Dallas, the City that Always Treats Me Right

I had a crappy week last week, so I decided to go to Dallas to make me feel better. It worked. Even though I was only there for about 24 hours, it was a day filled with good food and good people. I'm glad I have so many good friends there. Now I just need to get a good group of friends down here in Austin, and I'll be a happy man.

Sure he looks sweet and innocent...

Buddy
Originally uploaded by qortez.

But every now and then, Buddy (pictured above), turns into a little monster (pictured below)!

Monster Buddy
Originally uploaded by qortez.


This happened last night. I was having trouble falling asleep, so I thought I'd pet the cats next to me. Petting them usually relaxes me, and helps me sleep. It was at this time, that Buddy made his transformation. Normally, I can see it coming, and take evasive action, but since I was trying to sleep, he caught me off guard. He was able to maul my arm pretty good before I pried him off me. Knowing he would soon have to face my wrath, he ran away and turned back into the sweet and innocent cat. He lay in the middle of the living room floor, belly in the air. Which, as we all no, is cat for, "Look, I'm exceedingly cute and you must love me!"

How can a guy say no to that?

Night of a Thousand Dreams

For the last week or so, each nights sleep has been rather hectic. I've been having a very large number of completely unrelated dreams each night. I can't really remember details, but it's almost as if my mind was opening a random series of books and making a dream out of a random page. Generally speaking, I don't think I've had any clue what was going on. In fact, I'm certain that the whole experience leaves me quite confused. Sometimes I wake up between the dreams, and sometimes I don't. The end result is that I feel like I didn't sleep much at all.

Bollocks 2.14

I'm not very happy. I went to court tonight, to take care of my ticket. I was expecting to have a trial and all that. Apparently, that's not how it works. The last time I went to the court was to set up a date for me to appear in court. The purpose of this appearance, seemed to be so I could tell them exactly the same thing I told them a month ago. So, now, they are going to send me my trial date in the mail. Which means I have to appear in court, again. Which is not cool.

Homecoming Part 2: The Revenge

Actually, no revenge. My entire weekend rocked and was just what I needed. Thank you Dallas, see you soon!

Homecoming

Yesterday, I embarked on my first trip back to Dallas since I left about 6 weeks ago. I had been looking forward to the trip all day. Not only because I left work a little early, but also because I was going to see a lot of my friends. During the drive back, I actually felt like I was driving home. It is unfortunate that Austin doesn't feel like home yet, but Dallas was home for nearly 6 years.

So far, this trip has not disappointed me at all. It was very nice to get to see a lot of my friends last night. Most of them seemed really happy to see me, which is always a nice feeling and some didn't know I had left. I've already seen most of the people I want to see, and I'm hoping to get the rest tonight.

It's good to know that there is a place where I will always feel loved and welcome.

I'm not sure I should admit this

My alarm has been scaring me in the mornings. That is, every morning it goes off, for at least the past week. It doesn't matter if I was briefly awake 15 minutes prior to it going off, it will still scare me. Sure, the fear only lasts for a brief moment, only until I realize that I'm at home, in my bed, and that my alarm clock is making all that awful noise. Still, I never had this problem before. What's up with that?

Desire

Chapter 6: Mrs. Merryweather and the Kodama
Originally uploaded by Wyrd.

I saw this picture of a Tree Spirit from Princess Mononoke and decided that I want one. I also want a plush Cthulhu.

Is it bad...

...that the second person I know that has seen the inside of my apartment lives in Colorado?

On mornings like these...

...I wish I didn't have such a high caffeine tolerance.

Loss

For the past week, things had really started looking up for me, especially financially (not that I was hurting in that area). However, I'm finding myself extraordinarily sad. It's because I think I officially lost a friend yesterday. It was someone I had a lot of respect for, but everything I tried to do to prevent the loss just made things worse.

Gate Update

So, I've come to find out, that my gate key wasn't in the system at all. It sure was nice of them to give me a key that wasn't in the system. Also, my number can't be programmed into the gate system, because it isn't a local number. That makes having guests rather problematic.

I really dislike gated communities

I happen to live in one now. Up until today, the gate had been broken since I moved in, so it hasn't really bothered me. Today, though, I was able to discover that my key to the gate doesn't work. Not only that, but for some reason, my phone number isn't programmed into their system, so I couldn't open the gate that way. So, I had to wait for someone to leave the community. This was at 1:30am, not exactly a high traffic time. Also, the entrance is sort of designed so people don't come in the exit gate. I barely made it through.

Stupid gated communities.

Bollocks 2.0

I got another speeding ticket. This one for only 10 over. I had no idea what the speed limit actually was, though.

Fog

Fog
Originally uploaded by qortez.

Having grown up in the desert, I didn't have many oportunities to experience fog. There would be something like one foggy morning every couple of years.

Now that I live in Texas, it seems like I get to see fog fairly often. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it, though. Sometimes it's no big deal, you can still see well enough. Then there are those really thick patches, where you can hardly see. Those are creepy.

Two Weeks

As of tomorrow, I will have lived in Austin for two weeks. My new apartment doesn't feel even remotely close to home, yet. This may be partly due to the fact that once I reached a certain level of unpacked, I just kinda stopped. Also, it's just going to take time. I'm not doing too good on the social front, either, but I've only gone out a few times. I can't expect things to happen right away.

Work is good so far, I should actually start doing real work this week. The work sounds interesting, so here's hoping. Also, even though I work for a big mega corporation, our team is remarkably small, and so there's a nice cozy work environment. That is definitely a nice change from my previous job.

So, I'm still settling in. It's only been two weeks, so I can't really complain. As I get more settled in, I think I'm going to really enjoy myself here.

Stressed?

Yes, I am. It isn't so much the fact that I start a new job tomorrow. It's more the little things that I need to get done, and won't. The fact that I got back from New Orleans about 3-ish hours later than I hoped is a big contributer. My New Orleans trip was great, by the way. Another, is the fact that I'll get at most 6 hours of sleep, if I even sleep at all. (Yes, I know I should be getting in bed instead of posting this).

Things really aren't working out so well for me right now. Here's hoping work goes well tomorrow, and I have a chance to catch up on some of my errands. Getting some rest would be nice as well. If not, maybe I ought to take up drinking.

Not Smooth

So, um, yeah, the move didn't go smoothly at all. The movers were an hour late to pick up my stuff. Which wasn't too bad, since they called and let me know. I used the extra time to get some food. This was at 9:30am.

After the loaded everything, I rushed to get everything done that I needed to. Which ended up taking darn near an hour. At this point, I was thinking the movers might have a good head start on me. I got to my new apartment in just over 3 hours, which put me there about 4pm. 6pm came around, and no word from the movers. I call them up, and they say 15 minutes. So, okay, not too bad.

2 hours later, the movers show up. I finally get all my stuff in the apartment at 9:30pm. Now, I could finally eat dinner.

So, yeah, blah on moving day.

In less than 12 hours

I will be watching the movers pack up all my stuff in their truck to drive it to Austin. I thought I would have enough boxes to pack everything myself, unfortunately, this is not quite the case. I could use 2 or 3 more, so not too bad.

So far, this move has not gone smoothly at all. I had a hell of a time setting up all my utilities at my new apartment. Then I got a call telling me that particular apartment won't be available, and I'll be in a different one. So, I had another hell of a time changing everything over to the new apartment number. There's been a few other things that have increased the stress levels. Hopefully, this is the end of all that extra moving drama and tomorrow will be silky smooth.

This has been a great apartment, and I just love the layout. It will be missed. However, since I tore everything down, it just doesn't feel like home anymore. It will probably be a long time before my new apartment feels like home. So right now, I have no place to call home, and it sucks.

Also, I'm still not 100% convinced that I'm making a good decision here. I'm quite nervous. Too nervous for my liking. This has just caused my brain to be all over the place, and essentially mush. Which is not cool.

I'm going to be without internet for the next couple of days. Hopefully, I'll be connected again on Thursday.

Napping

Every now and then, I feel like taking a nap. On occasion, I actually manage to lay down for a while. A little less often, I actually sleep a reasonable amount. Other times, I'm not sure if I've slept at all. Today, was one of those "naps". I lay down for about 45 minutes, but I have no clue whether I actually slept or not. I'm guessing that I did, since I remember a dreaming of sorts. Not like a real dream, though, just random images or something. The only one I recall at this point was watching a sidewalk move by, as if I were in a car driving next to it. When I actually registered what I was seeing, I was awake, again. Not at all sleepy, as if I had never actually fallen asleep. This happened to me several more times throughout the "nap", although I don't remember what the other images were.

I've had this sort of thing happen to me several times before, and I never really thought about it. But really, it's kind of weird.