Today, I made out with a 21-year-old girl and then beat the hell out of her.

We begin this post in medias res, so that first line might be a little confusing. Let me explain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Technically speaking, I made out with a dude, and then beat the hell out of him. But it's cool. I'm from the future, and we do that stuff there.

I feel that I am not really helping you understand yet.

Today, in the stage combat class that I have been taking, I rehearsed a carefully choreographed fistfight with my scene partner, who is a 21-year-old theatre student at Towson University. We are rehearsing (among others) a fight scene from the BBC television program(me) Torchwood, in which two men who happen to be from the future (where coarse 21st Century labels like "straight" and "gay" are antiquated concepts) meet up in a bar and spend a few minutes reliving an erstwhile passionate and tempestuous relationship by alternating between playing tonsil hockey and brutally smashing one another through the furniture.

There, that's got it all cleared up, and nobody should have to read that paragraph more than once to achieve complete mastery of the circumstances.

Now that we're done with the exposition, I can get along to the actual post!

The stage combat class is a lot of fun. I've been driving to Towson University (north side of Baltimore, MD) nearly every Saturday and Sunday for the last four months to learn how to safely perform fights on stage that look convincing to the audience. I'm learning techniques in unarmed combat, knife fighting, and the good old rapier/dagger combination, and if I succeed in passing the Skills Proficiency Tests in those three disciplines this coming Sunday, I will have achieved Actor/Combatant Status, a classification bestowed by the Society of American Fight Directors that lets casting directors know they won't have to spend as much time and money on training me for fight scenes as they will on that other sucker who's auditioning for the role. In short, I'm play-fighting every weekend, and it might actually help me get a role or two the next time I pretend to be an actor.

I've already explained the unarmed fight scene I'm doing for my test. I am also doing a knife scene from the movie Rebel Without A Cause with the same partner. She gets to be James Dean, and if that's not emasculating enough, I think she might actually be carving off one of my nipples when she kills me at the end of the fight.

I am testing for rapier/dagger with another partner, doing a scene from Oscar Wilde's The Florentine Tragedy. My partner for this fight is not actually taking the class, but is a seasoned Actor/Combatant who is testing to renew his status. In other words, he knows how to do this, and he makes me look really good when we fight. I die in this one too, incidentally.

Other than the effort, expense and annoyance of having to drive to Baltimore twice every weekend, the only complaint I have with this class is only indirectly related to it. When we rehearse, we are working hard. We stretch for about 15 minutes before every class, and we just bust our asses for 4 hours each day. And it's usually in a warm room, with a few dozen warm bodies pumping out the BTUs, and I am a cuddly fat guy. Add to this the side effects from my otherwise wonderful prescription brain candy, and I end up sweating so much it looks like somebody's wrung me out like a damp towel.

I usually don't mind this, and I play it off with subtle comedy, like referring to myself as a cuddly fat guy. But my partner for most of my scenes just loves to complain loudly about the sweat, and then later mention that she's only kidding when I start to get a little annoyed and/or self-conscious. My willingness to tolerate this diminishes rapidly every class.

It has also caused me to re-evaluate my whole brain candy situation. I started taking this prescription for anxiety issues while I was in the middle of my miserable, stressful, ill-fated semester of law school. I definitely like the results I get from the pills: it's a lot easier now for me to be who I want to be. I don't get frustrated or embarrassed nearly as easily as I used to, and I actually can talk to a pretty girl now without immediately turning into Rain Man.

But, the pills are expensive, and there's that stupid sweating thing. So maybe I can at least get on a lower dose or something. I'll write more on this as events develop, assuming any of these developing events are as interesting as my excessive sweating problem.

Aren't you so glad you read my LiveJournal?

I think I'll wrap up for the night by actually expressing the thought that I wanting to write about in the first place.

The girl who is my scene partner for the kissing/brawling scene is cute, imaginative and excitable, but she is a very special episode who probably has more severe ADD than I do. Yes, I am also surprised that somebody could have worse ADD, but I have to get her attention with something shiny every few minutes, and hey, do you want to go ride bikes?

