Let’s take a look.

Jan­u­ary
The first month of the year started out with us in with­drawal from a week-long trip to Mex­ico. It was our Xmas Vaca­tion 2009, and it was fab. We didn’t recre­ate it for 2010, but we are plan­ning on it for 2011. We had a bake-fest – where we made cook­ies, ahem–and we moved into a new apart­ment. I lived at Henry Street for a measly five and a half months before we vacated for smaller and cheaper pas­tures. I was sad, I felt like we were sac­ri­fic­ing too much, and more than any­thing, I felt respon­si­ble for the move. V had lived there with C for I don’t know how long, and C always had more than enough money to go around. He was a trav­el­ing nurse, and they are always well com­pen­sated. But since he moved out, and since I moved in to fill the vacant spot, and since my bank account didn’t match C’s, we had to make a sac­ri­fice. It took a lot less time than I expected, and within a few weeks, I had accli­mated myself to the new space, and now I can’t think of leav­ing it.

Jan­u­ary also began my new school career. As I promised myself in Novem­ber, fol­low­ing the very ungrace­ful inter­view at Elan, I went back to school to fin­ish up my bachelor’s degree. I started out with two classes, dropped one, and really liked the one I kept: soci­ol­ogy. In fact, I liked it so much, I dab­bled with the idea of going into a social field to help peo­ple some way, some how. That faded as quickly as it came, and I focussed my sights on French, as I had when I was in high school.

Feb­ru­ary
The sec­ond month of the year was not so busy. I don’t remem­ber any­thing too spe­cial. We went to the SAP Open in San Jose. We saw a cou­ple con­certs. That’s it. Pretty much.

March
Wow, what a month March was. Aside from more ten­nis at Indian Wells, not much hap­pened. But being laid off from a job I hated made the month almost spec­tac­u­lar. I still can’t believe that I was as momen­tar­ily dev­as­tated about being laid off as I was. My ego just didn’t make the con­nec­tion fast enough for me to avoid the pit­fall in my stom­ach. To this day, there is no regret, and I’m so happy to be free of that weird hole in SSF.

April
It seems like I coasted through April, with only one con­cert. Adjust­ing to unem­ployed life was easy. I mean, when you’re fully immersed in the World of War­craft, it’s easy for the days to fly by.

May
May was equally bor­ing, except that my lay­off became final, and I was really among the mil­lions of job­less. I cleared out a money pit of a stor­age unit, which sub­se­quently sev­ered ties with a rela­tion­ship that lasted far too long. I got a new eye pre­scrip­tion before my ben­e­fits wore off, and I recon­nected with an old boss who kinda saved my ass–again.

June
As I look back through my cal­en­dar for June, noth­ing hap­pened. One hair­cut. That’s all?

July
July was a lit­tle more busy. The Fourth in G’ville, three birth­days, three con­certs, and the Bank of the West Clas­sic at Stan­ford. I turned 39 this year, and very shortly after that, I started to feel my age. For years and years, I never felt like the age I was. I always insisted that I felt like a 20-year-old. Though I main­tain this posi­tion now, my true age creeps in every once in a while to remind me that I’m adult and maybe should start act­ing like one…every once in a while.

August
More birth­days, more con­certs, more school, and a trip to New York! I started Span­ish for real and loved it imme­di­ately. Shortly after the begin­ning of the term, I decided to add a dou­ble major to my BA and make that Span­ish. Why not? Easy peasy. I had Eng­lish 1B and a cin­ema tele­course, but by Novem­ber, I was down to one class again and fear­ing that this is a bad habit to pick up.

My sec­ond trip to New York was fab. We had a great time in upstate at V’s fam­ily place, and a few amaz­ing days in the city after­wards. We went to the US Open two days, saw a Broad­way show, and ate our way across town. It was so much fun, we might do it again this summer.

Sep­tem­ber
School and school. I was so busy get­ting used to study­ing a for­eign lan­guage again, time just flew by.

Octo­ber
More con­certs, a straight wed­ding, and V’s first marathon in Port­land, Ore. And more school.

Novem­ber
A long week­end in Vegas to cel­e­brate a 30th birth­day, a week­end I can’t really remem­ber even though I kinda want to. More school. Only one concert!

