On Monday my apartment complex is (at my request) installing new carpet at my apartment. It really needs it. The stuff I have now is thin and dirty. I've steam cleaned it; it doesn't help. It really needs to go. I'm excited about getting the new stuff.
However, it's not a simple task to recarpet an apartment. Saturday I recruited my parents to come down to my apartment and help me prepare. You see, I had to move nearly all of my furniture (except for couches, tables, and dressers, basically) onto non-carpetted areas, like the bathroom (including bathtub, which I hope doesn't house a leaky faucet/showerhead) and kitchen. The desk I own is a pre-fab desk which I built in my bedroom, so it was a lot like building a boat in a basement. So we had to come up with a [unnatural] way to break the desk into two pieces just incase the carpet guys would need to move it out of the room. That wasn't necessarily an easy task, but it was easier than expected. Anyway, it ended up only taking a few hours... But now I have no place to sleep until I get the new carpet. Thus, this weekend I'm staying at my parents' place. Next week I'm going to have to waste a few hours (probably more than I did Saturday) putting everything back. Then I'll have a place to sleep again.
Last night I was out late with a friend, and so I drove back to my parents' place . . .
[ I'd like to stress that this is somewhat new territory for me. While on an internship in Austin, my parents moved from Dublin to their new location near Westerville. I had lived in Dublin since I was 4. I came back from my internship to find that the house I grew up in was now owned by the General Manager of the Hyatt downtown, and his wife had placed gargoyles in our front yard... It was quite a shock. Anyway, I now know my way around Westerville, but in no way is it "my town" like Dublin was. ]
. . . On my drive back, I drove through Otterbein's campus. Otterbein is a small private university in central Ohio. It was really fascinating. It was 2:45AM, and campus was barren. No one was around. Everything was dark. Even the houses with Greek letters were dead. It was a Saturday night... Even in the summer, Saturday nights at OSU were not at all like this. It was fascinating.
After that, my drive took me through a residential area. There were signs that said things like, "Congratulations, Julie, of the Class of 2005!" These were the large banners that go in people's front yards. Why do these banners always look IDENTICAL? They all use the same scripty construction-paper-cut-out font on the same cheapy felt backdrop between two sticks. If you look at one of them alone, it looks like it MUST have been done by a crafty parent. However, there are so many that look identical that they must buy them from some supplier... And that supplier must be making a KILLER profit on these cheap things. Why do people buy these things?
There was one house with some high schoolers playing a PS2 (or similar) golfing game on a projector on the side of their house. The virtual golfers were probably 25 feet tall. It was a little bit of a distraction as you drove by. I'm only assuming that their parents were out of town and the kids thought it'd be cool to... do something idiotic and expensive.
So I got home, went to bed, and had another one of these dreams which I will outline in another post. I then woke up feeling very reflective. I opened my closet and looked up to find relics of my past tech-savvy teenage life. There were lots of old routers and networking hardware... There were boxes that held old gameboy games. There was an old gameboy (the big heavy kind that doesn't fold in half). And way over on the left there was my old telescope. It's a Schmidt-Cassegrain, so it fits easy on a top shelf. It's tripod sits below it. It was a good telescope. I saw the rings of Saturn with it. I saw craters of the moon with it (note: it is unwise to look at the moon through a telescope during a full moon unless you are wearing sunglasses. It is, however, fun to use the eyepeace to project a reasonably large image of the moon onto some background). I never had the patience though to really make good use of it. I should have taken the time to drive out to somewhere very dark... find the precise coordinates so I could key them into the telescope so it could autolocate things for me... and got comfortable (somehow) and just looked. I've always regretted not having the patience to do such things . . .
[ In writing this, I wonder where my old microscope went. This was a fun microscope kit that allowed me to prepare slides of lots of different things and even project them onto walls for group viewing. It wasn't like today's plastic kiddy scopes. It was back in the day where if you wanted to use a microscope in elementary school, you had to actually buy a real microscope... I looked at some fun stuff under it too... But that's a different story. ]
. . . Then I looked down at the bottom of the closet. Lots of boxes of things. Again, the tripod for the telescope. And a silver CD-R with the word "Unreal" written across it. I've never been much of a gamer, though I remember playing Wolf3D before anyone knew about it. I think I was the first person I knew to find an illegal copy of it. However, after Wolf3D and a little Doom, it just seemed like an ill use of time. I flirted with Unreal because I had coworkers who did. The network game play was neat... but I really felt like I had moved away from that. Now I feel so distant from it that I'm almost embarassed to find that CD in my closet.
Then I looked at my recent purchases. You see, after moving stuff out of my place, I went shopping. I wanted to get a good outfit for F.Shizzle's (I'm still working on a good fake naming convention) wedding next month. While out, I also got three new pairs of shoes. Some shoes for the wedding, some new tennis shoes, and some sandals. I've never been much of a sandals person. However, for some reason lately I've wanted ot be. Maybe it's a desire to "fit in" more. Maybe it's a desire to try to be more like my friends. Maybe it's a desire to find a date. But it feels like something inside me is changing... and making me buy... sandals (which is hard to do when you have a foot as wide as mine). I felt this same "changing spirit" when I was buying pants for the wedding outfit. You see, for some reason, I've always liked pants that were pleated. I just thought flat front pants looked... silly and unsophisticated. There's a part of me that sometimes holds my hand behind my back when I pace thinking about things... I think that same part of me is what doesn't like flat front pants (and shorts, for that matter). However, I just recently realized that the reason why I'm always so unhappy with how my pants look in their seat is because they're pleated. Pleasted pants use too much material. I really LIKE the way flat front pants look in the seat. And despite my feelings about the front of the pants, I figured that other people must like the front of the pants, and I wanted other people to like me... So... I'd buy the pants of the people. And on casual occasions, maybe I'd wear them with the sandals.
I'm not disappointed by this change... And I'm a little disappointed that I'm not disappointed. However, I think it's just part of growing up. Fitting in? I dunno...
Anyway, I was just feeling reflective. That's the major point. This is a "bull session" among one man and maybe a couple of blog readers. It has no point. It's just thinking out loud to hear (read) the thought said (written)...
I should get back to sitting on my parents' patio and watching the geese. It's relaxing. I feel like an old man...
[ On that note, G.Tizzle.Sizzle turned 23 on Saturday. I thought she was turning 22, but instead she's turning 23. Now THAT makes me feel old. She'll be 30 in no time! If she's 30, then what'll that make me?! Regardless of the number, it'll be old! ]
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