April Forever

A Quick Thought

2006-11-30T17:03:00.000-05:00

Why the hell are couches and all other living room furniture swathed in either drab, muted colors or else covered in some hellish rendition of paisley or plaid? Why can't you find anything bright that isn't from Ikea? And why is it that people somehow think living room furniture without arms is still furniture? Where I come from, we call that "broken," not "modern."

I seethe with discontent.

How To Remove Cat Dander From Two Loveseats

2006-11-21T16:44:00.000-05:00

1) Realize that your two loveseats are infested with filthy, filthy cat allergens. Resolve to clean them first thing in the morning.

2) Go to Meijer. Ask the sales person about renting and Rug Doctor, making sure to ask her which formula gets rid of cat dander. Ask again, specifically noting that it must remove allergens which make said sofa unusable. Nurture the small spot of hope that grows within you as she nods and assures you it cleans allergens.

3) Go home with your Rug Doctor and cleaning implements. Begin attaching the upholstery attachments and realize the person before you didn't empty the hose, thus spilling water all over your floor. Hate that person.

4) Read the directions on the bottle carefully, noting how much you are supposed to use. Fill a bucket with the appropriate amount of water, then add the whole bottle, silently deriding the manufacturers for assuming you wanted only the minimum amount of cleaning done.

5) Spend the next two and a half hours washing every inch of your loveseats. Grow more and more angry with each puddle of cleaner that spills from the vacuum. Also vacuum the cushions, noting that curved surfaces are the worst thing in the world for a carpet cleaner to clean.

6) Empty the waste water, noting how a couple pieces of furniture can make a bucket of water look like it was pulled from a swamp.

7) Eat lunch and consider how you will brag to your girlfriend about how you valiantly slayed a million allergens with a sweep of your upholstery attachment. Feel manly.

8) After a couple of hours have passed put a slightly damp cushion on a slightly damp loveseat and test how well your work was. After ten minutes, note your persistent cough and slight tightness in the lungs.

9) Angrily walk to the kitchen trash can and fish out the bottle of cleaner. Note that it is a bottle of pet stain spot remover, and was never intended to be used as a cleaner in the machine. Remember the lady who rented the machine to you and loathe her.

10) Go to Target and buy a bottle of cleaner that actually removes allergens. Briefly consider buying two, so you have one to bludgeon the rental lady with when you return the Rug Doctor while screaming "SEE? THIS IS WHAT ALLERGEN-REMOVING CLEANER LOOKS LIKE! TASTE THE POWER OF NON-HISTAMINE-ACTIVATING GOODNESS! LEARN!"

11) Return home. Add more water to the bucket. Dump half the bottle of cleaner in, noting that this is far more than the original bottle. Believe that adding anything less than what must be a lethal dose of allergy cleaner to the water constitutes a moral failure on your part.

12) Spend another two and a half hours washing the loveseats, making sure to clean all of the pillows it touched, as well as removing the covers on the cushions and washing those in the wash seperately. Note that the cushions are stuffed with down feathers, leaving small feathers all over the living room as a reminder that these cushions will continue to spew forth noxious cat spores that burn your eyes whenever sat upon.

12a) Remove pants. Continue cleaning pants-less, understanding that whoever invented pants probably also invented cat allergies.

13) When finished, empty the waste water. Note how the water is even dirtier than before. Briefly question the wisdom of sitting on a loveseat that will never be clean.

14) Lie on your bed and pray that the allergens are gone. Consider hating cats.

Super-Mega-Ultra-Update!

2006-11-20T15:03:00.000-05:00

A lot's happened since my last post. Here we go.

--Found a subleaser who signed on Wednesday. It was a god arrangement for al of us because she needed to move out ASAP, and I needed someone to sign now. I left my futon behind, which wasn't a big deal since Elaine has one.

--I moved to Columbus. Whee!

My dad came down Friday to help pack and move, which went pretty well. He got to meet Elaine's parents, who were kind enough to feed us lunch and dinner. Everyone got along with everyone, and Elaine and my dad got to know each other a little better.

--We have Too Many Boxes. Fortunately, we also have a basement, so the boxes go down there. For everyone out there who doesn't have a basement, get one--it has made moving exponentially easier. Furniture peice we may not need, but don't want to get rid of? Basement. Large collection of books needs to stay out of the way? Basement. Large number of empty boxes which will undoubtedly be useful again someday? Basement. I cannot stress how awesome having a whole floor of storage space is.

Addendum: Washer and dryer hookups also rock. Not as much as a basement, though, since the basement can hold those and more.

