Cliffnote It.
Sometimes someone’s life can be such the trainwreck that it becomes impossible to remain a part of it any longer. I ended last month by dissolving my relationship with Justin. We were, in reality, two people so in polar opposition that we eventually became painfully incompatible.
A new relationship, born from eight hour phone conversations while he was in New York, has been developing over the course of this month. I really don’t know what will happen at the end of next month when he returns to the metropolis, but I do think that we’ll be back and forth enough so as to allow continued growth.
I’ve been gardening, as per usual, with the exception of lately. The last couple of weeks have been very demanding on my time, learning how to properly manage having a full life along with all the other things I’d grown used to doing with my rather solitary existence in the usual. The last couple of weeks have also brought weather so horrible both in heat, drought, and monsoon, as to do a good job at destroying the garden I’ve been developing.
The majority of the dahlias succumb to tubor rot after the five inches of rain that had fallen over the course of one weekend. Overwhelmed with water, they were then unable to actually take enough up into the plants to survive the scorching heat that soon followed. I started with twelve in that area of the garden and I’m now down to four, I’m very unhappy about it… disappointed, depressed, annoyed.
The roses seem to be doing well, they — unlike most all other plants — seemed to fare well throughout the rapidly changing weather conditions. All of the roses have massive new growth and buds, it looks as though next month will be a lovely show… hopefully. Of the newer plants, I lost two of the three campanula, the one remaining is now blooming. It’s pretty, but I suppose that isn’t a tremendous loss… considering all other new plants have survived and if not blooming, they are doing alright.
I noticed, for the first time within my lifetime, a hummingbird in my garden. I saw it originally Saturday afternoon, and then again yesterday evening while it was poking into my red Lobelia. It’s rather thrilling to see such a little bird dart around.
A majority of the herbs did not survive the abusive weather, every oregano and sage is burnt to a crisp after drowning previously. I have some minor hope for them still, but the catnip was beyond help, so it met with the compost bin, joining the dahlias.
The weeds are diligently attempting to take over. When I finally finish regular tasks outside I barely have the energy to withstand the temperatures indexing over 100° to pull the weeds that are encroaching on everything.
The tomatoes are doing well; I have already too many cherry tomatoes. It appears that I’ll finally have some roma tomatoes worth considering even taking inside; previously they’ve been befelled with blossom end rot, making them a bit too disgusting to bother with. The yellow pear tomatoes are very interesting, albeit unusually smaller than I expected, they do taste good though. I’m not sure about the peppers at this point. I have harvested four, and perhaps it’s still a bit early, but they aren’t being as prolific as I had hoped. I did plant considerably more than last year, but I need to make mental and perhaps even paper note to plant many, many more plants for next year. This will also mean creating a new planting area for them.
Most of my work stresses seem to finally be behind me. I’ve not had any instances of server instability, crashing, or otherwise poor performance since banning Movable Type’s commenting system. I was receiving harrassing emails from various individuals regarding that policy change, but thankfully that has ebbed to a stop at this point.
I finally made the upgrade to digital cable with a DVR, it also has high definition channels, but of course with a standard definition television, those channels are of course in SD. This makes me want to upgrade my tv; for a paltry $1200. Right, I’ll get on that immediately. The DVR is nice, I don’t see any majorly glaring problems with it, btw it’s the Motorola DCT-6412. Analog tv, channels below 100, look more shitty than ever. I’ve read that this is because the tuners in the box are of poor quality; but I’m much more likely to believe that it is due to analog/digital/analog conversion: signal comes in analog, is digitized due to DVR buffering, and then converted to analog again for display. The digital channels, and particularly those also coming in as HD (again, viewed as SD of course), do look superb and do not suffer that problem.
I believe Comcast has the billing/services terribly messed up, but I’m afraid to call them and try to fix it, for fear it becomes even more askew. I didn’t sign up under any special promotion, simply because I wasn’t aware of any. The first night the box wouldn’t show any digital channels, except HBO and SHO. The next night it had all the digital channels and SHO, but no HBO. Now it has basically what it should have, but now SHO OnDemand doesn’t work. I received a postcard in the mail the morning after setting up the new STB indicating a promotional rate of $30 for six months, and that would include SHO. I was beginning to make the assumption that I received that promo, but with SHO OnDemand no longer working, something is wrong. Either they’re still giving me SHO when I’m not supposed to have it, or they messed up the OnDemand part. I don’t think I would care to have SHO after the next two weeks. Once QAF is over, I don’t see much need to pay that extra $15 or so dollars. If it would magically disappear in the manner which it magically appeared, I’ll have to call and have it readded, and complain about not getting the promo… that I of course “assumed” I’d be getting… or some other complain-a-thon related antic.
I’m really at the pinnacle of three-week domesticity with the boyfriend. We go grocery shopping, using a cart, have gone to Ikea, Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, & Williams Sonoma… along with planning and execution of dinner parties. Two with just three people, which really isn’t so much a dinner party, but then also this past weekend we had a party of five. I’m enjoying this new little life, even if it does have an end coming next month. I have to keep thinking that we’re cramming in so much ‘life’ together because we have a limited period of time to be able to see each other whenever we’d like, without having to board a train first. It’s been a bit difficult for me to adjust to having something so domestic and intimate happen so quickly. He’s the closest to ideal that I think is actually possible… although an hour long bitchfest over a table decoration isn’t something I have any desire to repeat within my lifetime.
The dinner party Saturday was lovely though; the food was good, it was nice to have friends together, and the boyfriend did an absolutely lovely job of preparing the gazebo for dinner. It was a view out of a magazine, or in this case… it was very reminiscent of this ‘celebrate summer’ image on the Ikea website (in feel, not that everything was from there… of course).
I suffered the fifth Maxtor harddrive failure within the last year the other evening. I came into the office and heard a clicking sound, the kind you just know means something terrible has occured with the hardware. I will never again buy a Maxtor product. This one failed with its warranty expiring in June 2005, yes… last month; as if it were designed to do so. Fortunately, I suppose, this one contained mostly porn, so the loss is not tragic. Regardless, that particular failure rate is astonishing, it’s also across multiple different computers, so that cannot be immediately blamed. I believe that I’m going to begin a personal policy of replacing drives immediately prior to their warranty expiration. Instead of attempting to get their entire useful life, they’ll be trashed, and that warranty expiration will mean “time to replace” instead.
I had a horrifying moment this morning when I decided to actually calculate my net income. I’ve been very… complacent when it came to knowing how much money I actually make. I knew that I had enough to basically do whatever I wanted to do… except that started to slowly change over the past couple of months, when whatever I wanted to do also included doing things with other people again. This horrifying moment came after the first mortifying moment of realizing I had a mere $2.99 in my checking account (that’s not my only money-related account, so relief breathing can begin). My income has dropped significantly since the summer of 2002, when life was grand and I was preparing for that life with Davey. I’m still mostly in a “give-up” mode when it comes to work… it’s either just okay, or it drives me crazy. The glory days of my company, as sad as it is to say, I do believe are all in the past. This financial realization has only reinforced my desire to say that I simply don’t make enough to put up with the bullshit that I have to put up with. I think that things are slowly improving, but I think slow will be the case for a very long time, if not forever… forever being until I finally decide to get rid of the company and try something else for a while. I’m really missing the steady and plan-around-able income that a normal job would give, and even more so I definitely miss the health insurance benefits. I’d also be making, if I could manage to deal with it, a significantly higher income; the downside is that my freetime would also dwindle to nothingness. Right now I still think that my income is okay, and while it is practically minimum wage (if I had to actually work 40 hours per week) the free time is well worth the lack of higher income. I also do not have a car payment, rent, house payment (it’s paid for), or any of the other monthly bills that a higher income would be utterly required for.
I’m forced to reconcile myself to actually creating a budget, to not spending money as though it were water, but to really focus on what I want to use my money for. This month was abnormal though, from a fiscal standpoint. I went to Leesburg, Ikea twice, had three semi-expensive dinner parties, ate out multiple times, went to the dentist, and it just happened to be my month of buying things like big bottles of excedrin , lactaid, razor blades, and all that other insanity. I suppose having money left at all, even if a meager three dollars, is a miracle.
My health lately has been questionable. I’ve been under a dire amount of stress with the company, I haven’t had a weekend without the baby (my brother’s baby that is) for as long as I can remember… and I still think that my boyfriend’s mother is going to kill me. I’m sure this is translating into why I’m having such horrible tension headaches… it’s as though I need to wait until the excedrin kicks in before I can even move from my bedroom in the morning, err, afternoon. If it isn’t a headache killing my mood, it’s how sick I’ve felt after eating lately. I’m almost considering going back on a nicely anorexic diet of only water and cigarettes, since food makes me ill.
That’s July.