My mom found this picture inside of a box containing my great grandmother’s recipes (that she had me get from the house before I left). In case you’re wondering— yes, that’s two children (I have no idea who) sitting on the laps of two 60s era mannequins. In a fucking ghost town.
Other than that incredibly strange omen, today was actually pretty good. It’s the first day that I felt better since I got sick on Wednesday night. We took my uncle to his physical therapy appointment and managed to hit Target to get some essentials. After that, my mom wanted to go hang out at a Starbucks, and she was really weirded out by the fact that our barista was—how do you say—flaming.
I think I’m going to have to put her in a bag and slowly lower her into gay culture. She’s halfway there (she already loves Madonna), but I don’t think that she could spot a typical homo in a lineup.
I’m absolutely loving this 24-inch display. I feel like my entire life was leading up to this glorious moment of consumerism. I was able to get so much web design done today in so little time it boggles the mind. Colors are sumptuous and saturated, brightness goes as high as I want (I have it at about 30% of maximum or it just blasts my eyes out my sockets) and I bought an episode of some retarded TV show on iTunes in high definition to see what 1080p (or least the iTunes h.264 pseudo-HD) looks like.
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m trying to tone down my use of ellipses. Christen told me this story about how somebody she knows sends out these mass e-mails with nothing but fragments connected with ellipses. (I love my voice recognition program because it knew to type the word ellipsis instead of an actual ellipsis.) I love ellipses and their stream-of-consciousness goodness, but at the end of the day I feel like it’s lazy writing.
Also, I’m going to be required to write actual university level papers in less than three months and I’d better brush up on my grammar.
Another unsettling thing happened this week: I overheard my grandma in the other room talking about how marriage should be between a man and a woman. Of course, I wasn’t going to run in there and give her a speech on the rights of man (it’s really my uncle’s corrupt Republican influence because he watches that ridiculous Fox news shit on the TV in Grandma’s room), but it still set me on edge.
If that gets said to my face, I’m not going to be discriminated against, but I seriously doubt it’ll really come up in any kind of meaningful context. Interestingly, my mom told me that my grandpa (who was the ultimate 1950s macho man, he worked in a textile factory for umpteen years) supported gay marriage. So I guess you can’t pigeonhole people.
I realized this week one of the main reasons that I absolutely adore my East Coast family: for all practical purposes, they are atheists. Of course, since the family is Italian, we go through all of the Roman Catholic rituals: first communion and all that jazz, but my grandma will often think out loud about whatever she’s pondering and she will come to some pretty damn atheistic conclusions.
It’s all about the little things. The first time the family all had dinner (although it’s never happened in the past) I half-expected everyone to say grace, and when it didn’t happen I was secretly overjoyed. I think that’s mostly because that hypocrite Orrin would always say grace before we ate. For the record, I would never believe in any sort of supreme being that would consider a rich hypocrite boob job surgeon worthy of any kind of praise.
I definitely am not looking forward to some kind of hypothetical conversation where I would be outed as an atheist. I’m not going to deny my beliefs for a second, but you can never tell how people are going to react. It’s like coming out of the closet, but worse. I really doubt it would be such a big deal, but you can never be sure. I stayed in the closet about being gay until the bitter end at my job. My close coworkers, I’m sure, aren’t idiots, but you just never know what it’ll be like afterward.
My redesign of my professional site is nearly completely done, I just have to write individual case studies for each project. I’m not sure I want to make it live yet, but it’ll be done by the end of the night. It’s almost 2 a.m. EST, and I really need to get to sleep. I doubt it will happen though. This is the time of night I put on some rockin’ electro and power through my web design. I even opened the box with my oils, so I could even paint!
I’m overjoyed that I have all this free time to devote to my hobbies.
Called Josef yesterday, he was drunk and I didn’t realize it until probably 20 minutes into the conversation. He was considering moving back to his hometown due to financial issues. He also seems very depressed, despite starting his new job this week.
I talked with Taylor briefly a few days ago. When I think of all my (mostly doomed) relationships in California, Taylor stands out as the person that I thought I had the best chance with. Maybe it was just the magic of Ocean Beach and the magic of San Francisco (which I normally loathe) that made our affair sparkle with unrealized possibilities, but I think of him a lot these days.
It’s funny, the way I talk about it it seems like I’ve been gone for months but I haven’t even been here a week yet.
On the way back from my uncle’s physical therapy appointment, I asked my mom to stop the car so I could take a picture of Manhattan from the appropriately-named neighborhood of Cliffside Park.
I wish I had more to report on my awesome New York City adventures, but between the rain and my illness, I haven’t really made it out of the house. That will soon change though. Peaches is playing next Sunday at apparently the de facto indie venue of the city, Webster Hall (three quarters of all the concerts I want to go to in the next few months are there).
Writing so much makes me feel very connected to the people I love back in California (and all over the country). I think in Sacramento my schedule was just maxed out for writing. Things really were going on at a breakneck pace, but I just didn’t have time to write them down. It astounds me how even fun things like lipstick can become routine.
Well, I should probably try and mop up what’s left to do on the website. Sleep is overrated and I’m in a creative groove. Check the new site out. UPDATE: the new portfolio site is live.
Categories: Ennui
