hiked, it makes more sense than living by myself with more space than I actually need. There's someone I was hoping would move in and help out for a few months, since she's looking for work and not having much luck. I've been advising her on her resume and job search for the past week or so, and now she seems to have landed something. Meaning, she may not be coming after all.
• I'm not keeping up my webpage often enough; even with this blog, I only post every other week or so, and it's the easiest thing in the world to use. So why can't I find the time?
• It's election season, and for the first time in a long time I'm excited. In less than two weeks, I expect to see the necessary corrective to the very depressing state of affairs that began in November 2000. It had to end some time, and I have something to look forward to.

I consider my life pretty mundane. And yet I've got a lot to think about. Don't ever feel that life passes you by--look at it in all its details.