So we started to work the kissing into our scene for the first time today, which I was looking forward to. A cute girl is a cute girl, even if she's 21 as hell. The first few attempts ended up with the both of us breaking into laughter several times (I am just going to tell myself that she was laughing for the same reasons I was, and that is how it shall be written in the scrolls). I was actually pretty nervous, because I'm usually a narrator or a clown or something in plays, not the romantic lead. Go figure. So I've never actually done a scene with a kiss in it, and I was worried that it'd be awkward. Turned out not to be a big deal, really. But something felt a little weird.

Even though I have spent the last paragraph laying the groundwork for a fantastic series of jokes based in our finest traditions of ribald and bawdy humor, that's not where I'm going here.

Now that I've had the day to think about it, I know what felt weird. I have never actually kissed a girl who wasn't there before. Maybe it's because we're just acting and everything's fake, or because she doesn't dig me at all, but it just feels off. We're playing this part of the scene in a very over-the-top fashion, and she's all but climbing me like a jungle gym (relax, the kiss itself is actually closed-lips and very tame), but there's just no response in the kiss itself. Maybe it's only the limited size of my sample group, but in the past when I have kissed a girl I have been able to feel her respond from her lips all the way down to her feet. It's like the difference between actually flying a plane and playing a flight simulator game. All the same concepts are in play, but it just feels different.

I have just realized that I don't have any idea where I'm going with this line of thought. So I'm just going to stop here for now, and maybe the peanut gallery will have some clever insight.

Oh, and if any of you happen to be in the Baltimore area next Sunday morning, you should come see the class do our fight tests. There are some really great scenes. And did I mention that I get to make out with a little girl and then beat the crap out of her? It's gonna be awesome!

Current Mood: groggy

I've been skimming through my last few posts in an attempt to figure out where I left off. Or, more to the point, to figure out what the last major update on my life entailed. I know there are a few of you that don't really get any news from me outside of Livejournal, and likewise there are a few of you that I haven't had any non-blogging contact with in years.

But there are a number that do post with some degree of regularity, and so I feel it's time I reciprocated. I may be hitting a few redundant points, but it'll be a good reference for the archives someday. You know, when my royal library is completed.

If I scroll to the bottom of my Livejournal page, the entries go back just shy of a year. If I click the link to go to the previous page, the entries go all the way back to my trip to England two years ago. It occurs to me that I can't possibly have gone two years with so little to write about. I wonder why I just stopped posting. I never stopped checking my friends page. Maybe I'll hit upon some new pattern in my life by analyzing my old journal entries. And maybe Michelle Trachtenberg will show up at my door in a cheerleader outfit.

To recap: I went to England many moons ago, to study abroad and finish up my credits at UNCC. I took a class called Shakespeare in Performance, populated by students from UNCC and from Catholic University of America in DC. For dramatically inclined young adults who spent a month together in close quarters, we all got along surprisingly well. I've kept in touch with many of them, and a few are even reading this very post! Unfortunately, most of the CUA denizens have been chained to the oars in their respective theatrical endeavors, so I've only managed to bring them out into daylight once or twice since I moved here.

Oh yeah, that's right. I moved to Washington, DC in August. I came up here because I had been accepted to the George Mason University School of Law. I was well on my way toward learning everything about copyright and intellectual property. I planned to use this arcane knowledge in my poorly-thought-out quest to "represent artists' rights,"doing anything from lobbying for copyright reform to starting a record label or a talent agency or something.

Should have spent a little more time meditating on that idea.

I made it through one semester of law school, during which I discovered the following important things:

• Law school is bullshit.
• For years, I've had just enough ADD to keep me from noticing my social anxiety problems.
• I am able to think more clearly than ever now (better living through chemistry), but the only benefit seems to be an increased awareness of my total lack of concrete goals.
• Out of everybody in my class at Mason, I think that maybe only 5 or 6 don't wish they had quit when I did.
• Girls in law school are about 5 extra flavors of crazy compared to girls in college.

When I quit, I found myself unemployed, living in a classy - read: expensive - apartment, and without the benefit of my second semester's student loan disbursement. So I needed a job right away. And the funny thing about having an English degree and one semester of law school on your resume is that it tends to lead you to employment at law firms and nowhere else. So I took the ironic job. Working for a patent law firm.