--We have couch issues. Specifically, we have two loveseats which are old but comfortable. They were also stored at Elaine's parents' place, and they have cats. I am allergic to cats. We added the two together when we sat down last night for some six-month snugglebunnies and my eyes watered like crazy, so now we have to find a way to de-cat the loveseats before I can use them. Any suggestions?

--We bought blinds yesterday. Hanging them was a manly experience involving drills, electric screwdrivers and much manly dust. But they also fit perfectly. I am very proud.

That's all for now. More updates as the story/life progresses.

The chances of impeachment, and why rhetoric says it won't happen

2006-11-16T11:12:00.000-05:00

I've got a politically-connected girlfriend (through her mom) and I'm pretty liberal myself, so ever since the midterm elections, I've seen some murmurings of whether or not the Democrats should try to impeach Bush for mismanagement and such. You know the routine. One of the best articles I've seen about the subject is in Alternet, located here, and author Tim Dickinson says we shouldn't, for what I feel are very strong reasons.

Now, Alternet is a progressive news site, which means that most readers removed the right-turn signal from their environmentally-friendly cars and/or bicycles a long time ago. And predictably, a large number of the comments left at the bottom of the page (which actually takes up most of the page now) are somewhat incessant in their calls for impeachment. If we analyze the situation through rhetoric, though, I think that the chances for impeachment are very small for the same reason Dickinson notes--it looks like a power grab.

Most of the posters on the site are arguing that there's more than enough evidence to try Bush and impeach him. And they have a point--there is a law of the land, and said law appears to have been broken, so supposed criminals need to be held accountable for their actions. However, I think that there's far more pathos involved on the part of the posters than they realize.

For one, consider the history of the posters: they've had to endure not only six years of a president that most feel is horribly unpopular at best and a vote-fixing mass murderer at worst, but they also had to sit through the growing neocon movement during Clinton's administration as well as his impeachment over the Lewinski scandal, not to mention the previous years the Republican spin machine had spent reframing issues and getting people to see issues fron their point of view. And now, after years of being relegated to the sidelines of political action, after watching issue after issue being defined in language they cannot tolerate, voters from around the nation rise up and toss out a large number of neocons, validating the progressives' point of view. And I can't help but think that some of these calls for "justice" aren't just justice, but revenge, an "I told you so!" to all those out there who voted for Bush and, in the mids of the posters, helped cause this whole situation in the first place.

This point of view is problematic for a couple of reasons. It's troublesome for one in that it ultimately sets someone above someone else. In this case, progressives are better than Republicans, moderates, and everyone else who sought to support Bush in some way, and they should be recognized as having been "right" this whole time. And while progressives might believe that the public supports their point of view now because of the way the midterm elections turned out (or at least is more sympathetic to it than the opposition's), the truth is that their point of view puts a lot of people in the wrong, and if there's any drive stronger than a person's need to be right, it's the drive to not be proven wrong, and impeachment would most likely be seen as the progressives' need to be right rather than as the process of justice they claim it is.

But let's move to a more Toulminian perspective (Oooo, big rhetorical terms! If you're not sure what it means, look up Stephen Toulmin). The progressive posters are operating on several warrants that a large part of the nation does not agree on:

1) The war in Iraq was not justified (and, for some, outright illegal from an international perspective.)

2) The presidential election in 2000 (and, for most posters, in 2004 as well) was stolen and not a fair process.

3) The president has repeatedly and willfully violated the civil rights of American citizens and the human rights of both Americans and foreigners.

4) Etc. (9/11 mismanagement, profiteering, and many other issues besides)

You can usually find people who might believe one of those, maybe more. But these warrants are made isolated from historical perspectives, where presidents have repeatedly broken the law in order to achieve objectives--large parts of FDR's New Deal were eventually found to be unconstitutional, for example. What Bush did is pretty reprehensible in my mind, but to go from "People voted neocons out of office" to "Most of America agrees that Bush should be pulled from office immediately" is a pretty big leap in logic. And if those calling for impeachment agree that most people wouldn't support impeachment procedures, then they're admiting that they want a minority to override the will of the majority, which goes against their idea of a goverment of the people.

But all of this boils down to the same fallacy that many religious right people also possess--that ultimately, the majority agrees with them and their point of view. And the truth is that most people aren't as extremely committed as either die-hard progressives or religious right neocons are; they're a mix of beliefs that might lean to one side or another, but aren't as committed to a political ideology as the politicians or political activists are. This is why an impeachment process will fail, because in the minds of many people, justice was served when they voted Republicans out of office and Democrats into power. Now there is a balance of power again, and if the Democrats fire up an impeachment process that, as Dickinson points out, makes it possible for Pelosi to become president (however unlikely that situation is), many will see that as the Democrats trying for a power grab, and such "misuse" of power is why they voted the Republicans out in the first place.

