"Also, on the way over here, I saw someone who looked more like you than you do," said Amanda.
"Ah," I replied. I guess the timing is right, as this Evan, sub-par even by his own standard, is leaving for Atlanta at midnight. Serves me right.
Vanderbilt has topped the most topping of show-toppers with this one: a Quake performance with Kanye West headlining and featuring, of course, Guster.
I mean, duh. What a perfect combo. Fries with the burger, yeah?
Today is Thursday. I have two semi-major projects to get done by the end of the day tomorrow. I'm glad to have the deadline, self-imposed as it may be. I almost called out of work today because I woke up in such a funk. I was pretty sure that I was sick: my stomach felt like it was perpetually sinking, my head was cloudy, my arms leaden. I sat, folded between my knees, for twenty minutes before finally convincing myself to iron a shirt and head out the door.
It was and is allegedly 59 degrees outside (an assertion that I believe), a rather stark contrast to the severe drought and 100+ degree temperatures of the last month. I am rather proud of the fact that I managed to make it through the "hottest, driest, cruelest summer Tennessee has seen in half a century" without a vehicle and with a full-time job that is ten miles from home. Not bad for an emaciated New Yorker.
At any rate, I felt immediately better once I was out the door. The sky was brilliant and red, the sun throwing long, twisting clouds over my head. As I started up the hill out of the valley, I realized that I was just tired, not ill. I had gotten enough sleep, hour-wise, but must not have rested well.
This makes sense. I've not been resting well recently.
I was very disappointed last year to find out that my birthday was the last day of summer, as opposed to the first day of autumn. To avoid that shock this year, I Googled "Autumn Equinox 2007" and found a US Navy website documenting the various equinoxes (equinoxen?) and I was surprised to find that there are several years in which the autumn equinox is on the 23rd of September, not the 22nd. I took a quick tally. It was sad. I almost cried. And then I posted my findings to my blog. And all was well with the world.
I am spontaneous. I move frequently, change jobs constantly, switch up my daily routine so often it really should never have been called a routine to begin with. I don't thirst for change; I require it.
One of my quirks that allows this model to continue is that I don't tend to consider consequences. They occur to me, granted, but they never manifest themselves as actual threats to my welfare because, well, I don't let them. It's easier to ignore those kinds of things. And it makes it a helluva lot easier to pick up and move.
Sometime before October 1st, I will be moving to Atlanta. It's just like it always is; I am leaving someplace more than I am going anywhere and the repercussions therein, real as they may be, barely cross my mind. And yet this time there is a difference. On Tuesday, the first night that I was back from Atlanta after making my decision, I neurotically packed every book that I own into a black duffel bag, leaving my bookshelf bare and dusty. Clothes lounged dirtily on every surface of my room and my bed was unmade, and yet the books had to be packed. It was to be another three weeks until I left. The next night, I starting pulling out boxes and throwing away old clothes, folders, CD cases, keyboards, and everything else I'd horded away in my closets. I was not- and am not- excited about the move (though I don't dread it either, it simply seems inevitable), and yet something was bothering me. I realized that, though I was not contemplating the negative consequences of the move, I was feeling the repercussions. I could sense that I was leaving my friends, and it bothered me. I could sense that I was to be moving even further away from a girl of whom I am so fond, and it made my heart ache. I could feel the stability of my full-time job slipping from under me.
So it goes, I suppose. Maybe I'm growing wise to my own ways.
I've begun using a pad of mousse in the morning in a vain attempt to keep my hair's manic waves in check. An advertising fallacy: hair products, save the ones that convert your mop into a skull-shaped rock, do not control your hair. Mine has never once relinquished control. It is always messy; today it is simply boldly messy.
