Surreptitious Opinionation

So, Joe from Minneapolis is in town tonight. He called me this morning as I was meeting with my analyst in charge (AIC), assistant director, and director. We made plans for dinner. I thought would be a fun addition to the evening, so I invited him. Then I figured should at least be invited since it was a none-too-distant walk from his hood. We eventually all assembled at ye ol’ veggie chinese joint. (alice and friends). It was pretty good. I had fun. Then Joel went home, then Robbie went home. Joe and I had dessert at Chicago Diner. Hot [despite ponytail] waiter kept smiling. Chatted us up on our way out the door. Note, not our waiter. This may be more than wishful thinking. I may have left him my number with the bill some time in april or whenever I was last out here before the internship. Hard to say. *shrug*

Yay for people. Yay for out of town visitors.

I’m finding latter days waaayyy too compelling. I’ve been rewatching snippets of it for over a week now, and I’m still not sick of it.

So, this evening, I took my brand-spanking-new skates, and skated to the lakeshore, then along the park trails, north a bit, south a lot, catch sight of a hot guy, do a mutual double take (him on bike, me on skates), keep skating for 10s in the same direction, then do a 180 and sprint-skate after him for about 4 miles, getting somewhat closer, but never catching him. Tasting the ketosis (well, I was dehydrated and my mouth tasted vile). Skate to the gayborhood, get some berry pancakes. Train back, get off a stop early to skate home. Accidentally run across the tail end of a small (very small) folk music concert in the park sit for three songs, sing along, and clap. Get home. Shower. Update livejournal. Probably sleep soon.

Exercise is good.

beware the scroll

I attempted to indulge in a little retail therapy for my malaise. Largely unsuccessful, but at least I now have rollerblades that are less than 12 years old and a new 3.5 edition PHB.

I now have a better sense of how the apple stores work. I’m debating the merits of getting a procare package, but ~$100 seems a bit pricy to facilitate and speed up appointments that I hope to be having quite infrequently. It’d save me up to 4 days of laptoplessness, and make future laptop care appointments much easier.

Apple could do nothing for my iPod because it’s an HP iPod. Tech support had a sufficiently thick Indian accent that I suspect it may be located in India proper. I asked at both places if it could be exchanged for an Apple iPod, but of course the answer is ‘no’. HP tech support lady asked me if I was satisfied with the service I’d received, to which I replied grimly “as satisfied as I’m going to get”, she thanked me for my feedback, and then informed me that my model of iPod is out of stock, so it could take 10 extra days. Nice timing. Anyone else thinking of getting an iPod, make sure you get an apple iPod, with no other brand names tacked on in front of that. If not for the ‘hp’ on it, I could have walked out with an iPod I would have been happier with (easier to update its software from my laptop) from the apple store. I stab them so much.

I’m planning on getting Latter Days on DVD. I hear that they have the black chick’s songs in the extras. I’m down with that. Never would have purchased it if not for illegal downloading. MPAA can blow me. I also want to see Bear Cub and Angels in America, possibly purchase, since I can’t find bearcub for rent anywhere. ETA: also, I wanna see Mysterious Skin.

I may start up an amazon.com wishlist… Okay I did.

I’m also thinking of getting more toad the wet sprocket, and nickel creek. Anyone have any podcasts you’d like to recommend?

my blogging style is thoughtful and considerate, the quiz says so

I’m feeling disconnected. Not just out of proper context, as I had been when I went to visit in Toronto, circa 3 or 4 years ago, but nearly lacking completely in context. This is both new and … not.

The last time I haven’t been so context free since I moved to chicago the first time, and to college. In college, there was nobody I knew. I got excited when I spotted the scary guy who’d ‘hosted’ me over a sleeping bag weekend, and the homo dancer dude whose floor I slept on that same trip (Lysander?). Neither really remembered me. I built a social life from the ground up, like most college students do. It’s expected, most people have the same experience, and so it’s comparatively easy.

In chicago, the only people I knew in the area were , , and . I signed up with front runners (gay running club, with which I’d been affiliated in pittsburgh; it has chapters all over the place) and the gay swim team. Through , who I met from frontrunners, I became acquainted with (and signed up with) the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. I met Stephen Starkey at Motorola, and Glenn-Paul through gay.com (hey, yet another reason to swear off). Most of the rest of my social life was either conducted through these groups, with these individuals, or with people I met quite randomly.

This didn’t make for the deepest of roots in chicago. So now I’m feeling disconnected or shallowly connected. I’m going to examine this in a series of 3 posts over the next couple days: the first devoted to family; the second devoted to friends; and the third devoted to sex and romantic relationships. Each of them promises to be fairly lengthy. For now, I’m off to the apple store to bitch about my iPod and my unusable cd-rw/dvd player drive, as well as to get some blades.