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Reading: J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Listening to: |
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Friday, December 13
out of control Today, I'd like to start by giving a nice one-fingered salute to the person who stole my bike. Who removed the locked basement door from its hinges to steal my bike. Dude, it's the holiday season. Get in the spirit, put your obviously considerable talents to better use, and buy your own (and your own damned helmet, too). Or at least have the courtesy to equalize the situation and steal everybody's bike, not just mine. Or just restrain yourself, for fuck's sake. Also, I'd like to know how it's possible that I could take my bike to Eugene, the bike theft capital of America, and not have it stolen in two years, despite some haphazard locking practices, but have it taken from a (until now) secure basement a mere six months after moving here. Cosmic forces are aligned against me. Or Murphy's Law, at least. Oh, while I'm whining, I'd like to say this: FX, if you can't show the last four episodes of the sixth season of Buffy, then why bother showing the sixth season at all? Don't you realize it's cruel to leave people in suspense like that? In more positive news, today was devoted to Christmas. Bought many holiday accoutrements, including gift wrap, gift tags, crafty materials to make decorations for my tree, and a present for Shan, despite her telepathy spoiling my original idea. Also some animal crackers. Now I have ornaments on the tree, gifts under the tree, and a mess on my living room floor. And it's finally raining, which is fabulous. It finally feels like winter, and it makes it all the more cozy and nice in here with the tree lit and me puttering around being crafty. Lovely. Monday, December 9
you're on the road, but you've got no destination For all those who want to know what these Q-tip ornaments I'm creating look like, here you go:
It's incomplete. I need some glitter and stuff, so it looks less like Q-tips. A glue gun would make this easier. I'd forgotten that Elmer's glue isn't the most craft-conducive material ever made. Tonight as I was driving away from work, I was so deep in thought about my independence that I went straight through a red light without even noticing. Only afterward did I realize what I'd done. I swear I'm not normally that absentminded. It was midnight, after all. Still. I fear I may be an idiot. But back to what was occupying my mind to the exclusion of red lights. A week or so ago, I had a revelation. I had begun to think I was becoming hopelessly boring or shallow, because when I talk to many of my long-lost friends, I just don't have very much to say about my life. Work's fine; I read a lot; I watch TV; I cook and sleep. That's about the sum of it. As I was standing in my kitchen assembling my lunch the other day, I realized the problem isn't that I've become boring or shallow. Rather, it's that my life is no longer complicated. In school, life was filled with endless complications and events and interactions. Classes, papers, exams, crushes, parties, social life, work, deadlines, movies, blah, blah, blah. The list goes on and on. But now my life pretty much fits in that nutshell from a few sentences ago. There are no complicating factors. I have work time and free time. End of story. Hence: independence. With only work to worry about, and with that occurring in tidy blocks of time scheduled well in advance, I can wander around at will. Thus, trips to all over to see friends and the family. This is cool. In fact, it's something that I yearned for by my last term in school. To be able to do my work at work, and have the rest of my time be mine, which it never was while there were the aforementioned papers, books, and exams. I have no regrets that those things aren't dogging my steps anymore. But at the same time, I feel restless. Not, "Man, I'm bored tonight" restless. Restless in general. Like I need to go. Like there's something bigger I should be doing. Like there's something to find. But... there's not. Nowhere to go, nothing to find. If I were to get in the car, I'd just... drive. Because there's no end point, nowhere for me to arrive. And no reason why anywhere I would go right now would be any better or any different that where I am. It's like that cliche: Life is a journey, not a destination. And if you're trying to find the end, you're looking for the wrong thing in the first place. But I somehow feel like I need to take that journey. Like there is a destination, and I have to take the trip to find the end of it, if that makes any sense. The point of taking the trip wouldn't be to get somewhere, but to find the place I'm supposed to get to. Man, this sounds lame. No wonder I can't figure it out. Maybe it's wanderlust, some need to find something completely new. I dunno. Maybe I'm just trying to find the place where I belong. Sunday, December 8
it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift You know what's cool? When you're laying in bed, listening to a song or an album you've listened to a million times before, and you're struck all over again with how brilliantly, amazingly, wonderfully good it is. That, my friends, is the sign of a band imbued with genius. I went up to Seattle for my weekend to visit Shan, which was fun. We made some brief attempts at shopping, which were hampered by us taking the non-express (i.e. 35-minute) bus ride downtown. We had an entertaining dinner party with a bunch of her friends, including the aforementioned Nic. Much delicious food was eaten, many odd games from our pasts were played (which I suspect Nic enjoyed most, since he knew all the answers and thus had all the power), and I had this deeply bizarre small-world experience when I discovered that Shan's friend Eric is the son of one of my co-workers. We had to get up really early to play the "let's move Katie's car somewhere cheaper" game, but then we went back to bed. Seattle, though... Seattle freaks me out. I grew up in a small town, and Portland was familiar, because Portland was a place I went often. And Portland is not an intimidating city. It feels like a big suburb. But Seattle... Seattle is huge and crowded and loud and treeless. Just the sprawl of it all, the crush of cars as I drove in looking for my exit, made me want to run and hide. "I don't belong here," Shan told me. I wouldn't belong there, either. Good to know. For future reference. When I leave here... Upon returning, I embarked on a Christmas tree odyssey. I now have a lovely little tree, approximately as tall as I am. I had this kind of embarrassing incident. I was sprawled on the floor in front of my open apartment door trying to hold the tree upright with one hand and tighten the screws on the stand with the other. My neighbor Pat, whom my landlady thinks I should marry despite his being about twice my age, happened to walk by and discover me about the time I was discovering the stand was too large for the somewhat scrawny trunk of my tree. He got a good laugh out of my predicament, but was able to solve my problem for free by providing some handy chunks of wood to fill the space. Now, here's another thing. When setting up a tree, there are two kinds of logic that may conflict. Logic 1: Set the tree up in the spot where you intend to leave it, thereby making a mess in that area, which might be bad if you have white carpet like me. Logic 2: Set up the tree in the spot where potential messes will be easiest to clean up; for example, the tile floor in front of the door. Now, my father has always opted for the latter logic, putting the tree in the stand in the garage and then carrying it inside and performing any necessary straightening. I followed this example, which presented me with a problem given the precarious state of my tree's verticality. However, leaving it in the middle of my hall wasn't the best option, so I had to scootch across the floor, dragging it behind me, all the way to the other side of the room. Yes, actually, I do everything the hard way. Anyway, it's now where it's supposed to be, complete with lights and the few ornaments I purchased at Target. Am in the process of making new ornaments out of Q-tips. I spent all my money on parking in Seattle. 
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