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Well it's official. Phrank and I are going to move in together. We've already broken the news to the respective parents that would try to talk us out of it so that's out of the way. The Hutch and the Sarita on my side are cool with it and that's the only familial approval I'd want.

What apprehensions I had about getting a place together have faded. There's going to be a lot of newness for me in this but I'm not worried about it. Yeah, for all practical purposes this is my first time doing this. Or at least my first time in adulthood. The last time I was barely in my twenties and under the influence of way too many psychedelics. But I'm pretty excited about the prospect of having a home with Phrank.

I keep discovering things about Phrank that still amaze me. She is a domestic goddess for one. In a way I had an inkling of this from the very first night we met in person, when she made me take off my hoodie so she could sew the sleeves for me. But it turns out she's an awesome cook among her other qualities. After living like a bachelor for so many years, I've forgotten for the most part what a home cooked meal is like and her's are pretty damned good. And that's just the surface.

So I'm plunging full on into this and I like every bit of it.

He's a Muncie boy...

Apparently the city that led to my moral downfall is quickly making the rounds of the Internet. Muncie, Indiana has achieved some amount of fame in the past, in sociological circles it was the site of the Middletown studies. The university located in Muncie, Ball State University (yes, I've heard them all) is the alma mater of David Letterman to name one.

As much as Muncie is a den of hedonism and (most likely) debauchery, in the last week it has achieved Internet notoriety as a sleepy Midwestern town. Which it is. Lazy Muncie which is the middle coast response to a pseudo East/West Coast white boy rap feud (starting with the Chronic of Narnia via SNL, all which are linked on the Lazy Muncie site), shows Muncie for what it is. Except for the BSU craziness.

The truth is, I haven't stepped foot in Muncie in close to a decade but I doubt it's changed that much. When I was there it was a dying Midwestern factory town. A city that is part of what is referred to as the Rust Belt. By the time I got to that town there were at least three abandoned high schools and many abandoned factories to scurry around in (as long as you avoided the cops, which we did). But it appears that Muncie is still hanging on as strong as it can. Good for Muncie. Personally, I'd never live there again but there are plenty of good people that call it home and it does still hold a special spot in my heart.

Check the video if you have high speed.

Living space...

My relationship with Phrank is ever evolving. This is a good thing, as if it were to stay the same would just be stagnation.

As many of you know (this isn't a current events blog or anything), I've been planning on moving down to her town in the spring (June to be precise). When I first announced my intention, there was a discussion about how cohabitation was out of the question. I was ok with this as other than roommates, I haven't lived with a woman in close to fifteen years. Since then I've lived as a single guy with roommates. Yeah, previous girlfriends and I spent almost every night together but I always had a home to go back to if needed (or vice versa).

Within the last week or so however, the question of sharing a place has arisen. At first I was a bit flustered as I thought it was verboten and wasn't really prepared to even consider it (even though I brought it on myself but I'll save that for later) when it came up. Shortly after, I wasn't so sure.

Here's the thing, I'm 99.99% sure that Phrank is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. And yeah, it's a bit scary to know this but I do. It's scary because I know without question and being so sure of something like this is rather daunting and new to be quite honest. The fact that we're just a couple of months into it makes it just this side of irrational as well.

So now we're in the stage of weighing the pros and cons of living together. Pragmatically it makes a lot of sense to just go ahead and do it. But there is all of this other stuff. The things that can't be known until it happens. The strains on our relationship. On top of that, I'll have my own set of stresses of moving to a new town and trying to carve out a new place for myself.

All of these questions and yet there are no simple answers. It would be so much easier if there were simple answers. And yet I don't mind because this is growth and that's a good thing.

New band of the week

For the past two weeks or so my new favorite band has been Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, once again proving just how not up to date I am on current music as their album came out last year sometime. It's hard to say exactly why I'm so enthralled by them, it could be the referential aspects (tuning in everything from the Talking Heads to Modest Mouse), the toy piano intro on "Details of the War" or perhaps the mostly upbeat vibe off the album. Yeah, it's probably emo but I like emo and I'm not going to deny it. At least they're not talking about how miserable they are since she left. Lyrically (as far as I can tell) the songs are as abstract as anything else out there. Of course, many times I put myself in the camp that lyrics can be rather secondary. It's not that they (lyrics) are unimportant but they are as just as much an element of a song as the guitar or organ. No matter what this band has created a wonderfully beautiful album that is worth checking out. It's not very often that you'll find something like this.

Slipping on myself

Needless to say I've been spending as much time with Phrank as I can. I took an extra day off and went down for her birthday. According to her, I did pretty good with the birthday gifts. Which is good, I was really hoping she would like them.

Without going into to details, she and I had been in a bit of a funk for a spell. A large part of the cause of this is I'm just too passive for my own good. I've known about this for awhile but had kind of forgotten as it had been so long since I had to confront it. The path of least resistance has always been my choice which is actually not a good choice. I know exactly where it comes from and it's a tough reality that I need to change it. On of my fears is other people's reaction when I have to confront them on something, in that I always assume there will be a horrible reaction. Growing up seeing that kind of behavior in my home pretty much made passivity my defense mechanism along with one or two others. What I fail to realize is that most people are not going to react violently when challenged about something.

This is just one of the things I have to work on. The downside is that many times it takes someone else to point things out to me before I recognize them. I do know that I have a tendency to run my mouth (and fingers) and have not always learned my lesson when called out on it. I forget that words can hurt or at least allow unfair conclusions to be drawn.

