I had my car valet parked today. An entirely new and uncomfortable experience for me. Not so much because of certain movies I've seen, but more because I don't generally like the idea of letting some punk who I've only seen for like a minute jump in my car and drive it away. I'm steadily becoming more savvy about parking around here. Thanks to hard lessons learned, as well as the joys of driving twenty minutes to get somewhere and then spending half an hour driving around looking for a place to park, I've developed certain strategies related to parking. For instance, today. I wanted to go to The Container Store. To pick up containers to store things. And this store, as my partner might be apt to describe it, is "Capricorn Land," wherein all us who love to be organized and have nifty things to make us organized, will happily spend an entire week in the store. Camping out, even, sleeping bags and all.¹

After checking for a location near me, I settled on one that was second closest (by only like six miles, so technically that doesn't even count). The driving force behind the decision was that one was in an area I've already been. Plus, the second one was in Pasadena. Hello! Here's where the savviness kicked in: I called the store and asked where parking was available. There's no such thing as normal parking lots around here, and though I don't want to, I've just had to accept the fact that free parking out here is a fucking oxymoron.

But joy of joys! The Container Score, or at least this particular one, has valet parking. You show up and hand over your key and they park your car, and as long as you spend some money at the store, parking is pretty cheap.

Upon my arrival, I was able to find the special valet dude right outside the store. I pulled over into the fire lane (the only available place to pull over), then got out in the hopes that I could quickly see how the whole valet thing worked.

Phil: This is valet for The Container Store, right? Valet Guy: Yes, yes it is. Phil: Okay, so how does this work? Valet Guy: Give me your keys and I'll park your car for you. Phil: Okay sweet.

I left the guy only the ignition key, and then the guy just went to hang the key in the little bin. I protested that my car was still illegally parked, and this was his response: "You're not allowed to park there." Oh, really? I had no idea. Then: "You leave your car on the street and we validate, okay?"

So I snatched my key back from the douche bag of a valet guy, jumped back in the car and drove around the block. And found an open space at a meter. I parked and walked back, then, in the hopes that a renewed interaction would miraculously cure our previous communication folly, tried asking again about the clearly fucked up parking situation.

Phil: Okay, so I'm at a meter, but I didn't pay because you said you validate. I'm cool now, right? Valet Guy: Did you put money in the meter? Phil: You said you validate. Hence, I don't need to put in money. [Note: I was thinking maybe they had a sticker or something to put on my dash to show I was shopping away. Maybe?] Valet Guy: No, in meter, you need to pay coins. We don't validate. Phil: First you say 'valet', then 'validate', then 'valet' again. Which is it?

Back to the car it was, then. And pulling up once again into the fire lane. But this time the guy took it and parked it properly. But shit! Did it really have to be that complicated? It STILL took me half an hour to actually get the parking issue squared away. It's madness. But I made a day of it, partly to make sure I got my money's worth. and also because I was short fifty cents to pay for the damn valet service (they only deal in cash). So I had to go in search of a way to obtain it.² And gaggle along the way at all the fancy schmancy that is Pasadena. Big name clothing stores, a Bentley car dealership, et cetera.

¹I met the manager of the store because I stopped her to ask for help, and after talking, she wound up telling me she really wanted to hire me. What are the odds? ²I succeeded and got the cash. Did I tip the bitch valet guy? Hell no.

After watching the new episode of Project Runway tonight, I realized that my current living situation could probably double as the workroom on that show. Only instead of sewing machines and fabric everywhere, I've got a computer atop a very cluttered desk. And other very cluttered surfaces, such as on the printer cart and the little nightstand drawer thing. And boxes piled throughout the room. And piles of things all over the place that need to be sorted and organized. In between classes today, I ended up continuing to attack my room with gusto. I'm one of those people who can't be productive unless my living space is in decent order. And by 'decent', I mean that I have to know where everything is. I'm not immune to a somewhat messy room. But when everything is boxed up and I'm unable to find things I'll potentially need along the way, it kinda drives me insane.

In the spirit of keeping consistent with the show, I only worked until midnight before deciding to call it a night. I'll have tomorrow to hit it again, and I'll even have a small budget with which to go shopping and buy stuff like maybe some bookshelves or drawers or crazy storage devices of some kind. The possibilities are endless. Or as endless as they can get when one is on a grad school budget. Okay fine, the possibilities are limited. Whatever.

The good news of the evening is that the walls are no longer bare, and I can actually see the floor. Things are shaping up. Because the runway that is grad school is upon me, and I sorta need to get on that shit. In the spirit of Tim Gunn, though, I will make it work.

In an effort to actually make myself at home, I abandoned any and all attempts to study this afternoon. Having spent the last two and a half weeks cooped up (like a chicken, no less) in a tiny room in which I had to use my bed as my desk chair, I was ready to move up in the world. The other guy moved out today, which was my cue to divide and conquer. Conquer I did. Divide... I wish. I had to migrate, really. Which means that all my stuff that's in boxes can finally be broken free. This is significant for me because I've been without a good deal of my things that I rely on for general life purposes. Among such purposes, one of them includes staring at things. A very important part of everyday life, mind you. I had almost nothing to look at for nearly three weeks, except for the eyesore that consisted of all my junk piled everywhere, and I about died. I kid you not.

