ad astra!

So Metro had their grand opening last night.

Apparently I did some stupid shit, and I don’t even remember. That’s so not a good thing! But I guess I’m glad to not remember. Weeeeeeee

Life’s fun.

Car

Originally uploaded by Paul Pellerito.

So I went and saw my car today and picked up a courtesy car.

The bill is $320 for the towing and $5,500 for the body work. Had the airbag gone off it would have been totalled.

Thanks, Edmund, for bringing me up to Grand Rapids to get a loaner!

It feels good to have a car to drive again. Everything is covered under my comprehensive with no deductible. And as it’s my first claim in 4 years my rate shouldn’t go up. Lucky.

Joe’s mother, Bonnie Shannon, passed away this morning at 12:43am. I was with Joe for support and Monopoly when she died. As she took her last breath, it started to rain and the wind chimes she loved so much sounded.

Joe has been one of my best friends for several years now, and I’ll always remember his mother’s strength and the joy she brought to our lives even if it was a brief time that she touched mine.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
         from The Waste Land T.S. Eliott, 1922

What I would really like now is a few years where people stop dying.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
         from The Dead James Joyce, 1924

Today I had a day off. Since I don’t have my car, I didn’t really do much today other than clean up my apartment after this weekend. Oh yeah, this weekend. Friday I went and got Jon after work, then we went and hung out with Steve and Angie (Jon and Angie went to the same high school, so they talked most of the night.) Steve and I had met before a few years back, so we got along alright. Dane showed up. Jon and I slept at Dane’s. Then on Saturday we went to Crow’s Nest for breakfast, then back to my place where we watched Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi while Jon napped and I tried to. Then I remembered I was due in Grand Rapids to meet up with Mike York and Brad Peters… so we headed north. Then on the way back I hit the deer, so Sunday we just hung out until Dane came over that night. Dane brought me to work on Monday, then Joe brought me home. And that brings me to today, when I didn’t do much and didn’t see anyone. Monday night after work I mostly slept. I was around people all weekend, and then suddenly no one was there.

It was weird being alone again, I guess, and spending all day today alone hasn’t seemed to help. I think not having a car also makes me feel trapped.

It also got me to feeling the way I did a few years ago when I was majorly depressed, back when I still lived with my mom in the summer of 2000; I hated days off because I had nothing to do and no one to see and would be so horribly depressed I just sat and cried. Nothing quite like that today, but that sort of feeling was here— just in a diminished sort of way.

What I can’t figure out is I haven’t been able to sleep now, and I think at least in my dreams I wouldn’t be alone. (Even if my toothbrush gets broken)

I need to get up around 9:30 or something, to get a ride from Joe to work, then hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have a loaner…

So… last night Jon and I were coming back down from Grand Rapids and I hit a deer. We’re both fine.

I’ve been taking Xanax all day.

Insurance. Yay.

Partied last night. Jon danced.

1. a drill
2. drywall anchors
3. five hundred more dollars
4. fiscal responsibility
5. quick cash to take care of the previous two things

A lot of personal blogs I read, people talk about their dreams. I never do, since I’ve never really believed dreams to mean anything in particular. But lately I’ve been having some really strange relations with my dreaming life.

My dreams as of late have been about objects I own and use regularly, and usually in a dream one of them gets broken. I think it’s just anxiety of owning everything in my apartment, but if something big broke I wouldn’t have the money right now to replace it… which sucks. But the weird part is I’m having this dream that things break, then I wake up and expect that they’re broken.

Take, for example, the dream I had about my DVD player. I dreamed that it had broken and so I was looking at prices in the store the other day. I also dreamed that my toothbrush got broken whilst I was brushing my teeth, so yesterday I went and bought a new one, believing it to be broken. I went to get the toothpaste out last night and I found my intact toothbrush in the cabinet, and had to wonder to myself how it wasn’t broken. Had I had a spare around that I already switched it out with in my just-woken-up-haze and forgot about it? No. I just dreamed about my toothbrush breaking.

Weird. As. Hell.

Hey Jon, I had to change the sheets on the bed. Not because they were particularly dirty, but because they smelled like you. Which isn’t to say that you stink, it just made me lonely.

I’d like another nipper of brandy, please

Good, better, best, bested.
How do you like that for a declension?

Today was cleaning day in my apartment. I had so much work to do! I’m such a good procrastinator. Today I cleaned the bathroom from ceiling to floor; Joe, Casey, and Mario all know how notorious I am for having the dirtiest toilet around, so I cleaned that up first. I discovered today what was keeping me from doing the job—rubber gloves! I put those on and I feel like I can scrub clean the dirtiest mess. I also did the tub, floor, and sink. It’s all sparkly and clean now!