I try when made aware of something, to work on it but it can be a slow process. I can be stubborn and changing myself is something that I need to be aware of on a daily basis. I'm not always aware of it on a daily basis. I slip sometimes. But I get up and try again.

Questions...

Apparently I can't stay away from doing this. Perhaps it's the force of habit. Perhaps it's the fact that this is the closest thing I have to keeping a journal. But once again I'm drawn to typing little characters out onto the screen of my hopelessly outdated computer.

Over the last few years, I've been trying to figure out where it is that I come from. Obviously I came from Indiana and I seem to be quite fine with that (I did get an Indiana themed tattoo, that must mean something). But I wonder how the hell I became what I have become so far. Where did I pick up the lessons and values that I have now? I'll acknowledge that some of my core values, like trying to stay honest, came from my folks and eighteen years of attending church (yes, for an agnostic the fear of god is still strong in this one). But I'm not sure where I picked up the other stuff. Not that I'm good at it but I think we should try to be nice to each other. Or that there are certain basic needs that everyone should probably be afforded. Shelter and health care being among them. And a certain level of dignity (although there are times when I see people who to me just seem not to deserve it). And I don't know exactly where these ideas come from. I presume it's from writers that I've read over the years and there are those that will just say I'm a victim of the So Called Liberal Media but I don't think so. Perhaps it comes from years of trying to stay on the outskirts of mainstream society even though I am just as much a part of it as anyone else.

I'm not sure exactly where I come from and that sort of bothers me. It'd me nice if I had a firmer grasp on it. But then again how important is it really to know where you are from as long as you have an idea of who you are?

Winter driving, gifts and a bit of a hiatus

Sometimes winter driving in Colorado is not for the faint of heart. Due to horrible road conditions and other people driving dangerously too slow (15 mph) my drive down to see Phrank took an hour more than usual. I'd have to say it was the worst conditions I've experienced on the drive yet. And of course about thirty miles before Denver, the roads were completely dry. Good thing the Surly Mayfly is such an awesome car, the tires help quite a bit as well. Coming back had it's own moments of treacherous driving as Rabbit Ears Pass was closed and a detour was in place over Gore Pass. After getting home I had to go directly to the car was as the Surly Mayfly was covered in an icy brown film. Joy.

Phrank's birthday is coming up this week. I've already picked up a few things but there was this one thing I wanted to do. Tonight I discovered I was foiled by lack of materials. So now I must implement plan B. I can't go into to much detail as she is probably reading this. My hope is that she likes what I get her but I'm limited in that I haven't known her that long to really get her tastes down. There are some things about her that are a given and she may not know it but she does drop what I take as hints.

I've never considered myself to be very good at getting gifts for people. My family can attest to this. Hell, there was a period of about six years where I didn't get them anything for Christmas. Part of this was that I was always dead broke and wanted nothing to do with the holidays to boot. Generally I'm not to good about taking hints for gifts or otherwise. I am one of those people that needs things spelled out for me, especially when it comes to gift giving. It surprises me that I even get a sense of a hint at times. Imagine that.

Now for a bit of business, kids. As it may already be apparent, I haven't been updating this on a daily basis. This is probably going to continue as I seem to have hit a wall on what to write about. I don't have customers to really bitch about anymore. And I have no reason to complain about my (lack of) love life. So until I can find a new focus, I'm not going to try and force myself to write something every night. Of course I'll still update a few times a week when the mood hits me but I'm done trying to do this daily for the time being. So there it is.

Ready for it...

I never thought I'd hear myself say it but I'm beginning to look increasingly forward to summer. Admittedly a large part of it is anticipation about moving away from here, starting anew and living much closer to Phrank. And it's only February. Of course I still enjoy the winter but for once I'm just ready to move past it.

Not only that but I wonder what kind of customers I'm going to have to deal with in the next place. Over the past two weeks our network at work crashed and we haven't been able to access many of our customers files. This can be rather annoying when dealing a customer who believes they need something we are supposed to have, right now. Let this be a lesson to everyone, if any company creates a digital file for you, make sure you keep a copy of it for yourself. For me I store files not only on my own hardrive but online as well. Of course none of that is the sensitive stuff (like I have sensitive stuff). I wonder if that's the kind of thing I'll have to deal with in the next job.

As of now, I haven't been able to get a good feel on the people that live where I'm moving to. It's far bigger than anywhere I've lived in the last fifteen years. In towns that size there will be all types. Some change this is going to be. But I have been bitching and moaning for a while now about how I want to live in a city and that's where I'm going.

Bring on the spring.

Not the early bird...no worms either

So I have a confession. I haven't been getting up on the mountain much at all. The strange thing about this is it doesn't bother me that much. Of course, it'd be nice if I'd go a bit more and if my situation were different, I'd probably be really irritated by this but I'm not. Part of it is that as hard as I try, I'm just not an early riser. It can take a good hour sometimes to rise from the chair I drop into after getting out of bed. The coffee needs time to work it's way through my system for me to function again.

I've never been an good early riser. Even back in high school getting to school was a challenge. And this was before I discovered coffee. When I got to college I intentionally tried to schedule my classes so I would have to awake too early (fat lot of good that did). Futhermore, with the exception of a couple of jobs, I've never had to get to work that early in the morning.

There are folk beliefs out there that say that the time you rise is based upon what time of day you were born. If that's the case then this all makes sense. As far as I know I was born sometime in the afternoon around two o'clock. I do seem to function better after noon.

Although I'd imagine most of us would rather sleep later than we can. Not that many months ago, I wouldn't get out of bed before ten. To this day I'd still do that if I could but I can't.

And on that note, I should go to bed. I'm still thinking about hitting the hill tomorrow.