Category Archives: Life

Back home. I awoke yesterday long before the sun would be up after too few hours of sleep. Not to mention late. I had enough time to hop in the shower, pack up the rest of my things and we were off to the airport. Samantha’s coat and snow pants were pulled over her fuzzy Spongebob pajamas and during the course of the ride, she dozed a bit and held onto my arm the whole time.

It was only 9 days and it went amazingly fast. On the other hand, most of those days Samantha did not have school and she was plastered to my side. I felt suffocated by the time I left. Still, seeing the tears on her pudgy little face in the airport made me cry as well.

On the other hand, I had an adorable little kitty to go home to and he’d been on his own – for the most part – a couple of days since Ryan left. I missed my kitty terribly yet part of me wondered why I should go home when no one would be there.

I felt more at home with the colder weather and it snowed a bit the last few days. It definitely felt more like winter weather and it didn’t seem so strange to hear Christmas music. Nevertheless, it was cold and I knew the weather in San Antonio would be much more enjoyable.

I enjoyed seeing almost all of my family and friends, some of whom I had not seen for years. We hung out and went out and I got to know a few new people as well. However, my time there was so packed with acitivities that I felt really tense by the time I needed to leave.

I was exhausted and slept a bit on the plane back. Both physically and emotionally, I was ready to return home. But after I entered the door, it wasn’t long before I was heading back out to check the mail, open packages and return to unpack my bags. I checked e-mail and completed tasks that had been put on the back burner for over a week. All in all, I didn’t head to sleep until after midnight – over 7 hours after I had headed home.

And I suppose the best way to sum up my return home is that I was conflicted. It was bittersweet, after all.

Airports are like different universes. It’s as though someone grabbed a part of some parallel universe which is similar but not-quite-the-same and dropped it into the middle of our universe. Voila! An airport! Although airports are always under construction, it seems, I don’t believe they were ever constructed in the first place.

Time seems to be simultaneously faster and slower. It takes so long when waiting to board yet, 2 short hours later you’re someplace else. There’s a physical disconnect with the place you were before. this always feels so strange to me.

In airport and on airplanes we cater to the every whim of a person just because he or she wears a uniform. In the rest of this world, the uniform means nothing and is nothing more than a sign of an insignificant job.

You could live and work in an airport, if you never got caught. You could avoid people easily enough. Airports have every amenity to take care of you. Except there’s one small catch: airports experience a special sort of inflation. I always found prices in airports to be ridiculous, especially when you could drive 5 blocks and buy the same thing for a fraction of the price. But when you can limit what enters your institution, you control the prices.

I do not necessarily looking forward to stepping into one of these randomly placed glimpses into another universe in just two short days but I suppose I will live as long as I don’t have to stay there.

Yesterday seemed like a good day. We headed to a shopping center and hit up Pier 1, Lowe’s, Linens and Things and Barnes and Noble. We finally purchased a mirror I had been wanting for the living room and happened to find a modular shelving set at linens and things which was on sale because they’re going out of business. We both added some books to our collections and we finally got brackets to help us hang our mantel shelf, which I did around 3:45 this morning. LOL It actually turned out really nice.

On the other hand, the modular shelving did not work nearly as well as I would have liked and I wound up putting a half dozen useless holes in the wall because the holes in the shelves are so small and particular. Even using the paper templates which came with it resulted in problems and I wound up wasting half of the anchors which came with. Not to mention that trying to get the shelves on the damn wall made a bunch of black marks (because the shelves are black). I finally “finished” even though the shelves are not flush to the wall, level with eachother and possible not even usable. I just decided to give up. Ugh.

Monday was a very weird day. It started off not too bad with some episodes of Stargate and then Ryan received a call that one his troops has fucked up so he jumped in the shower and ran to base after being screamed on the phone. Of course, it wasn’t his troop. It was someone else with the same name who is now his troop and Ryan basically wasted a trip. Bah!

We spent the day doing a little shopping, including brand new bras for me, and grabbed dinner at the mall and ended up with a trip to Wal-mart for some necessities. We returned to a hot apartment as our electricity had partially shut off while we were gone and I hopped on the phone with the answering service who told us to check the breaker box, which we did, and flip the switches for the living room (where the electricity had been off) which we couldn’t find. OF course, after I hung up Ryan found the switch and I had to call them back to say never mind.

If only it ended there. I went to turn on my computer to find that it didn’t work and assumed it was the power supply because I’ve had the same problem before. Unfortunately it was too late to call anyone so I waited until yesterday where I made like 4 calls to Best Buy before someone answered and gave me a ridiculous price. We also talked to someone else who quoted a better rate but wouldn’t have been able to do it the same day so we went a little out of our way to a great shop that was sort of hidden away and were greeted by an extremely helpful chap who even gave us some free service. We took the time to browse their shop as well which had a variety of used and new computers and accessories for some damned good prices so Ryan is now considering getting a laptop from there.

Although it all turned out okay, it was a harrowing experience. I was very worried of having additional damage done to the computer so I’m very grateful that it wasn’t. Of course, I am not impressed with our electricity which has already gone out twice since we moved in. Ick.

As much as I love my kitty, he is still a kitten and very curious. Unfortunately, he likes to get into places which are hard to block off and just as difficult to get him out of – places like the back of the TV, the fireplace and under the dishwasher. I have tried distracting him with toys as well as spraying with water and while he doesn’t like being sprayed, it doesn’t phase him all that much.

Any ideas?