giddyiguana

Did y'all miss me?

I guess I'm horribly overdue for an update, aren't I? But, hell, even now I don't REALLY have the time to say everything I need to say. Surprisingly enough, I do (kind of) have a life, albeit one that has been sucking big floppy donkey dick more often than not lately. Nevertheless, I am still alive and working on improving it (and by "it" I, of course, mean...umm, what do I mean? I'll have to get back to you on that one.)

So, rather than a real "where the hell have you been the last three months?" update, here's a few brief highlights:



The People's Republic of China kicked so much ass I don't even know where to begin. Basically I learned that everything I ever thought I knew about that country was wrong. The whole society was far more open and progressive than I ever expected--not only in the gleaming touristy metropolises (metropoli?) like Shanghai, Kunming, Xi'an, and Beijing that every Westerner visits, but even in the dozens of rural flyspecks I visited such as Jiinggangshan, Jaopingdu, Ruoergai, Baoxing, and the Tibetan areas of Szechuan and Gansu, where it was obvious I was the first Westerner the locals had seen since Otto Braun. Sure, I saw many very poor places, but even there construction was continuing at a breakneck pace and society as a whole was inexorably marching towards modernity. I guess that's one of the benefits of a centralized economy: all the rediculous sums of money that country is making by flooding the US markets with its manufactured goods are going right back to the people rather than into the pockets of a few corporate fat cats.

You know, it's funny. Here's a country I'd never visited before, where I knew virtually nothing about the culture, and don't speak a word of the native language, and yet, after spending thirty-six days there basically "living like a local," I'm actually homesick for it. I now have friends all over that country who are actively recruiting me to come back an teach English...and I'm seriously considering taking them up on that offer.

But now, I'm back in Spartanburg. BOO! I returned home to find an apartment with an inoperative air conditioner and an appalingly bad flea infestation--one so bad that I wound up in exile from my own apartment for a number of weeks, taking refuge with my friends Tim and Rochelle until I could get a professional exterminator to come in and take care of the problem. Oh, and by the way, the air conditioner still doesn't work...and my apartment complex is expecting me to sign a new lease with higher rent? I'm telling them tomorrow exactly where they can stick that new lease if they don't fix my damn air conditoner, give me a new fire extinguisher (I haven't had one since I tried to put out that dumpster fire way back in...when was that? March??), and do something about the half-dozen other complaints I have about both my apartment and the complex itself.

I'm also back at my old job at Bed Bath and Beyond. Since I'm now trained to work both sides of the store, I also got a barely-perceptible raise and a few more hours on the schedule as well. But I'm still having to work with that self-important asshole of an ops manager David, so we'll see how much longer I manage to put up with the bullshit.

And I got some shitty news about school as well: I found out last week that somehow the Department of Education managed to lose the FAFSA I submitted back in February...and the deadline to submit a new one had passed back on July 2. I went ahead and resubmitted it anyways, though, since it's clearly NOT MY FAULT that some pinhead bureaucrat had fucked me over...but it remains to be seen if the Gods of Financial Aid will smile upon my offering and allow me back into school this August. Otherwise, I'm boned, as I'll have to sit out a semester, which would push my graduation back even further, to December 2007. Damn it, haven't I suffered in Spartanburg long enough???

And finally, I recently learned that my biological dad's days of hard working and hard living are finally catching up with him. He just got out of a hospital in Denver, where he was treated for congestive heart failure and pneumonia. Now, he and I haven't exactly had the best of relationships in the past, but we had recently begun mending fences, and I had even agreed to move out west with him and work as his "electrician's apprentice" for a while after graduation. But now, since his health has become a major concern, the whole post-graduation plan has been cast into doubt.

But anyways. I hope everyone is doing well...I'll be around more often to offer my random insights and commentary in the future. As always, either be good or be good at it!