Decem­ber
Decem­ber was kind of gay. It is hol­i­day sea­son after all, and the gays love the holidays…well, most of them, except this one, any­way. But we saw Liza Min­nelli at Davies, which at this point is a once-in-a-lifetime deal, and it was purty cool, I have to say. But was was extra spe­cial was Cyndi Lau­per at the Inde­pen­dent. She was there to pro­mote her Grammy-nominated blues album, but I was there to live a dream. OMG. For as long as I can remem­ber, she has been one of my favorite singers, and I never got to see her live. She was kind of a diva on stage, but it’s kind of OK because I think she’s allowed at this point, and her voice was fan­tas­tic. She was all in black leather with all kinds of red hair every­where. My god, that was a great show. I love her so much. Even if it was the blues.

The holidays…meh…what’s to say? They were kinda bor­ing this year. We planned a “stay­ca­tion” to save some cash, and it was nice. It rained a lot. NYE is all a blur, and I real­ize that it was just a week ago, but I can’t remem­ber what I did, so I’ll just say I’m sorry, please forgive.

Don’t really know what to expect for 2011. I’m going with the flow and let­ting things fall where they will. I’m in school, start­ing again in a cou­ple weeks, three classes, drop­ping none of them. They’re all required now. I’m turn­ing 40 this year. I can’t fuck­ing believe that shit. I’m not gonna own that one for a while. Although, the guys I hang out with now kinda like dad­dies, and though I’m loath to be a daddy, it might be a fun drag to play.

I guess that’s all. We’ll see.

I stepped into the future this morn­ing. I opened up my pack­age from Amazon.com, and found my birth­day present to myself, my new Kin­dle. For a long time, I poo-poo’d the whole idea of the Kin­dle. Books should be printed on paper and bound with glue and have pretty and col­or­ful and attrac­tive cov­ers to look at. And peo­ple should have copi­ous book­shelves on which to hold these books.

At the same time, I was secretly intrigued by the tech­nol­ogy and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the Kin­dle. Remem­ber when I went to Palm Springs all those years ago? I used to lug three or more paper­backs with me, some of which were parts of series, and after fin­ish­ing them, I would often drag myself out of my pool-side chair to drive to the Barnes & Noble in Palm Desert only to find that they didn’t have what I wanted. And I would be kinda pissed off. Well, those days are over with the Kin­dle. Seri­ously. This is not an adver­tise­ment. I’m not being paid for this. I love the Kin­dle. Now that I have one for myself and have seen how it works, I won­der why I waited so long.

When V and I moved into our cur­rent abode, we made a sac­ri­fice with space. There is no room here for book­shelves and a library. When I cleared out my stor­age, I “donated” dozens of paper­backs that I didn’t really want to get rid of, but in all real­ity, couldn’t keep any­where. Granted, I’ll have to repur­chase those books that I would like to read again, but I won’t ever have to move stuff around to find a spot to put them any­more — and feel guilty about doing so. They’re all stored on the device, and even if I remove them from the device, they’re stored at Amazon’s site and can be down­loaded again at a moment’s notice. I’m totally in love.

That said, I really do hope it hooks me up again. I loved to read and dis­tract myself from real­ity for a while. But with com­put­ers and the inter­net and YouTube and every­thing else vying for my atten­tion — and fuck­ing WoW, Jesus on the cross, Ennis is drag­ging his butt to get to 80, hon­estly — I won­der how effec­tive it will be. I hope so. And I hope that more col­lege classes allow Kin­dle ver­sions of their text­books to be used. OMG. Can you imag­ine? I’ve already seen a few listed, and it’s bound to happen.

This is the way of the future. I can’t wait.

Sorry, G’ville, I can’t take it any­more. Your locals are so methy and cracky that I just don’t want to deal. It makes my soul hurt to see so many peo­ple who have given up. Your cli­mate is hot and dusty and dry. Your local cui­sine is lack­ing. Your local enter­tain­ment is … well, it isn’t. The Lodge was a clus­ter­fuck, and it’s a walk into town on a busy, two-lane high­way, and I don’t trust your dri­vers to be legally licensed and sober enough to stay on the road and not come careen­ing into me. I know you would like to con­sider your­self “awfully handy to the city,” but you’re not. I just can’t hack it any­more. I don’t think we’ll be see­ing much of each other in the future. We’re just not meant to be.

I finally own my car lock, stock, and bar­rel. I made the last pay­ment ear­lier this month, and the title came in the mail today. Now what? It’s been seven years and eleven months pay­ing it off. I will never do that again. Never lease a car. It’s a waste of money. Totally. I don’t even drive the thing any­more, but what­ever. It’s one less bill to worry about every month!

