Rock River

It seems that I am a single man once again. Furthermore, it seems that every time I become a newly-single man, I celebrate by purchasing a new bedding set.

Whatever, judge me, whatever. It helps me.

I actually rearranged my entire apartment yesterday. My apartment is a studio, so no big deal. But those small changes have given me a bit more space, a breath of fresh air, some nice tweaks. Oh, I like that last sentence! How I would like to apply it to my life writ larger.

Sometimes life is like a pretty bowl full of something that looks a lot like diarrhea.

I played pool boy one lovely Sunday afternoon this summer. I think this was, all things considered, the best summer of my life. I might be overselling it.

This pigeon waiting nervously at the bus stop with me was tagged. I thought it worthy of a photo.

Lincoln Karaoke is really Lincoln KTV. I went with a couple of Koreans. These aren't them. It was pretty fun.

I still look the same. I still wear that same hat.

Had to go to the last movie in the park (aka Chicago Outdoor Film Festival) alone. This is my favorite summer thing, these movies in the park, but it turns out that I don't like to go it alone anymore. Not after I had such wonderful company for so many weeks. Miss you, Marv.

I'm hoping to take some time off soon. I have a nice long weekend for the Labor Day holiday coming up. I should be going to visit my family down in Virginia the next week, and I'd like to make it out to Portland sometime in the coming months. I need to stretch my legs a bit, get out of this nutty metropolis.

Currently Reading:
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott

Buddy

It was my birthday. We went to a slightly pretentious Asian restaurant that I've always wanted to visit, replete with beautiful waitstaff, deafening music, and snobby people. I drank this watermelon martini. It was delicious.

So I'm 30. And big deal. Like I said before, as long as people are surprised when they find out that I'm 30, I'm okay with it. When I actually start looking 30 and acting 30 and having the kind of responsibilities that most people acquire around the age of 30, that's when I'll get all bitter and depressed about it. For now, it is cool. But I'm not changing my age on any of my online dating profiles.

I didn't do any sort of blow-out, big deal wham-she-bam or anything like that. I decided that since the events of my August - work and school-fizzle related - conspired to make this an unfortunately-timed watershed moment, I'm gonna have to really tear it up for my 31st. India in 2010, anyone?

I had a really great birthday, though. Everyone treated me very well, and for days on end, actually. Thanks for your cards and gifts and wishes and words.

This is Coldplay, when they came out into the audience to sing! Yeah, we weren't that close. But the concert was awwww-some.

This will be one of my favorite people to think about in the coming months. His name is Scott, and he looks exceedingly like James Marsden; four out of five friends who have been consulted on this agree. He leaves for Madrid next Tuesday for a year of schooling. He has made my summer wonderful in a hundred ways. He is kind, thoughtful, loving, adventurous, fun, and challenging. Because of his plans for this fall, our relationship had an expiration date stamped on it the very first time we met. But I'm happy to say that our friendship won't expire, and I look forward to having him in my life in the future.

Ending on good terms! How nice.

Currently Listening to:
Stupid Love by Mindy Smith

Grand Mall

And so the older sibling abuse begins: new nephew Jesse with old niece Ellie

Currently listening to Sufjan Stevens. Currently watching Watchmen. Currently reading something with the rather trite title A Fraction of the Whole - it is much better than the title suggests. Currently drinking root beer and locking my big toes together.

There is no taste more nostalgic for me than the taste of root beer. It is the taste of my grandparents' house in rural Ohio, the taste of the incredibly exciting visits there during holidays and summers. The tractor rides or trudges through that oh-so exotic substance called snow, the Christmas mornings or summer birthday parties with Dairy Queen ice cream cakes. Mine was the one in the shape of a log, Amy's was the heart-shaped one. Oh but the root beer - I remember the exact place in the pantry where the root beer was kept. I remember looking at it often, admiring it. Ignoring the other bottles of other flavors that were obviously for the boring taste buds of the boring adults. Ginger ale, anyone? Blech. Faygo was my grandma's brand. Didn't make any difference to me at the time, though now I suspect that seemingly innocuous bottle label may have had an acute effect on my adult sexual identity.

This afternoon on my bus ride home from work a woman in the front of the vehicle experienced some sort of medical crisis. It was intense and heartbreaking. The bus was full but not crowded, I was far to the back - my preferred seating - and the first indication that something was wrong was when this very loud, practical-looking woman with a shopping bag said, "Bus driver, I think we have an incident here." My first thought, hilariously, was that someone had touched her inappropriately, and she was gonna take care of business right there in front of us all. Instead, she crossed the aisle to this young African-American woman who appeared at first to be sobbing rather heavily. After a few seconds, it became clear that she was in fact experiencing some sort of seizure. Her head was rolling and jerking and her hands were moving very erratically. Another young lady from the middle of the bus moved quickly to the front to see to the girl. I thought they might have been together - funny how irrationally one can think during these critical moments - but it turned out that she was a nurse. I think she was a wonderful person to have on the bus, not at all shy about helping out or employing her skills. In a simple, understated way, heroic. These two ladies calmed her, encouraged her, and gave her comfort until the ambulance came to take her to get help. They are good people.

