Still no haircut.

I’m in Oakland airport, waiting for my flight back to Seattle.  (That was written last Sunday; I’m back now.)  I came down for Link and Zelda’s wedding.  It was impressively geeky, as my names for them imply: lots of video game music during the ceremony, I was at table Unreal Tournament, and I’ll have pictures of the cake and the rock band session up later.  Also, they committed to love each other “until the heat death of the universe.”  Awfully romantic.

It was really good to see old friends.

Athena and I split up last month.  There’s not much to be said about it.  We both felt it had to happen; she’s an awesome person and it just didn’t work.  I’ve been having a rough time; I’m managing as best I can.

School is going well; my graduate program remains a bit incoherent, but enough of it feels useful — and I have enough appreciation for the change in lifestyle and context — that I don’t regret my decision.  I’ve gotten better at balancing school and work and all the things I feel compelled to put off when I’m balancing school and work.  I’m working out a fair bit, and hiking occasionally, and I’ve started Aikido.  The last doesn’t feel like it’s quite what I’m looking for, at least not yet, but it’s nice nevertheless.

I’ll be trying Mailbox Peak in a couple of days.  Should be fun.  :)

A difficult breakup, fewer video games, more exercise, less procrastination, more introspection (yes, even more), wonderful friends, and a summer that’s still a little unclear but looks to be comfortably full.

When you struggle to make the right decisions, remember: Life is self-creation, not self-discovery.

I just realized that Me First & The Gimme Gimmes is going to make great late-night driving music.

We’re on the way down from Seattle to Chico, about halfway through the eleven hours it will take.  I’m really looking forward to seeing my family over Christmas.  Twice a year is a little too rarely, for me.  Then Athena returns to the north, and I spend new years with the Quakers.  I expect a lot of reading, hiking, good conversation, and being cold.

And I survived my first quarter of grad school.  I say “survived” to be arbitrarily melodramatic, as anyone might, but it was actually pretty rough.  Not exactly what I expected academically, but then I do have this tendency to pick vaguely defined, multidisciplinary fields of study.  Still, I remain intrigued, and I feel like I’m pretty well up to speed.  Give me another quarter and I might even know what I want to focus on.

Cat mentioned a few days ago — in passing, of course, certainly not intending to suggest any action on my part — that it had been three months since I’d last updated this journal.  This is, of course, a large part of why I’m making myself write now.  I enjoy the process of writing well enough once I start on it, but like anything that isn’t video games or late-night rambling philosophical conversation or um actually a lot of other things, it’s hard to get started.  Sorry, that sentence sort of got away from me.

I haven’t been spending as much time lately with Cat and Wolf as I’d like, but I’ll be seeing them — along with Rain — at new years.

Renaming my friends feels comfortably self-indulgent.

One of the awkward bits of adulthood — at least my current version — is that even when I have downtime, I’m quite aware of how limited it is, and how busy I’ll be when I return to work or school.  I feel a compulsion to make sure my leisure time is highly efficient; I feel frustrated when the hours seem to slip away without me making good use of them, relaxation-wise.  (There’s a Calvin & Hobbes comic that’s about precisely this — you know the one.  Let’s pretend I tracked it down online and linked to it, and we both had a good nostalgic laugh.)

The answer to this (I mean the answer other than a personality overhaul) is for me to cultivate a lifestyle that doesn’t oscillate so wildly between busy and free.  Dimensional wasn’t so bad, although it had other frustrations; I think that once I’m out of grad school I should be able to sort this out.

Procrastination and rationalization.  Check.

Also, notice how many semicolons I’ve been using?  That’s grad school, right there.

My turn to drive.  I hope you’re all well.

Of course everyone got sick.  Many confirmed cases of H1N1 among the attendees and Enforcers, and the majority of my friends got hit by flu, H1N1 or not.  I caught something myself, but it was comparatively mild.

Athena gets home tomorrow, after five weeks away.  It’s felt like a very long time, and I’m really looking forward to her return.

Work started today, 11 months after I quit my last job.  (It’s great so far.)  School starts in a couple of weeks.  Life will be busier soon.  I have books I haven’t read and games I haven’t played.  I could use another summer.  But I’m also really looking forward to all of this.

Also, it’s raining.  :)

Seattle continues to be excellent, the recent heat wave notwithstanding.  I’ve been spending a lot of time with Athena (one floor apart seems to be perfect for us, right now) and with S & F.  I’ve also joined the ranks of the PAX Enforcers, and I’ve been socializing with them a bit.  They seem like a pretty neat group so far.

The past month has included:

• Four days of shameless geek indulgence at R’s nominal Anime Expo gathering (we barely attend AX itself these days, preferring to stay home and play games).  It was great to see old friends, and we even managed to get in a couple of nights of D&D.
• An Azure Ray concert with Athena.  They were a little rusty after such a long time apart, but it was really quite lovely, and cemented Rise as my favorite Azure Ray song.
• A long weekend at NPYM, an annual Quaker gathering.  I’ve never been there before, but as a resident of the pacific northwest I’m now within their territory.  They were pretty awesome in ways very similar to the Quaker groups with which I’m already familiar.  I met cool people, and it was generally a pretty comfortable experience, simultaneously exhausting and energizing.
• A week at PYM, yet another annual Quaker gathering.  I’ve been attending PYM pretty consistently since highschool.  It was a lot of hiking, singing, Wink, and good company.  I also had a chance to meet with a group of Nontheist Friends, representing an intriguing corner of the community I hadn’t previously encountered.

And now it’s 10 pm — as always, time passes quickly here.  I have just another day or two in Chico before I return to Seattle, and then six weeks until school starts.  I’m looking forward to it, but still certainly enjoying my ridiculously extended vacation.  In the meantime, I have PAX, as well as some vital relaxation to attend to.

I flew out to Arizona in March with my father, and we drove from Tucson to Albuquerque with my grandfather in his RV.  We stopped to spend a weekend with my sister’s family along the way, and I had a chance to see my three-year-old niece.  It was a comfortable trip (although three year olds are pretty draining), and it was nice to spend some time with my grandfather.  I expect people of his age to have a particularly strong craving for social contact, but he’s very self-contained.  And very quick.

My final trip was to St. Thomas, in the Caribbean, where one of my oldest friends lives on a boat with his wife.  It was rustic and beautiful and a little disorienting, but relaxing once I got used to it.  I got some experience sailing and snorkeling, not to mention sleeping on a constantly tilting surface.

I have pictures of Arizona & New Mexico and St. Thomas (as well a few other new albums) on flickr.

Seattle has been pretty kind to me so far, even going so far as to have sunny, warm weather for my first few days here, to ease the transition.  I’m pretty well settled in my apartment now, two weeks in, and IKEA is somewhat richer.  I start at the University of Washington in the fall, and I have what seems to be a pretty good part-time job lined up.  I’m not sure what I’ll be doing over the summer.

I didn’t get a haircut this time.

It’s been another month in the quiet whirlwind of my life.

New Year’s gathering was wonderful.  They’re always good, but this year’s was particularly close-knit, and had a good combination of reconnecting with old friends and meeting new people.  Also good food, music, hiking, conversation, and lots of relaxing.

I drove to Seattle instead of Chico after new year’s, almost spontaneously.  This provided the opportunity for further quaker fellowship, a trip to the zoo, some time with a very busy S, and an unexpected reunion with an old highschool friend and a lovely couple of evenings with him and his housemates.  My return to the southlands was delayed by flooding on I-5, so I rescheduled my GRE appointment and finished up my grad school application in Seattle.  Did I mention that I applied to grad school?  I applied to grad school.  The MSIM program at the University of Washington.  It could be fun.

I’m back in Chico now, uploading photos and trying to arrange the bits and pieces of my plan for the next couple of months.  I need to check in with people, but there’s a good chance I will be in the bay area this weekend and in LA next week.  Beyond that things are still up in the air.

After a few days in Chico, I flew out to spend a couple of weeks on the east coast.  New York was lovely, and I have a few pictures from my one day of all-out touristing (Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and the public library).  It was great to see K (who somehow has an apartment with a spare bedroom in New York) and the weather was a bit of a learning experience, but not so terrible an adjustment.

S was on her own east coast trip, so we met up in New Jersey and went on to Boston to stay with the falcons, who were really quite wonderful hosts.  I found time among the cookie baking and pajama brunching to go see R in Somerville; we played games, braved the cold for dinner and drinks, and stayed up helping her neighbors with some vital Rock Band progress.

After a few days back in Chico, I went down to the bay area with my parents to see the Revels, as is our yearly tradition, and to join a pretty large group of extended family for a sort of holiday mini-reunion.  I had a chance to catch up with my brother C on the way down, and my sister C’s family on the way back up.  I also ran across a bunch of quakers in the midst of their evening festivities (and those quakers know how to party, let me tell you).  I’ve missed the bay area.  By which I mean the people in the bay area, although the place itself has a certain nostalgia for me.

