I Want Them To Know How I Love Them So

The sadness doesn't fill me anymore. It visits me occasionally, touches me lightly, tousles my hair, and then moves along. I feel better. I am making some friends and connections. I am planning towards the future, a bit. I feel happy. I am moving on.

Wonderful things are happening in the world. Scott and Tami have a new baby girl. Our bank cut back our hours of operation, which means I get an extra hour of non-work life every weekday and two on Saturdays, without taking a pay cut. This is not comparable to having a new child, nor is its inclusion in the same paragraph meant to imply this. Just both wonderful things.

In two weeks I will be taking a long weekend and travelling to New York City for the second time in the past year. I'm going to be visiting with a couple of friends and spending some time laying around Central Park and staying somewhere with a moderate amount of swank and just generally enjoying a little freedom. I am excited about this trip.

Little marbles of hail just started coming down from the sky moments ago, making the most wonderful ping and clang sounds on the heating units in the alley below my window. Thunderstorms and random downpours today, like a summer day that is full to its breaking point.

Currently Can't Get Enough of:
April by Sun Kil Moon

Plan to Marry

Even though it is being overshadowed by bigger news events and won't make anywhere near as much press as the Prop 8 battle in California, something about the gay marriage decision in Iowa feels very real, more personal and exciting for me. A state which is not my state, but is located directly adjacent to my state, and is not located in the very progressive Northeast or the very libertarian left coast but in the very heart of America, has decided that people like me should have equal access to marriage.

Here is a most awesome quote from the unanimous Iowa Supreme Court ruling: "We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective."

Damn straight.

Currently Watching:
Slumdog Millionaire

Who Loves You, Baby?

Yesterday was a very stressful day. My bank branch was audited by our company, which basically means that two guys came in first thing yesterday morning and looked over our shoulders and all of our paperwork from the last year for the entire day. It is very nerve-wracking and tense-making. They ask you questions that you couldn't possibly know the answer to, and count everything and go through notebooks and folders and drawers and everything. But we got through it and did very well. They only found the most insignificant errors possible, which makes me happy and reflects well on all of us at the branch.

In the afternoon, the human resources director of our bank came into the branch and asked to speak with me. She raised the possibility of transferring me to a supervisory position at our main bank location. That would have been a very good opportunity for me, promotion and networking-wise, if I was interested in a continued career in banking. I thanked her for thinking of me, but explained that I am tentatively planning on returning to school this fall to pursue a Master's Degree and my career in education. I'm riddled with doubts now, though; isn't this all a little bird-in-the-hand considering quitting my job means facing 10% unemployment and acquiring new debt?

I have a cold. Can't breathe. Bad timing, bad timing.

Tuesday night I got to see Jersey Boys, the Broadway musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. A couple of Kevin's friends (does that make them my ex-friends in-law? former friend's friends? ah, nomenclature) came into town for a mid-week visit. I trudged through the Sunday morning snow to meet them for breakfast, and Bethany mentioned that they were going to see Jersey Boys, that she went to college with a cast member. I guess I kind of invited myself along by saying how much I would love to see it. Well, the show was pretty great. If you were ever forced to listen to oldies in the car with your dad, you probably know many of the songs. Bethany's friend didn't go on that night, but he hooked us up with some sweet seats. We all went out for drinks after the show which was great, great fun. I know just enough about Broadway to carry on a casual conversation about shows and showtunes with him, so that was cool, too. Melodie and Bethany are the sweetest girls, just wonderful, wonderful people. Great huggers, great talkers, great fun. I hope that I will get to see them more if I move to Georgia later this year, which is where they both live.

Facebook is interesting. It is a lot of work, lots of messages and pictures and stroking people's egos. I'm kind of lazy on the internet. I read a lot, but try not to do too much that takes effort. Sad but true. Since I was two years late for Facebook, I also signed up for the internet thingy du jour, Twitter, which I am actually enjoying more, I think. I can send a quick txt message from my phone during the day to say something important or mundane, and I enjoy reading other people's micro-posts. If you are interested, you can find me at Davie_St. I've never used an underscore for anything before, thinking it looks just a little too self-congratulatory, but I guess DavieSt was already taken.

