Just a quick post to make it seem like this blog isn’t dormant.
49 Days. That’s how long we were in this nightmare. Technically it still isn’t done, there is one small piece of missing tile in the kitchen.
We haven’t even paid the remaining balance for the work. Not because of us, because the final figures haven’t even been given to us yet!
What an ordeal this has been.
Excuse me, I am hangry and must go have some pizza.
TTFN.
I just wanted to get this in a form I can look back on. Getting jolting news that there is a flood happening in your home whilst you are 4.5 hours away with family on Christmas Eve is not how one envisions a holiday to go.
To have to cut a trip short and rush home to assess damage is not ideal, but yet, somehow, I think in a way that with everything that has happened in the last 5 days, surprisingly, I am OK. This is weird. Usually I would be in more of a panic.
Sure I have been emotional at times, mostly when we finally returned home at 4am on Christmas Morning to survey the damage that was done. Anyone would be emotional at that particular time when they see their home in a state of damage.
We were so lucky that all of our personal items and such survived intact. The most important member of our family, our cat Pumpkin, was our chief concern. He has been doing OK. We worry now whether or not he has a cold or something else going on from breathing all the contaminated air. We’ll be keeping an eye on him in the coming days.
This last statement is going to sound rather obvious from someone who hasn’t updated this blog as often as he should… but I need to update this thing more with my thoughts, especially given the current state of things for the next month.
What else can I say on this insignificant blog that hasn’t already been said elsewhere?
I don’t need to link to anything here because you definitely know what has been going on in the last 30 hours before this post.
The clock is racing backwards in America (can we even call it America anymore?)
I personally am frightened. Literally. I. Am. Frightened.
You know what I am not going to let this do? Kill my hope. Hope that we can still turn this wayward ship around. There has to be something better on the horizon, right? Even though the waters look mighty dark now, hope has to be there.
Have I given you enough nautical references for one blog post? Yeah, we’re good.
Hang in there, reader. We’ll get through this together. We have got to keep believing that.
Is precise typing a lost art? Maybe it was never an art to begin with unless you were a secretary.
Maybe we just take typos for granted and have gotten so used to the convenience of computers and the ability to use the backspace key to correct mistakes.
There is a beauty in using a typewriter however that I have always felt a comfort in. A few years ago, Greg found an electric typewriter from around the late 1980s/early 1990s and asked if I wanted it. I took him up on the offer. We then saw a manual typewriter from around the late 1950s/early 1960s and got that one too. That was a pain to use, but I decided to start using it for a personal, typed journal. I ended up getting more often than not annoyed with how often the strikers would jam up with each other when typing too fast. Or that I would have to smack the keys hard to get results (which was a common complain of typewriters of that era.)
We ended up selling both of them well before we moved to Atlanta.
Fast forward to last weekend. Greg sees this beauty in a store:
That is a Smith Corona Electra 210. I’m guessing it’s from the mid-to-late 1960s, maybe early 1970s. It’s hard to date because Smith Corona is notorious for not putting date tags on any of their products. The only thing we needed to get for it was the ribbon, which fortunately is easily found.
It works great! I have resumed my typed journal after almost 5 years. I am going to make something of this.
In case you are wondering, a typed journal might look like this:
There is more to the entry than that, I’m not going to show you everything.
Now you may be asking yourself: why in the world am I not just typing in this blog instead of doing this? That’s a good question.
A lot of stuff I want to put down on paper is really not fit for the darkest recesses of the interwebs. I don’t want anything salty that I way write to really come back and get me when I least expect it. The internet has more ears than a field of corn and once you put it out there, you’re never going to get it back.
And, by the way, White-Out correcting tape that is instantly dry really helps when you commit mistakes.
I feel the same as a lot of people do, that we have been perpetually stuck in March 2020 for almost two years. You know, everything has been a blur in all of that time. It seems that lately every bit of hope that I might feel is so instantly dashed by the grim reality of the world’s situation.
I have tried to come to terms with the fact that I, like most other people, want to move past this pandemic so much and try to establish a new normal.
Will anything ever be the same? Of course not.
I don’t want to go off on a tangent of feelings that have been shared time and time again by other individuals in other media.
The question I can answer is: “What will the new normal be for Greg and myself?”