I am now a Class 5 Paperwork Bitch, coordinating all sorts of routine filings for divers patent applications. I've got two bosses, to whom I will hereinafter refer as GeekyBoss and SexyBoss. GeekyBoss and I are attuned at certain basic levels of nerditude, and so we get along quite well. This has still done little to disguise the fact that he's actually not a great boss. SexyBoss is an unstoppable patent dynamo, churning through files with ruthless efficiency. Unfortunately, her impressive production efficiency does not carry over into interpersonal professional skills. She more or less runs the show in my department, and she is the final authority on damn near every patent filing question that arises. But when she is in professional-mode, she appears to be incapable of communicating without sounding like she's scolding a kindergartener. Needless to say, my personality has occasionally run afoul of her sense of order, and vice versa.

For weeks I was thrilled to actually have a job. Being able to afford my rent and feed myself is actually quite pleasant. However, that's all I can do right now. I am making just enough money to cover my expenses, but I am not paying down any of my substantial outstanding debts. Couple that with the fact that the firm seems to be doing everything it can to convey the impression that we lowly employees are thought of as disposable automata, and it's like flying through turbulence. The turnover rate in this firm is probably comparable to the turnover rate at Taco Bell, and that includes attorneys who have actually gone through the misery of law school. I am not heading for the door just yet, but I am definitely memorizing the location of the emergency exits.

All right, I think that's most of the background information. If I successfully reverse my anti-posting behavior, I'll be filling in some details later on. But right now, I am too tired to focus for much longer.

If you still actually read my journal, comment here and let me know. It'll encourage me to continue with these no-doubt riveting updates about my life. Or possibly to post a quiz about what kind of unicorn I am. Oh Livejournal, how I've missed you.

Current Mood: groggy

Greetings from the future.



Don't believe me?

Current Mood: nerdy

I've been wanting to write for a long time, but you know how it goes. Not sure exactly what I want to say. Too tired to write now. Oh damn, I'm running late, no time to write. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera....

And tonight is no different, really. I am tired from this weekend, and from my body's hard-fought battle against whatever microbe is trying to turn me into a Kleenex ruining machine. And I haven't got a clear idea what I want to say, even though I am almost bursting with thing to write about. I guess I'm not late for anything at the moment, unless you count all the stuff I'm behind on.

Like writing.

You see, this post is recursive on many levels. I'm writing about the reasons I haven't been writing, by way of writing about the reasons I haven't been writing.

The plan now is for this post to be the first tiny flake in a snowball. With careful nurturing and just the right amount of reckless abandon, that snowball will careen down a mountain, laying waste to the hapless village below in a beautifully ridiculous avalanche of metaphor, wit, and well...snow. All the survivors of my poorly thought-out symbolism will face the destruction, solemnly performing the customary farewell dance of their elders, before checking into the YMCA to await their FEMA support.

Ok, now that's just silly. Nobody would believe FEMA support.

Boldly casting aside his completely unintentional segue, the author decides that his snowflake/raindrop imagery has come precipitously close to nonsense. Also, he really isn't kidding about how tired he is, so he's going to bed.

Current Mood: tired

I am ridiculous.

But I am also a genius.

Having awoken this morning with a peculiar craving for a Chick-Fil-A chicken egg and cheese biscuit and some hash browns, but being also logistically prevented from getting to my most convenient Chick-Fil-A location before the termination of their appointed breakfast hours, I came up with a solution.

I called them up and placed a special order for one freakin' breakfast combo meal, and they're gonna save one under my name until I can get there.

Like I said, ridiculous, but a genius.

mmmmmmmm.......bifkit......

Current Mood: bifkit!

Relevant news, preamble:

• I have quit law school.
• I am looking for a job.
• I am trying new things
  • personally;
  • philosophically;
  • professionally;
  • and romantically.
• I really have more to write, but I don't just post this little chunk here, I'll never get started on it.

Current Mood: tired

Happy birthday Alan!

An update is forthcoming.

It'll be a long one.

Or possibly several concatenated moderately long ones.

For the first time in my life, I genuinely feel like I've been beaten.

I think I might be losing my mind.

Here follows a rambling rant of repetitive regret, ruefulness, and reproach. Be ye warned.

I ran out of the pills that keep my ADD and anxiety in check on Thursday. I didn't realize that the prescription for another bottle of pills had already arrived in my mailbox, and was in fact sitting in a pile of unnoticed coupon mailers on my desk for several days. Consequently, I hit a low point on Sunday. I refilled my prescription last night, and I am now safe in my medicinal cocoon.*

Even though I am over the panic now, I still feel like some of the conclusions I reached during my little episode are pretty valid, and I recount them here so that I can think about them some more and whore for LiveJournal comments.