Let’s see, it’s Day Who Knows of my funem­ploy­ment. I’ve only got a cou­ple weeks left before I’m really unem­ployed. I haven’t really done any­thing to work on that. I’ve been brain­storm­ing a lot about what I would like doing, and every­thing I come up with sounds fun, but doesn’t pay very well. I’ll have to work two jobs again. Yay. Or else set­tle for an office job. Nay.

I’m still going to school. I think it’s my only sal­va­tion at this point. I’m reg­is­tered for the fall term, with an Eng­lish class and Span­ish 1. That’s excit­ing. Really. I’m look­ing for­ward to it. I should have learned Span­ish a long time ago, like 20 years ago. What­ever. And I’m think­ing that I could dou­ble major in French and Span­ish or some­thing fun like that. I took a French place­ment test from SFSU the other day, and it put me in fourth year French. So, what do I do as a junior? I mean, I’ll be maxed out of classes before I even start! No, that’s not true, but I hope there are options for study at this level. God, that makes me sound so con­ceited. “I know every­thing there is to know about French, what else can you teach me?” Lady, please.

It’s cold and rainy today, my hordies still aren’t to 80 yet. Dammit all to hell. There’s so much to do! Will I have enough time? OMG.

I woke up this morn­ing, and Vinny was gone (he was in the shower), and I thought, shit, he left with­out me. But then, he would have left with­out me because I was laid off on Mon­day, and I don’t have to go to work any­more. The Secret works.

I called in sick on Mon­day; I had a migraine that would kill an ox; not the first time. The headaches have been more fre­quent in the last cou­ple of months, and I haven’t fig­ured out why, although I’m think­ing they were because of my job. I checked my e-mail, and was going to send an e-mail to every­one telling them that I was out sick that day. Instead, I found a mes­sage announc­ing a manda­tory com­pany meet­ing at 9:30 a.m. Oh, wow. The last time we had one of those, they announced lay­offs. So I sent a mes­sage to K and J and asked them to let me know what was going on. Then I went back to bed.

A cou­ple hours later, I woke up and checked my work e-mail. No responses. Then I noticed that my e-mail was frozen because my inbox was full, and now that I think about it, it was a weird coin­ci­dence that my e-mail inbox was full and blocked the day that I was laid off, or was it a coin­ci­dence? So I sent a cou­ple e-mails from my gmail account, and I got replies really fast. One of them said that there were indeed reduc­tions: 270 peo­ple, 40% of the staff. Whoa. That’s mas­sive. Then I called the VP, and the first thing he said was, you were part of the reduc­tion, and you need to call HR. I don’t think I’ve ever dis­missed a VP before, and cer­tainly not as fast as I did him. He was all like, sorry, not a reflec­tion on you, I wish you the best, yadda yadda, and I’m like, save it, get me out of here. I was lit­er­ally wav­ing my hand at thin air in my room like he was stand­ing in front of me and I was shoo­ing him away. I wanted to find out what I had to do next, not hear some­thing insin­cere and canned. I’m so turn­ing into my mother.

I went in to work yes­ter­day to sign the papers and find out what the whole pack­age was about. It was the first and last time I’d ever been to Bldg. 249. It was my last day at work. The pack­age is nice. I’m on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave and on full pay­roll and ben­e­fits until May, at which time I will become unem­ployed. Later this sum­mer I’ll receive a sev­er­ance check, my stocks will vest, and I’ll have a tight lit­tle sum of money to stash away. And there’s always unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, too. I should be able to max out the ben­e­fit. And if I do it right, I should be fine for a while.

Seri­ously, this is weird. I haven’t been unem­ployed since 2003, and even then it was only a cou­ple of months. I always have a job. I’m always work­ing. I haven’t been laid off since 1995. I always leave on my own, I never wait to be laid off or fired. But this time, even though I knew my job sucked, quit­ting with noth­ing else in my favor would have sucked worse. I wouldn’t have the pay­checks or the sev­er­ance or the unem­ploy­ment. I made a choice to stay in a shit job until the com­pany decided what to do with me. I decided to let them make the move. I was patient, and I was going stir crazy.

I have to find some­thing cre­ative to do with my time. I have to find a pur­pose again. And that’s great. For so long, I’ve been stuck in a job I hated and which didn’t even need me, and now I’m free. I think it’s time to move on from biotech and do some­thing more inter­est­ing, more fun. What, I have no idea, but we’ll find out. I’ve got plenty of time.

So, next up, $32 mil­lion. Nice round num­ber. And why not? What do you say, Universe?

Oh my god, I could really use a drink right now. My boss just gave me my review from last year’s per­for­mance, and he voiced — out loud — every­thing I’ve been rant­ing about for the last year. I am in the void. The group’s projects are under­whelm­ing, we’re “heavy” aka over­staffed, and the com­pany doesn’t know what to do with me. They’re going to try to find a place for me. That should be heart­warm­ing. That should make me feel safe and secure; I have a job for the fore­see­able future. But, brass tacks, I have noth­ing to do when I come to work, they know it, and no one know how to fix it yet … or ever. I’m bored. I need intel­lec­tual stim­u­la­tion. I don’t want to roam the halls look­ing for some­thing to do. And yet, he admit­ted to me that it’s not worth his los­ing the tal­ent in the short term only to have to make up for it later on. So I have to keep my nose clean and show up every day. And try not to go fuck­ing stir crazy. The Secret doesn’t always work.

My god, it’s humil­i­at­ing. How am I sup­posed to look at these peo­ple? They’re sup­posed to help me look for stuff to do, make up new respon­si­bil­i­ties, extend cur­rent ones. I feel like a char­ity case. I don’t care about the review and the num­bers. I know I didn’t exceed expec­ta­tions. I know I didn’t per­form to the best of my abil­i­ties. My abil­i­ties do not lie in man­ag­ing peo­ple. They lie in pub­lish­ing and for­mat­ting and copy-editing … things that I can no longer do. I feel like I’ve been cast off, put down in the base­ment behind stacks of boxes, hid­den from view because no one knows what to do with me. How do I make a job where none exists? How can I repur­pose my career? How do I stay relevant?

I never thought I would cry at work … espe­cially over some­thing like this, but I’ve never felt so worth­less before.

I would like to give pub­lic and sin­cere thanks to the City and County of San Fran­cisco for imple­ment­ing a Twit­ter ser­vice by which to report prob­lems found through­out the city. I have used this ser­vice three times already, and three times I have seen the prob­lems fixed within 48 hours. It’s amaz­ing to me. All of the issues I had were with road con­di­tions, small things com­pared to the over­all state of roads in the city, but they were men­ac­ing nonethe­less. The most recent of these was a small­ish pot­hole up against the curb of Lyon Street, just across from our new apart­ment. It was about two feet square, just big enough to roll one of your wheels in and not be able to get it back out. It looked like it had been there for a while because it was filled with all sorts of debris, includ­ing a banged up old orange street cone. One night, after park­ing just inches from it, I sent a direct mes­sage to @SF311, and within an hour, I had a direct reply with a case num­ber, and two days later, I woke up to the rum­ble of road equip­ment tear­ing up the street to fix the prob­lem, which looks a great deal worse than a sim­ple pot­hole. I should have taken pic­tures. In any case, it gives me a lit­tle bit of civic sat­is­fac­tion know­ing that I helped fix this irri­tat­ing prob­lem. I will be vig­i­lant and unafraid to tweet away any issues I see … within rea­son, of course. I mean, don’t even get me started on the Tenderloin …

In other news, I’m in a bit of quandary. Our new apart­ment is con­sid­er­ably smaller than Henry Street. I think I’ve men­tioned that. V made a sort of half-hearted rule about buy­ing new things, espe­cially when it comes to shoes. Yes, it was directed at me, and yes, I am ignor­ing him. His rule is that if we buy some­thing new, we should be pre­pared to get rid of some­thing old, in order to main­tain some ten­u­ous bal­ance that he thinks we’ve achieved. Ha, I say. I have 20-ish pairs of shoes, and they’re not at all orga­nized, and it’s messy, but what­ever. I wear them all. So, when I saw a sale at 6pm.com, for a pair of Keens that I don’t have yet, and for $30, I had to jump on that. They came in yes­ter­day, and I clev­erly wore black shoes to work so that when the new shoes came in (also black), I could swap them and wear them home with­out rais­ing too much sus­pi­cion. I don’t think he noticed them because for sure he would have said some­thing. But now I feel guilty for buy­ing them, or guilty for not telling him that I bought them. Like I need to come clean and admit an offense or some­thing. Like I’m doing some­thing wrong. Like his rule is ridicu­lous. He doesn’t read this, and no one else does, either, but I still feel like I need some abso­lu­tion. This is just as ridicu­lous as his rule.

