Mighty Quiet

The internet seems to have fallen silent for the summer. The blogs go un-updated, the flickr sites grow stale, and everyday the news is the same: oil prices up, economy fucked, McCain a typical republican asshat. California's on fire, literally, and those of us on the central coast wake up each day to a mix of marine layer fog and thick plumes of smoke.* The busses run less frequently, the campus is less choked with students, and our bank account (no link to that) keeps stumbling along thanks to my teaching gig. I've got a new pair of shoes, some new shirts and pants, and a new cut on my left arm / squid tattoo, because I'm a stumbling idiot.** I miss my friends: those I've lived away from for years, those who are just away for the summer or part of it, and those I'll be leaving behind while I'm in France (i.e. all of them.) I'm feeling kind of maudlin, obviously, but also less panicked about everything. The nice thing that has come out of leaving everything I know and love to be in a profoundly foreign place for that long is that I've been reveling in the things I do here that I like: spend time with B, drink chuck, watch Netflix, goof around. Humans are all retards: we can only enjoy things when we're confronted with their absence. Inefficient, poorly-programmed robots are we.

* This has the bonus effect of keeping things nice and cool, since the sun rarely breaks through until afternoon.
** Our friends S+T gave me a new desk, which is amazing, but I scraped my arm carrying it up the stairs, which is amazingly lame. I really hope I didn't badly fuck up my favorite tattoo.