I guess one of the lingering aftereffects of wigging out for days and then resuming the interval is a screwed up sleep timer. I've been exhausted all weekend, and last night I couldn't get to sleep until 4am. That didn't stop me from waking up at 7:00. Well, to be more accurate, I don't think I fully slept the entire time. I have a vague memory of just lying inert in bed, not quite alert enough to contemplate why I wasn't unconscious. Anyway, even though I have been awake the whole damned time, I decided to take a mulligan today. I have maintained good attendance in my classes so far, with few exceptions, and I knew that I was going to be a worthless husk if I tried to actually read cases or answer hypothetical questions, so I stayed home and have been re-aligning my soul all day.

In my deeply depleted and plebeian state, I have been meditating on the anxiety-inducing thoughts of the last few days. I have concluded that I don't want to be a lawyer. The law degree was just one step on the way to getting a legal education and an MBA so that I could somehow represent artists' rights, but I didn't realize that I would hate it this much. I suppose hate is the wrong word. It's more like apathy so intense that it's palpable. I want to skip to Intellectual Property and Copyright law, but I have to wade through the slough of despond basic first-year courses before I get there. Let me tell you exactly how much of a shit I do not give about the Rule Against Perpetuities.

All of my research about what life in law school is like and how to get through it comes from sensible plans with the ultimate goal of getting a job as a faceless drone in a big law firm. If you know me at all, you realize how out-of-character it would be for me to commit to working 80 hours a week on salary just to cover my student loans. Add to that my desire to get a bidness degree, and the future becomes even cloudier. If I don't want to be a lawyer, then my goals are not really in line with the "how to succeed in law school" plans. In fact, part of me is considering the possibility that I don't have to excel in school right now. (The success plan to which I have given the most thought espouses acing the first year classes and getting on Law Review. This has an added bonus of increasing the likelihood for financial assistance for the next two years.) But if my goal is to go on to another degree, then my motivation to bust my ass evaporates. If all I want is the legal education, and to focus that education on topics that I won't even study for another year, then why should I try to come out on top of my class? The grading system, like most other aspects of law school, is a fucking racket that screws the students, but that is a subject for another rant.

I am at a crossroads in my first semester as a law student. If I decide to press boldly onward, I will have to buckle down and work my ass off for the next couple of months. I have pretty much burned through all of my allotted slacking off time. I have overcome the kneejerk desire to quit law school altogether, though that wasn't really and option, as the consequences of such an act - defaulting on my loans, being stranded in DC with no job and no income, telling my parents that I gave up - are untenable. Now I have to look at what I want to do with the next few years of my life and decide if I should commit the next 2.5 years to trying to excel at something I loathe, or if I should merely extract the education that is useful to me out of law school, a la plasmapheresis. (Sorry, I gave at a blood drive at school last week, and so certain vocabulary words have a greater presence in my mind than they usually would.)

Pessimistic though it may be, I am afraid to try forcing excellence because I'm not sure that I can actually do it if I don't care about my classes. I'm at least going to finish up this year. And that puts me 1/3 of the way to a law degree if I continue, and puts me on the other side of a wasted year and mountains of debt if I don't. Is it less of a waste to half-ass my way through law school then it is to quit after a year? I haven't done nearly enough research on MBA programs (the joint program at GWU was pretty much the only option I considered), so I don't know if business school will be any more tolerable than law school. Is it too late to start a band or run away to Hollywood?

That's pretty much it. Do I buckle down, or just buckle? Stress myself out and give up my life to get good grades, or just do enough to get by and get the degree and the education for my own benefit? I'm equivocating, but I need to make a decision soon. And since asking my parents for advice in this case is pretty much asking for a confrontation, I am asking you, the intertron, for insight.

This tirade brought to you by 3 hours of pseudo-sleep, medicinal metabolic lag, and the letter Q.

*This makes it sound like I spend my days in a drug-induced haze. Not so. I'm really pretty much the same person, only I have less trouble focusing, and I don't agonize over petty details as much. Seriously, I never realized how panicky I was until I started taking pills that have a side-effect of reducing anxiety.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: The Thorns - Blue

So, what did I promise to write about in my last few posts?