So, I bought one of those big hand soap refills and a 6-pack of toilet paper today. Guess I'm staying in Chicago. I actually did get an acceptance letter on Thursday to the school in Savannah that I applied to back in February. Ha ha, fuck you and all the snails that work in your admissions department, AASU.

I am still romantically involved with that handsome, vegan Jew that I told you about earlier. He's away for the weekend at a family wedding - oh my gosh, a Jewish wedding, how fun! - so I'm using these days as practice for returning to life on my own. He's leaving for Madrid in just a few weeks, so I'm wringing every drop of fun out of him that I can in the meantime. We went to a Coldplay concert up in Wisconsin last weekend, we've attended every Tuesday night movie down in Grant Park so far this summer, and we are now on a first name basis with the staff of the restaurant Crisp just down the street here. He's not big on shopping or the beach, so I get plenty of me time too.

What a great summer it has been. I hope that yours has been great, too. Let's have tea sometime soon and talk about it.

Currently looking forward to turning 30, just to get it over with already.

About Food

This was my dinner on Monday night. I like dinosaur-shaped meats. All meats should be dinosaur-shaped. In other thoughts, are McCain Smiles kind of black-face racist or do I just overcook them?

I'm sitting here eating Edy's Double Chocolate Brownie ice cream and remembering how I used to pay a small fortune for a midget-sized quart import container of this stuff at the Carrefour in Taiwan. Taiwanese ice cream sucks, and I would have absolutely died a miserable white man's Asian death without this crack. Even now, the taste takes me back to laptop movie nights under the mosquito net on the world's hardest bed.

Everyone that I know loves food. Except me. I've been running with a gang for a few weeks now that can easily spend an hour in Whole Foods' produce section picking vegetables for a cookout. This is great, excruciating madness. I see the enjoyment that eating out at new restaurants brings people, the excitement of trying a new type of cuisine, the fun that some find in cooking from scratch, from finding a new recipe.

I love ice cream, doughnuts, and Pringles, am passionate now about certain, very specific Asian dishes, and pretty much just eat to survive otherwise. I actually enjoy smelling food more than eating it most of the time. I work right by the break room at my bank, so I get the olfactory experience of biryani, Greek kabobs, and Vietnamese rice dishes on a regular basis. And then there was the day when someone brought sardines, extolling their Omega 3 content, and was savagely rebuked by all others in attendance.

Anyway, I don't love food. I guess some people have a hard time understanding this.

Just Watched:
Grey Gardens on DVD
"If you can't get a man to propose to you, you might as well be dead."

Pride comes easy with 450,000 of your peers and peeps around. The Monday after it generally isn't quite so easy.

Blogs are great. You can come and go, people care and they don't. So casual, like gym memberships for people who join just because they want to tell their friends and not feel so lazy. The best blogs, of course, have multiple authors with interconnected conversations and conflicting ideas and dynamic comments and heated discussion. My blog is a soliloquy, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Looking for meaning in the dustbin of my life. I probably won't find it in Savannah, so I might as well keep looking here. I learned a couple of weeks ago that the school to which I have applied doesn't make the all-important out of state tuition waver decision (my $10,000 question) until 2 weeks before school starts in August. This hardly allows me enough time to pack my apartment, much less quit my job, give my landlord any sort of notice, get a moving truck, move 1,000 miles, find a new place to live, change my mailing address with the postal authorities, start classes, get a job, and grow a new life to replace the one from Chicago that I shredded and recycled.

Young (very, very young) artist's work on display in the corridor outside the classroom portion of the new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. The gril is sad indeed.

I am not. I've really been enjoying this summer so far. I'm at the beach almost every day that I have off of work. I've been to several interesting concerts in Millennium Park, several fun neighborhood festivals, and experienced a different side to life in Chicago than I have during previous summers. It has been good. A lot of this has to do with the fact that...

I am still seeing this boy named Scott. He is very NICE. This may be my highest compliment of all, and altogether too rare for the gay boys. Which is not to mention other facts such as: he is also nice looking and nice smelling and intelligent and accomplished and stylish in a slightly-askew sort of way and somehow, miraculously, enjoys my company, too. He has cool friends, and I am working hard to get over his veganism. He turns out to be Jewish, which is a delicious irony if you know anything at all about my father. He is also moving to Madrid in August for a year of school, so I am totally, positively not falling in love with him.

I am mapping some things in my head now, though, as far as relationships go. And ebb and flow. I'm learning. There are interesting convergences and divergences, people patterns. There's probably more in common with evolutionary theory than just terminology, also. Punctuated equilibrium and missing links and extinction.

Currently Listening to:
Marry Me by St. Vincent