So, where have I been for the past couple weeks?
Well, sick for one, and then Connecticut for the other. I'll leave out the sick part, since it's not exactly interesting. I wasn't even quite sick enough to excape work; it was just normal time, only with a headache and nausea.
Connecticut was sort of my present to myself for my birthday (thanks to Kirby for noticing that, by the way). Not the most exciting place to go on a self-indulgent trip, but I wanted to visit D. It's been more than a year since I've seen her, after all.
She and her boyfriend (technically it's just him, but she more or less lives with him) have a fairly spacious studio apartment in a residential tower in central Hartford. The view is great: they're on the seventh floor looking out towards a number of the old churches, and the sound of the fountain at the building's entrance wafts up.
As always, we didn't have anything serious planned. We mostly just hung around the place, killing time and enjoying each other's company. We did have a few outings, though. We went out shopping, since I've been promising her for a while that she could give me a wardrobe makeover. For some reason* women I know tend to be very attached to this activity. WE got some good stuff, though: a couple of button-down shirts and some jeans in a better cut. Granted, I still live in the suburbs, isolated from any women my age, but if there were any, I would be so totally set. They'd totally hypothetically want me.
*(note: this reason is almost certainly that I've been wearing exclusively t-shirts and jeans for longer than most people have known me)
We also took a side trip into New York, largely just for the adventure of overcoming our own haplessness in getting there, which we did, after getting lost on the roads and missing the train we'd hoped to get. We didn't get to stop by R's family's restaurant, though we passed within 20 miles of it. Too bad, really; I kind of wanted to see R's sister, whom I like in her own right.
Of course, I also wanted to talk to her a bit to see how R's doing with her anti-depressants and everything. Off the subject of the trip, thinking about R is a little depressing lately, given that she stopped calling around the same time she started her medication. It feels disturbingly like loving (or even liking) me was a symptom that needed to be drugged out of her. I'm still not sure how I feel about psychoactive drugs as a concept. On the one hand, I want her to be happy, but on the other hand, I want her to be her. Which is problematic, of course, since by "her" I mean "the 'her' that I knew." During what little contact I've managed to solicit since her prescription began, she seemed subdued, distracted, lacking the enthusiasm and excitement that made her so appealling.
Ethics of desire, I believe she called this: the notion that something beautiful owes it to the world to go on being that beautiful thing. It's simultaneously terribly romantic (as in the opposite of cynical, not as in romance) and horribly chauvanistic. A lot of romantic notions are.
What do you do when what you loved about someone turns out to be contingent upon her going through periods of misery? (Well, obviously I don't do anything; this is all up to her. I guess I mean more... what am I supposed to think?)
At any rate, aside from the nostalgia associated with being so close to R's place, my New England trip was good times. Monday and Tuesday (which I took off of work) were a bit subdued since over the weekend, one of D's therapy clients committed suicide, but such is life for a psychologist.
Tuesday the 15th, my actual birthday, I got back in the evening, and L made dinner for me, complete with cake and singing, and 24 candles. Apparently this is the last year I get the full count of candles, since they come in boxes of 24, and L is "sure the fuck not buying multiple boxes of candles to just burn all at once." I love my friends, few and far between (since college) may they be.
Life since then has been back to normal. I started Christmas shopping this past weekend. Looks like another year of making people request specific things: every time I go to the mall, all I can think is disbelief that anyone would ever want this stuff. Especially those pictures of waterfalls with the moving light and the poorly-synth'ed water sounds.
Seriously, who the fuck buys those?
Well, sick for one, and then Connecticut for the other. I'll leave out the sick part, since it's not exactly interesting. I wasn't even quite sick enough to excape work; it was just normal time, only with a headache and nausea.
Connecticut was sort of my present to myself for my birthday (thanks to Kirby for noticing that, by the way). Not the most exciting place to go on a self-indulgent trip, but I wanted to visit D. It's been more than a year since I've seen her, after all.
She and her boyfriend (technically it's just him, but she more or less lives with him) have a fairly spacious studio apartment in a residential tower in central Hartford. The view is great: they're on the seventh floor looking out towards a number of the old churches, and the sound of the fountain at the building's entrance wafts up.
As always, we didn't have anything serious planned. We mostly just hung around the place, killing time and enjoying each other's company. We did have a few outings, though. We went out shopping, since I've been promising her for a while that she could give me a wardrobe makeover. For some reason* women I know tend to be very attached to this activity. WE got some good stuff, though: a couple of button-down shirts and some jeans in a better cut. Granted, I still live in the suburbs, isolated from any women my age, but if there were any, I would be so totally set. They'd totally hypothetically want me.
*(note: this reason is almost certainly that I've been wearing exclusively t-shirts and jeans for longer than most people have known me)
We also took a side trip into New York, largely just for the adventure of overcoming our own haplessness in getting there, which we did, after getting lost on the roads and missing the train we'd hoped to get. We didn't get to stop by R's family's restaurant, though we passed within 20 miles of it. Too bad, really; I kind of wanted to see R's sister, whom I like in her own right.
Of course, I also wanted to talk to her a bit to see how R's doing with her anti-depressants and everything. Off the subject of the trip, thinking about R is a little depressing lately, given that she stopped calling around the same time she started her medication. It feels disturbingly like loving (or even liking) me was a symptom that needed to be drugged out of her. I'm still not sure how I feel about psychoactive drugs as a concept. On the one hand, I want her to be happy, but on the other hand, I want her to be her. Which is problematic, of course, since by "her" I mean "the 'her' that I knew." During what little contact I've managed to solicit since her prescription began, she seemed subdued, distracted, lacking the enthusiasm and excitement that made her so appealling.
Ethics of desire, I believe she called this: the notion that something beautiful owes it to the world to go on being that beautiful thing. It's simultaneously terribly romantic (as in the opposite of cynical, not as in romance) and horribly chauvanistic. A lot of romantic notions are.
What do you do when what you loved about someone turns out to be contingent upon her going through periods of misery? (Well, obviously I don't do anything; this is all up to her. I guess I mean more... what am I supposed to think?)
At any rate, aside from the nostalgia associated with being so close to R's place, my New England trip was good times. Monday and Tuesday (which I took off of work) were a bit subdued since over the weekend, one of D's therapy clients committed suicide, but such is life for a psychologist.
Tuesday the 15th, my actual birthday, I got back in the evening, and L made dinner for me, complete with cake and singing, and 24 candles. Apparently this is the last year I get the full count of candles, since they come in boxes of 24, and L is "sure the fuck not buying multiple boxes of candles to just burn all at once." I love my friends, few and far between (since college) may they be.
Life since then has been back to normal. I started Christmas shopping this past weekend. Looks like another year of making people request specific things: every time I go to the mall, all I can think is disbelief that anyone would ever want this stuff. Especially those pictures of waterfalls with the moving light and the poorly-synth'ed water sounds.
Seriously, who the fuck buys those?
kirby:
lol well lets see.... air vents include air of all kinds... like heat. it was 23 degrees there at night. and defroster.. oh i dont know, when you get in the car and your wet from the snow? yeah windows fog up pretty quick style 