Workout from hell or moving in the heat?

I'm tired, sweaty and sore but I'm getting closer to being moved into the new place. I've decided to give up the old bed and second hand couch, I've decided that I'll at least buy another bed and possibly look into a new sofa and love chair in the next couple of months. Right now it's just an air bed, a lounging chair and two foldout campsite chairs. It's actually kinda nice not to have all of that overhead. I'm pretty happy with the move so far in that I've got all of my "high dollar" stuff in the new place, the food, the pots, pans, plates, glasses and silverware. I still need to move the clothes, books and a few other things. Then I'll move my bookcases and another chair and then I think I'll be done. I'm going to see if I can get rid of some of the other stuff on craigslist.

As far as the additional damage I uncovered I'm going to see if I can make a claim. I did see that my policy allowed for damage due to flooding from the building which I think should cover and any structural problems (such as was the cause of my flooding) that allowed damage to my property. I really just want to get something out of this because it's just really not fair. I get robbed in March and my place is flooded in August...hell I just want enough money to cover the moving expenses at this point. I'm starting to worry that my clothes in that closet were ruined as well as they are smelling a bit of mildew and wonderful stuff like that. At this point I think I'll need a full day off (which will be tuesday) just to relax and get my mind around what has happened. It's been a rather whirlwind couple of days.

Things just got a little worse...

Well I thought the extent of the flooding was to part of the backbedroom...but no...it extended into the closet as well and well...virtually everything is ruined including about 3500 in collectible comic books. On top of that my renters insurance doesn't cover flooding!! WONDERFUL. It just keeps getting better and better. I'm going to check the policy to see if it covers prior structural damage (which was essentially the problem that caused the damage) or negligence by the landlord since they never fixed the damage the first time. There has to be a loop hole!! Anyone have any advice short of hiring a lawyer or am I screwed?

Ugh...but okay

So I got home last night and guess what? My apartment was flooded for the 2nd time in less than a year. So I will be moving to Carrboro on July 31st. That's right. I've had enough of the bullshit. 1 BR/1 BA on the 3rd floor, security sytem and tons of other stuff my current place doesn't have. Also? MY CELL PHONE WORKS IN THE NEW PLACE!!! So yeah, goodbye Bellsouth and AT&T...you can suck it. Man it's going to be so much nicer than the dump I'm in now.

Update on the friend...

So I got in touch with Dave. Apparently his email is still in dial up and being a full time student, husband and father keeps him all but away from his email. So I just decided to give him a shout and it was great. Despite the first 10 minutes or so of interrupting each other because we wanted to ask so many questions everything went very well. We got the past 8 years out of the way, talked about old friends, our families, our jobs. After that we settled back into a comfortable, albeit rusty from the time apart, resemblance of our old friendship. I'm not sure if the time apart was a good thing or a bad thing but I'll admit that I'm glad we're back in touch again. I've missed my friend a lot more than I wanted to admit. Life is filled with people that you eventually have a deep connection with, whether it's a good friend, a lover or a family member. These are the people that know your secrets, your nuclear codes so to speak. It's always very hard when you lose touch with these people for various reasons because somewhere out there someone exists that knows you almost as well as you know yourself and the reverse works for them as well. It's a strange symbiotic relationship in which you've developed an attachement with these people. These are the people the finish the sentences you started, the ones that are the charter members of your inside jokes that no one else gets, the ones that KNOW who you are even if you change here and there. So for now it appears that I have my buddy back in my life. I'm debating going down to my home town in the fall and visiting with him and a few other people I hadn't seen in years and seeing how much we've changed or stayed the same.

Well another week come and gone and nothing terribly exciting to report to be honest. I sent an email to my friend Dave that I mentioned in the last post. Haven't head from him yet so I'll give him a call this week and see if that brings anything. I get the feeling that perhaps his wife is behind all of this without his approval. Strange.

I also got invited to a 15 year high school reunion. It's strange that it's been that long...even stranger that they are having a reunion for it. I'm debating it although I'm just not sure it's worth my time. Maybe the 20 year reunion will be a little more appealing. Frankly though I left that town 11 years ago and never looked back. I'm not terribly excited about returning any sooner that I have too.

Work is going well. I'm finally actually doing...well...work. Nearly all of the training is over and there are giving me customer troubles to work and I'm happier doing that now. The training was getting a little old and the breaks in between just weren't helping either. Now things a lot more fluid and I feel as if I'm actually doing something worthy of getting paid for. Of course in about a month I'll long for the tired boring days of training I'm sure. That's just me. Never satisfied!!

Suprisingly my Rangers are still fighting with Oakland and the Angels for the A.L. West. Apparently the heat that usually stifles them is everywhere but Dallas this time of year. I still give them time to fold sometime in August. Trust me they'll make some godawful trade throwing away any talent they have in the farm system for a long shot to make it to the playoffs and set the team back another 3-4 years. I would look forward to football season and the Cowboys but ever since Jerry Jones hired Barry Switzer, Signed Deion Sander and that moron T.O. I've just last all passion for the team I grew up with. Don't even speak to me about the Mavericks either I'm still smarting from that one. I guess I'll have to wait for college basketball season again and root for the Tarheels. They don't break my heart AS much.

