Epiphany in Baltimore

2002-01-07

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

I'm suffering from a minor case of the post-holiday blues.

I love the holidays, and had an atypically great season this year - time back in Michigan with my family, then time here in the area with my friends. Both were extraordinary. Now, I'm left alone in this big city again, and it reminds me of how alone this place can be - that I've made just a handful of friends, and that none are the type to call up on a Saturday night and ask to go to the movies. That this city has tons to do and to explore, but that I have no one to explore it with. Jason is broke and far too content sitting around watching TV on weekend nights.

I have finally given the girl whose number I got at the Memorial Lighting a call back. Left a message. Haven't heard back. We shall see, we shall see, we shall see.

My mild case of the blues hasn't been helped by some crummy things occurring lately. My car, I think, is dead. It started not accelerating or going into gear well yesterday, getting progressively worse as the day went on. Last night, I had to rev on the gas to get it to go into "reverse" in the parking lot at the grocery store. This morning, I started off to work, but made it only a few houses away before I realized that it would be too risky to attempt to drive there like this. I turned around to park on the street and get a ride with Mike - who hadn't left yet - but the car wouldn't go into "drive" because we were going uphill. So I had to put my safeties on right there in the middle of traffic, run up to the house, get someone to help me push it, and finally got it to the side of the road.

The symptoms appear consistent with a bad transmission. I fear I'm going to be left with a dilemma as to whether I should get a new transmission ($400-$600) for a 1993 Plymouth Acclaim with 99,000 miles and no air conditioning, or rush getting a nicer, newer used car somewhere. I was hoping this car would last me until the fall or winter (I had shopping for a new car pegged for November 2002 for the last fourteen months or so), as it is paid for and it's nice not having a car payment every month. Buying a new car would make a lot of the purchases I want to make in the next couple of months - a weight bench, new weights, an eliptical machine, a DVD player, a new coat - impossible. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Maybe I'll take the car into Pep Boys tonight and they'll tell me it's something simple, like a bad air filter or something. I'm not optimistic, though. Everything I've heard from everybody is that it's probably the transmission.

In addition, I've lost my wallet. I'm not freaking out about it yet, but I was wearing pants with really shallow pockets yesterday and it could have easily fallen out somewhere. I called the movie theater, to no avail. I've looked all around the house. I don't know where it could be.

Today, I have a meeting at 9am with my principal and my department head. Neither of them told me about it; I just got a call on Friday from the secretary asking if I could make it at that time. At first, I was freaking out ("What did I do wrong? Maybe they want to fire me at the semester break. Did they hear about [insert something I've done wrong in the classroom this year]"), but then I had a memo in my mailbox and it looks as though both me and the other new teacher were scheduled for the meeting. It appears to be a routine discussion of my formal observation, which occurred two months ago. I'm not sure of the timing, but perhaps they just wanted to get it over with before the end of the semester. I'm still a bit nervous, though. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've spoken to my principal this year other than "Hi," so I don't know him very well. I like him for the most part, though. There are 80 or 90 teachers here, so I don't feel our lack of communication is anything personal. Hopefully the meeting will be short and sweet. My observation two months ago did not go all that great, and I think my department head stated things a little too harshly at times. I'm not sure why we need to meet about it two months later. It's probably contractual.

The weekend was dull. I tried telling myself that I deserved a dull, relaxing weekend after the excitement - both visiting family and friends and then entertaining friends - of the last three weeks or so. But I got downright bored by Saturday night. Jason and I watched a marathon of this really good show on A&E called 100 Center Street (starring Alan Alda and Kristen Devicq from Party of Five) on Saturday, then fought between the AFI Awards (me) and A History of the Ku Klux Klan (him) after that. I got sort of sloshed on leftover Long Island Ice Teas from New Years during an especially funny rerun of Saturday Night Live, while Jason paved his way through about five Rolling Rocks. Well, at least we've evolved from getting drunk together watching Bridget Jones Diary... But I can't shake the feeling that we're spending too much time together. With his currrent joblessness (he hasn't been called to sub in the last two weeks of school), it seems like he's always at home. Always. I was home alone for about twenty minutes the other day while he went to the store, and it was so weird. Sometimes I just want to grab him, shake him, and ask him what he does with all his time. I want to be supportive, though, which will only occur when I stop internalizing and blaming myself for his decision back in October to quit. He never should have quit without having something else lined up. I wonder if he'd admit that now. He's my best friend, but sometimes I wonder about him. Sometimes, I feel like asking him how his job search is going or if he got called in to sub, but am worried that it will feel like a criticism to him, so I don't ask. I wish I knew what to say.

Anyway, back to Saturday Night. Yes, I still love Tina Fey. She has such an attractive mix of goofiness and seriousness. I especially loved her joke about being on alert: "On Monday, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a terrorism warning, advising all Americans to be on high alert this week. On Friday, he announces that the period of high alert may be extended indefinitely. I think I speak for all Americans when I say: Bitch, I can�t be more alert than I already am. I�m opening my mail with salad tongs, I take my passport in the shower with me, I�m watching so much CNN that I�m having sex dreams about Wolf Blitzer. How about this? You stay on high alert, and I�ll go freeze my head like Walt Disney and you can wake me up when all of this is over, alright?". Gotta love her. I want to find a girl like Tina Fey.

On Sunday, I went to see a matinee of A Beautiful Mind. Alone. I really liked it. I had middling expectations, because Ron Howard directed it - his movies either are good to great (Cocoon, The Paper, Apollo 13) or just plain awful (The Grinch, one of the worst movies I've ever seen). But Russell Crowe is an amazing actor, and it got good reviews, so I had some hopes for it. And it was a good one. Crowe won't win an Oscar this year because he won last year (besides, I'm hoping it's Gene Hackman for The Royal Tenenbaums), but he's now given three Oscar-worthy performances in the last three years. Jennifer Connelly was very good, too. And beautiful. I liked the film a lot - it throws a very interesting curve ball at the audience right in the middle of it, but never loses its sense of realism. The ending was very emotional. That five excellent movies I've seen in a row - Ocean's 11, Vanilla Sky, Lord of the Rings, The Royal Tenenbaums, and now A Beautiful Mind. I still want to see Ali, The Man Who Wasn't There, and (especially) In the Bedroom.

The other tidbit of news is that we now have a third roommate, temporarily. Josh, who is roommate Mike's friend, is sleeping on our couch while he looks for a place of his own and gets interviewed for teaching jobs. He's a nice guy - much nicer than Mike, actually (wow, I'm really in a roommate-bashing mood today, I guess. I mean, the guy did give me a ride this morning to school...). Hopefully he'll make the house feel a little less depressing over the next couple of weeks. Maybe we'll even go out to a bar or something.

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My new design is nearly finished and should be up this week sometime. It won't be anything fancy, but is green like a chalkboard and I've used Eraser Dust fonts for part of it. At least it won't have those X's on the side...