Oh yeah, I promised to write another post the day after a bunch of times, and then I never did. Think I'm actually writing maybe 2 a month now.

Anyway, things in short:

Back in June, I mentioned that my CD writer just stopped writing CDs. I even made a quasi-obscure literary joke, and I didn't get one groan from my quasi-obscure literary friends. Alas. Anyhow, I have since not only replaced the faulty hardware, but I have in fact compiled a mix comprising not one, but two CDs of musical awesomeness. I know that I have already promised impressionmuse that I would mail her a set (at this point, I am so far behind that I don't remember if anybody has sent me a mix and I owe them one). I am still calling it a summer mix, even though it was made at the very end of the summer. So what I'm saying is that I want to trade mixes with people again. I say this almost constantly, and I figure if I keep repeating it, then somebody might actually decide to participate.

Now, on to other things that I may have mentioned during or since June.

I did not get into George Washington University (my first choice school). I was not surprised by this, but I did make it a point to call the dean of admissions so I could hear the final word from her personally. She actually sounded sad.

What does this mean? Well, for one thing, I am paying roughly 1/2 the tuition at my current institution as I would have at GWU. And for another, I feel like a fucking idiot because I'm pretty sure I would have gotten into GWU if I had just gotten my fucking application in earlier, like when I had actually planned on submitting it. Also, my grand scheme to get a law degree and an MBA in one fell, four-year swoop is going to have to be re-evaluated. But then again, after one month in law school, I am starting to re-evaluate damn near everything about my plans for the future.*

My apartment here is really nice. And from what I understand, I actually got a pretty good deal for the area. This in no way diminishes the sticker shock every month when I pay rent. I don't have much knowledge about housing prices in many areas, but for those of you in Raleigh, Charlotte, and surrounding similar areas (ie, the Carolinas), imagine what you think would be a really good deal, but not altogether unrealistic on an apartment. Now swap out the rent for the square footage, and you've got DC rent. Couple this with the generally higher cost of living (the $.99 value menu at Wendy's? That is now the $1.19 value menu. Greedy freckled bitch.) and you get compelling evidence that I am a stupid, stupid man for not finding a place with a roommate to defray expenses. I am, however, metro-adjacent, which is a hip term in the local vernacular meaning "I can walk to the damn subway." So I am not spending as much money on gas as I would in Charlotte, and more importantly, I am avoiding DC traffic on my morning commute to school. This is especially useful, in that it keeps my blood pressure from blowing the roof off of my skull.

Seriously, DC traffic makes me look back fondly on that 4 hours I spent leaving Atlanta.

My social situation is slowly, but surely improving. I have actually been to a few parties here. The fact that I willingly entered a social gathering where I was literally surrounded by strangers should illustrate the lengths to which I am going to avoid becoming a damned shut-in. I have made a few friends, but nobody's at the "hanging out for a while" stage yet. And there are girls here, and you know how I like girls. And you also know how that usually works out for me, so you won't be disappointed by the first three that caught my eye: married, in a relationship, and "it's complicated." No, these are not rejections I have gotten, but are indicators of relationship status that I have either determined firsthand (chica's wearing a wedding ring and mentions her husband) or via the strangely socially acceptable technique of Facebook stalking. What the hell does "it's complicated" mean, Facebook?!

birma wanted me to write about events and thoughts leading up my big move, so this is as good a place as any to mention the girl I was into before I left. She was off limits pretty much the entire time I have known her. But about a month or two before I was going to move away, she broke up with her boyfriend. So I called her up and said, "I'm moving away in a few weeks, and I hear you're on the rebound now. You wanna hook up?"

Obviously I didn't say that. But I did spend weeks agonizing over how to attempt any sort of relationship with this girl (who, it has been pointed out to me, is way out of my league) without being some asshole who was trying to score on the rebound. Even though my stints as "rebound guy" have each lasted for well over a year, I didn't think that it justified making a quick play for a vulnerable girl. Life would be much easier for me if I hadn't developed any morals. So, we talked a lot, and we hung out some, and we even went to a movie. (Incidentally, the most recent Harry Potter flick is much much better when you watch it in the company of a pretty blonde.) And I tried to calculate the exact moment when enough time had passed so that she wasn't a rebound, and enough time was left so that I wasn't a prick trying to get lucky before blowing town. All my mental aggravation led me to the conclusion that there wasn't any such moment, and our hero wasn't going to get the girl in this chapter. So I moved away, and she didn't notice. And we only talk when I initiate conversation. And this was all starting to sound eerily familiar, so I decided to file her away under "it would've been nice," and I have all but go let go of the notion now. But I bet she's a great kisser. :)

