is it bad to pick a new gym based primarily on the fact that individual flat screen tvs are mounted on the cardio equipment?

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my first whole month free of work has been tumultuous in more ways than one. i’ve been getting a lot of what i wanted to do done too, though a lot has had to be pushed to the side.

it’s gotten freezing in the past few days. i just got back from buying groceries(i’ll be making the famous macaroni with tuna a la salah again, which makes me smile, and is also fitting since i’m working on finish my rabat memoirs). i decided to go to the nicer key foods on montague somehow remembering they have a bigger selection. which i remembered correctly. what i misremembered was their lack of bottom shelf variety; the other key foods has three or four cheap brands of everything – this one had one. i bought more than i thought i would so one bag didn’t fit in my backpack; the hand that held it was numb when i got back to the apartment(an eight block walk or so).

i am looking forward to the spring; something’s not right when dogs being walked, wearing full-body winter-wear, are shivering so bad they have trouble with their balance.

peace

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i’m scared to walk away. i don’t know if i can.

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i just wanted to add a current picture of the growing belly…since a few people commented that i didn’t really look pregnant in the last one. a lot can change in six weeks. the baby and i are growing well..as you can see. so this is me at 6 months in front of our home in chicago. i rather like the shot…makes chicago look a little less gray and cold than i feel it is right now. hope everyone is well. tripp…you’ve made jason very happy with this northern cali move. now he has one more person to add to the list of reason’s we too should head west. not that i mind that!

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all i want right now is to go home to richmond, sleep in, go for runs in the morning, stop by ukrop’s, play with the kittens, make healthy dinners, hang out with elisa and jaffray and becky and sue and jennifer and mom. i know why im homesick, there are many reasons, but i wonder if the feeling will ever turn into anything else. will i always revert to wanting to be where i grew up or will i, at some point, wish for some other time in my life? it just amazes me how my quality of life goes up when im home. i eat better. i exercise outdoors rather than in a gym. i am not as stressed. i walk around a clean house in sock feet and i enjoy doing housework. this trip might include some painting and some yard work. and when i go home im in good hands. people love me, people know me, people express these things.

bethany and i were talking the other night about our friends here. bethany and i are pretty lucky: we met in dc, worked together at geographic, hung out a fair amount in our first year in a new place. as time went on, i became busy with classes and applications for grad school and bethany became busy with work and her boyfriend. but we still had lunches, got drinks, talked about our own graduate applications. bethany came to yale this past fall. and she knows a lot about me — she’s been to my house in richmond, she knows all about my adventures (and boredom) in dc. and now she’s here. bethany and i were talking the other night about our friends here, and how so many of our friendships are surface. i adore so many people here, but i adore them based mostly on my interactions with them and not on actual conversations. ive had some great conversations here, sure. but in two years, it’s amazing how i know intimate details about people here — how many people some have slept with, where people hang out in new york, which artists they admire and who they hate — but yet i dont know full stories. im not quite sure how to explain this because i do think our group is unusually tight. but since i have so few intimate conversations with people (since we always hang out in groups), i feel like even though i spend 24/7 with people here, they know relatively little about me and i about them. it’s a bit unsettling. id like to change it.

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last night, we delivered milestone 4 of the game. this means an end to another hellacious week of work; a week of 12 hour days (again). as always, with my commute, i was out of the apt for 13, 14 hours a day.

but my level came together at the end, as well as can be expected given all the dependencies.

i think by sometime in may, ill finally be able to talk about what i have been working on.

so i have 6 days left at work. and i have no assignments for this next milestone, so right now i dont know what i will be working on. but i do know that my insane days should be wrapped now and i can finally concentrate on my own life.

the good news is that i havent stopped writing through all of this. i have been going to the coffeeshop about 3 or 4 times a week to eat breakfast and write before work. it has worked well for me and i can usually get about 500 words out every morning. the newest book has finally take hold, past that finding the first few words part. its up around 17k right now, which is almost respectable enough to consider it on its way.

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i am been painting again. at least for now. rather, i am inspired in a way that i haven’t felt for a very very long time. i don’t know why this has happened, it just did. i found something that i wanted to do and do it over and over again in different ways with different media. the cool thing is, i found a concept that can translated to many different forms of mediums.
i am also completely exhausted, which means i seldom have any free time to do anything else other than work my job, come home and rest, wash and repeat.
i am also considering purchasing another domain name to post my new work completely anonymously. i am of course as always scheming, so yes i do have ulterior motives. anonymity is good. that way when they find you, the find you because your work is good, not because they googled you.
blah, im rambling. my eyes aren’t working.

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