Just finished watching:
The Wire, Season 2

Southern Man

My bank manager goes to the mosque every Friday afternoon for a weekly prayer service. Today when he came back, he told us that there had been a special ceremony because a guy there had, in his words, "accepted Islam." Then he told us that the man had converted from Christianity. I said, "She must be really beautiful," and Mohammad said, "No, he." And then I explained my joke, that the man must be becoming a Muslim so that he can marry some beautiful woman. Don't tell him that I said so, but Mohammad's wife is a total knock-out. I'd convert for her.

But really, at the words accepted Islam, I became very uncomfortable with the whole conversation. I can't say that it was because I am unfamiliar with that sort of terminology or usage; I'm very familiar with it. Only from a Christian perspective, of course. It took me four-tenths of a second to realize how very off-putting and cultish a lot of our Christian verbiage and nounage must seem to those with limited knowledge of faithspeak and Bibletalk.

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I joined Facebook yesterday. I think that I'll probably come to regret that, but for now I'm finding it a profitable exercise, reconnecting with some really nice people from my past and connecting differently with some really nice people from my present. I'm adding friends slowly so that I can try to be personable and write a message to folks that I may not have talked with in six or eight years instead of just adding people to some silly roll call friends list.

A moment of unfettered honesty, I hope: I think that one reason I'm doing this is to prove to myself that I have friends. And I do have friends! Lovely, nice people. But I'm not the kind of person that collects connections or flaunts friendliness, and I don't have many friends in the here and now. So I'm reminding myself that I like people and people like me. I'm getting better about this in the real world, too, attending this Sunday night church service the last three weeks and meeting some nice and funny people. Making conversation and laughing, I can do it!

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But do I sabotage myself? Do I wait until I have my flight booked and my exit from the scene staged before I really try to love and embrace the place where I am? I've been accused of that, but I don't think it is necessarily fair. Sure, it is easier to try meeting new people and getting involved in new things now that my calendar says T-minus three months to liftoff. If something doesn't work out, no sweat, I'm leaving anyway. But I'm no commitment-phobe, and I've managed to make great new friends in lots of places that I've been in the world.

I guess the truth is that things really start coming together after a year of living somewhere. Stuff becomes second nature, and you get to know people, even the incidental little people in your life, on a deeper level. Opportunities arise, things grow and change, and life becomes easier and better. Sadly for me, that is also the time that I am itching to move along to somewhere else, something new and exciting and different. So while there are some really positive and advantageous changes coming at my work, and while I may have just met some really cool new people, and while I may be totally digging this new church service, and while they may be building a Trader Joe's - I couldn't dream this up if I wanted - at the end of the block where I live, I am still getting ready to leave. Again.

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I got some papers in the mail yesterday from my building managers asking me to renew my lease - which expires at the end of next month - for another year. I was kind of sweating it, then: what if they won't let me stay for just a few months, what if they want another year commitment or I have to be out? Moving to a new, temporary place in Chicago just isn't an option; way too much expense, work, and hassel to justify a three month stay. So I was trying to mentally prepare myself for the possibility of moving to Savannah at the end of April instead of the end of July. That would be so soon!

I called today on my lunch break, and they are letting me go month-to-month, just asking for a month's notice before I move out. Dodged a bullet on that one.


Currently Listening to:
Neil Young, Greatest Hits

Éirinn go brách

Today is pretty much the low point of the Chicago social calendar as far as I'm concerned. The Saturday of or just before St. Patrick's Day is certifiably insane around here. It seems to be especially bad here in my neighborhood, as there are a large concentration of Irish-themed pubs in a very short walking distance from my apartment. This morning I went to catch my bus to work at about 8:30, and I was amazed at the number of people who were already staggering down the street in their bright green tee shirts and Mardi-Gras-with-clover plastic bead necklaces. It took me a few hours to realize that those people probably just never went home last night, but still, 8:30 am is impressive either way, starting or finishing. On the ride home this afternoon I saw the police dragging some guy out of this one pub just down the block, handcuffing him on the back of the unmarked squad car while the line up of eager DePaul students waiting to get in the door for some green beer watched idly by. That was about 3 pm, so the party's really just begun.

I hate drunk people, so I'm gonna be holed up at home for the rest of the evening, waiting for this storm of cod-Irish alcoholism to pass me by. At least tonight I'll feel like I have some excuse.

Currently Reading:
At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill