Lucy's Spleen

Eaux I am so bored with writing about myself. I can't believe how complainingly I am making it through this month. I was going to write that day nineteen is like the Wednesday of November, but then I realized that I have felt that way through all of the -teen days, making the point proportional, but uninteresting. Stan and I are both struggling with our writing tonight; he's been working on a paper for the past couple of days and can't get enough distance from it to discern what it needs at this point, kind of like how I can't see past the fact that I'm blogging now more for the sake of achieving this wacky ambition than for the pleasure of writing.

Of course I could fall to the next obvious option which would be writing an entry for x365, but my bad mood has persisted through today meaning I lack the compassion required in writing about other people. Thus I'm left with writing boringly about my boring thoughts on how boring my writing is. Have you stopped reading yet? (Now Stan is listening to his laptop read his paper aloud to him in its robot voice. Speaking of boring...) It's hard to want to reveal your thoughts when you're feeling mentally stunted. (Now the robot voice is swearing and singing about Santa "Klowss," it's no longer boring, but speaking of mentally stunted...)

You know what I need? I need to get outside for a while, commune with nature and whatnot. That must be why I've got the dog lust going on so bad, it's because I'm lacking the Holy and Unaffected in my life. I'm spending too much time cooped up under the fluorescents with a bunch of civilized types concerned about what to buy next and what other people are thinking about them. I've been in this frame of mind before, but I note that I didn't get there last year and I credit the farm with all its funny animals and the kids I encountered in my work at the Youth Brigade. What's missing from my life is rawness and unselfconsciousness and innocence. These things aren't easy to come by in the big city.

I will show some photos of the kinds of things I mean:

I am a participant in NaBloPoMo.

 

Brr. I tried to go out for a run today, but was thwarted by wind. It seemed nice enough out from the vantage of our little back deck as I went up and down the stairs to the basement with our laundry earlier. It seemed like a brisk jog along the bike path would be the optimal activity for a day like today. But you can never tell when those winds are going to come up, or where, and I found I was grievously unprepared for the chill , even  when I really got moving. This means I definitely need to get signed up with a gym. The way I look at it, I can either spend money to go to the gym in the clothes I already have to work out in, or I can buy new technical clothing and shoes to be properly equipped for rocking the outdoor exercise. Either way I'm out a fortune, and it's hard to tell how to spend it most wisely.

I aspire to be an outdoor-going type of guy. I suppose I prefer it- getting out on my own for a rare solitary activity in the land of always being jammed in with folks like sardines. Did you know Somerville is the most densely populated city in Massachusetts? I sure emmer-effing did. I am made quite aware of the fact each morning when I cram myself onto the T. Anyway I wish to exercise out of doors, I miss my long evening walks on the farm, but the dark gets me. I won't be taking early morning jogs (I'm too realistic to even begin to entertain such fantasy), but going out in the dark after work- and it starts to get dark here a little after 4:00 in the afternoon (the insult!)- holds zero appeal to me, so I'd only be making use of those technical clothing on weekends. Of course I know I can invest in both places, eventually. For now though that kind of loot means a lot to me. It's expensive to live in the city and we came with so little. A few bucks here and there can mean the difference between having a nice dinner out or having, say- a bed, so I'm trying to be aware of how I spend for these things. Of course, we're very comfortable with our mattress on the floor (it's so nice and firm) so given the opportunity I choose the dinner every time. Of course that's why I'm thinking about exercise in the first place. I need to start moving my ass if I'm going to keep it from spreading any wider.

...Now I'm looking up geographic differences between Salt Lake City and Boston: 4,200 feet elevation versus, essentially, sea level, I know that one. Could it be that there's only a two degree difference in latitude, really (SLC 40+, BOS 42+)? It seems as though it should be so much more than that, given the difference I notice in the angles and intensity of the sunlight here (more intense light, more exaggerated angles is my wholly unscientific observation). Wow, Anchorage is at sixty-one degrees. Holy smokes! If that doesn't remind a guy that she has nothing to complain about with regard to temperature I don't know what will.

Hi Alaska/Arexa!
Greetings from warm, southerly Massachusetts. Hope you're enjoying your permafrost up there. Give my regards to Santa!
Love,
Someone Who's Probably Warmer than You

I'm still doing this.