Speaking of dying, I put together my brand new desk chair from IKEA. Finally. It's adorable. It suits me nicely, and is probably the most comfortable computer chair I've ever owned. It's my first official "computer chair" so of course it's bound to be in the top ten. But death, I mentioned death. Yes. Assembly of this particular desk chair was precarious. Very simple, but it hasn't earned my full confidence that it won't, in fact, topple sideways whilst I'm sitting upon it. It seems to have a slight tilt to the right, see, so hence my first five minutes sitting in it consisted of me leaning violently to the left and gripping the table with claws extended and at the ready for about four of those minutes.

I've not yet spent a great deal of time in the chair. This could either mean that A. I really did fall and so am typing this from another point in the house or B. It's holding up just fine and there is absolutely no basis for my childish fear. The truth is closer to C. It's holding up just fine, but fear remains. No doubt it'll be one of those moments during which, once my phobia has waned or else disappeared completely, the thing will topple me righteously, and no amount of therapy thenceforth will ever cure me.

Margarita Monday would be so much better if I didn't have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to move my car so I don't get another ticket. I'm seriously not vibing on all those darn parking rules. Move my car by 6 A.M.? Who do these people think I am, Superman? Shoot. I suppose, given the threat of another ticket, or else towing or booting my car, I can get up in my blue spandex and move the car. But dammit, I won't be happy about it.

When I spend time online, the last thing I want to be doing is homework. Especially when the "instructor" for the course wants to "make sure you read every fucking word of every page of every book ever written about the topic at hand" (emphasis and paraphrase mine). For instance, I was working on a quiz this evening, and was confronted with the following question: In English, word order affects __________.

If this looks like an innocent question, then you're not in grad school taking this circus of a class, are you? Because it's not. It's a direct quote from one forty-page chapter of a textbook. I read two chapters of said book this week, and also one chapter or so from each of three other books. Indeed. Needle in a haystack that covers the entire state of Montana.

And given the nastiness of this particular book and its infatuation with detail, the answer could easily have been anything. People. Air traffic controllers. Puppies. The medical profession. And for the record, single verbs are not those that don't get to file for marital benefits on their tax returns. They're not verbs that stand alone, either. But they are bitch-ass stupid.

But I digress. Today, for those who cared to watch it, was the Super Bowl. I happened to be among those who didn't care to watch it, but did catch a snippet of it because the lesbian roommies were watching it.

Rather than sit and watch sports today, I went out and explored more of LA. Back to West Hollywood, but from a new vantage point: with gay men instead of lesbians. I even went to the SUPER gay mall. Which is really just a mall. That attracts gigantic gay clientèle. With lots of money. And penchants for fashion and big-name designers. And a love of paying lots of money for things that come in tiny miniature-purse-sized Calvin Klein bags.

And then there was me, all awkward and uncomfortable walking through stores whose cheapest t-shirts were a bargain at $80.00. Awkward and uncomfortable because I don't know the names of the companies of even half off my wardrobe. I was thrown into a big gay pit of something completely beyond me. A black hole, more like. That makes more sense, given the thrill of ease and calm that swept over me the second we booked it out of there.

Words like botox and nose job don't usually describe people walking right by me. (Rather, they describe celebrity gossip, such as when Robert and I conjecture that Sarah Jessica Parker totally had a nose job!) And given that I wear jeans that don't have the designery vertical stripe thingies in the denim, I'm surprised I wasn't lynched by the Uber Gay Fashion Elite.

Somebody else in one of my classes shares my propensity for procrastinating on the purchase of textbooks. (Whether she also manages to write in such stunning alliteration, as I just have, remains to be seen.) See, I discovered that one of my teachers put all the textbooks on reserve for us to use. Of course, this teacher also expects us to do all the reading. Which is a total drag, and generally goes contrary to my nature. But because of its onlineness, coupled with said teacher's tendency to quote directly from the texts on her stupid quizzes, I just have to grin and bear it. So anyway. I go to check out the books yesterday, and get three of the four of them. The fourth, however, is conspicuously absent. A potential problem for yours truly. I utilized a student employee of the library to sleuth the truth (I'm on a roll!), and learned that it was due back today.

Returning today. Finding it absent once again. Deciding to wait it out. Fortune smiled, and the punk classmate (who I don't know, except to know that she's a punk, at least in this scenario; like it matters, though, the class is fucking online) returned with textbook in hand. And tried to recheck that shit out again! Oh, it was on.

Little did punk girl know, however, that student employee library girl was on my team. She totally had my back, and was able to secure the book for me to check out. And this matters because in grad school, doing all the work involved is life and death. It's cutthroat, bitches. Survival of the fittest ones that aren't about to get owned by some stupid online quizzes. And will use any and every means possible to beat you to checking out the book that has finally been purchased but has yet to arrive in the mail. So bring it on. I'm ready.

The city of Los Angeles always seemed, to me, famous for its fantastically shitty traffic. Regarding driving and cars and such, I felt that that was the main drawback. Oh, how wrong I was. You know what's equally shitty, if not shittier? The fact that the highways are easy to traverse and get off of, but if you ever want to get onto them, you may as well consider yourself totally fucked if you're unfamiliar with the area, as I am. Everything is so poorly labeled, all the blind drivers in town are on equal footing along with the rest of us. But perhaps the shittiest of all? Parking. LA is ridiculously strict when it comes to parking. First, there's the whole parking on the side of a three-lane thoroughfare, thus making them all two-lanes wide. Then there's all the signs posted all over streets and neighborhoods alike about certain times deemed no parking times because street cleaning is scheduled for then. I was watching the news the other night and there was this big fucking headline breaking story about how the latest translation of "Los Angeles" has nothing to do with angels. Rather, it has more to do with all the potholes and cracks on each and every mile of the over 2,000 miles worth of streets here. Or 20,000 miles, I forget what the exact quote was on the news.

Can you say 'bitter'? Please do. You would be too if you fell prey to the parking enforcement vultures and, like me, found yourself having to shell out $35.00 for parking someplace you've been parking periodically and without incident for the last two weeks. I could've been a few inches into the no parking zone, maybe. Or the enforcement only comes around once every other week or something. Whatever, the case, I'm lucky to only have just gotten the one ticket so far, I suppose, given just how anally retentive parking rules are out here. I'd sure hate to see the uniforms they make the parking elite officers wear.

As it turns out, one very effective form of bonding time between gay men and lesbians is television. In the form of Sex and the City. Because what's not to love about a TV show that features vastly heterosexual characters. Talking about sex and relationships. That are heterosexual. Mostly. Sexual, anyway. Middle ground is the name of the game. Should you be thinking that a more culturally gay friendly show might be more effective, stop it! I tried the whole Project Runway thing already. It failed. Instead of being something that brought us, as roommates, together, I wound up making catty comments about the clothing or the bitchy rants and drama of the designers on screen, while my roommate stood awkwardly by for a couple of minutes before disappearing into her room and barricading herself in.

But when the topic is one that involves the love lives of four women in New York, it's a different story. Because gossiping about fictitious characters is infinitely more fun than listening to the whinings of a reality show. (I made no mention of making fun of said reality people in that statement; that part is still ridiculously fun. Actually, Project Runway is all around fun, but for the purpose of this argument, suffice it to say that it's not high on the list for stellar bonding time between gays of different sexes.)

We happened to watch one episode where the red-haired lawyer woman (names are so hard to remember for that show; it's probably because of all the sex talk) is mistaken for being a lesbian. Chuckles abounded at the cute little gay jokes that, unlike most jokes of their variety, actually left the characters wishing they were gay. How refreshing.

Unbeknownst to me until this past Monday (roughly), the Superbowl is coming up. I currently have no plans for the day, at least with regard to watching a football game. I haven't even been invited to any parties. And if the past few years' commercials are any indication, I'm not even going to watch any of those, either. I've already seen the sneak peek of the Pepsi commercial based on a classic Deaf joke anyway.

It seems I made a slight error when I was driving to get my haircut just now. The one entrance to the place, to my knowledge, happened just before the shared lane in the road began. So I fudged it a bit, and pulled in anyway. Only to have a man, sitting in the passenger seat of a mini-van going the opposing direction, pucker his lips and wag his index finger back and forth at me. Woops. I guess I did a no-no. I'd better go sit in time-out now.

Opportunity presented itself to me today. In the form of an afternoon jaunt to Hollywood. I've been in LA for a week and half and hadn't yet been. It's really surprising that it wasn't the first stop I made when I got here. Hello! Hookers, bootleg music, stars on the sidewalk, tourists, Scientologists, and lots more! My priorities must have been pretty intensely out of whack, I was obviously way out of line. Well, I've sure seen the error of my ways. I've now walked along the only sidewalk on the planet that requires your full attention. No looking at other people or surroundings, lest you miss out on seeing the name of someone famous immortalized on a gold star. Those who visit the street on a regular basis are easy to pick out because they're the only ones not hunched over while they're walking, trying to make out names on the shiny stars reflecting sunshine (thus making them quite difficult to read).

And when offered the chance of being a part of the studio audience for Jimmy Kimmel Live (for free), we of course were like, "Fuck yeah! Anything for the chance of being in front of a TV camera and maybe being on national television for a few seconds!" The opportunity of a lifetime, that is. All the glamour of standing outside for an hour, being told to stand in place like a herd of cattle, having our digital cameras removed from our possession, and then of course going through the metal detector and everything. Not to mention getting to sit for another hour and a half or so, waiting for eight o'clock to roll around so they could start the forty-minute filming process. With one of our crew feeling quite sick, and with said icky Jimmy Kimmel happenings, we opted to collect our things and take leave of all the glitter and fuzz.

As to where we took leave, that would be the road home. Which just so happened to involve a highway whose turn we missed at first but caught on the turn-around. A highway that was serving as a temporary parking lot, but whose traffic moved slower than the average grocery's.

Despite it all (and perhaps because of it all), a fabulous time was had by, uh, all.

Since when is 900 pages considered "light" reading? I'll tell you when. Since that nutjob monopoly guy professor of mine said so in class this afternoon. But wait, it gets better. He pulled out his monocle and rechecked his syllabus, and corrected himself: not 900, more like 950 or so. Woops. His bad. Just the thought of actually having to even turn that many pages of various textbooks was enough to send my brain into Emergency Seizure Mode, wherein it prepared for shock to set in and then the convulsions to strike. Which, considering how depressing the lecture was about future statistical projections, and then about all the shit that can go wrong in life that can totally throw our communication systems out of whack, giving me plenty to worry myself sick over as it is... I found is an unnecessary stressor.