One of my favorite songs ever, just for fun:

It’s over, we’re com­pletely moved out of Henry Street. Good-bye, farewell, see ya later. I don’t ever want to do that again. Seri­ously. Oh my god, I can’t really tell you enough how much I hated that whole expe­ri­ence. Not only the box­ing and schlep­ping across town in I don’t know how many trips, but the amount of junk that I have accu­mu­lated over the years and to which I have ascribed some sort of emo­tional value. It’s junk. Books, CDs, papers beyond belief, I don’t get it. I am mov­ing into a new phase of my life that is non-accumulative. I’m not buy­ing things I don’t need. I’m not col­lect­ing junk for the sake of any­thing. For my sake and san­ity, I will strive to be a min­i­mal­ist. Not only will it help my liv­ing space, it will help my bank balance!

And the books! Did I men­tion that I have more books than I know what to do with? Granted it’s not a library, but it’s so many. So many that I don’t know what to do with them. So many that I want to buy a Kin­dle just so I don’t have to keep them around. I don’t read as often as I used to, so it’s a won­der why I buy books at all. And that Kin­dle thing, as much as it’s still an abom­i­na­tion in my mind, is a pretty good idea for those of us who want to remain lit­er­ate but who don’t have space for it. I have to find a place for all these books. Like, some­where out of my apart­ment. Far, far away.

One of the strangest parts of the new apart­ment is my neigh­bors, as in, I don’t know them, I don’t see them, I don’t even really hear them, except when they open and close their doors. Our build­ing is three build­ings, three floors, six units in each, 18 total, do the math, all con­nected with lit­tle alleys between them, so from up above, the build­ing itself looks like an “M,” a “W,” or an “E,” depend­ing on your point of view. Our kitchen has win­dows that face onto that alley and look directly into the kitchen of the apart­ment next door. It was weird to wake up the first morn­ing, go into get break­fast and see some­one stand­ing there. I got a lit­tle self-conscious of my hair and my attire all of a sud­den. But then I real­ized that they weren’t look­ing over at us, even though I was look­ing over at them. I quickly averted my gaze and agreed to ignore them.

It’s weird. I feel like I’m break­ing the fourth wall when I do look over, and I can’t help being a lit­tle nosy. Plus, they have cats, and the cats see us and stare at us like we’re lit­tle laser points on the wall. And that freaks me out because I can see this black mass out of the cor­ner of my eye that is watch­ing me, and I don’t want to look because it’s not polite, and is this what city liv­ing is really like? Weird. Really weird. I don’t know them, and I almost don’t want to know them because it would totally ruin it for me. If we met on the street, would I have to be rude and not acknowl­edge them? Does the fourth wall extend out of the apart­ment and into the street? And since the win­dows don’t cur­rently have blinds or cur­tains, if we put up blinds or cur­tains, would it seem rude con­sid­er­ing the unspo­ken agree­ment of non-involvement? I just don’t know enough city eti­quette to know what the right answer is. I lived in flats for so long, and they were all so closed off from the neigh­bors, I don’t know. They were like lit­tle houses. I didn’t have to worry about stuff like this.

What­ever. Happy Mon­day. Happy February.

V&I were at Henry Street start­ing the cleanup process the other night, when a man came up to us and asked us if we lived there. We looked at each other like “what does this one want?” but instead he said that he lived in the neigh­bor­hood for 30 years and lived in our apart­ment for a long time. I was intrigued, mostly because Henry Street has a lot of curiosi­ties that have made me won­der. So we chat­ted for a few min­utes and he revealed a boat­load of information.