Could an impeachment succeed? Sure, but it has to appear impartial, and that's very difficult to do. The only president that many felt could actually have been impeached by a bipartisan effort was Nixon, and the public almost universally loathed him at the point he resigned--he had only a 25% approval rating when he resigned. But even at the height of the scandal, one in four people supported him as president.

And this is the problem I see with impeaching Bush. Even if we enact all the reform that "empowers" people--eliminating political action groups, limit lobbyists, get stricter campaign laws, and so on--we're still left with the fact that there are large groups of people in our country who do not, and will not ever, agree with you. And what the posters at Alternet almost refuse to recognize is that politics always means compromise. It has to, because otherwise we get torn apart by beliefs and balkanize, huddled behind our little borders thinking that everyone else in the world is badwrong, and only these people right here know the truth. And these posters are committing the very same error in thought that the right-wing people are: that someday, they can be right.

And this is why I'm an independent: because I continue to believe that we can all be right sometimes.

Late-night update

2006-11-08T03:42:00.000-05:00

No subleaser yet, but the god news is that all of the news of Democratic wins weren't just media hype. As of right now, the House is Democratic, and the Senate looks like it will be; Montana hasn't been called yet, but the Democratic candidate is leading by a decent amount, and the Virginia race might not be called for a week or so, but there are enough votes seperating the two that a recount might not get called, and the winner would be Webb. So here's hoping continues on this track.

Ohio voted to raise the minimum wage, shoot down stupid constitutional amendments for allowing slot machines and a weak smoking ban, and passed a stronger smoking ban. Elaine's perspective is here--she's not as thrilled about the smoking ban as I am, but I don't think our views are too different from each other, since neither of us have any desire to take up smoking. I am rather giddy about the swift kick in the crotch voters gave to RJ Reynolds, though.

All right, time for bed. Here's hoping we wake up to a Democratic legislature.

More Renting Hate

2006-11-01T14:12:00.000-05:00

The woman who was interested in my apartment called today to say she couldn't take it--she said that she just thought she couldn't make it work financially. I had one more call about the apartment, but the lady had a small dog, and our apartment only allows cats. So I'm back to square one. I called the campus newspaper to place a classified ad, and...well, I don't know what after that.

The problem with a one bedroom apartment is that undergraduates want the cheap cost of living with someone else rather than the freedom of living alone. I'm still holding out hope for a subleaser soon, but it's getting harder and harder to do so. It doesn't help that the landlord can't help me out in any way, and the managing company is worse than useless; after all, they have empty apartments to push, so why waste time helping find a subleaser when they know that I have to pay them anyhow?

I'm not sure what to do about the situation. I can't get out of it, but at the same time, I can't pay two rents. I guess I'll hold out hope for the ads and keep papering campus with flyers.

A Nibble!

2006-10-27T12:26:00.000-04:00

So I was sitting down to play World of Warcraft, and I started to run an instance when my phone rang. I was hoping it would be Elaine, because I am just That Way. However, I didn't recognize the number, and it was in town.

"Hello?" I answered.

"ALEC," it said, "I AM THY SAVIOR, A POTENTIAL SUBLEASER."

Well, that's what it sounded like.

The lady who called is a grad student and is looking to move out on her own. Since she didn't want to deal with the hassle of a random roommate, she saw one of my flyers (insert silent squeeling in glee noise) and gave me a call. She sounds very nice, and I think I managed to hook her. She's coming by today around 4:30 to see the apartment.

...which, naturally, is even more of a disaster since A) I'm trying to get ready to move, and things (well, books) are everywhere, and B) I've had a horrid cold this past week that's kept me from getting much of anything done, much less make sure the used Kleenix don't clump together to form some kind of ultra-soft, aloe-coated sentience. So now I must spend the next few hours trying to get as much clean as possible while not irritating my cough. Hopefully, it'll be worth it, and I can move in a few weeks not having to worry about paying two leases.

Hunting the Wily Subleaser

2006-10-26T17:06:00.000-04:00

I'm moving soon to Columbus to live with Elaine. I'm looking forward to this, but what I don't like is trying to find a subleaser for my apartment.

I've come to realize one of the problems with living in a small college town: everything happens on the university schedule. This means that people aren't looking for apartments now because it's not semester break, so I'm papering campus with flyers in the hopes that some deviant renter exists.

I've also learned a few other things about advertising on campus:

1) Local businesses have enough money to wallpaper houses with their advertisements. They just spread that out over all of the available surfaces on campus.
2) Driving pushpins into plywood with your fingers sucks.
3) Putting up posters in cold weather sucks.