My mom is in town

Let us make do with these shots from last weekend when we were touristy around the Harvard campus and the harbor near my office:

More words tomorrow.

Go moms!

I am a participant in NaBloPoMo.

Holy Sit

The couch is comfy. It lends form and structure to our formerly incoherent room. It looks as new as it is, which makes all our other (scavenged) stuff look like crap. It has got me thinking of many, many more things that suddenly seem essential to purchase, starting with curtains and a rug and throw pillows to start to tie things together a little. It is unmistakably green.

Last night we came from work and assembled it, cinched on its (so green) slipcovers, threw down the cushions and VERILY WE DID RECLINE UPON THE COUCH and snuggled in thereupon and did watch of our latest Netflix rental. And lo- it was revealed unto us that the couch was accommodating to various positions of repose in alternating configurations, yea that it was exceeding comfortable, and we saw that it was good. Amen.

P.S. My mom is coming tomorrow! Yay mom!

P.P.S. Go blogs.

I am a participant in NaBloPoMo.

I am at work and ought to be concentrating, but all I can think about is our couch which is to be delivered within the next four hours and which Stan is sweetly awaiting at home. 

UPDATE: It's there! I can't wait to go home and put it together. Also I am a shopping second-guesser extraordinaire so I am nervous about the color. I wanted this shade:

but that cover was not available for the sofa we wanted, so we settled on this one:

Which means we will now have the same sofa in the same hue as approximately nine hundred and seventy three million other young urban people with small apartments, but oh well. After two months of taking turns in our single armchair I'm just excited to have a place where the two of us can read or watch a movie while both seated, comfortably, at the same time.

I am a participant in NaBloPoMo.

I just finished reading over a batch of emails from my girlfriends at home all about their fun Halloweeny weekends and now I'm all, "Hey, it's Halloween?" I don't think they have that holiday here. Anyway if they do I know we weren't invited to celebrate. That could be because no one knows us to invite us but I think the real story is that the whole state of Massachusetts forgot to party in advance of a mid-week All Hallows Eve due to a temporary mania known as Red Sox Fever. This is a condition which causes in its victims a major disruption in sleep habits and unusual levels of alcohol consumption on weeknights. Other symptoms are an excessive wearing of red and/or logo-emblazoned clothing and an upset of speech patterns manifesting as a verbal tic, in which the afflicted individual will be heard to uncontrollably mutter or shout, "Go Sox!" even addressing perfect strangers with this declaration or speaking out inappropriately during professional meetings and the like. I'll tell you the fever hit this city hard this season; people around here have been suffering for weeks, growing increasingly agitated over the past few days such that it seemed the fever was peaking. Finally, around midnight last night, we were awakened by the sound of the whole city erupting in a great loud cry of delirium and now it seems the epidemic has passed.

Thank goodness! I was beginning to fear even I may have been catching the fever.

It is hot here this week. Very hot. It is so hot that the the little thermometer on the thermostat in our living room has maxed out; it just can't go any higher. It is so hot that it's too hot to do anything other than sit around in your underwear reading in front of the tiny, ineffectual air conditioner in your bedroom, unless the other thing is to sit around in your underwear at the computer and ogle your Internet buddies.

There were things I was supposed to do today. I was to return the trial Interview Outfits that didn't pass muster and get back the money I shouldn't be spending on such things. It's amazing how expensive it can be to try to find a job. Especially out here in the land of WWBs (Women With Blazers). My mom says I should have a blazer for the follow-up interviews I have scheduled this week for a very blazerly firm downtown. "You can carry it on your arm, " she says. I say it's ninety-three degrees; no one else will be wearing a blazer, either. I wonder if that's even how you spell blazer? Maybe it's actually bleah-ser; seems like that would be more fitting. I've rather enjoyed my month of unemployment. It's refreshing to not be devoting forty-five hours a week to The (underpaying) Man. But looking for work is stressful in its own right, you're constantly selling yourself and constantly spending cash you're not replenishing. Plus it gets a little lonely at home. I'll be very happy if word comes back that I should show up someplace at 8:30 on October 1 with my blazer on.

