Finally transferred notes from my XO to this laptop for formatting & posting. Old blog posts, something that happens every time I relocate to a new place (I don't know if traveling puts my immune system down, or I happen to travel during allergen season every time, or... whatever it is, whenever I move, I sniffle for about a week and then I'm fine thereafter).

Ah, yes. Chris and I have an apartment. It's in East Boston, near the Maverick stop; gorgeous kitchen, wood floors (except for the kitchen and my bedroom), an actual bathtub, access to a roof deck... I'm in love with the neighborhood. Then again, I fall in love easily, and the fact that I'm finally settling into a place that's in some way "mine" - that's something I've been looking forward to for many years. In fact, once Tank and Nikki (currently occupying spare couches and mattresses and helping me unpack until Chris returns from Montreal) go back to Olin, I won't need to read in the bathroom. I'll have a living room with a couch and a lamp. Next to my bookcases. I'm going to have bookcases.

There's a park nearby with sailing lessons, and a bike trail, and a lot of good restaurants (including Santarpio's Pizza down the street, which my brother Jason has wanted to go to for years - he'll be pleased when he visits in September) and a gorgeous view of the skyline. The train runs right downtown by the library and the Haymarket and the people in the neighborhood - oh man! I'm going to like it here. I'll need to make sure I occasionally make it out of the office in order to enjoy this place a little.

Enough happy rambling about my apartment (and how Chris and I have a projector and a blank wall, and how he's growing herbs, and how I'm getting a digital piano, and... er. yes.) I was up in NH this morning - crashed on VanWyk's extra mattress last night after a quick dinner with Chandra in Nashua - and Adam taught me how to ride a motorcycle. I could only go (very slowly) up and down the length of a parking lot in a straight line. (Also, helmets and riding jackets are heavy.) I liked it, though; it combines what I like about cars (you can go fast on them without dripping sweat and wheezing) and what I like about bikes (everything else). He then took me on a ride (on his motorycle) through Manchester. We stopped to watch a Shriners parade, which involved little old men with funny red hats driving go-karts up and down a truck. (We were confused as well. They were also, in some cases, in clown makeup.)

Resolved: that I will not let people walk over me. As much. (This is not a high bar to pass. I occasionally make myself a human doormat.) The only problem is I don't know how to do this; I'm never sure how much I should concede and how much I should push for, and I always err on the side of yielding. How do you get calibration for this?

Also resolved: I will not put my computer desk in my room. Keyboard, perhaps. Drafting table (or less ambitiously, desk) - sure. But I should read, and study, and sleep, and do these things away from a keyboard and a screen. Cook, too.

I find myself getting increasingly ready not to miss things. Part of the trick of being happy is wanting what you're going to get and learning to not want the things that are going to go away, and I can do that well; I can be happy waiting for a long, long (indefinitely long, in fact) time. Waiting and at the same time being restless and agitating for it to come and happen now. There's now and then there's not-now and I'm far happier living in the former; it's more interesting and it's happening and it's real and it's all that I can shape at the moment.

So I will soon no longer have my "year off" wanderer status, and I will soon not have my compatriots from Olin to live and work with (indeed, Andrew has gone home already, and while I'm living with Chris he'll have his job and his own hobbies and friends and a relationship), and I will soon have an office to be at (though it's a crazy office and I love it) and I'll settle into another round of habits and traditions and I hope those traditions will continue to include the remaking and rebuilding of everything in my life as I learn how to change them for (what I think is) the better.

And that's all going to happen, and that's okay. It's going to happen, so I might as well be happy about it, and so I am. (I like being able to do that. It's like having a happy-spigot. Like I have an internal energy source that I can tap nearly any time I need it.)

Now if I could just wrestle my brain's flywheel into submission for the night - it's clattering all over the place, I'm trying to grab it and grind it down so I can sleep...