In years past, Mondays were generally days of badness, what with being the first day of the week and all. Fortunately, that's not the case anymore. I've found my savior in the form of Margarita Monday! A local Mexican-American style restaurant here has this every week ($2.50 margaritas!). I got invited to it because it's a big social gathering time. And lo and behold, even though it's not a weekend night, the margaritas sure come in handy! It's a great opportunity to socialize, and an equally great opportunity to not think about depressing shit you learned in class.

Oh, and it's a great way to celebrate just having bought hundreds of dollars worth of textbooks. Because how can you not drink to the fact your four classes require a whopping twelve textbooks between them. I'm so going to have to recycle every single piece of paper I encounter from now on just to assuage the guilt of all the trees that were used for only one semester of my graduate education. Or maybe I should just quit now and go plant trees for the rest of my life.

Graduate school is finally becoming a reality. Oh, sure, I've been in school a week already. But today happened to be the day I discovered just how much work is actually involved. What better way to spend a Sunday than holed up in the library, and then my room, muddling my way through four chapters of two respective textbooks, then taking three online quizzes, participating in online discussion, and sending an introductory email to my professor. While I generally try to avoid as much responsibility as possible on weekends, I made an exception today because I was desperate. Plus it was all icky and rainy outside. Which, interestingly enough, is fairly motivating weather when one has a great deal of homework to do.

So I learned about poorly formulated concepts like "pinball wizardry" models of how language works in the brain. And I had the pleasure of reviewing acronyms versus initialisms. By the way, I totally shook my head when 'iPod' was listed as an acronym. Yeah, the nerd who wrote the textbook was clearly not a computer nerd.

Blue skies and sunshine: enjoy them while you can. The weathermen and weatherwomen were wrong today. Mercifully so. As in, it didn't rain all day long, as it has the previous few days. I think I'll chalk it up to my needing a sunny day. Not only was I sick and tired of the gloom, but more importantly, I just bought a bike. And dammit, I wanted to ride it. And dammit, I did ride it. The weather was nice enough to let me have my ride to and from campus, free of rainfall. Delightful. It clouded up again tonight, though, and has been raining all evening. According to a server I talked to while out on the town (I unwittingly went right over to UCLA--I had no idea that that's where it was located, but there I went), we have joyous warnings of flash floods and heavy rainfall. What the fuck, people? At least I have my handy umbrella that I've had for like ten years which, up to now, was mint condition.

Still, I didn't let the rain deter me (tomorrow will probably be a different story, but I'm not going to lie, I want the weather people to be so wrong they have to go back into remedial meteorology). While most times, Californians know only one speed (that would be: acceleration), they were stunningly adept at making driving conditions not-all-that-bad. I was a little surprised to see the freeway jam-packed at 11:30 at night as I headed home for the evening (though I'm finding I shouldn't let anything around here surprise me), the fact that the freeway went a consistent 50 mph or so was, for lack of a better phrase, damn nice.

Oh, and before I forget, if you ever find yourself in LA, don't leave without going to Diddy Riese. Cookies and ice cream at a bitchin' awesome price. And probably some of the most delicious bites you will ever take in your entire life. Go. Just go. Don't question, just go. I'm pretty sure they have one of these both in heaven and hell, because it's something that no one (and I mean no one) should ever live without.

I guess I never really thought about it much, but it's come to my attention that I am the Ernie to my landlady's Bert. We're just roommates, so don't even go there. I feel very lucky to have found a place to live that is nice and close to campus, with nice people, in a nice, quaint little area. Additionally, I feel like I'm living in California's own version of the Smithsonian. Oh sure, I've seen places like this before: impeccably decorated, replete with big comfy couches that never get sat on. Did I imagine I'd someday get to live in one? Shit, no!

I'm so glad to have a room that didn't come prefurnished. Otherwise I'd probably already have been dragged off to prison with charges against me relating, but not limited to, damage of property and a criminal count of actually using the furniture. Some of the other charges might be as follows:

• Stepping on the carpet while still wearing my shoes
• Sitting on the sofa and not fixing the pillows the instant I got up
• Leaning on said sofa pillows, causing them to be less fluffy than they were originally
• Letting one of my keys touch the wood on the dining room table that's never used anyway (Must! Not! Scratch! Wood!)
• Leaving three boxes of unmade furniture leaning against the wall, out of the way so that people may walk past safely, but clearly ruining the ambience provided by the beautiful paintings by artists no one knows personally
• Using a pot to make some pasta for lunch
• Walking on the runner rug in the hall, causing it to be out of alignment

Oh, and the final strike against me: setting the alarm on my first day here while someone was still in the house. Yeah. That went over well. It certainly made for an interesting phone conversation, that's for sure.

Who knows, though. Maybe I can help this place be more lived in and healthy. Perhaps put some magnets on the refrigerator. Rearrange the pillows on the sofas. Read some books and leave them laying around in the living room or on the counter. Something. Anything to make this place feel less like grandmother's house.