I think that's enough writing for now. To close, I am getting used to living up here, and I am handling law school. I have a few friends, and that number is growing. I have been keeping my apartment clean (remarkably clean, if you've ever spent any time in the sties I used to live in). I even had guests this past weekend, even though they were only using me for my apartment. :) And next weekend I am going to Raleigh for ncschmoo's pending nuptials, so I will see friends on a joyous occasion, and I will in all likelihood get chicken wings and beer at that most sacred of institutions, O'Malley's. So life is looking up. :)

*This subject has all the early warning signs of being a really emo post of its own in the near future.**

**Yes, I am aware that I very frequently write things like "I'll touch on that in a future post," and I almost never follow through. But nobody really gives a shit anyway, so it's cool.

PS - I haven't really been posting frequently enough to give out my mysterious "points," but I will offer 20 points to the first person who points out the literary joke that I have now referred to twice.

Current Mood: optimistic
Current Music: Danger Mouse - 99 Problems

So, johnofchisane sent me a link to this:


And I thought it was kinda fun and worth sharing. But then I saw a related link on that page that took me to this:



I have never felt older in my life.

I'm gonna go yell at some kids for no reason now.

Current Mood: listless

A. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag seven people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag "whoever wants to do it."

1. I hate bell peppers. Makes no difference if they're green, red, or yellow. I have no valid reason for this, not like my reason for hating licorice (because it's what evil tastes like). I'm actually teaching myself to eat bell peppers in small amounts, but I can only do it when they're cooked, in very small pieces, and/or a supposedly essential component of the flavor (like putting peppers on a grilled sausage). I can't even stand the smell of raw bell pepper.

2. I am usually terrified of girls that I'm attracted to.

3. I have noticeable amounts of gray hair on my head.

4. I have dozens of stories with hundreds of characters constantly playing out and becoming more complex and interconnected in my head. For ten years, I have been unable to make myself write any of it down.

5. I hate cooking for myself. When I'm the only one eating, I will usually do the bare minimum to satisfy my hunger. This usually involves eating out when a) I can't really afford to and/or b) I have food at the house. But when I'm cooking for other people, I will happily spend hours, even days, preparing food for everyone.

6. Though I have historically been somewhat detached from politics (apathy and laziness being the two major causes), I have recently started to pay more attention. I still hate it when I am expected to pigeonhole myself by identifying myself as a party-member or by declaring outright what my usual decision-making mindset is (liberal or conservative). I do lean quite a bit left of center on many issues. So far the only real result of my partially increased attention to political news is that I am filled with an overwhelming compulsion to change the channel whenever I see our president on TV. I just want to slap that smirk off his face most of the time, and I can never actually listen to his voice anymore.

7. For years and years, I would make jokes as a defense mechanism in situations where I felt threatened or uncomfortable. I still do that, to a degree, but I guess I felt uncomfortable or threatened for so long that I have become a genuinely funny guy (if I do say so myself). I'm still waiting for that "funny guy gets all the chicks" stereotype to pan out.

So, yellowdart and hummerabs03 tagged me. I guess I will tag:

amsalliecat, birma, greenpad, impressionmuse, reddrummz, runswithcarrots, and alien1143.

Current Mood: calm

So, Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm (from DaVinci's Notebook) are playing tomorrow night at The Birchmere, and I really want to go. Who will go with me?

Current Mood: geeky

For the next installment of my life, I will be living in the Washington, DC area. Specifically, I live in Fairfax, but that's only important if you're mailing me something.

I moved up two weeks ago with the help of my friend Dane, who had valuable experience driving a truck with a trailer attached. numberprocess also came by to help with the move-in (thanks again), and we got everything inside the apartment at least. I am still putting things away, largely due to my own inherent laziness, but also due to the fact that I didn't have a dresser to accommodate my clothing or enough bookshelves to accommodate my 6+ boxes of books (help me, I'm turning into my father).

