Entries tagged with nostalgia

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My first car

Jim is out somewhere in the city, selling my car. It's a good financial move. There's a job he can move into that requires a 4-door car, and mine is a 2-door, and he really needs to be able to take this job. So we'll sell this one and buy a different one. It makes sense.

Still, it's been a good six years. I'll miss her.

( Pictures of my car! )

Current Mood: hot

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Okay, so it's nearly 5 am and I'm still awake. You might ask why. I shall tell you.
IT IS HOT. REALLY FUCKING ANNOYINGLY HOT. TOO HOT TO SLEEP.
I'm angry. I think Connecticut weather is really good at pushing my buttons. First it's ABSURDLY cold for three months, then it can't make up its mind and is miserable for two more months, then the weather is PERFECT for two weeks, and BAM, summer hits you and suddenly it's too hot to move. So annoying.

So there have been a couple of weird things. First, the guy who found my phone mailed it back to me. This is the old phone, the one I got last summer and then lost in October during the Genetics retreat in Massachussetts. It came in the mail the other day, and I took it out of the envelope and turned it on and sat down with it and looked through it. And I was shocked at the rush of emotions that suddenly overtook me. I hadn't realized it, but I had that phone for almost the exact duration of my relationship with Clark. We spent HOURS talking on the phone right after I got it, and when he came to visit we compared phones (we had the same one), and we sent each other countless text messages. The texts are gone from the phone's memory, but just holding it and hearing the tone of its beeps brought back a ton of my memories.
The second weird thing is that the apartment smells vastly different depending on season. And now that it's summer, the apartment smells like... last summer. Which means it smells like arriving in New Haven (which makes me think of road tripping), and it smells like Clark. It's funny that it "smells like Clark," because it doesn't REALLY smell like CLARK, it just smells the way it did when we were... whatever we were. "Dating." So it brings back those memories.
And the third weird thing was being in New York last week to see the Met, and the week before that for the cheese conference. After the cheese conference, we walked over to the World Trade Center site, Ground Zero. I hadn't been there (or to New York at all) since I was there with Clark, so all those memories came flooding back, and I actually found myself missing him. And again last week after we went to the Met, we walked along Central Park for a bit and then went to Times Square, and I had a fleeting thought of missing him again.
I guess this is one of those cases where I still feel the same way--it was never going to work out, and I'm over it--but I also feel a little sad. In severing the romantic relationship, I also lost his friendship. I was so mad at him for so long that I guess I hadn't really noticed. And we were really only speaking every three or four months over the last four years anyway, so I was used to him disappearing for long stretches of time. But I haven't talked to him since October now, and it feels strange. It's summer. He usually turns up again in summer. I dunno if I want him to or not, but I think a part of me does miss him. I guess I'm not mad at him anymore.
Weird.

Anyway. I started knitting the wedding gift for my cousin. It's going to be an intense bit of knitting between now and July 7 to finish it. Especially since I spent an hour tonight un-knitting and re-knitting a row. I forgot to yarn over in one row and didn't notice it until four rows of lace later, and it took me half an hour to figure out that I had to go back more than just one row. Grah. Now I understand lace knitting's appeal, and lace knitting's downside. On the one hand, it makes my OCD so happy to count stitches and be obsessive about where I am in a pattern. And to un-knit rows carefully stitch by stitch instead of ripping out rows at a time and then putting the loops carefully back on the needles. On the other hand, GOOD GRIEF it takes FOREVER to un-knit lace.

Anyway. I'm gonna try to sleep again now. Or knit a few rows and THEN sleep. I could probably finish this square before sunrise....

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: reality

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I went to the beach. Andrew came. Good thing, too, 'cause that kid is all logical and comforting and stuff, and I totally would have driven all the way to Rhode Island just to sit on the beach in the rain and sob. But Andrew printed out directions to a closer beach, and we got there before it started raining, and I didn't cry. I actually felt a lot better. Things seem better next to the ocean. It smelled like the ocean. It smelled... okay. In the sense that things are going to be okay.

I got mad about a lot of things tonight. I think I'm doing better now; I think I've recovered from my anger, and dealt with it a bit, and am once again able to handle life as it comes. I'm so glad I remembered beaches; so often I forget that they always help. Why does it always help to go to the beach? Unfailingly?

Anyway, I just drove for two hours, and it poured on the drive back, and I'm exhausted both emotionally and physically, so I'm going to bed.
Sweet dreams, kids.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Music: the intro music on the sixth season GG disks

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Turns out I can't handle the internet. Yeah, it's like $200 to fly to San Jose right now, but it's about $600 to fly to San Jose and back again. And more than that to fly round trip to Reno. So maybe what the universe is saying... is that I should just buy a one-way ticket and go home....

I'm a wreck today. Some stuff (or rather, a thing) happened this week, and it shouldn't have thrown me off center but it did. I'm homesick and sad and lonely and I feel so, so, so stupid and guilty. I've messed up. I've messed everything up. I shouldn't have graduated early; I should have stayed in Santa Cruz for a fourth year. I shouldn't have moved to Connecticut. I don't belong here. I should be in Santa Cruz right now, living on loans and Ramen, taking electives and graduate seminars as a senior, writing a thesis that makes sense and spending free time--which I'd have tons of--on the beach, watching dolphins at sunset, with people I love.
I shouldn't be sitting at home alone in New Haven on a Saturday night, watching full disks of Gilmore Girls and crying into lukewarm tea because it's too cold (and dangerous) to go outside for a walk.