"Touch with your eyes, dear." "Oh, hahaha! Don't be silly, that's impossible!"

Buckets today. In the form of rainfall. Slowly poured buckets, but enough to flood the gutters of the streets and somewhat flood the parking lots on campus. I was glad to have my umbrella handy in the car. I've always got it with me in the car, but have never really had much occasion to use it. But given the distance I had to walk, I opted not to do my usual rain-running. I instead favored the use of my umbrella, and it really did make things quite pleasant, despite the fact that my shoes still got soaked from the puddles and the flooding parking lot. To my great surprise, neither of my two classes today was a snoozefest. And one of the classes is of the three-hour once-a-week lecture variety. I had a feeling grad school here would be different. However, I had no idea I would be in for competent instructors who are also engaging presenters. AND they even have good senses of humor. How refreshing!

Certain assumptions were made, though I'm wondering if that's customary here. Because my last name is French, I apparently speak French. (I know a phrase or two, but it's my partner who actually speaks the language.) But given that the teacher who made this sly observation also signed APPLE when she meant to sign BORING, and that she talks very fast and in general seems very cool, I didn't bother to correct her. Call it laziness if you want to. I'm banking on the fact that she'll forget all about the whole French thing by next week, if she hasn't already. I just hope she's not taking any of those newfangled memory pills.

Today. Day one of school. Officially. Not for me, though. That's tomorrow. Today was a jaunt around campus, exploring things and ogling people and things. For instance, I learned that the library has escalators. Again. This place is totally, all around, high fucking tech. I'm thinking there's got to be a standard HFT factor or ratio of some kind. It's out of control. Tonight. I was working on putting together some furniture. A favorite pasttime of mine. I realized that perhaps, if I want to not make my roommates hate me, or else evict me, I should cease my construction for the evening. I happened to be in the hammering phase of a set of drawers. A great way to earn points in my favor when it's ten o'clock at night and I'm hammering away without thinking twice about it.

A friend asked about what the people were like. I'm here to report that the people are crazy awesome. I'm basing this off aesthetics only, because I've met only like ten of the ten million people who live here. But. I'm pretty sure I've already heard at least fifteen different languages being spoken in various spots I've been to. I've seen people who are eight feet tall, and others who are a mere 3-4 feet tall (and I'm not talking about the kiddies). The diversity out here is one of its biggest assets. I love it.

On a related note*, it's been brought to my attention that the program I came here for is, according to every new person I meet in the speech department, "really hard to get into." I conversed with a number of speech students and faculty today, and here's a sample of how our conversations went:

Phil: Hi, I'm Phil. Other Person: Hi, I'm [name]. Are you a new grad student? Phil: Yep. I'm actually new to the area too. I've only been here since Friday. OP: Congratulations. You know, this program is really hard to get into. Phil: ... OP: Didn't you find it difficult to get accepted into the program? Phil: ... OP: ...

I'm not entirely sure these conversations were even held in English. I could have said something to the effect that I was once a pirate with a peg leg who traveled through time to get surgery to replace my missing leg and then returned to school to get my master's in speech pathology (change of career, you know), and they still would have said, "Wow, good job, it's really hard to get in here."

That remains to be seen, but I do know of a place that really IS hard to get in: my closet. Why? Because I recently acquired a zombie of the softest and fiercest kind: a sock zombie. He hangs on the door of my closet, ready to pounce and tear the snot out of anyone's socks who tries to enter. He's a force not to be reckoned with, especially if you care for your socks. He arrived in the mail today, and needless to say, I'm aquiver with fear and delight. Heck, I may even toss him into my bag for school and sic him on anyone who tries to use overused phrases regarding graduate school admission.

*Okay, so maybe that note wasn't related at all. But I needed some form of transition, and that's the one that won.

Some haps, in the form of an unordered list:

• Current count for items of furniture, fully assembled: two. Today, among other things, I put together a printer stand slash file drawer. An hour, it says? For one person to assemble that thing? Try two and a half. They failed to account for the excessive use of screws. My hands are raw from turning the screw driver over in my hands so many times. Which completely sucks. They’re all red and tender and everything. I guess it serves my own piece of furniture right that it’s not horizontally sound. it’s slightly lopsided, and the wood didn’t fit perfectly right in some places. But I got it together, and if I hadn’t just made note of that, no one would be any the wiser. Unless someone is a total nerd and pays attention to things like that. Sheesh.

• I did some exploration today. Sans map, even. I just picked a street and drove until I couldn’t go any farther. Well. At least until it looked liked I’d need some pretty hefty government clearance of some kind in order to go farther. I saw some more of the mountains in the area, and didn’t find much of anything that would be useful to me or would warrant my returning that way ever again. Regardless, though, it was fun. I’ll be doing more of that here very soon.

• I’m still not used to having roommates. For some reason, I feel obligated to interact with everyone who’s home, or who just arrives. I’m like a puppy that has to go and greet them, and then chat them up for a few minutes before being able to return to my room or to whatever it was that was occupying my time before another resident arrived. Perhaps one of these days I’ll get told to fuck off and go do my own thing, and I will forevermore be cured of puppy dog syndrome.

Well, then. I've been here a solid thirty-six hours or so now, and damn. A roller coaster of the emotional variety decided to make a train wreck of itself. On me. In the never-ending saga of dealing with la familia, today was wrought with discussion of how I should be living my life (or not living it, as it were), whether or not to keep buttons that weren't attached to shirts, and whether or not I had done my laundry yet. All clearly relevant and related items, and paramount to my success here while I dabble in the thing they call "grad school."

Aside from having to expunge all sorts of emotional traumaticness, I had a not-too-bad day today. I got out and explored the area some. I went shopping for a bike to get around on. I went into a Target store that was actually on the second floor (the first floor is a parking garage, in which I parked, naturally). Obviously, I was surprised when I didn't see Captain Kirk OR Mr. Spock, what with the whole shopping cart escalator thing they had right next to the escalators you climbed to walk into the place. High. Fucking. Tech.

I got owned on the road by a number of mini vans, driven by both sexes. I went to a nearby mall, which turned out to be awesome. I wandered a bunch of stores, ogled a bunch of cute puppies and bunny rabbits, avoided kiosk sales peeps by saying vague things like "not today," "I've already got one of those," and "I don't, no," to the questions "Do you have a cell phone?", "Do you want to to smell? Aromatherapy!", and "Can I ask you a quick question?", respectively.

I bought myself a map of the city, in the hopes that it might lessen the number of times I end up getting lost. I found my local Apple store. I found a cool place to buy shoes, only they didn't seem to carry any shoes in my size, so that was kind of useless. And I found a scrapbook store, too.

Finally, I took myself out to the California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. When I first tried to eat there, it was like a fifty minute wait. So I wandered around the mall for like two hours, and by the time I got back, I was hungrier than I was before anyway. Diversified pizza is the name of the game there. So of course I wasn't going to eat just any kind of pizza like I would anywhere else. I wanted something totally unique to this place. Tostada pizza was where it was at. Left field crazy ass bizarre sounding, but as I was craving adventure, I sprang for it. Three words: oh so delicious. I'm already excited about my leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

(Note: This entry was written yesterday, but thanks to unreliable internet borrowed from an unsuspecting neighbor, I wasn't able to actually post it.) In the immortal and unforgettable words of a no doubt popular but less-than-rememberable movie star (at least for me, in my exhausted state), "I have arrived!"

Los Angeles's population has officially grown by one more person. Me. And, while devoid of some things that had to be left behind, and a very special someone, I feel like I'm off to a pretty good start. I base this observation on the fact that I'm still alive, and am in my new place of residence.

The drive in wasn't too bad, except for the last hundred miles or so into the city. When all of a sudden, the highway has six lanes instead of two, and ends up packed with cars whose average speeds range anywhere from 30 to 90 mph. Driving in LA was one of my big concerns with regard to moving here, but I made it through the city successfully somehow. I only had my side mirrors to rely on, because my car was so full of boxes and clothes and such. But I found myself not only being a defensive driver, but also an offensive one. You really have to throw your weight around to get anywhere in this place. Damn.

Next on the agenda: learning the area a bit, testing out the waters some more. I didn't have much drive to do that today, mainly because driving for two hours in the city wiped all the energy out of me. I feel literally like a fish who was flung from the ocean by a wave, and I'm flopping around on shore trying to get back in the water. I blame that mostly on the sheer tiredness that has overcome me. Tomorrow will bring newness and should be good.

But first, the pillows are beckoning. And I don't have the power to fend off their siren song any longer.

It's been one of those days. And I'm not talking about the kind that everyone nods and smiles about because they've all experienced something similar. My current status: sitting in a motel room, a little over halfway between Albuquerque and Los Angeles. My current goal: arriving in Los Angeles. Alive.

I've had virtually no time to plan for this move. Getting into grad school, while very exciting, left me very little time to prepare myself. So I did all I could, planned all I could, and did my best to execute all of said plan. For the most part, I considered it wildly successful.

Some, however, did not. But I suppose the patriarch of my familial unit could pack and be ready for a big trip, finish up working and tie up all loose ends and paperwork, and also find a place to live and a way to pay for an education in a manner far superior to how I did it. I know this because that's what he told me ALL MORNING LONG.

Long story short, I'm in the midst of the move, but am pretty much devoid of a great deal of the things I had intended to bring along. Oh sure I have most of the STUFF. But the only thing I have in which (or on which) to place or display any of my stuff is the boxes in which they're currently packed. Trendy.

Despite my incredible collapsable furniture, I was unable to take any of it with me, on account of there just wasn't any space in either of the cars to fit it all. The icing on the cake: I was the only one unsurprised by how much stuff I had. Because, when you live on your own and aim for self-suffiency, that's what happens. It's not crap, it's things you need.

But I digress. I'm starting fresh, sort of, and haven't much choice except to deal with it. There's only so much bartering and arguing you can do with people who still try to order your meals for you.

Anyway, starting fresh. Within the confines of the car, I was graced with the presence of my younger brother. My relationship with any of my brothers, at any given time, varies. All was going well, and then at some point after dinner, we sorta got into it over a he-said/she-said sort of deal. And lo and behold, I finally got up the nerve to tell my brother just how homophobic he's been in the past. Surprisingly, he was shocked, and even went so far as to say that, once I pointed this out, he started to think more about his past behavior. Said he'd never looked at things through my eyes before. Might some progress be made in the future? Hopefully, yeah.

