Finals and Fun

Getting slightly sick, munching Halls like I'm addicted to menthol.

I'm quite a pervert, methinks. The other day I dropped by a local hobby store, and one I had done a website for. The owner looked like he was greeting a long-lost friend when I came in. He didn't know exactly where I was living right now or what I was doing, not even if I was in Portland or not. Meanwhile, Z sent me an email reply to my Christmas iCard, asking where I was. Every time I run into people -- even Sheets today, who I got the SP Eugene TM's desk from -- are unaware of my "living situation".

And the scary thing is... I like this. This sense of going into a room, and people know who I am, and the sense that they don't know the details of my life, or what I'm up to, or where I am living and what I am doing. I like this kind of mystery, this being an unknown quantity. This sense that nobody knows where I may show up next. Being unsettled has it's high points; even more ironically I'm not unsettled right now -- I've committed myself to 2-4 years in one place.

To be quite frank, that's permanent. While this will be the last time I will live under this roof -- and I am savoring it as much as I can while I do, since I love this house and all its faults -- I have no intention of moving north or south or east or west again. Portland is a magent to me, love it, hate it, adore it, abhor it. It's home. It will always be home. I love travelling, but I always love seeing those green signposts counting down: Portland, 89 miles; Portland, 64 miles; Portland, 21 miles. It was like reliving my exodus of a year ago, in reverse. Heaven above, it felt good.

But everyone thinks I am unsettled and unpredictable. So no one -- save for certain staff people at an unnamed business -- rely on my presence. I am free to come and go as I please, be wheere I please, and not when I please. And I have the luxury of a very settled domestic situation which I can always find refuge in.

Now with patience, and a few other *ahem* additions, life could be really good for me right now.