Then I moved on to the kitchen, did the dishes, mopped the floor, cleaned the counters and stovetop. Then I took out the trash and papers, vacuumed, cleaned off the kitchen table and the coffee table, and did laundry in the bedroom. My apartment is all neat and tidy! What a perfect use of a rainy day.

Jon’s out. He did 15 days for Contempt, I guess because he was too drunk to remember why he got put in jail in the first place and the judge didn’t believe him. Sounds like that’s all he got for it, though. He did learn the valuable life skill of how to make cigarettes from smuggled tobacco and toilet paper, as well as how to start a small fire with toilet paper, a pencil, some magazines, and laffy taffy. And the valuable life lesson of not getting yourself arrested.

Remind me never to go to jail.

Looking back at today, it was great!

Everyone’s bitching about the rain, and it did in fact rain pretty much all day yesterday and today—and it was cold. But I actually liked it. I’ve been kinda down (about being broke, Jon being in jail, people leaving, even having lots of laundry to do) lately so it seems to match my mood. But today i had a lot of self satisfaction. I did vendor charge backs for the stuff we are sending back to Our Wholesaler from noon until five (there were like 7 of them to punch in) and it totals about $30,000 worth of overstocked and unused merchandise. This is good because we have way too much inventory for our script volume. Whoever ordered this shit before I got here was out of control, and now I’ve got to send it all back and get this shit under control! I also returned about a thousand dollars of expired narcotic items to our reverse wholesaler. Then I did the weekend order and filled scripts in the pharmacy, so all in all I think I spent three hours back there and five hours doing other stuff. Anyhow, I feel very accomplished. And I enjoyed the rain today, and last night I got to sleep to the sound of the rain—which I always enjoy. And I went bowling from some people from work, as noted below.

So all in all it was good. The only crappy thing was that I had a dream about Jon this morning, saying he had a boyfriend and didn’t want to see me ever again. Which just pandered to my sense of rejection… and was really weird, since he’s in jail and off the list. But deep down inside, I miss the short time we spent together and I miss all the times he smiled.

Life goes on. I’m still writing my future.

BV and Jenni

Originally uploaded by Paul Pellerito.

Last week, I decided it’d be a fun diversion to get some people together to go bowling! So tonight we went to Airway Lanes. It wasn’t as many people as I hoped for, but it was still fun! The beer flowed like well, beer and the balls rolled like well, balls. Jenni won 2 games, her boyfriend Steve won one and I won one. BV came but just watched, as she said she wasn’t the bowling type. I suck at bowling(my high game was 150 or something) but it was still fun! $7 for 2 hours of bowling and shoes is more than I think I’ve ever paid but it’s cheaper than a movie and better than sitting home alone! Yay bowling! Hopefully we can do it again soon.

Via BoingBoing

I wonder what it will be like to live someplace completely new, and rather than being surrounded by old memories have a fresh canvas to paint new memories upon instead of trying to cover up the same old tattered one. What will it be like not to be surrounded by the familiar place of my past and instead have the only thing that reminds me of the past be the way the breeze feels at night or the way the light comes down from the clouds at twilight. I wonder what that will be like.

I’ll be hosting a party on Saturday, June 17th starting at 7pm. Bring your own beverage! It will be to commemorate both my birthday (the 20th) and my 10 years of being out. Gifts are not required, but if you want to bring me anything I’m requesting BOOZE!! YAY! BOOZE!!! So save the date!

1. Dino
2. Zac
3. Casey Stratton & Karen Simms (private secretary)
4. Brad
5. Josh
6. Tina & Candace & the other Caseyfans
7. Matt Petrovich and my old gang from GVSU
8. Dr. Milt Ford
9. Dr. David Ihrman
10. Angie & Matt
11. Travis Manning
12. Carson
13. Jon.

It seems like I’m always missing more people than I actually see on a regular basis. I wonder if it’s like this for everyone or if it’s just the fact that a lot of people I know are spread out over different states and situations. Of all the people on the list, I’ve been missing Zac the most lately, I think because it’s getting warm and summertime and that’s when we met and became fast friends. I’ve also found as I get deeper into adult life the harder it actually is to meet people and have the time to develop friendships with them. For example, I met Shawn for coffee once and had a pretty good conversation, but neither of our schedules have synced up well enough for us to get together again. I guess this is something we all have to cope with—we really do meet so few people in our lives. I really believe I’m one of the very few people who’ve been blessed with so many wonderful people to meet and make great memories with—but then I end up missing them dearly. I believe I know many more people than the average person, but distance and time keep us apart.

“My maid died fourteen years ago and i have found it absolutely impossible to replace her.” —Elaine Stritch in Autumn in New York