Tomorrow: making the rest of the drive to the City of Angels. Fingers crossed it goes well and without all the incidents that graced me today.

And I'll have my salad, like I ordered, thank you. No soup for me.

It's been one of those days, that's for damn sure. As evidenced by the fact that it's nearly 2:00 in the morning and I'm typing this. The day was, for the most part, nondescript. Busy as fuck, but none too exciting. Oh what am I saying? It was riveting! Paperwork! Last-minute addendums to paperwork! Lunch! Paperwork! Discussion! Paperwork! And then home to cast aside the paperwork and continue the packing. Avoiding phone calls and ignoring text messages from the parentals asking me if I'm packing. Spending some time with my honey. Probably the most sane two hours of the entire day. Without which I probably would have fallen over dead.

Oh wait, I nearly did die tonight. Over dinner. The unwitting (that would be me) savoring a delicious meatless microwave chili made with none other than bits of Boca burgers. Sitting down to eat, and reveling in the absolute tastiness of the chili, with shredded cheese atop it. Conversing about which of us likes crackers with our chili. Placing the plate/bowl combination on the coffee table to add more cheese. Looking up as I'm saying the wittiest, and funniest, comment about crackers and chili the world has ever heard. Reaching for the cheese. Not using peripheral vision effectively. Right hand coming in contact with awaiting plate/bowl combination of delicious chili. Chili bowl flying into the air, twirling, no less, and landing all over my hand, my jeans, and the carpet.

You know how, even though it's not in the movies, some things seem to happen in slow motion? Because you totally see what's going to happen, and can therefore notice everything in the minutest of detail? So even though it takes less than one second to happen, it feels like at least three? My delectable bowl of chili didn't move in slow motion. No. I'd venture to conjecture that it actually was in fast forward mode. Had it been caught on film, it may have looked like the abused and stunningly dumbass film technique employed in a certain unmentionable not-Oscar-worthy movie, the image repeating itself in gray shadows as it moves faster than normally super-fast speed.

The four bites of that part of dinner were like heaven in a bowl. The following debacle to clean the carpet, clean my jeans, and get the scalding chili off my hand and wrist, had it been witnessed by a Hollywood producer, might be the inspiration for a scene in a new Ben Stiller movie. And although I was expecting my hand to blister or be victim to an even worse fate (I was mincing around in pain), dousing it in cold water seemed to cure it just fine.

Fortunately, the mess was pretty cleanable, and the chili didn't fly with a far enough radius to do too much damage. I'm kinda wondering what will happen to my jeans, though, because they were covered in chili. When I came home, I coated them thickly with Spray 'N Wash, the wildly successful stain remover. Of course, if the stain doesn't come out, I suppose all I'll be able to do is hope that someone decides the "jean-spattered-with-chili-sauce-stains" look will be the next big popular fashion statement. I don't think that's too lofty a hope on my part, really.

I used to be compelled to like every single song on any album I purchased. I may have mentioned this before at some point. That's not important, though, because it's still true. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not known for my ability to keep only what I need. Today's fact comes via my CD collection. It's not a terribly huge collection, but it's big enough that there are plenty of CDs I never listen to anymore. On the one hand, I could say that tastes change. But the reality of things is such that, well, I had some really shitty CDs in my collection. Many of them were gifts, mind, so at least I wasn't spending my own money on them. But the fact that I kept them all these years doesn't excuse that I actually kept the wretched things. Was this based on the notion that, because it was given to me, I was obligated to keep it? Perhaps. Was this a brotherly status issue, i.e. whose CD collection was the biggest? Definitely. Was this because I wanted to keep the CD because only one of the ten or fifteen songs was any good? Yes.

And there was also the issue of my never wanting to admit that there were songs on CDs I owned that I actually didn't like. As if it would decrease the value of the thing to say that there may be one or two good songs, but the rest is total crap. Heaven forbid that I not like every single song from I band I like. No, that one song I didn't like would totally ruin me, and not allow me to enjoy the band anymore. Better to skip the song when no one is looking, lest I look like less than a true fan.

As of now, I'm officially cured. A nice chunk of my CD collection is bagged and ready to go in for trade. Um, yeah, probably not going to miss them. And who knows, maybe one of the 11-year-old lovebirds from the bowling alley last night will stop grabbing his "girlfriend's" "ass" and will instead buy some CDs from my teenage angst years, and his life will be changed forever. Here's hoping.

Today marks my 24th anniversary of life on this planet. Pretty good timing, really, for my birthday to not only land on a Saturday this year (yay! no work!), but also before I take the plunge and head off to graduate school. All the insanity that is my cleaning and packing process has brought me new perspective and insight into my own nature. Whether that's a good thing, I'm not sure. For instance, I spent about an hour today doing some intense packing. In the process, I found a stack of folders, each organized by topic, with some items dating back almost twenty years.

It's not news to me that, in the past, I've been known to find it difficult to let go of things. And it's not that it's so much attaching sentimental value to everything. Quite often, it's an "I don't know what I should do with [insert item here]. I don't need it now, per se, but what if I need it like ten years down the line?" The premise: the only thing worse than having something and not being able to find it is not having it and being fully aware that, at one point in the past, you did have it, but decided to get rid of it.

