Author: cheerfulchaotic

So my roommate just called me a ho, and I was kinda forced to agree (by het standards, anyway, I’ve had a slutty week). But that’s another story.

The day after I got out here, our dsl froze hard. Behind the absentee third roommate’s locked door. Disconnecting and reconnecting the phone wiring (plugged in at the kitchen) didn’t so much help. Sucko. I’ve been patching network connectivity through mooching off of the student computer labs, and hanging out at friend’s places, speaking of which, much thanks to and , both of whom also helped me feed my wc3 hunger, as well as my net needs =)

Looked at much housing. Some of the places look pretty cool, but I’m incredibly reluctant to commit while jobless. Especially to a year long lease. But for my would be roomies, time is running out, as the student deluge will soon begin, and they are strongly bound to Berkeley campus. Argh.

Time to get cracking on those temp job applications. No really, time to get cracking. No really, motherfucker, time to get cracking on those applications.

Where oh where did my motivation go?

Met cool guys. Feeling like I just naturally slid in socially out here, and I have seen only one of the guys I know from irc in person, he’s the one leaving for portland soon. He’s a cool guy, and we could have done fun stuff together, like bike all over the place, and climb, and visit the beach and photograph the tide, or whatever. But rent is steep, and it’s all too easy to be food in the bay area.

Speaking of food, I have sampled many good restaurants out here, at least 3 of which were specifically vegan. Bay area r0x0rs my world. And the trains. Bart, how I love thee, let me count the ways. Also, this place is crawling with cmu alums.

Okay, yeah. That’s it for now. Whee.

Job hunt, must remember job hunt. [Applied for like 3 or 4 things already, including natural grocery store cashier w/benefits, and tech god in martinez for the county govt.]

Stream of consciousness is fun. But this time, later, I mean it, really.

Good night.

Okay, so I was trying to surprise someone *cough* by my unexpected presence in the bay area after my flight difficulties, but he wasn’t there on friday, so I suprised instead. Of course, the dsl I’ve been relying on for my bay area job hunt fell down went boom. Behind the locked door of the out-of-town roommate, to whose room no one has keys. Ugh. I’m so ready to pull the fuse for the entire house (note, not circuit breakers, not separate fuses for each part of the house… Anyway…)

But we’ve found a few places in berkeley, all quite liveable. My only concern is signing on to a lease without a job. Naturally this is translating into a reluctance to agree to any place rather than an increased emphasis in job hunt (not that that’d do alot of good, see earlier comment re: dsl) And now that I do have net access again, I find that none of you have politely put your lives on pause while I’ve been ‘away’. The fact is that after 2 or three hours I still haven’t caught up. I give. You win. If it’s important, point it out to me, and I’ll see about making the effort =)

Many job opportunities identified, but more chatting. Hmmm, priorities. Bleh. Time to go ‘home’.

Okay, my flight for tomorrow evening has been canceled, on account of vanguard crumpling into nonexistence and filing chapter 11. The cheapest/best option currently available to me appears to be grabbing the train on monday from pittsburgh to emeryville ($159.30). I would get in on wednesday afternoon. I am pissed yet resigned. The ‘reduced rates on fares’ that I get by going through their suggested alternates require $100 trips to philly or chicago, and end up costing about twice as much as I originally paid, and more than twice as much as I would pay for rail travel.

For those of you with appropriate legal knowledge, is there anyway I can get my payment back, or does chapter 11 screw me out of that as well? Can I cancel ye ol credit card payment?

Hitchhiking is starting to look appealing. =)

Which inspired a neat, yet totally impractical idea. EHitchHiking. It’d work something like this: Hitch a ride from pittsburgh friend (perhaps my little sister) to columbus, where we would go dancing at Axis, and , say, could pick me up and take me further west. We’d stop off in indianapolis where some other cute, thoughtful gay guy who wants to meet me, and trap me in his car for 3 hours drives me to springfield, and from there to kansas city to meet , etc. =) It’s cool, because I’d get to meet these people in person and have time to get to know them. It’s radically impractical because of the geographical distribution of my friends, the tremendous time sacrifice it’d require from people I’ve never met, the trust I’d have to have in a chain of such people, the environmental impact of the double driving across the country, And the like. Oh well, it was an interesting toy idea.