• He lived next door when Har­vey Milk lived at 18 Henry Street and knew him well. That val­i­dates prob­a­bly the biggest thing about our place. We lived in Har­vey Milk’s apart­ment! OMFG. Can you get gayer cred than that? Total win. V found Harvey’s name and address on a vot­ing record from the 70s when Har­vey was a super­vi­sor and lived in that apart­ment. Granted that’s an offi­cial record, but what­ever. Word of mouth, eye wit­nesses, and all that.
• He con­firmed that the abun­dance of elec­tri­cal out­lets in the kitchen, din­ing room, and liv­ing room was because the first floor had been a porn stu­dio. No idea what movies were made there, what the pro­duc­tion com­pany was called, or any­thing else, but he hinted that it was a gay porn stu­dio. Why not? And you know, one of the biggest down­sides to old Vic­to­rian / Edwar­dian flats is the lack of power out­lets. This place had no lack what­so­ever, and they all worked. It was pretty con­ve­nient, and already I miss them.
• And that funky face mask above the door that leads to the garage? It’s just there to cover the door­bell. Ha. When I first saw it, I freaked out and instantly thought it was satanic or oth­er­wise pos­sessed. I grad­u­ally changed my opin­ion and made it a pro­tec­tive tal­is­man for the apart­ment. It still freaked me out when I woke up in the mid­dle of the night, looked out the bed­room door, and saw it look­ing back at me. And here, it’s only a cre­ative way to cover up the door­bell. Silly.

That’s all I can remem­ber right now. We talked for a good 15 min­utes, and it was nice to hear the sto­ries. I don’t like talk­ing to strangers because most of the time they want to crit­i­cize me for buy­ing a Ger­man car (even though it was man­u­fac­tured in South Car­olina), or to com­plain about how the pigeons on the roof are eaves­drop­ping on them, or some crazy shit. I guess, every once in a while, you meet some­one who has some­thing inter­est­ing to share.

I’m really going to miss Henry Street.

V is my hero. My cuter, younger, hip­per boyfriend has come through time and again, and dur­ing this move, he has become my super­star. Last July, his room­mate moved out and fled to the East Coast. I left my apart­ment on Colling­wood to fill the empty space and cover half the rent. Then, just last week­end, we moved to a new apart­ment, a smaller apart­ment, and we’ve had to get rid of a lot of fur­ni­ture that just won’t fit. If it were up to me, I would call the Sal­va­tion Army (as much as I would hate that) and have them come pick it up in their super­huge truck. And thank­fully, it wasn’t totally up to me, because V has stepped up and posted every sin­gle piece of fur­ni­ture on craigslist, and so far, every­thing has sold. So instead of donat­ing (to a mostly wor­thy cause), we are actu­ally mak­ing some money off of it all. Well, he’s mak­ing money off of it all. We incurred so much debt mov­ing into this place, what­ever money he makes off of any of the fur­ni­ture goes directly to him to pay off what­ever is left. And that’s OK, because I was going to give it away for free anyway.

And I’m going to say right here and now — on the record — that I do not want to move again for at least ten years. I know, I know, ten years is a super long time, but hon­estly, I can’t stand the thought of pack­ing up and mov­ing again. So maybe it will end up being three, and we have a really cute new apart­ment with a fab kitchen, so maybe it will be seven. All I know is that mov­ing is the worst, and I can’t think of doing it again for a long long time. No more Uhauls, no more new fur­ni­ture. No more schlep­ping dusty boxes up and down stairs. I will grow to love NOPA and my cute lit­tle neigh­bor­hood, and the 5 stop right around the cor­ner, and I will deal with laun­dro­mats and no park­ing again. And I will save lots of money so I can buy a condo and never rent again.

And with regard to debt and all the evil that comes with it, I’ve had to drop my Eco class on Thurs­day nights because I can’t afford the fuck­ing text­book. Can you believe that shit? For three years, I lived on Colling­wood, shar­ing a $2000 apart­ment, and I had a lot of free time and money. Then I move to Henry Street, and I split a $3000 apart­ment, and I had a lot of free time and absolutely no money. That was the cat­a­lyst for mov­ing. We were both so broke that we couldn’t sur­vive much longer. And this whole school thing started up before I had a chance to reap the sav­ings of the new and cheaper apart­ment, even though the school thing was in place before we decided to move. Ugh. It’s so stu­pid. A text­book. Granted, they’re more expen­sive than they should be — I mean, why should an Intro to Ecol­ogy text­book cost ten times as much as Stephen King’s lat­est tome? And where’s the fuck­ing Kin­dle ver­sion of these text­books? It’s bloody high­way rob­bery, I swear to god. Oh well, les­son learned. I thought that work­ing full time and hav­ing a steady pay­check would make return­ing to school easy to afford, but return­ing to school as a 38-year-old work­ing adult is not easy in any regard.

So, another Mon­day, another week. It’s the end of Jan­u­ary already. Hahawhat? Jesus on the cross, Kathleen.