Of course, there's nothing quite like having to pick up everything and move two states away to motivate one to finally let go of things. I rooted through some of my crap and came to the conclusion that some things aren't worth holding onto. Because who needs old newspaper clippings of opinion articles that date back three years? And instruction manuals for things you no longer own, but found the instructions amusing? Not laugh-out-loud funny, even. Totally corny, more like.

I realize now that, in the past, I found it important to look back and remember, to the detriment of enjoying the moment. Which gives me permission (from myself, you know) to get rid of that which I know I'll never again look at anyway. Okay, that's a lie. If I kept it, I'd look at it again only when I'm once again getting ready to move. Useful.

In conclusion. Number twenty-four brought amazing new, materially, memorially, pictorially, bowling-ly, and lovingly. I couldn't have asked for a better day.

There are those who would argue that I'm a very well-rounded person. With a variety of skills that I employ on a semi-regular basis. But there's one skill for which I possess an astounding lack of talent. That skill is the art of balancing a whole bunch of cardboard boxes up two flights of stairs to my apartment. I'm now in the panic phase of my upcoming move to graduate school. I have a week left, and yet I still have an apartment full of stuff that needs to be packed, be it for storage or transport. A friend was kind enough to donate over half a dozen cardboard boxes for this packing endeavor. When I picked them up from her house, I took a few trips back and forth from the house to the car to put them in. I did this partly because there were so many boxes. And partly because there were only four different size boxes. So stacking them inside one another was not exactly possible. Unless you're Chuck Norris.

Upon my arrival home, I was faced with a dilemma: a bunch of boxes in the car. Two flights of stairs. Not a lot of energy left. I considered leaving them in the car and getting them during the day tomorrow. But then the male hormones kicked in, and I decided Hey! I'm going to carry ALL OF THEM up to my apartment AT THE SAME TIME. Brilliant, I know.

So I pulled them out of the car and stacked them as best I could. One set of boxes was cradled in my left arm. The lone box of enormous proportions was placed precariously atop that stack, and leaned against my head. The final stack was held in my right hand, at a dangerous angle such that it threatened to fall and spill its cardboard contents at any moment.

I made it from the car to the stairs, and began the climb. One step up. A second step. And then, in slow motion, the angled box in my right spilled before my very eyes, even though I wasn't looking because I was too focused on the climb. And then the enormous box of wonder decided to detach itself from my head and go flying to my left and into the awaiting bushes below. Back to the drawing board.

I checked the boxes for signs of any unwanted life forms that may have been intercepted in the fall. They were mercifully devoid of any additional, unwanted, life forms. I repeated the initial failed attempt. And failed again. The sad part is that I was actually surprised by this. Finally, realizing that I had now used up the precious sixty seconds I had intended to save by this balancing act (in fact, I probably added a good 120 seconds to the whole business). I left a bunch of boxes on the second floor and just made an extra trip to get them all upstairs and into my apartment.

I guess I didn't miss my calling as one of those basket-balancing-on-the-head people after all. I'd probably be lynched because I wouldn't be able to supply the village with food. And all the clean laundry would just get dirty. And forget about carrying fruit. I guess I'll just have to face it. I'm no Carmen Miranda.

The writing process is a mystery to me. I'm currently in awe of the fact that I agonized over my letter of intent for graduate school. It seriously took me a solid week to wind up with a draft that didn't make me cringe, much less crawl under a rock and hope that no one ever look me in the eye ever again. But just now, I knocked out a letter of resignation for work in like two minutes flat. I've held a number of jobs, but have never actually had to write such a letter. Strangely, every job I've held ended on my employer's terms. But I've never actually been fired. Just phased out, I guess you'd say. The one job I ever quit was at my old university, where my bosses were such shady mother-fuckers that they would fire the entire student staff and then rehire them, in order to avoid having to pay the 50-cent or one-dollar yearly raise the university required every department to pay its student employees. All I had to do was tell those assholes I didn't want to be rehired. Piece of cake, but I hate them still anyway.

This time, I actually had to write the letter. And because my whole life is in fast-forward at the moment, and because I've never written one of these letters, and because I don't much care how good it is because it's a letter saying that I'm quitting my job, I guess I just don't care how good it actually is. Which works in my favor. Because it's total crap. I didn't even bother putting my employer's address on the letter. Mostly because I figure since I'm handing it in to them in person, it doesn't much matter. But also because, well, I don't care. I didn't find out until the last minute that they needed one of these puppies. So if they don't like it, well, I guess they can fire me.

I wrote it somewhat formally. With paragraphs and everything. And when I use the plural form there, I mean one paragraph followed by a "second" one, consisting of approximately two sentences, that says "Thanks so much for your time." [Now, let's talk about a severance package, even though this is voluntary. You know, sort of as a way of saying "Thanks, Phil, for putting up with all our shenanigans. We know how much shit we put you through, and are so glad that you actually liked your job enough to stay with us. You fucking rule." And then I'll be like "Pay for my education, bitches." And then they won't, and I'll leave anyway.]

I'm glad, at least, that I'm keeping in tradition with leaving jobs in very non-traditional ways. Two weeks notice is for wimps. I got it down to a week. And I'm damn proud.