Reasons I’m pissed:
Delaying the housing hunt, so that I may possibly be doing it on my own.
Making it so that I can’t see charlie off to portland.
Generally fucking with my life.
Delaying the in-person job hunt plan.

Now I have to go pack more. suck.

My furniture is gone. My fiction is packed. My kitchen is not. My clothing is mostly dirty. Much progress to make before liftoff, but I am not stressing about it too much. I have tomorrow and much of wednesday. I also have plans aplenty for my first week in san fran. =)

So, I’m minding my own business chatting late at night, when this guy who I find pretty physically attractive, but entirely too emotionally hung up to seriously consider sleeping with [again], sends me an im, and starts hinting at how horny he is. I bluntly ask him whether he’s trolling for sexual company. He tells me about this guy he’s been chatting with, and recently met (out of state but moving here soon), and how they’re both monogamous sorts. Then he asks me whether it’s cheating for him to sleep with someone else before he makes it here. I tell him that that is between him and his guy. This question/nonanswer exchange is repeated a few times, with variation. Then he says he’s going away for a few minutes. (to beat off, I’m guessing). Then he comes back, and says that his moral compass is clear, and thanks, but he’s sorry, he doesn’t think it’d be right for him to, etc, etc. Mostly, as soon as I heard about the guy moving here, I was amused. Particularly about him trying to shift responsibility for his moral code onto me.

So I got two free movie passes in christmas, as a ‘thanks for working here’. I’ve never used them.

I am now faced with two choices on how to use them:

Minority Report v Reign of Fire
and
Jane (my little sister) v Ken (this cute guy I met online)

I’m leaning towards Jane, and asking for her input.

Yesterday was my last day at work. I didn’t get half of what I wanted to do done. I did go out to a bar with my coworkers afterwards. Had pizza & beer (yes, yes, not vegan, but we all know I’m more veganish than vegan.)

<insert sleep here>

So, I’m more optimistic about this jobless time than I was about the last jobless time. I got up and did exercise type stuff this morning, which I’ve been meaning to do in forever, and haven’t really gotten around to. I’m prepared to label this a good thing, and an auspicious sign of my proactivity (we’ll ignore the fact that I dragged my ass out of bed around 2pm 😉

Tomorrow is my last day in the office. And wednesday is my last day in pittsburgh. I’m emotionally excited, incoherent, and stuff. =)

Also, I realized recently that the cool people who want to meet me in Kansas City are going to have a hard time getting past airport security. It’s only an hour and a half layover. Probably have to board half an hour before take off, so make that an hour. In which time I would have to get off the plane, and through security, both ways, as well as to & from the respective gates. This is sounding a little dicey to me.

Stupid, irrelevant, useless restrictions of additional airport security. Bleh. The terrorists had tickets.

So, I’ve been to a nude beach or two in my time. Took a dip or two in the Pennsic classic swimming hole, and skinnydipped under other circumstances. At it’s best, there’s something profound and mystical about public nudity. A shedding of concealment, an unshrinking exposition of the self, no pun intended. More conventionally, it’s about grabbing attention, or fitting in at a spot where you can scope freely. At its worst, it’s just for shock value.

But, the truth of it is, I get bored and restless at these casually nude locations. Despite not really believing that I have a great body, I’m pretty comfortable with being seen sans clothing. But being naked has no great entertainment value for me. Nor does seeing a bunch of naked people. And it seems like not alot other than that happens at these venues. Fun to splash around in the water, though.

I just mailed my federal taxes in. Hopefully I’ll be getting a multi-hundred dollar rebate soon.

Maybe I should start thinking about that research paper again =)