I actually put up posters last week, but I found out this week that most of them were gone, and those that remained were covered by ads from a local gaming store (one I don't particularly like, but hey, I'm gone in a month, so who cares?) So I had to go around and put up completely new posters. The upside to this is that I came prepared--I broke down and bought a staple gun. It was certainly faster and easier on my hands than pushpins, and I'm hoping that prospective subleasers will be impressed that the advertiser cared enough about this apartment to post announcements with something reminiscent of a firearm. That's a sign of quality.

Tomorrow, I need to get a hold of the local papers and post classified ads. I don't want to spend more money, but it's better than running around every 3 days trying to stay ahead of all the other people looking for free space.

Six word stories

2006-10-25T15:07:00.000-04:00

There's an article in this month's Wired about six word stories. Ernest Hemmingway apparently wrote a six word story ("For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.") and declared it was the best story he ever wrote. So Wired got a bunch of famous sci-fi types to write a six word story of their own. Some of the entries:

Vacuum collision. Orbits diverge. Goodbye, love. --David Brin
Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. --Joss Whedon
His penis snapped off, he's pregnant! --Rudy Rucker
Longed for him. Got him. Shit. --Margaret Atwood
From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings. --Gregory Maguire
With bloody hands, I say goodbye. --Frank Miller
It cost too much, staying human. --Bruce Sterling
I'm your future, child. Don't cry. --Stephen Baxter
I'm dead. I've missed you. Kiss...? --Neil Gaiman
The baby's blood type? Human, mostly. --Orson Scott Card
To save humankind, he died again. --Ben Bova
Tick tock tick tock tick tick. --Neal Stephenson

Fiction exercises are interesting, and can produce some really nifty results. (I especially like Gregory Macguire's submission.) I'm thinking about trying some of my own, but it's tougher than it seems, and the sci-fi aspect only adds more of a limitation. But how about it? Anyone else interested in trying to write some six word stories?

One more long-term update

2006-09-29T00:35:00.001-04:00

It's been a long couple of months. One of the more notable things was that I spent two weeks with Elaine, living with her on a daily basis. It went well, but we also learned a lot from it. For example, with food, I tend to be a brand shopper, since I know I like those foods, and she tends to go for the deals. It was also odd to have to deal with living with someone on a daily basis. When I normally visit, it's usually a bit of a rush to spend as much time together, but that's not sustainable when you're living with someone. These sorts of things are no doubt common knowledge to everyone, but at the same time, it's still something to adjust to after living on your own.

We're both working on new projects now, though; she's studying for the PCAT, and I'm working on the dissertation. In addition, we're also working on the idea of living together permanently. Elaine has started to look at apartments online, and when I head down to see her, we'll look through the more promising ones. Elaine also has a better idea of what the neighborhoods are like, so she can figure out a nice place online a lot easier than I can.

Lookng around my place now, I'm looking at how I'm going to move everything. I'm starting to figure out which books to pack up and which to donate to the library. I'm calculating what I'll need to drag to Goodwill, and I've got to figure out how to get a subleaser for next year. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried; I've never moved in with anyone before. My only experience was with my last girlfriend, and that wasn't "moving in with her" so much as "she was over at my place all the time, and eventually a ton of her stuff got left here," so my experence with that is somewhat soured. With Elaine, though, I'm looking forward to it.

It's fall, and I've always loved autumn. There's a spice to the air, and things get cool, but not freezing. The sunsets are still bright, and the trees are colored. Everything feels like it's winding down, but I feel like something new is starting. I can get rid of the stuff that's holding me down, and move on with my life. And it's good to have someone there who is willing to come with me.

Rings

2006-08-04T01:05:00.000-04:00

Shopping for an engagement ring is a strange experience. I get the feeling that there will be more experiences like it in the future--like buying cars and houses--but this is the first time I've been able to feel the pressures put on us while looking for the ring.

Even though Elaine and I put up a united front when it came to looking for a ring, there were still a couple of times I felt the salesperson forcing us into the three distinct roles that are played when looking for a ring. The three stereotypical roles, and their corresponding goals, are:

--The salesperson
1) Sell an expensive ring.
2) Sell them a ring they like.

--The bride
1) Get a ring she likes.
2) Try not to spend too much money.

--The groom
1) Dear god, get something cheap.
2) Make the bride think it was expensive.

So a weird consumer triangle gets made when a couple goes ring shopping. The salesperson wants to sell an expensive ring--heck, maybe two, if she can convince someone to buy a solitare ring and then one of those wrap-arounds. The groom, who normally buys the ring, doesn't want to spend a lot because most people can't drop $3,000 or more on a set of rings without some heavy budgeting. And of course, the person who has to live with the ring is the bride, and everyone wants the bride to be happy. So the bride becomes the person to win over.

And you can feel this fight starting to take place in the salesperson's tactics. Elaine became a diva of sorts, where the salesperson was showing her different rings and telling her about all the options she could have. I was a little more than an extra, standing next to Elaine. I didn't ask about the prices, but I could tell that was what the salesperson was expecting of me, and there were even a couple of times, I could see the salesperson arranging the tag on a ring so that the price wouldn't be immediately noticeable.

Oddly, Elaine found the ring she liked the most at Kay Jewelers, which isn't where we expected to find a decent ring at all. I think part of it was that the prices were out front, so there wasn't any anxiety over that on the part of the salesperson, and that the salesperson we talked to was pretty low-pressure. In the more expensive shops, you could feel the sales people hovering on us, and once we said the words "We're looking for engagement rings," they slowly managed to work us over to the diamond engagement ring section, which we weren't all that interested in.

We didn't settle on anything permanent yet, but we certainly got a better sense of what was available and what she wanted. I think she started to get burned out on the attention near the end (though that could have just been from a really pushy salesperson in the last store we went to,) but she did say that she liked the diva feeling, and that I should get my own chance to experience that, so we may end up going ring shopping for men's wedding bands sometime. (We both tend to like window shopping, so that's not a big deal.) But next time, I think I'm going to try and avoid mentioning weddings. We'll see how long that lasts.

A couple of random notes:

1) For some reason, whenever a guy says, "I'm interested in a ring," the immediately show him the rings that look like class rings--you know, the ones with the huge stones. In one store, I even said "I want a ring like this wedding band, but with sapphires in it," and the salesperson showed me a sapphire ring that looked like I was going to pimp-slap a ho with it. How does a pimp ring look like a wedding band? He even had a ring to start with. How do you think that's anywhere near appropriate?

2) JCPenney, while nowhere near the class of an actually jewelry store, still has a nice selection of jewelry. I think I'm just biased towards JCPenney in general, since I really like their men's section, but if I was shopping for anything other than engagement rings, that's where I'd go. In fact, there's a pretty decent men's wedding band that I'm thinking of getting. (It's my feeling that if the bride gets a sparkly ring, the groom should also get something sparkly, so I've been looking for wedding bands with gems in them.) I'd recommend them if you're in the market for something sparkly yet well-priced.

An Involuntary Hiatus

2006-08-01T13:35:00.000-04:00

Elaine is gone this week to a wedding in New Hampshire; two of her friends from college are getting married, and since it's the place they're at is pretty far out there and she'll be busy seeing friends and generally celebrating, I won't get to talk to her much this week. She'll be coming back on Sunday, but that's the day I'll be driving up to Boundary Waters, so I won't be able to talk to her until, oh, next Friday at least. So we'll be more or less out-of-touch with each other for a little under two weeks.

This is the first time that we've been out-of-touch for more than a day or so, and really, even then, we've had the ability to talk to each other, but we recognized that we were hanging out with our friends or something and we would just be too busy to talk. This is a real "We can't talk to each other even if we want to" situation, and it's just odd to experience. With Karen, I was so wrapped up with her various situations that it was a relief to be somewhere she couldn't get a hold of me. With Elaine, I want to talk to her, and even though I'm not worried about anything life-changing happening over the time we'll be away from each other, it's still an adjustment to get used to.

Part of this feeling is probably due to the the fact that we spent a lot of time together this past week, relatively speaking. I went down to Columbus on Tuesday because we missed each other, and I had the flexibility to do that. I stayed through Wednesday (which was special because I got a chance to make her dinner when she got home, and I got to feel all domestic) and left on Thursday morning, only to have her come up here on Saturday and stay until Sunday evening. We also did a lot of stuff together as a couple, which was nice. She met some of my friends here and played a board game with them. We even drove up to Toledo and browsed the ring selection at various jewelers, which is a heady experience in and of itself; I'll probably write about it a little later. And when she was ready to leave on Sunday, we spent a lot of time saying we didn't want to be apart.

I think both of us feel like we're just waiting until the end of the year, when we can move in together and we don't have to make special trips to see the other, and right now, when she's dealing with work scheduling and studying for classes and other pressures, figuring me into all of that can be difficult, especially since when I'm there, she wants to spend as much time with me as possible. Negotiating this difference between her "regular" world and time with me, then, is a challenge. But even with this difficulty, we've still had time to talk to each other every night on AIM or on the phone, and this extended time away from each other is something new to both of us.

Obviously, I don't expect anything horrible to happen while we're apart--neither of us will want to stop seeing each other or anything like that. But there's still the fact that a part of my regular routine has to change for a bit, a pleasurable part of it that helped make the rest of the day easier to get through. These next couple of weeks will be difficult, and we'll find ways to talk to each other during that time, I'm sure, but not as regularly as we would want. But part of what makes this all tolerable is knowing that we're moving forward together, and at the end of this, I know she'll be there, excited to see me and talk to me about what happened. It's something I haven't really had before: the security and reliability of someone who cares.

These next couple of weeks will be hard. But a future with her makes it worth the hassle and the wait.

A New Craving

2006-07-19T17:48:00.000-04:00

Elaine has given me a taste for Chinese food.

A few years ago, I would go with my friends to a restaurant called Hunan Buffet. There I would pick all the finger or sweet foods--chicken on a stick, bananas in heavy syrup, and all that stuff. They said that I ate like a little kid, and I pointed out that I just didn't like a lot of oriental food--to me, it seemed to be all steamed rice and soy sauce punctuated by some vegetables and, if you were lucky, perhaps a piece of meat. This is not my idea of a meal, nor will it ever be. I like meat far too much to give it up entirely, and if a dish advertizes itself as having meat in it, it better be more than just a random few bits added in.

Anyhow, I digress. The point is that, a few weeks ago, Elaine and I decided to pick something up before we saw The Compleat Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at Columbus' Shakespeare In The Park program. She suggested Chinese, and I, being in a good mood from all the sweet, sweet lovin' Elaine had been giving me that day, said I'd try it, so long as it wasn't the cheap stuff. So we swung by this palce called the Happy Dragon (I think that's it, anyhow) and I ordered some garlic chicken with pork-fried rice.

And it was delicious. I've never actually had Chinese food that actually appealed to me. It was such a different experience. In fact, the next day, when Elaine was studying, we ordered from a different Chinese place for dinner, which I also enjoyed. (It was drenched in lobster sauce, but it was still quite tasty.) And now I'm sitting in my apartment, thinking that Chinese would be really good right now. It's an odd thought, because now I have to look up what Chinese places there are in town, and I realize that there are all these restaurants that I've never even noticed because I trained myself to glaze over them while driving or looking for restaurants. A magical world of cuisine has unfolded before my eyes.

I try a lot of new things with Elaine. She's commented that there are times we do this "city mouse, country mouse" thing because there's a lot of stuff she's tried that I haven't. It helps that she's in Columbus, of course, where good food can at least find a little corner and survive by word-of-mouth advertising, and you actually have to be good in order to survive as a restaurant down there. At the same time, though, she doesn't treat me like I'm from the sticks, nor does she seem to assume that any city smaller than Columbus is backwards, so I feel more comfortable admitting that I've never had hummus or decent Chinese or anything of the sort. They're new experiences that I get to tie into my memories of her.

And it's nice to have someone whom I can feel comfortable around to try new things with.

Settling Down

2006-07-14T20:20:00.000-04:00

It's Friday, and and since my lady has had a long week of studying and she likes seeing me talk about how wonderful she is, I figured that if I can't see her today, then I should at least write about her. I am going down to Richmond, Indiana, on Sunday to see her and two of her friends, Alex and Alex (a married couple,) so at least I'll get some face time with her this weekend.

But things are going well with Elaine. It's been almost two months now, and it feels like things are starting to settle down a bit. We're coming down out of the "elated-new-love" phase and starting to head into...something else. I'm not sure where. It's odd, because this is the first time I've ever really felt like this.

The reason it's so odd is because I'm making all sorts of plans with Elaine: moving in together, engagement, even some talk of children (Nothing too serious, obviously. It's usually baby names. We bandy about names from time to time, remarking on whether or not we like them, or remind ourselves how we're never going to X or Y when we're parents.) It's not that I'm scared of the speed we're moving in the relationship--plans for moving in have progressed to the point of "Let's shoot for December-ish"--or that I'm scared of the commitment. In fact, maybe that's the part that causes the most thought. I'm not scared of this at all. I'm looking forward to it, even though we've only been dating a short period of time. With my last girlfriend, we were together for a couple of years, and engagement or living together was something I was always hesitant about. This feels very different from that.

I think a lot of that is due to the fact that the relationship is changing. Before, it was that puppy love phase, where you can't believe you found each other and you spend a lot of time just learning about each other. And while we still each think we're incredibly lucky to have the other and we're still learning about each other, we're in a position where the relationship can become a little more serious, where it's not all flowers and dinner and high romance. Sometimes it's just sitting in the same room with the person, getting some work done and every so often rubbing the other's back or shoulders. It's the idea that no matter what we're doing, it's better because the other person is there, and they're just as happy to be there.

Meeting her friends is a part of that. Visits from me still constitute something special, since it's a long-distance relationship and we want the time to be special. But I like these attempts to make it more personal as well. I'm starting to learn about her friends, her regular schedule, her regular life. I'm becoming slightly less of a magical creature that flies in, romances her for a couple of days and then flies off, only to be heard through IM converations and text messages, and more of a regular person, a part of her life.

And if the biggest thing to happen in my life is to become a part of hers, I can honestly say that I'll die a happy man.

An "I'm in love" moment

2006-06-19T22:23:00.000-04:00

So I decided to do a little evening grocery shopping tonight, and as I was walking through the produce section, a woman walks by in this black-and-white polka dot dress, the kind that floated around just below the knee but was tight in all the right places. That kind of dress. Yeah. Anyhow, I saw her walking past fairly quickly, and my first thoughts were "Damn, Elaine would look hot in that dress."

You could say I'm a bit smitten.

Small thoughts

2006-06-16T12:21:00.000-04:00

I think an indicator of how much Elaine and I care for each other is the fact that she bought a text messaging package for her cell phone.

That seems a little weird at first, because you would think that there are a lot of other things that would indicate our committment, like our willingness to drive two hours to be with the other person. But at the same time, you need to understand the situation a bit. For one, Elaine doesn't type fast on her phone at all--it's T-9, and I can appreciate how annoying it is to send text messages that way because I did it with my old phone and despised it. (I have one with a thumb QWERTY keyboard now, and that's much better.) There's also the fact that she often messages me when she's at work, which is difficult for her as well--she has to type a couple of words, then put the phone in her pocket because she has to help a customer, then when she's done, take it out and type a couple more words.

So it means a lot to me when my phone beeps and I see I have a message from her. Just a few minutes ago, I got one that simply said "I miss kissing you. :)" I know that it took time to write that, and that she cared enough to type it out between shuffling prescriptions for people.

Text messaging suffers from the fact that most people who use it are young kids, and they butcher the English language so much that it makes me want to hit young people who use text messaging. But for us, it's become a form of portable e-mail, a way for us to reach out at any time and tell the other person how much we care. And I appreciate knowing that I can help her out when she's having a bad day by sending her a funny message. It helps cut the distance down a bit and let us share in parts of the person's daily life.

I've been in long-distance relationships before, and even with e-mail, the distance was harder because we had to set up times to talk to each other. Now we can be more spontaneous. When I really need to talk to her after a long day, I can call her on my cell phone. If she wants to send me a little note about how her day is going, she can send a text message.

Personally, I'm willing to put up with the massacre of English if it means I can tell my lady how much I love her whenever I want. It's a small price to pay.

Another step forward

2006-06-13T18:49:00.000-04:00

I am officially post-preliminary.

The preliminary exams are a bit of a gauntlet for Ph.D. students. It's like an essay exam in college, only you have to write 3 or 4 essays, and they all have to be 8-10 pages long. And you have to write them all in a weekend. And you have to do it twice because there are two lists. And you have to defend your answers in front of a committee of four professors, all of whom are interested in how you handle yourself when confronted with the fact that you don't know the answer to the question.

Yeah, it's a little stressful.

However, I came through the process pretty well. The committee thought I handled the essay questions pretty well, so the defense today was mostly clarifications and explanations of terms. I did have to confront my lack of knowledge in a couple of areas, mostly in relations to technology issues and social identity issues, but those are areas everyone saw that I was aware of and would improve upon for the dissertation.

The dissertation. I have to say it again because it's a little hard to believe I've gotten this far. One year ago, I was a mess, and I had no idea whether or not I'd even finish. Even at the beginning of the year, I don't think I had a solid idea as to what I wanted to do. Now I have rough outlines, chapter ideas, research directions, and four professors interested in helping me with my project. In two or three months, I'll be ABD (all but dissertation) and I can start looking for jobs. As a doctorate in rhetoric and writing. That's mind blowing.

And then there's all this other stuff happening in my life. I spent the weekend with Elaine, and it was a wonderful time. We saw A Midsummer Night's Dream in the park, played board games, and just spent time with each other. We talked about all sorts of topics. I had forgotten what it was like to spend time with someone who really understands me, who I don't have to cater to or keep part of my life in the background. She's just an amazing woman, and I hope I get to spend many more weekends with her.