I think Harvard is doing right by Stan. It seems to be everything he expected, and more, and less, and other things. He hasn't seemed to need to work/study nearly as much as I was anticipating, but he's a smarty and what the hell do I know about graduate school? He is definitely the Dad of the first-years. We got together with a few of them for beers last weekend and I was mesmerized by their plump, radiant baby faces and wondered how it could be that these children know anything about anything. Turns out on talking to them that they know plenty, because they went to fancy prep schools and prestigious colleges. So.

It appears that a feature of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is constant events and gatherings. Stan has meetings of various sorts lined up almost every day and there are parties we're supposed to RSVP for and election events and all types of this kind of business going on. It reminds me of every film you've ever seen or every book you've ever read about goings-on at University. I'm rereading This Side of Paradise now just to, you know, keep in the spirit of things.

So far my Top 5 things are:

• Our apartment, which is spartan but lovely and coming along. Slowly.
• "Dave's" around the corner which is a cafe really but which we use as a market for the staples: wine, beer and bread.
• The weekly farmer's market in our square where we buy mountains of gorgeous produce (heirloom tomatoes, especially).
• Our neighborhood, which has the perfect mix of old-school hippy community charm and yuppie boutiqueyness for the likes of the two of us, and is also convenient to get to and from without being quite so intensely/grungily urban as a lot of neighborhoods.
• The autumn light and weather have been phenomenal. Apart from today, which is too damned hot, as I have mentioned.

How It Came To Be That We Landed (A Too-Long Post)

It's a tender grey, overcast day in Somerville, Massachusetts. I'm sitting on the floor in the living room of our unfurnished apartment looking out through the bay window over the roof- and treetops of our neighborhood, watching the branches sway in a light breeze. The past two days have been bright and busy and swelteringly hot so the cool air and Sunday pace are a welcome respite from somewhat unforgiving conditions. I can hear little kids playing in the park downstairs but otherwise it is a quiet day on our little avenue and I am delighted to be here.

The cross-country drive was long and un-scenic, but apart from two atrocious motels out of four ("Dead Whore Motels", Stan's mom said) and the unhealthy feeling of sitting still all day eating road food, I found the drive relatively pleasant. Stan drove most of the way and we listened to books on tape: The Kite Runner and, of all things, Faulkner. It's been ten years since I last read The Sound and the Fury and I had forgotten it completely so when we picked it up of the shelf at the bookstore I was thinking- Hey, this is a classic! A good old dose of Americana to enjoy as we drive across a long swath of America, not realizing what we would be in for. It actually turned out to be the perfect road novel because it kept us wide awake for miles and miles if only because we had to listen *so hard* to figure out what the hell was going on. Also it prompted lots of good pit-stop plot discussion and jokes about nerding out on hard-core Literature as we go Harvard-ho (ha-ha!). Also regarding the road trip in general: this country over-subsidizes the production of corn. I thought so before, but now I REALLY have reason to believe it but that's another post altogether...

We drove I-80 to I-90, stopping to sleep in Cheyenne, Des Moines, Perrysburg (Toledo), OH and Liverpool, NY. There was much discussion of detouring to visit friends along the way (Hi Tom! Hi Chris and Sarah, sorry to have not seen you after all!), but with our inconvenient mini-van full of all our worldly possessions and with the poor time we made over Labor Day weekend, in the end we both felt like we needed to just keep on truckin', which actually was a very good assessment. At a steady pace and with a couple of brief stops along the highway for national landmark viewing (Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Disneyla- Niagara Falls) we rolled into Boston in perfect time to (fumble wildly at the last minute to try to figure out how to get from the highway to our neighborhood without a detailed city street map and to) pull up at our new place, find the keys in the mailbox, haul our little carload up three flights to our apartment, hop back in the van and (more wild fumbling) deliver it to the airport almost exactly 120 hours from the time we picked it up in Salt Lake (e.g. in time to not have to pay another red cent for the thing). That night we unpacked a fully-equipped kitchen, inflated the pads for our sleeping bags and tucked in on the floor. We did not bring one stick of furniture.