I'm wondering again if I should drop the whole ruse. What the hell am I doing here? Who am I kidding? What on earth would I do with a Ph.D.? Everything seems so pointless and exhausting. I miss fog. I miss my family. I miss my family pre-baby. I want to go back to fall quarter freshman year and do everything over again, the right way this time, and not end up alone and cold on the wrong side of the country.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: The Postal Service--Such Great Heights

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I cleaned a little bit today (I must have been feeling ill). Cleared off my desk, hung some things on the walls, organized my shelves a little better. Came across the area I've set aside for incense and thought to myself, "Mmm, should light some incense, make the apartment smell pretty." I picked up the box that Jamie's mom gave me last Christmas, twelve sticks of rose-scented incense... and discovered it to be empty. Felt sad. Not sure what to do with the box now; it smells so good still, but is too squished and empty and sad to hang on to. I guess I'll throw it out. Seems like I've thrown out so many things since I left Santa Cruz. Moving is weird like that; it forces you to let go of things, whether you're ready to or not. Sometimes I wander the apartment at night looking for something, only to belatedly realize I threw it out during the move seven months ago.

Anyway. Today was a nice, relaxing, lazy day. Shannon and I got together and dyed our hair; she went a shade closer to black, and I renewed my faded purple streaks with a strong dark blue. I'm enjoying having colored hair. It makes me feel more like me, in some weird sort of way. It makes me feel more outgoing, too.

Anyway. AnyWAY. Just wanted to record those couple of thoughts. Back to the tidying now; perhaps I'll tackle my absurd bedroom next, or the box room that's had flattened boxes in it since I moved in. *sigh* Six months in New Haven and I still haven't finished moving in. I don't cook and I don't clean. I'm bad at life. *sigh*

Current Mood: ready for bed

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Realizations

Today I was awesome.

Yesterday a large group of us gathered to sort of reunite after break, to catch up and whatnot. On the walk to the bar where we met, I and three of my friends passed a group of four guys who were walking the other direction on the other side of the street. I thought one of them was the architecture student I'd met a week and some days ago, but although they saw us, and we looked at them, and they looked at us looking at them, they didn't follow us. My gay best friend, upon hearing this short tale, advised me to call said architecture student today and mention that I'd been sick so I hadn't called, but that I thought I'd seen him and that had reminded me that I had his number. I took this advice and called said architecture student today, and after a bit of chatting he said I should call him later this week about meeting up for a drink on Thursday. Thursday was my suggestion, and I take full credit for making a move here (thank god for gay best friends, though).

Anyway. So I sort of have a date.

I also went climbing today, which was fair to middlin but not spectacular. And I hung out with some girl friends, which was fun and spontaneous. They fed me cinnamon buns and we watched Garden State.

( More )

Current Music: O-Zone--Dragostea din Tei

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Musings from last night's exhausted study session

My laptop hasn’t worked properly in a long time. A little over a year, in fact. I’ve barely used it in that year—I think the last time I tried to use it was three or four months ago. It won’t turn on if it’s not plugged in, it won’t install the wireless card, and it won’t play DVDs. So besides being a warm, expensive, heavy Solitaire machine, just about the only useful thing it can do is let me type documents. Tonight I needed that—someplace internet-less to sit and type up take-home exam questions. I plugged in my laptop in my room, set it on my bed, plugged in my flash drive, and got to work. As the laptop warmed up, it began to make that smell that it used to make freshman year in the dorms. The faint, warm sheet/hard drive smell. At first it reminded me of Jamie, but only oh-so-vaguely—after all, that smell wasn’t present the second time we dated. I worked a few minutes longer and finally figured out what exactly the smell reminded me of.

Civilization II.

I used to sit with my laptop on my bed and play Civ II for hours. Near the end of winter quarter, I’d sit with my laptop on Jamie’s bed and play Civ II for hours. Always, that faint warm sheet/hard drive smell accompanied the game. It’s such an innocuous smell, and such a pleasantly neutral, emotionless memory, that I left the computer on and moved it to the other side of the bed so that side could smell like freshman year too.

I went to take out my contacts and got to thinking about freshman year me. The person that used to use this laptop was so different. I had completely different bookmarks in my browser freshman year. I interacted with the internet completely differently freshman year. I used AIM differently freshman year. I used this computer for school; I relied on it and kept my soul on it. And just… my personality was different. I used to sit up at night after Ann went to bed and type out blog entries full of emotion and love. My entries aren’t about emotion and love anymore; they’re about anxiety and loneliness, and often apathy. And not just the content is different; my writing style has also changed. It’s just strange, to sit and think about what a difference only three years makes. I don’t even use the same blogging site.

I miss that girl, the quiet one that was so madly in love with the boy down the hall. She went to class in her pajamas and did integrals in her head when she was drunk. She believed in magic and was completely dependent on her circle of friends to support her. She wanted to be a marine biologist and go to grad school at Scripps. She didn’t know where Scripps was. She had a thing for guys who knew how to play guitar but she only knew one who did. She felt like an adult and a 6-year-old in the same body, with way too many responsibilities and a completely naïve view of the world.

At least that much hasn’t changed.

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And now, my friends, I leave you. I'm going on a date. And I'm surprisingly... nervous as all hell.