We Are All Just Numbers...

Unpacking, etc. Apartment is in that weird, liminal space in which it gets much messier before it looks awesome. Sure.

So I will leave you with some numbers:

112: The temperature that it was here yesterday.

$4.67: The price I paid for gas last time I filled up. (I decided to get 2 gallons and drive to a station that I knew would be 20 cents cheaper.)

6-16-2008: My 2 year anniversary of living in California.

$323: The price of my round-trip plane ticket back to Indiana. Maybe I should add another $30, seeing as how it's American Airlines. In August, I'm going back for a wedding...and if there were ever a month when I would not want to visit Indiana, August would be it. Ironic, considering that that was the month I moved there.

Back to trying to get the home together.

As each box is unpacked, broken down, and thrown out, life is slowly starting to wind back down into a normal routine. Moving is an incredibly stressful event, and I've already decided not to move again until I have enough money saved up to hire movers to do it for me. I've also decided not to move again until I am done with my time here in SoCal, or until I get married/shack up with a life partner. Neither are happening any time really soon, and so I can relax and melt into a puddle of domestically-blissed-out Mel goo.

I do like it here. Already I have learned the funny little quirk of life down here in the desert: do it (it being anything) or don't do it at all, and wait until October. Almost everywhere else in the country, people get outdoors during the summer and hole up in the winter; here it's the other way around. 115 degrees is simply too punishing. I find myself day-dreaming a lot about places like Seattle and Asheville, places that are mountainous and cool and rainy and cloudy and humid, but when I catch myself, I shrug it off. And remind myself to put on more sunscreen.

The cats are doing alright with the move, too. Maggie doesn't seem to be fazed at all; Austen, well, he's another story. He's not the brightest kitty, but the first thing he learned at the new place was to pry open a kitchen drawer and dive inside whenever he gets scared. Sometimes I wish I could fit in there with him!

Last night I tried my hand at cooking, with mixed results. I found a recipe for ground-turkey-stuffed peppers which looked yummy...I added the correct amount of milk to the turkey-flour mixture, but I found it a little too runny for my tastes. I added rice to the recipe, but added it a little too late in the process so it's not entirely cooked, and the whole recipe is not spicy enough. I am excited, though...I think this will be a great recipe to experiment with until I perfect it into my version.

Tomorrow I am going off to San Pedro in the evening to visit my cousins before they move away to another phase in their army life. I am not due over there until later, so I think I am going to get a little adventurous and explore the Queen Mary over in Long Beach. Given my penchant for calamity, it will be a brilliant stroke of luck if I manage to sink the old girl.

Over and out, folks. Have a great weekend!

Living It Up, Singles-Style

So much has happened in the past month...things that seem pretty cruddy at the time, even as you intellectually know that it's all happening for your own good. But all of it pales in comparison with the biggest event of the year: I moved.

In fact, I am currently hanging out in my own home, my Palm Springs condo (rented, not purchased) sipping champagne out of a shotglass that my colleague gave me. Why a shotglass and not a lovely, elegant, art-nouveau-style glass flute? Well, the flutes are packed away, the plastic shot glasses were accessible, and oh my god give me alcohol NOW!

Moving is effing hard work. And you always find out who your true friends are when you move. This move was such a protracted affair, and when the actual furniture got moved, it was apporximately 1,003 degrees outside. But it's over, for the most part; all that's left is the best part, which is unpacking and organizing and cleaning and decorating and making it my home. I will stay here for at least three years (simply because I am sick of moving, and I love my job), and it's nice to think about what can unfold here in this time. Maybe I'll write a novel, or find real love and companionship as opposed to a stop-gap measure. Maybe I'll learn to grill on the charcoal grill the previous tenants obligingly left behind. Maybe I will entertain some, and learn to knit. Maybe there should be no "maybe" about any of these possibilities.

At the end of the day, all I know is this: this is the first place I have wanted to live in a very long time. I moved to California because I had to, because the alternative was staying in Indiana and feeling like a mooch with M. and gambling on a very problematic relationship and giving his mother more ammunition against me. I moved to Beaumont because I needed to be close to work and my colleagues. But I moved to Palm Springs because I found a great place to live, in a great city. Except for the lack of heterosexual men, of course. But I found a place where I wanted to be, and for the first time in 2 years, I feel as though I had a choice.

Now pass me that champagne, please.