I'm on track with my degree and I have a lovely woman to share it with. I have to wonder, is this what most people feel like when they're "adults?" Does it really feel this together?

I hope so. In a way, I want this to keep going as long as it can, and in a way, I know it's going to get better.

Restart

2006-06-07T01:49:00.000-04:00

I haven't written anything here much, even though I wanted to. I blame part of that on the fact that I was studying for my preliminary exams, of which I've only finished taking last weekend. Part of that is anxiety, I think. I like my essays to be polished, and this feels less so. I'm not sure what about it feels wrong; the fact that it's not polished, or the fact that I'm worried the thoughts won't be worth noting, or something else.

I'm probably being too recursive, anyhow. I tend to do that.

One other reason I wanted to start writing in this again is the fact that I've met someone and I want a place to remember the thoughts I have about her. She has a Livejournal as well, and I thought it was nice to be able to go through it and see some of the thoughts she had. It helped me get to know her, and I got a little insight as to what she thought of me at points. I'd like to have some place to discuss her as well, because I know I like it when she says nice things about me where others can see them. It's not all about the narcissism, of course, but it's been a while since I've felt like this, and there are ways that I've never felt before, and I want to put it all down and have a way to remember.

When I was in college, I wrote a long collection of essays (50 pages, long for an undergraduate in creative writing) about death and memory, and I eventually came to the conclusion that one of the ways we help remember those who have died is by telling stories about them, and getting others to help them remember for them. You share the memories, and then move on. I want to do the same here. I want others to know what I feel now, so maybe if I forget, they can help me remember.

And of course, if it's written down, I won't forget. I don't want to forget this. Not her.

Inhalations

2006-03-20T20:05:00.000-05:00

I’m wishing you were in your clothes right now
as I’m sitting on my bed in my parents’ house,
holding your blue shirt to my face and inhaling,
trying to catch the last lingering fragrance you were wearing
when you knelt next to my bed in the dark
and asked what my first impression was of you
and what I thought of you now.
It’s that night we read tarot cards together with Lauren
and you confessed your concern about your dying grandmother to me.
But the whole reason I’m holding it to my face right now
and trying my hardest to filter everything out but the lingering musk
is the hug we shared that dark morning,
where my nose slid along the side of your neck
and all I could sense was you.

What are you thinking?, I asked.
I’m just enjoying the company, you said
in a soft sigh, one that spoke of contentment.
I keep thinking we both wanted the same thing then,
to hold the world still at 4:49 a.m.,
frozen in that moment of connection

I took your shirt home with me by mistake
and I still regret it—there’s no way I can stop
wishing you were here at 4:49 a.m. again in this same shirt
sharing a possibility only your fragrance can share with me tonight
around my body, outside of time and inside the envelope of the night.

This is an old one, but one I'm still proud of. I still talk to the woman I wote this for occasionally. She's married now and has a son. She's quite happy, and I'm glad for that.

Five by Five

2006-03-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

Signal-to-noise, I always miss your voice
just before it calls across my handset. It cuts off
the first part of your sentence, abandons me
to attempt to understand you. I call back
through the interstice. I wait and hope.

I don't really fancy myself a poet. I think I know just enough tricks to get by, but poetry is really for people who really, really love words. You have to have a huge vocabulary and enjoy the idea of synonyms and antonyms and all the other -nyms in between.

Still, I apparently have a large enough vocabulary to confuse some of my roleplaying friends, and I do like to write. However, my preferred form of expression is the personal essay. I'm reading so much about it now for my preliminary exams, so maybe that's why it's hard for me to write about it now, because I'm thinking about the theory behind it so much. Or perhaps it's the fact that a personal essay should still mean something to a larger audience, and I'm uncertain whether I can do that on a regular basis. A lot of that's practice, but still....

One step at a time, I guess. This isn't what I'd consider my best work, but it does a couple of things I'm proud of. We'll have to see if I get enough practice at this to write something I'm really, really proud of.

Lifewebs

2006-03-15T20:50:00.000-05:00

It's a crinkled leaf, curled around itself
so the insect inside can shelter itself, its eggs,
its self from harm. And when you find this leafhome,
green but folded, half-alive and still moist with effort,
concealing curiosities that six-year-olds forage for on a blossoming spring day,
do you tear it open and dissect its contents, grimacing at the tiny things within?
Or do you peel it trepidatiously, waiting for the contents to pounce on your fingers?

Or do you giggle and raise the leaf,
exalting the embyronic,
to see if what's inside can fly?

Welcome to my blog. I hope it's interesting. We'll see how that goes.

In the meatime, please feel free to comment on...well, anything, really. I'd like comments on the poem, but I'll take what I can get.