personal

A short long week

How can a four-day week have felt so long?

It’s over at least, and the weekend is here. Rumor is, we’re going to get a few inches of snow before the weekend’s out, but it remains to be seen. Aside from a flurry every now and then, we haven’t had any snow here since October. A very marked contrast to last year, I’ll say that much.

No big plans for the weekend. Some writing, reading some Kaleidotrope slush, most likely. By the way, if you haven’t yet read any of the stories or poems in this month’s issue, now would be a great time. And I’d love if more people would join up and post in the forums what they thought of the issue, good and bad.

Okay, I think I’m going to fall asleep now. It seems like the only sensible thing to do.

Thursday

Oh, such a day. Nothing too remarkable about it, beyond a two-hour meeting, who’s take-away seemed to be that we need to have more meetings so that we can have less meetings. (Have I told you? It’s the Year of the Meeting!) Then drinks after work to wish well a co-worker who’s leaving us at the end of the week.

Which is luckily tomorrow. Not luckily she’s leaving, but that it’s the end of the week. For a four-day week, this has been quite a long one.

Oh, and don’t even get me started about looking for an apartment. My brain might very well explode. I think I’m going to regroup, reconsider my finances and reality, before actually going to look at any places. I may be faced with the very real possibility that I may not be able to afford to move out, now or in any near future.

I’m hoping I’m wrong about that — I love my parents, but it’s been seven years now — but we’ll see.

Where I am

I decided this was going to be the year I finally move out. I moved back home to New York in the summer of 2004, and that, amazingly, was almost eight years ago now. Of course, now I’m faced with the very real possibility that I don’t earn enough yearly to buy a place of my own, at least not anyplace nice, in New York. I’m looking at down payments I quite possibly can’t afford on mortgages I quite possibly won’t get, which run for decades longer than I quite possibly want to live there, and that’s even before property taxes and interest rates and monthly expenses. But still, I got in touch with a realtor in Queens a few days ago, and I’ve said I’ll try to call her tomorrow, even though that might prove difficult at work.

This was so much easier when I was just renting an apartment, and when I was dealing with central Pennsylvanian prices.

Beyond that, and all the talk on Twitter and elsewhere about SOPA and PIPA, it was a pretty ordinary day.

Rainy day

I had some weird dreams last night, nothing that I remember too clearly, but a string of dreams that seemed to be chasing one another into the morning. I wound up oversleeping and didn’t get my early train like I’d planned/hoped.

It wasn’t raining when I left this morning, so I can maybe be forgiven for forgetting my umbrella. But the rain was well underway by lunchtime. I ducked into the local Duane Reade, a couple of blocks from the office, to buy a new umbrella…only to have it break on me the minute I walked out the door. First it wouldn’t stay open, and then the little plastic button that’s supposed to keep it locked open snapped off. I was tempted to go back inside and ask for a refund — it wasn’t expensive, but it was still ten bucks, and it was still raining — but I’d for some reason tossed my receipt in the garbage can just inside the door before I left. I maybe could have still made a case for a refund or exchange — “I was just in here” — but I managed to get the umbrella working, more or less. It won’t win any design awards, and I should probably swap out my regular umbrella for it, but it’s not like it’s being held open with masking tape or anything…yet.

Beyond the rain and the dreams, it was a pretty ordinary Monday. Thank goodness it was actually a Tuesday.