I wish I had an answer to that. I don’t think anyone can answer that question of themselves. Those kinds of answers will come when most sane, logical people are assured that we can put this behind us. Unfortunately, as long as there are people in the world that are putting stupidity over logic… we aren’t getting out of this anytime soon.
It’s hard not to feel that we are doomed as a society. Not just the pandemic, but in civil discourse as well. I’m sure you know what I am talking about. People that cry that they don’t get their way even when the facts say otherwise. All of this hits closer to me than you ever could imagine. Not just at home, but it did at work as well. Would you believe two different people at work got let go because of vaccine mandates? Yeah, I was shocked as well. Shocked that people can’t make the obvious decision for the greater good of their co-workers and society in general and get the freaking shot.
OK, I’m rambling now. Time to get off the soapbox and go to work.
3 years.
It’s been 3 years since I started this crazy journey to becoming an ATL-ien.
3 years since I started sending job applications out and then ultimately getting hired and starting the whirlwind that brought me and my husband to where we are now.
3 years.
While that amount of time is not so notable in and of itself, what is notable is that I have at this moment regained something which I regretted giving up to come here.
In my old job, I had weekends off. I have worked every weekend since early November 2018. Starting this week, I have Sundays and Mondays off. While it’s not the entire weekend, at least I have one weekend day off.
Someday, Saturday, Someday.
Meanwhile, I will certainly enjoy being off the exact same days as Greg again. We already have these last two days. There are many, many more ahead. Just you wait! 😊
I sit here with my mind in a blur. It’s been a hell of a week in Atlanta. I am going to assume the reader by now has heard of the tragic and hateful events that transpired earlier this week.
(However, in case you’ve been living under a rock, go get up to speed.)
I echo what a lot of other people have said, hate has no home in ATL. None whatsoever.
What I do want to talk about is how I personally feel about all of this and how it relates to me.
As a gay man, I have had my fair share of hate, scorn, epithets and what have you thrown at me. It’s not fun. In my travels here, I have driven past the places where this all happened lots of times. I never though anything of them. They are legitimate businesses ran by good people. To have so many lives cut short by a terrorist claiming he was trying to remove sources of his sex addiction is just the most ridiculous thing I have heard in quite a while.
How can a person live with themselves after that.
Gah. I don’t know.
There is lots more to digest out of this, but I don’t want to ramble on. A lot of other people have already said what I am thinking.
Let my good friend Ron educate you a bit:
If you’re having to explain your use of creed or nationality-specific terminology in place of globally-accepted vernacular (“China virus” or “Wuhan flu” v COVID-19, for example), you needn’t bother. You’re, at minimum, a “tad” racist. #StopAsianHate #StopAAPIHate
— Ron Roberts (@ImRonRoberts) March 17, 2021
Atlanta is strong. We won’t let hate win. I know this place is a good one. I still love it here and we will go forward stronger. Say their names.
OK, so what has happened.
Well, the world is still so far upside-down.
I am still upside-down.
I am not sleeping well. I need to start exercising to try and help that.
We got the condo, we moved in over a month ago. Maybe someday I will get used to the obnoxiously loud engines on 17th Street.
Xmas is this week. We are doing it virtually like most everyone else is and we are OK with that.
Live stream Xmas Night at http://youtube.com/nickandgreg/. Please join us.
Kthxbai.
With all of the stuff that is happening in life that I have to be enthusiastic about there is always a flip side. It is an inane sense of dread.
Dread for the hopelessness that we as a country are never going to get out of this shit show that we have been in for the last four years.
Dread that it won’t get better.
Dread that we are not going to have the freedoms anymore that we have had for the last two plus centuries.
Dread.
It’s a powerful emotion that consumes me.
So I decided that I should make what to some might be a minor change. To others, it might be considered a major change. It by no means is legal yet, that will happen in 2021. But I feel it’s long overdue that I exercise my right to take my husband’s last name.
It’s minor and major to me all at the same time. I won’t go on record as to the specific reasons why I am doing this. I just feel it is the right thing to do.
So, there. It is partially done. At least in the court of social media and this website… whatever the hell that counts for.
Oh, and by the way, lots of exciting stuff is already happening. Details to come soon.
TTFN.