Writing is still going well. At the moment I'm getting past the outline stage and doing some ROUGH drafting which is fun but scary because it's REALLY rough. I'm hoping to take a writing class in the fall once I have my schedule sorted out. I really need some other writers around me to help prime up the pump a bit. It's amusing though as I've been writing some short stories based on movies or shows or other things in my life that I think "man that would be more entertaining if I had written that." Meaning I watched a REALLY bad movie this weekend and decided to rewrite the whole thing over and belive me...it was a much better movie. Well at least I think so.

Strange things afoot...

So the wife of my high school best friend, David, emails me last night to let me know that he would like my contact information. I haven't spoken to this guy in nearly 10 years and it's just...weird. I feel like a hole in my life might be filled as I've been trying to reach out to him for years...but I'm nervous because he's always been hard to read at times as well. After 10 years I fear he may be downright lost in translation. I'm excited but definitely nervous. Hopefully he'll get in touch though...I admit I'll be fairly deflated if he doesn't. She also sent me a picture of their daughter and it was just uncanny how much his little girl looks just like him. I also noticed David's wife has friended other people I had gone to high school with and man it was strange to see so many people that I haven't seen since...well high school and to see pictures of their kids. Made me wonder what the Hell I've been doing with my life. So strange to see the faces of my old friends and cohorts on the bodies of these tiny little children.

Like picking at a scab...

So I got a "note" today from my ex wishing me a happy birthday. My first reaction was surprise and after reading it my secondary reaction was to wonder sort of angrily why she even bothered writing it???

Many of you may or may not know that I have been relatively single for the last year. The short answer is that my dating pool hasn't been the best, the longer more complex issue is that I was also getting over the damage from breaking up with my ex. We were together the better part of two years, but lets take the amount of time out of it and just make the point that it was the quality of the the love that we had for each other that made the relationship special. Once we broke up that wasn't something that was easily healed...well at least not for me but we'll call that another story. We broke up in June of last year and by that September had more falling out which led to all communication going out the window.

In Decemeber I get a phone call from her apologizing for how things went bad in Septemeber and aside from another trivial email a month or two after that we didn't speak anymore and I didn't give communication with her another thought. She had moved on with someone else, moved thousands of miles away, we didn't have that much in common anymore, I could pick tons of reasons why we just hadn't kept in touch. I could name lots of good reasons why we didn't need to keep in touch. Nothing mean spirited, just sometimes you need to move on with your life right?

So I'm spending my last year dating other people, getting over the emotional investment losses and moving on. I'm not having as much success as I would like romantically but hey how many single people are always finding exactly what they want anyways right? Then I get that note and it just seemed so out of place and also so...trivial.

The note essentially contained the contents of a computer generated greeting card that your bank might send you every year just so they seem more caring. The note felt exactly like that...like she didn't want to make a real effort to keep my business but just enough that I wouldn't forget that she was a part of my life. You know what? I spent two years with you and one fairly painful year apart from you...I don't really need a baseless birthday note from you to remind me of the relevance you had in the grand scheme of Jeremy.

So why write the note? I guess that my question of the day. I didn't get anything from her for Christmas, I didn't hear from her when my mom had a biopsy, she hasn't kept in touch with me for jack shit on anything else. Why do I rate a birthday "note" all of a sudden? Had it been a nice email just saying that she wanted to keep in touch more often and left the door open to be, at least more civil and friendly then at least I could have had something more to go on. Yet I get this note, two days early I might add, that essentially just says happy birthday and I can't figure out why you make that effort for someone you don't even talk to anymore.

Maybe I'm cranky, maybe I'm just not seeing the picture, but I know that when I don't really keep in touch with someone after about a year I'm not going to be sending them birthday notes. I'm not saying she's wanting me back or something nefarious is afoot...I guess I'm just irritated because I have to think about her again and i didn't want to.

Well the holiday is over and it's back to work. I spent most of the time off doing even more cleaning around the apt...so much so that everytime I walk in the door I'm scared I've been robbed!! It's still amazing that I'm still throwing a lot of crap out the door these days and when I turn around...there is even more!! However that "pile" of stuff seems to be dwindling considerably. I have a theory that a lot of this was stuff that I just boxed up everytime I moved instead of getting rid of before packing to move and thus it just stayed with me over the years. I still have bank statements from 1995 I need to shred!!! Overall it's getting to be quite manageable now and I'm thankful for that. Charly on the other hand is not happy that I've taken all of the cardboard boxes away...maybe I'll leave one for her to play in.

Nothing really new on the dating front. It's amazing though how picky I've allowed myself to be and all of a sudden I'm actually SEEING the people I want to date in front of my eyes. Problem is most are married or coupled up at the moment. I'll work on finding the single ones or resort to homewrecking if necessary :)

In other news I've started writing on not one, not two but six short stories!! I'm pretty excited about this, not because I would necessarily publish them...but because I'm writing again...and enjoying it. I'll hopefully have more to share about that soon but it's strange to actually be writing, making folders for ideas and all the fun stuff I used to do back in the day when I was writing a lot. Also I've been looking up art and creative writing classes for the fall so I'm pretty excited about that.

I hope everyone had a great holiday and I'm doing my best to catch up on all of your blogs!!