Since then I've seen or at least made contact with most of my friends in the area. I have been hit in the face with the harsh reality that I have once again moved away from a place where I had dozens to hundreds of friends nearby to a place where I know twenty people, tops. I'm not worried. I am, after all, very charming. So I will go about making friends once I get into the swing of classes at GMU. But for now, I am a stranger in a strange land.

I have a very nice place to live. The building has nice amenities and excellent security, designed to keep out the riff-raff. This is mildly unnerving, because I'm the riff-raff!

I've been wanting to write about my life leading up to the move, but now that I'm here I feel like I can't fit it all into one post. Well, I suppose I could, but it would be unusually long, and far beyond the attention span of the average LJ reader. But I want to write. And I know I need help to stay motivated about writing regularly, so please, if you're reading this and you're at all interested, comment and let me know. Better yet, ask me something so I can write about it.

In the meantime, I have to go tend to my oven before the pizza sets off my unbelievably irritating smoke detector.

Current Mood: contemplative

In the morning, I will finish packing up all my worldly belongings and set out for the heart of Mount Doom, deep within Mordor Washington, DC.

I am moving away from Charlotte.

I'll give you all a more substantive update after I'm all settled in.

I just saw a sneak preview of Transformers with bombpiece.  I went in with the assumption that Michael Bay was about to take a treasured piece of my childhood and slowly lower it into a vat of acid, but at least it would look pretty.

I was wrong.  The parts of my brain that control nostalgia and geekiness were behaving like the parts of my brain that control picturing naughty cheerleaders in lingerie pillow fights.  I mean, they actually got Peter Cullen.  Peter Fucking Cullen!  The original voice of Optimus Prime (also, most of the other major cartoon characters that I loved as a child) was brought back to reprise the role.  The movie opened with a Peter Cullen voice-over, and I just knew that I was going to have a fantastic time.

I don't want to spoil the movie for you, because I actually want you all to come with me when I see it again about a thousand times.  I do however, want to try to convey at least part of my joy in the condensed form of a lolcats conversation:

OPTIMUS PRIME - O Hai.  I has been made of awesome.

MEGATRON - I can has t3h Matrix from t3h first movie?

OPTIMUS PRIME - Oh noes!  I made some badass for you.  We fight now!

Go see Transformers.

You will see evil mechanical aliens acting nonchalant.
You will see Michael Bay silencing his critics.
You will see a marine shoot an alien robot in the taint.

What more can I say?

I am in the process of retooling my brain so that maybe I can write cogent prose again. In the meantime, you get a list:

• I have been planning a week-long road-trip out to Arkansas so that I can visit my best friend Bill, whom I get to see an average of .7 times per year. He's lived there for several years now, and I've never once been out to see him. My route would take me from Charlotte to Fayetteville, with an overnight stay in Nashville to break up the driving. I would also be able to stop for some delicious food on the way at several restaurants recommended to me by Marcus.
• My mother offered to set me up with some of our family's frequent flyer points instead, so that I would fly directly there and back.
• I say she offered me the points, but actually I was told in no uncertain terms that I would not be driving anywhere.
• I have never been more disgusted or disappointed by the prospect of free air travel.
• The way the flight schedules work out, I still get to see Bill for roughly the same amount of time, and it's not like we're going to need two cars or anything.
• If it weren't for the fact that my plans have been preempted because my mom is pissed that I haven't gotten a job yet, I would be absolutely thrilled.
• Now, instead of driving in my gorgeous car through the country and enjoying the adventure I was planning, I get to go through the positively insulting security theatre at the airport.
• I know I will be in a much better mood about this tomorrow, because I still get to see my friend. But right now I am pissed because I am being treated like a child. As if it were not embarrassing enough already to be living at home and unemployed, now I've got my mother making my decisions for me.
• I believe I've bitched about this enough for now. Let's move on to something else.
• I have seen a shrink, and I have been diagnosed with severe adult ADD.
• Raise your hand if you're surprised at all.
• I am in the process of trying different doses of different medications to figure out what treatment will work best for me.
• I am trying to get my ADD under control before I go to law school in the fall, because I will make an ass of myself and waste a tremendous amount of money if I go off to a law program and dick around.
• I know I haven't kept my journal up to date, so a lot of you reading this have no idea that I got accepted to the George Mason law school, and I am on the wait list at George Washington.
• Either way, I will be moving to DC in a couple of months.
• George Washington is my first choice, because I want to enroll in the joint JD/MBA program they offer. If I don't get in there for my first year, it will be such a tremendous pain in the ass to do the joint program as a second-year transfer student that it's pretty much a better idea to get my law degree from Mason and get a second business degree elsewhere. I would be shaving a year off the total time for both degrees by doing the joint program, so doing both degrees separately doesn't actually cost me any time. (George Mason does not offer a joint JD/MBA program. In fact, I don't think they are reputed to have a decent business school at all.)
• I've been doing my best to kiss butt and impress the admissions department at George Washington. I even brought them muffins. Unfortunately, I won't find out if the school is even going to open up the wait list for admissions until the end of this month.
• The whole "moving to DC" thing is another major factor in my unbelievably pathetic job search. I can't get a "real job" that will hire me for the duration of "maybe a couple of months," and will allow me to take the time off I will need to visit DC for the purposes of sweet-talking the admissions office and finding a place to live.
• This leaves me with two options:
  • Temp work - I am signed up and have completed the testing and paperwork for a temp agency, but every Monday, I can't bring myself to call them. This may also be ADD related.
  • Odd jobs - So far I have been paid to take care of an absentee friend's lawn, and I have been paid for singing with a bunch of amazing vocalists at a community arts gig in the Levine Museum of the New South. (Check me out, I'm a professional musician now.) Two nights ago I ran into the man who gave my first job when I was in high school. I mentioned being unemployed, and he gave me his card and told me of the many projects he's working on and needs help with. So I'm calling that a good omen and I'm going to invite him to lunch as soon as I can.
  • Hmm...now that my travel plans have been truncated by 4 days, I actually have time to try for that lunch meeting this week.
  • Even if I get a job out of it, there's no way in hell I'm thanking my mom. :)
• I have made virtually no investigation into potential financial aid for law school, even though my first choice is the most expensive law school in the country.
  • I can't afford any law school on my own, and so I've been planning on getting more loans to cover it.
  • I don't really think that I'm eligible for any scholarships or grants, because I am an upper middle class white boy with a marginal GPA.
  • My goal has been to buckle down and kick a lot of ass my first year so that people will offer me money for the remainder of my schoolin'.
  • I do, however, feel like a complete asshole for not even looking into any financial aid besides filing my FAFSA paperwork. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with the school if I do get money from the guv'mint.
• I'm really looking forward to moving to DC:
• I've got quite a few old friends from Raleigh there.
• Also a few new friends from my trip to England.
• A few brothers from Mu Beta Psi.
• At least one former love interest.
• And the only girl that I would break the five-year limit for.
• Not to mention all the great stuff to do and see and eat in DC.
• The thing I look forward to most of all though, is moving out of my parents' house. It's a great house, I love my parents, and we get along. But holy shit, it is so far past time for me to leave that I am starting to relish the nights when I sleep on a friend's couch.
• I'd like to live on my own, but even with student loans, I just can't justify the expense of not getting a roommate. One roommate = 1/2 rent and 1/2 utilities.
• I need to find a place somewhere adjacent to the Orange Metro Line, as that train makes stops at both schools that I might be attending.
• Reading back over this list, it's like a textbook example of ADD thought.

I am feeling better now, so I'll close with a shorter, less hostile list:

• If you have ever lived in the DC area or know anybody that has, and you can recommend some place for me to look into living, I will love you forever.
• As soon as I solve the mystery of my CD burner that just would prefer not to write CDs (hereafter referred to as Bartleby, for the one or two of you who will get the joke. I'm looking at you, runswithcarrots), I will be in full Summer Mix CD swing. I am even thinking of making a two-disc mix this time, because I've got a lot of music I want to include. nicholaspea has already given me his mix, and it is most awesome. Get your mix on and trade with me!
• In two days, I will be hanging out with my best friend and I will be damn near 1000 miles away from everything that's bothering me right now.
• I really miss writing in my journal here, because it's fun, it's therapeutic, and I actually get responses from my friends with whom I have been painfully lax in keeping contact.
• That's it. I mean really, did you want this rambling brain-dump of a list to go on any further?

Current Music: In The Nursery - Mandra

I'm running away to the beach for a while. Then I'm going to DC for Wesley's wedding. I'll be back next week.

In the meantime, I leave you with my latest discovery in the Asian grocery store:



I'm pretty sure that this kind of thing won't ever be not funny.