Our Big Agnes bags and pads were comfortable enough for sleeping but we were really hurting in the apartment for A) a place to sit and B) light sources, so we spent Friday Craig's List-ing and making trips to Goodwill and Family Dollar. (Thank God for ample WiFi freeloading opportunities because otherwise we'd be nowhere even by this point.) Friday night I dialed in the weekend yard sales and we spent Saturday hitting the pavement in meltingly hot weather in hopes that somebody's trash would be our treasure, as it were, and not too trashy at that. At the first sale we hit all we could do was laugh as we found ourselves buying EVEN MORE KITCHEN STUFF (sure it's great to be able to spin salad, but in the meantime what is a person to sit on?), which we then had to drop off at our apartment before we headed in to Harvard Square to hit a benefit sale.

Visiting the Harvard campus the weekend before orientation starts in the fall was an experience I'll never forget. It presented a quintessential snapshot of our cultural image of The University Experience. It was like every movie you've ever seen about college: scared-looking First Years arriving with their folks, driving up to the residence halls in minivans, checking and double-checking schedules and supply lists. There were parents  everywhere, busting with pride over Junior, yet inventing excuses to delay, excited and nervous about leaving their babies at the mercy of this big, dog-eat-dog Ivy League world. And man is it ever prestigious- I could very well have tripped over the duffel bag  of the future Secretary of State, and   Stan swears he saw Chuck Schumer dropping off a daughter or somebody. This "Hahvahd" is serious business (yet the support/admin staff have turned out to be as chimp-like as anyplace; hopefully that bodes well for a bright bulb like me getting a job around here...). The whole scene is significantly difference from my own experience, but I recognize what it means, how significant it is to be associated with such a venerable institution. I'm really excited for Stan to be a part of it.

We bought two sturdy, non-atrocious wooden chairs at the benefit sale and then fled the insanity of the Harvard Square scene, taking our chairs with us on the subway, where we had our picture taken to document this particular aspect of the pervading Back to School theme that dominates the area at this time of the year.  It was so hot that we decided to stop in for Lesbian Day (comforting to know they've got that here, too) at the hardware store in Porter Square and buy a little window air conditioner to make our lives more bearable in the sweltering weather, which lasted until exactly the end of that day, and then it turned chilly and overcast. Stan carried the AC home and I carried our two chairs; I am still sporting bruises on each of my hips from the wood knocking against them...

...Now it's many hours later and dark out and I'm sitting on my living room floor drinking espresso and eating three squares of bittersweet chocolate with hazelnuts. Stan is out in the middle of the room in the new-to-us ubiquitous Ikea armchair we bought today from a couple of grad students near Porter Square. Our square is called Davis and we walked back here from Porter in single file carrying our chair and its matching ottoman and getting The Look all the way. The Look is what people give you as you toil down the street carrying large, unwieldy objects. The Look is what they give before they refuse to budge- not even an inch- so you can pass them on the sidewalk to maintain the arduous pace that is barely getting you there with your quite large, very unwieldy object. This has been my first experience with The Look because The Look is distinctly NOTa western phenemenon, not this look anyway. Under similar circumstances a Westerner would simply look surprised, maybe a little confused, and probably offer to help. Not here. Here sometimes The Look is delivered with empathy and a sense of humor, more often with annoyance, but most typically with a total ambivalence. Always The Look tells you, "This is the price."

I was starting to hate The Look, but after three days of serious scouring for basic household needs- like, you know, something to sit on- I have already grown accustomed. This is the price- and now we have 2 sturdy kitchen chairs, 1 not-unattractive armchair, a small-but-useful folding table (temporary desk for me) and a nice new comfortable mattress to show for it. Oh- and a broom. I am starting to be a little stressed about not working since it seems like we're hemorrhaging money on home supplies. But that's what it takes to start a home and I can't tell you how happy I am to call Massachusetts my home right now. It's exactly where I want to be and I think whatever the price (and it ain't cheap in some ways [so long, friends]), it's worth it to have landed, here, in this particular place; I hope to make the most of it.

(P.S. Pics will be up on Flickr in the next day or two...)

Open Letter

Dear Minneapolis,

Dude- would you mind laying off on the snow for a second? I mean, we understand this is peak season for extreme Northmidwestern weather or whatever, but don't you realize there are visiting scholars in you trying to get the lay of your land? And though one particular visiting scholar may be an intrepid explorer (indeed even if such a scholar may be classified as something of an extreme sportsman and is known to be mostly impervious to weather of any type), if your snowfall is such that your major University is completely SHUT DOWN due to white-out conditions then how is a scholar expected to be able to explore campus, check out the facilities and do the whole requisite meet n' greet that was the reason the graduate program invited him to visit you in the first place? Can you answer me THAT, Minneapolis?

What I'm trying to say here is how are we supposed to know whether we want to live in you? Could you please just tidy it up for a day (make that Friday, March 2, if you would) so that the intrepid, scholarly half of this team can do what he came to you to get done?

That'd be terrif.

Thanks in advance,
Emily

P.S. He says he had a pretty rad time there today, by the way. Could be he felt a little isolated as apparently he was the only guy walking around out of doors in this weather, but so far as I can tell from him it sounds like you could be a pretty okay city...

Do lists count in this game? I hope so because it's nigh on 9:00 and I'm still at the office after moving and hauling and more moving and organizing and a couple of beers.* This is okay with me because a. the beer was on the company, and b. I'm the last guy here and the final reason I'm sticking around is to take a few moments to blog, but not too many moments, thus- a list:

Things About the New House

• It's only partly finished! There are some doors on some rooms, but not all doors on all rooms, and no knobs on any doors... yet.
• Everything is very immaculately clean and very shinily new and very inoffensively non-personal-smelling, except the closet wherein we jammed all our crap until we get a chance to organize it.
• It's neighbored by a park and a historic farm, but is also quite near the highway in a very populous suburb south of Salt Lake (we call it "South Bejeezus") which is crisscrossed with major thoroughfares and where (as far as I can tell) the only businesses are big-box stores and chain restaurants.
• It's kind of like living in the country, except not. Evidently the farm, just out our back door, is a great place for bird-watching. We heard at least three vees of geese** passing over the house this morning, which is charming. We can also hear a subtle hum of traffic all the time.
• It is deeply comfortable in every imaginable way. I woke this morning from an impressively sound rest, rolled over and said to Stan***, "Mmmm, it feels like sleeping at grandma's house." To which he replied, "Emma, it IS sleeping at grandma's house!"
• Um, so have I mentioned we've moved in with the parents? We have. Stan's mother and her husband are allowing us to take gross advantage of their hospitality and free rent in the hopes that it will advance the time line of our childbearing agenda and bolster the ranks among their steady-growing fleet of adorable grandchildren. That reason, and because we're just so damn delightful to have around all the time.
• This is an exceedingly choice situation, even if it is way out in South Bejeezus.
• For example, they've assigned us this tremendous bed we can't quite believe. Stan woke up this morning and said to me, "It's like sleeping on an aircraft carrier. They can land planes on here and you just keep on dreaming!"
• A new, more stunning view of the Wasatch Mountains- hwre!
• A commute- blech.
• A surprisingly noticeable difference in elevation/humidity- brrr.
• All those big-box stores- I have no idea how to deal with them.
• Living with moms is totally fun (I know, I've done it a lot)!

Things About the Old Apartment

• Still a huge fucking mess. Lots of work to do this weekend during the times when I am not at Werk work dealing with a huge fucking mess.

Go TEAM!
Fight A LOT!
Totally MOVE!
ALRIGHT!****

P.S. Day three. I went ahead and added the link and the seal, up on the left over there. One of these days maybe I'll even bother to register...

* I get to drink beer at we-erk! Neener, neener, nee-ner!

** Jeez.

*** For those of you who go way back with the Spleen, Stan = Asberger. I know, you're not caught up- I'm working on that.

**** (mostly) Actual cheerleading cheer I happen to know, but not from being a cheerleader because I never was one. I only changed one word in this cheer, which word used to be WIN! Actually I may have changed two because it may have originally been YAY! or HOORAY! or FUCK YEAH! instead of ALRIGHT!, I can't really remember. Except it wasn't FUCK YEAH! because I definitely would have remembered that. Anyway, believe it.