Christmas was fairly relaxed and quiet, as it tends to be here, and C’s family left last night.  I’ve been settling into my sporadic residence in Chico, enjoying the land and tolerating the weather.

My travels have been fantastic for my music collection.  Thanks to S and K for the mixes and to everyone else for their recommendations and contributions.  I’m listening to Priscilla Ahn and Sufjan Stevens right now.

Speaking of music, one of the local Chico papers has an article about my brothers.

Tomorrow it’ll be time to do laundry, pack and get ready for new year’s gathering, in the mountains of Oregon.

I hope you’re all well this holiday season.

I was in the bay area for quite some time, but I still feel like I didn’t have time for all the people and things to do.

I got to see my cousin L in Sacramento on the way up, and then spent a few days in Chico catching up with my parents and hanging out with K and her friends.  I spent an afternoon with D and A, and went to the weekly dueling pianos show that my twin brothers put on, which was awesome and absurdly over-the-top.

My time in Chico was brief, and the same went for Portland.  I did have quite a nice hike along the Columbia river with K and S.

I went to my aunt & uncle’s beach house after that, in Rockaway beach, more or less due west of Portland.  It was quite nice, but I was there only briefly before I drove up to Seattle.

Seattle was mostly relaxation and downtime, and spending time with S.  We saw “Let The Right One In”, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I recommend it as a date movie.  We also had a “Twilight” party that involved glitter and quite a lot of alcohol.  The movie wasn’t as bad as I expected, although it was fairly bad.  Certainly not “D&D: The Movie” bad.  I met a lot of S’s library school friends; they were generally pretty cool, as librarians tend to be.

Driving into Canada was peaceful and pretty, although it was disconcerting in small ways.  I’ve been working on thinking in kilometers instead of miles.  The lanes are also narrower, many of the green traffic lights blink, and there are a few subtle matters of driving etiquette that I don’t yet fully grasp.

Vancouver is pretty cold.  It’s not bad, and actually I’ve always preferred colder climates (colder than LA, at least) but it’s taking me a while to adjust to wearing a lot of layers and focusing on staying warm.  We’ll be heading to the beach as soon as M gets out of the shower.  I like getting bundled up and wandering along gray, windy beaches.

I haven’t taken as many pictures as I expected.  I’m spending a lot more time sitting around talking with people than I am going out and hiking or seeing the sights.  I do have a few trip photos up on flickr.

(I wrote this a couple of days ago, but didn’t get around to posting it until now.  Too much to do.  It’s the good kind of too much to do, though.)

Granted, I do have a fair bit left in the storage unit.  I did sell, give away or throw away the vast majority of my possessions.  The last couple of weeks were an increasingly stressful whirlwind of preparation, and suddenly I am sitting at G & A’s house with virtually no responsibilities and no home.  It’s relaxing and disorienting.

As I drove around on my frantic errands yesterday, there were leaves on the ground, as if it were fall.  And it rained last night.  That was a nice touch.  It’s raining again now, here.

I’m glad I came to LA, and I’m glad I left.  Thanks to my moving helpers for the moving help, and thanks to the farewell partiers for the farewell parties.  I will miss all of you.

I’m in the bay area for the next week and a half or so; I’ll be trying to check in with bay area friends over the next couple of days, but feel free to give me a call if you haven’t heard from me.  I’ve also put up a travel calendar at http://www.niloc.net/calendar/.  It’s pretty general and certainly subject to change.

I’m a little scruffy (and my hair is longer).  The story there is that I have a bet with some of my co-workers; the first of us who shaves during the month of September has to buy the others lunch.  R pointed out that I have an advantage in that I don’t have to worry about career-related repercussions, because I’m quitting in mid-October.  (Yes, I work at a company conservative enough that people think about these things.)

So here’s the plan.  I quit my job in a month.  A couple of weeks after that, I move out of my apartment and spend as much as a month driving up and down the west coast, visiting friends and family in the San Francisco bay area, Chico, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver.

After that, I stay with my parents in Chico between trips to New York, St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands), and probably a couple of other places.  I’m planning a trip to Europe at the end of all this, probably in late January / early February.

And then?  I’m not sure.  I’m moving.  I’m not sure where yet, but it won’t be Los Angeles.  I’ve been here long enough.

Any of you who live along my route (or anywhere, really) and would like to see me, let me know.