morning again, and I'm at work. Bah.
*****
So this morning, i'm in a storytelling mood, and I've decided to tell the story of me and Chris, who i chatter enough about in here to make him blush with embarrassment. (He reads my journal but we mostly don't talk much about it.)
So, wander back with me to the end of 1992. It's my freshman year of college. I'm in a state I never imagined setting foot in, at a school that dwarfs me. i'm exquisitely happy—I have friends, I'm starting to think about actually coming out as bisexual, i'm coming out as pagan with a vengeance. I have a severe crush on this girl named Teresa (I call her Teesa and sleep on her floor most weekend nights, she calls me Krissiepoo and flirts with me like there's no tomorrow).
Somewhere in here, a friend of mine shows me this thing that some new friends of hers have shown her. It's called ISCABBS. I fall in love immediately, fully, and without reservation. (This is before the advent of the Web, remember. Text-only is the rule of the day.) I recognize immediately its capacity for letting me communicate without worrying about how i look or my strange accent. Conversation in a text interface is much more reliable for me than an audio interface.
So i get in the swing of things, learn the ropes, and am soon talking to people from all over the country. One of these people is a guy named Chris, from East Lansing, Michigan.
Well, one thing follows another, and we discover that we're falling for each other. It's the first relationship for both of us. The summer of 1993, we make plans for him to come down to Iowa City for my birthday.
Again, one thing leads to another and it's pretty obvious by this time that we've got it pretty bad for each other. And somewhere in here, we participate in a ritual designed to tie to two of us together, no matter where we are.
Things follow their natural course, neither of us is very happy with the long-distance relationship, and I act quite unforgivably immature. We break up. We get back together. We break up again. We don't talk to each other for a couple of years.
As he was later to say, it was the loudest silence either of us had ever heard.
And through all this time, the tie forged by our ritual remains. I'm not sure i can describe it anything like accurately, but it's sort of a knowledge of the other's existance, an attraction of coincidence that seems to strive to keep us in contact.
During the time we were silent, we both dated the same woman (him first, then me), and I moved from Iowa City to Seattle.
And then he dropped me a line about two years ago. Just a note.
We haven't shut up since.
So that's the story of me and Chris.
*****
I went to the Friends of the Library book sale yesterday, and bought somewhere between 45 and 50 books, and spent (total!) $27.60. Included in yesterday's haul were several books about linguistics, a bunch of pulp sf, some children's books (There's a Monster in my Closet and Stellaluna, for starters), a few gardening books, hardback copies of books I have in paperback and have worn out, and some books that I just plain picked up and said, "okay, yeah, I need to own this. Not for any literary value, but for the sheer entertainment value of having a 70's-era paperback with a photograph of a woman with Farrah Fawcett hair and a knitted jumpsuit (no kidding...a KNITTED jumpsuit) in a position that's apparently supposed to indicate that she's having some amount of licentious fun with the smirking guy in the background." To me, it looks like she's trying to do yoga with something stuck up her butt. I told the picture, "your chi is definitely out of balance here, babe."
I also bought a Gor novel, mostly because I want to make fun of Gor novels but I can't do that without having read at least one. I can tell I'm going to have to wash the inside of my brain out with soap after reading it.
The bookshelves have not reached capacity yet, thanks to the new shelves Mike and Ivana so thoughtfully donated to me.
*****
A credit card company is hounding me for money it thinks i owe it. Well, I actually do owe the money, but it ain't getting its $300 all at once. i have to pay rent in a couple of days, after all.
Of course, i'm terminally terrified of calling the credit card company and telling them this. I have this weird phobia of calling strangers on the phone. If only I could just send them email...
maybe i'll send them a check with a memo: "Go Away."
*****
there are days when I settle into my life like I do into my favorite shirt, when all around me is warm, cozy, snuggly, and supportive.
Today is not one of those days. Today my life is itchy.
Which means, unfortunately, that i'm not paying as close attention to work as i should. I want to get OUT. I want to go walk in Ravenna Park and take pictures. I want to write a poem while riding the bus. I want to climb up on a big rock and just sit and look. Sit and see.
I'm also tired of being perennially behind on bills. The slump in business we had a little while back cleaned out all of my financial reserves, and the fact that i'm paying rent all by myself is not helping. If I had a decent machine at home, I could do some sites for money, but i don't and I can't.
I mean, it's not like I'm hurting terribly. I have money for food and for rent and the necessities, but the last few months I've been living hand to mouth, my entire paycheck spent almost before the money hits my account. And this credit card thing has thrown my plan (which was to get a little bit of savings built up before paying off my debts) off track for at least a month, maybe more. It's always something, isn't it?
And it's not likely that I'll get the other two-thirds of that raise till December. Okay, in the scheme of things, money is not as important as happiness, but I maintain that while money itself doesn't make me happy, being free of financial worries certainly does.
Okay, after taking off next weekend, i'll buckle down and work 60-hour weeks for a while. Working a lot has two major benefits: I make lots of money, and i don't have any time to spend it.
Besides, one day soon I want to have enough money to develop my vacation pictures. It's pretty sad when you have to budget for the $15 it'll take to develop two rolls of film.
*****
I know i'm bitching, but unexpectedly having to be at work both days this weekend has put me in a grumpy mood. I occasionally get ambushed by my emotions, and this is one of those times. I need to do something nice for myself, but i'm really having to try hard to be adequate right now, and there's just so much that isn't getting done.
I don't think i'll be spending my weekend alone next weekend. Ivana's going to be out of town, so it looks like I get Mike for the weekend. Which is simultaneously cool and disappointing--I seriously need rest and recharge time, all of these people have burned me out. On the other hand, i can get a lot of geeking done with mike, and maybe solve my stupid sendmail problems.
Maybe I'll grab Mike and we'll go out to play with Laura. She'll have moved completely by that time, so we can see their new house.
*****
I updated backstory. If you think I should have more information there, email me. Or email me anyway.
*****
I need a laptop. I need a laptop in the WORST way.
Unfortunately, my PC OS of choice is windows NT, which doesn't play well with laptops. I think I can suffer along with Win98,though.
If you have a favorite brand of laptop, one that has plenty of RAM and disk space, doesn't break down often, and (maybe most importantly) is fairly light, tell me, okay?
*****
I'm realized about three sentences ago that I'm experiencing waves of sudden longing for things. Yup, seasonchange is definitely here. This is the irritable energy that occasionally presages an attack of mania, the bad kind in which i don't actually get anything done, just spend all my time being so scattered that I get a lot of stuff started but nothing actually finished.
Forewarned is forearmed, i guess. I wonder if I can manage to take a couple of days off next week to blow off some steam. I need to take a little time and just sit down with this big list of things i need to do and figure out a plan to get it all done. Maybe i'll do that tonight if Mike doesn't kidnap me.
