Back to Life

I'll leave Seattle on November 27 and arrive at Penn Station in Manhattan on either the evening of November 30 or the evening of December 2, depending on whether I stop in D.C. on the way.

I feel like a six-year-old about eighteen days out from Christmas. 

My travel plans have changed dramatically from the original concept and I am very happy with those changes, with one exception: I won't be able to visit my friends @martymankins & his lovely daughter @tiffmankins in Salt Lake City on my way. I was going to do a road trip and head where I pleased, including SLC; alas, I got rid of the car. And I'm pretty sure I won't be tackling car ownership again for a good while.

I'll be taking the train. I must say, I do love taking the train. 

Image thanks to @scoutny

So I'm getting to go a full month early. I'll be staying with my old friend Bill in Hamilton Heights for the first couple months as I get my bearings. This was enormous surprise and a colossal stroke of good luck. I was fully braced to watch my (meager) savings get drained as rent while I found work and learned my way around, but now I have a two month head start. I am insanely, ridulously grateful, and so happy I made these great friendships so many years ago. (Bill is the since-childhood bff of my own beloved friend Bernie - who lives near D.C., which is why I might be stopping there on the way.)

I have these old aspirations I've never let die. I want a rich life experience doing things I adore (or need to fall back in love with): taking classes, writing novels & plays, acting, working in the arts all the damn time, finding some way to teach, because I for some reason really strongly feel like I want to teach...something, somehow. Gazing in awe at incredible architecture, at 300 and 400-year-old buildings, finding little pockets of history that move and inspire me. Renewing older friendships and making new ones. Meeting the online friends in person for once. Traveling around to other spots along the Eastern Seaboard and in the South (and eating all their food). Really living and experiencing the singular sensation that is New York City. Learning peoples' stories, listening to and talking with the sorts of souls who come by to hang out in the greatest city in the Western Hemisphere. People who are perhaps radically different than me, but with whom have at least that primal pull in common. Falling in love. I'd love that. 

But I also expect to meet myself again. Come back to myself, whatever that means. Back to life, but now with all the stuff I've collected along the way so far. Lessons, perspectives, knowledge and understanding. A more fully grown mind. I want to be happy and healthy, regardless of where I go, but I think my best shot at that right now is heading into the old, edgy, urban soul of New York.

This has been a long time in coming. I do feel like this is a good time. 

I can't wait.

I love The Oatmeal

<p>Online Coupon Generator from Coupon Fu</p>

 

theoatmeal.com - he's got a book out now as well. Read, read read!

Thanks, @theretronaut

What a pleasure to stumble across these photos:

JFK AND JACKIE IN A PHOTOBOOTH, C.1953

                             Credit: Retronaut 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

City Car Math Query

The Scion iQ, the way I want it, costs (before tax & all that stuff) $19,175. It gets 38mpg.

Aston Martin, whose cars I've been in love with since I was little, but who, until now, have never made I car I could or would actually drive, do a re-badged version of the iQ called the Cygnet. It's $48,000. From what I understand, Aston sprinkled magic fairy dust on the engine, and it gets 57(!!!1!)mpg.

I'm on a mission to buy the Scion sometime next year. I'm already go to sleep thinking about it. But if I somehow can, if my great American novel hits the spot & sells a million, I'm gonna get that Cygnet. And I will hug and squeeze it and call it George.

I will not call it George.

The Aston swag ("...the 'Emotional Control Unit' starter system", for example), badge & grill is alone worth all that extra money, but I'm thinking that once you've owned the car for X number of years, that $18,000 will be recuped in gas savings.

How many years+months is X? Assuming say $4 per gallon & driving your standard 1000 miles per month? I won't drive that much, but just for the sake of the math problem & in the spirit of typicalness.

Typicality?

Anyway, how do I set up that math problem and/or what is the answer? Just curious.

 

little update/work work work

I love my new job. I did paid orientation on Friday & had my first full day last night/this morning (overnight hours), and it just couldn't be a better fit. So glad & grateful. I'll be able to hang out online at work after a couple of weeks. Between now and then, I'll be mostly AWOL from Twitter (again, sorry :P), because I'll either be

1) at my old job

2) at my new job, or

3) asleep.

I'll check in here & there, like when I wake up & have coffee. I'm announcing this as if it'll make all that much difference - it won't really; I've hardly been my old prolific, quasi-entertaining self on Twitter lately anyway. I'm actually hoping to make a full come-back after a couple of weeks, even doing short daily (or nearly daily) postings here on the ol' blog.

Anyhoo, hope you guys are all well, and I'll see you soon.

:)

One Job Two Job, Red Job Blue Job

I threw copies of my resume around Seattle like confetti. I got offered a job last week and I took it. It was seasonal, ending on September 18, just in time for my trip to Mexico to see @tmcassani. It paid what I wanted, but I'd have to go through the whole rigamarole of getting fingerprinted, getting a TWIC card, renewing my Washington State Guard Licence & doing a drug test. No problem, but I'd be a lot happier not having to pay for all that. Some companies subsidize these things, some don't; this one doesn't. But hey, JOB. A very needed new job. I spent the next days wishing I felt more genuinely excited.

That bird in hand, I went down the list of other interview appointments, looked 'em over, and cancelled 'em all - except one, whose interview was today. So I went, and I got a couple of big fat surprises. :)

A Glowing Titanium All-Weather Magical Timepiece

For the first time in my life, I know exactly what I'm doing for the next eight months. I'm terrible at that usually, and I might get terrible at it again, but right now I have a map, compass, flashlight and a glowing titanium all-weather magical timepiece. I mean a calendar, sorry. It just feels like something special now that I'm actually using one, filling it out with an actual pen. It may or may not be glitter ink in the pen.

As of April 7, 2012, I've been back home in Seattle for three years. I needed the reprieve & I've done/figured out a lot of stuff. I was necessary & it was good, and as itchy as I've been to get going, it was the right length of time.

But now it's time to take off again. I'll come back home eventually. Then I'll take off again. *Next time will be Hawaii. Then I'll die and they'll burn & scatter me here at home, over Elliott Bay, so I get that Frasier view of my skyline).

Image Credit: Stern Grossman

Whys, what-fors and the schedule of events after the break: