outer-jessie's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Holiday Horror Stories Diaryland is probably broken because I didn't order anything through its banner at Amazon this year. Too broke. Sorry, everybody, it's my fault. But if it helps, you can still read diaries if you go to the sites directly (e.g., type in all the bloody letters of outer-jessie.diaryland.com). Of course, you will only be reading this if you've already figured that out, because notes are broken too so I can't tell you any other way. I would like to tell you all about how living in Oakland is not all that scary and all my fears were unfounded, but that would be lies upon lies upon farce. For one, it was hella scary. But for two, absolutely nothing scary actually happened to me. Despite having paid to live there for two months, I found a place in safer quarters in less than a week. I lost about three weeks' worth of the cost of the Oakland place, which is really rough because we are barely holding on by the skin of our bank account's teeth, but at least they let me off the hook for the second month. And my airbnb space in Oakland served its purpose: I set up camp there so I could start my job and looking for housing from a local base, while my cats were reasonably well-attended and safe. The place itself was nice and the hosts even nicer, but hospitality was not their forte. While pleasant, the place was dirty, and while friendly, my hosts largely ignored me. It was every bit as awkward as I feared, but short-lived, so it's water under the Bay Bridge now. I have a little space of my own now, overrun with very small ants but quiet and in a pretty area. I essentially live in my landlords' backyard, so I feel safe, and I have plenty of parking well off the road, sometimes with a deer or two to greet me when I'm out and about. A slew of noisy chickens live out back, so I get free fresh eggs, an excellent perk. My drive to work winds through misty hills in the morning, and I feel like I'm in the Enchanted Forest on a daily basis. For the first week or so that I was here, I literally thought I was about to die when I drove out there, and my anxiety almost crippled me (thereby actually causing me to almost crash, nice job there self-fulfilling prophesy). But it's amazing how quickly a person can adapt. A day or two after I learned how driving goes in Oakland, I was yelling at other drivers who weren't figuring it out fast enough. I can navigate to a BART station and get myself downtown for fun and good food, or I can drive on the (really, still pretty scary) freeways, where the cars might be going 70 or might be going 15, depending on the traffic. Google Maps phone app with the verbal driving cues has become my best friend. Once I know what I need to do, I can relax and enjoy the sights, and there are an awful lot of them. I found myself feeling happy to be here, the steep rents and ridiculous population density notwithstanding. I like my little house and I've been warmly welcomed by most everyone. My job, although tedious in practice at the moment, is in a beautiful spot and is populated by a really cool bunch of people who make me cooler by osmosis. It feels good. Not as good as living in Oregon, maybe, but baby steps in the right direction. G was here for Christmas, briefly, and I tried to share this goodness with her in the hopes that I could get her to ditch her job and join me here. Unfortunately, it was (relatively) cold while she was here, which had an inopportune side-effect on her: It made her a bitter Bostonian. She's not from Boston, which you may recall, but I am, and I know how we are in winter. Fucking bitter, and fuck you for asking about it ya fuckin asshat. But seriously. She was not happy, at least not until I got the heat cranked up to Sweaty Jessie and packed her in with lots of blankets and a heating pad. Then, and only then, she smiled. She was not impressed with the pace of life in the city, the fog had all burned off when I finally got her up the hills, everything we bought while here was broken, the Groupon I got in the work white elephant was for a different restaurant than the one we ate at expensively and we didn't discover it until we tried to pay, and ants. Ants decided to invade my space while she was here, just to humiliate me. That, on top of the fact that the place was a pig sty because she showed up a day and a half earlier than we planned in order to surprise me, and it was an embarrassment of embarrassments. Oh, and because we were too lazy on Christmas night to cook our traditional dinner (instead going to the restaurant I *didn't* have a Groupon for), I whipped it up (or most of it; I forgot to make the pasta, i.e. the key ingredient if you ask me) for brunch on the day she left. And that took so long she almost missed her plane. What's that thing they say about first impressions? They can be really easily changed from bad to good, right? RIGHT? Not ideal. So perhaps she will be in a little less of a hurry to move out here now that she's seen it for herself, but I'm still pretty satisfied with my choice. Or absence of choice, since really I didn't have all that much of a say in it all, or maybe I did but it didn't feel like it. But anyway, I'm ok. And she'll be ok. And I'll see her on Wednesday on our family trip, so I don't have to miss her for long. After that, I don't know when I'll see her or anyone else again, but I'm putting off lamenting that fact until it's in front of me. I'm still hoping she'll want to come here. I'm really hoping. How are your holidays going so far? 7:56 p.m. - 2014-12-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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