en route to camp hollywood...

last chance to update before camp hollywood... and if i'm overwhelmed now with how much has gone on since i last bothered to blog, it won't get better with that. (heh. so when i wrote that, it wasn't really the last chance -- it's now "tomorrow", and i'm stuck in the philly airport for another 3 hours before the 6-hours-later-than-the-original flight to LA that i got stuck with when norfolk's planes weren't getting off the ground this morning. they stuck me in a cab to newport news, where the flights to philly apparently were relatively untroubled. silver lining: maybe, just maybe, for once i'll get something written and hit publish before i can think too hard!)

honestly, the worst of the busy has been over for nearly a month. let's see, vblx was june 19-21... we got access to the new apartment just before that, and had fun hosting a few pennsylvanians in the mostly-empty rooms. jesse was at sea for most of the couple weeks from then until we had to be out, but was around for the final rush. we handed in our keys at the old apartment on june 30... the week leading up to that was somewhat insane. the week after that was also insane, since we had declared we were having a housewarming party on july 10, effectively setting a deadline to unpack. it all got done, more or less. during the moving process, i got to rent a pickup truck -- it's official, dodge ram is not my style, but i did not smash it into anything. i am also almost too wimpy to make half a clothes-dryer moving team -- thank goodness we're on the ground floor this time.

looking back through my calendar, it strikes me that this weekend will be my first major out-of-town trip since going on a quick whirlwind to see the parents memorial day weekend. that's unusual. and fine. i've been enjoying settling into my new neighborhood.

the most major lifestyle difference: bicycling to work instead of 3 hours a day on the bus. i love it. i've been really lucky with cooperative weather so far, so i'm not entirely sure what my rain plan is... the bus, i guess, if it gets so bad a poncho won't help? it's a bit under 3 miles each way through some of the prettiest parts of norfolk. i can sleep in until almost 8 if i need to and get to work on time. (i don't really unless i've been out dancing ridiculously late, because i love the luxury of getting enough sleep and still being able to have an hour to eat breakfast and get a few things done.) there's a grocery store on the way home, among other shops, so i don't have to lean quite as heavily on jesse for our household errand running. heck, there's even an art-house cinema (probably the biggest thing i've missed from knoxville besides the friends there...) between home and work. my friend mark and i have been catching their series of "classics with mal," where the longtime local film critic shows a classic film and then rambles for 30 or 40 minutes about everyone he's ever interviewed who's at all connected to the film. i'm a fan of the story-telling -- it's a neat mix of cinema and local history... a certain boyfriend, who was available to go for the magnificent seven, didn't enjoy the after-lecture, though, and i can totally understand and release him from the obligation to stick around with me if he comes back.

my other big project lately has been working towards being able to run the virginia beach half-marathon in early september. i'm only dancing one to two nights a week most of the time, so it's a good time to do it without too much danger to the knees. i'm up to a PAINFULLY SLOW 8.5 miles for my long run. and a little apprehensive about missing it this weekend... maybe i'll rearrange things to go tuesday or wednesday night. i was going to hoping my shoes and run in cali, but i ran out of space in my bag and decided i wouldn't likely do it anyway. now that it's getting close to fall, the virginia summer's finally warmed up to what i think of as summer -- 90s and humid. after discovering that a little dehydration melts my brain to a disturbing degree the previous week, i took water and ran after dark on sunday. jesse wasn't around to check my conversational dexterity, but i think it was better. (conversation was the main place where i was obviously impaired after running... for example, i remember struggling to tell jesse about a story i'd recently heard on the radio about khrushchev's first trip to the US; i had to resort to calling him "the soviet shoe-banging guy?" because i couldn't remember the words "khrushchev" or even "premier" or "after stalin.")

'k, with 2 hours here to go in the airport... time to switch from rambling on to wandering around for a bit.

what makes a bad neighborhood?

now that we're moving to an apartment that's sometimes purported to be in one, i'm curious.

people keep telling me to drive through as dark's falling, to trust my instincts. i hate to say it, but i really don't have much in the way of instincts about this sort of thing. abandoned-looking houses with busted out windows everywhere spook me, but the upkeep in the couple blocks around us looks fine. i've been tracking on spotcrime.com, and i can't really see much difference in the number of incidents between where we're moving and the supposedly "good" neighborhoods -- car break-ins and occasional robberies seem to be pretty standard for the city. people seem to cite folks standing around outside as a telltale... but it's summertime, and i tend to take that as neighbors being much more likely to have an idea what's going on in the area. and not being too afraid to be out -- that's good too.

we've committed now, so it's too late to back out... ok, we did insist on adding an early termination clause to the lease, just in case it's too good to be true. but what do YOU look for when scoping out a neighborhood?

moving again!

i feel like i've been under a writing block lately... too much happening too fast; living it is fun, but i try to write, and i get completely overwhelmed. the last several weeks, in total blur format: d.c. for dclx, new york via chinatown bus kinda for babble (but mostly for wandering), conference in richmond, new york again for frankie's funeral and my birthday, work a week, find an apartment, shop for jesse's new car, sign up for half marathon, make it through the state inspection at work...

but it's time to start breaking through the weight of things to tell. easiest way? start rambling incoherently.

my current can't-shut-up-about topic is moving. we're not moving far, just a grand total of 18 miles if you have a car... but if you don't, or even if you do and traffic sometimes makes that particular 18 miles take two hours to traverse... it's a different universe.

norfolk has neighborhoods. each with a cute little sign. long before we really started looking at specifics, i started talking to people about neighborhoods.

everyone says to live in ghent. it's cute, in walking distance to a whole district of bars and restaurants, not very far from downtown. unfortunately, also seemingly out of our price range for anything with central air conditioning. not really an option when boyfriend isn't really a fan of the muggy hot southern summers. (it's been really gentle weather thus far this year, but i'll be amazed if the 70s last into june!)

we wound up finding a place in park place, just north of ghent, which is actually one of the ones people tend to recommend avoiding. BUT! it's a couple blocks off the campus of old dominion university. completely renovated condo -- a dishwasher, hookup for washer and dryer, and modern-looking electrical sockets were all also among missing features for most of the places we looked at. and a crime map utterly fails to convince me that the particular area is really any worse than the rest. maybe i'd worry more if we were trying to raise children and ensure they stayed out of trouble, but for us it's fine. under 3 miles from work, so i can bike maybe 40 minutes instead of riding the bus for 3 hours a day. half an hour each way by bus if the weather gets bad. 6 miles to the base where jesse's ship should eventually stay once they get the bugs worked out and get it away from the shipyards...

aside from the details of the place, though, i think i'm most excited about living in the same community where i work and play. two of the things that really appeal to me, the conflicting urges i live between, are the impulse to explore as much of the world as i can... and the need to really dig in my toes and become a part of wherever it is that i find myself. that second option means working to build the reality i want instead of continually wandering around to see if what's out there already. getting involved.

and somehow, that little 18 miles makes such a difference for that mission. local buses, unlike the cross-bridge ones, run 'til around midnight. so the curfew for having to figure out an alternative way home becomes four hours later. i can try out activities independently without worrying so much. explore in more depth. volunteer. see if and where i fit. maybe even go back to school... (available tuition assistance from work kicks in next winter!)

i'm excited.

i don't live in a county anymore

virginia is weird. i'd idly thought it was a little strange that up to now, even registering to vote and getting my virginia state driver's license (which was finally necessitated not by driving needs but by the desire to get a norfolk library card), i hadn't had to put down a "county of residence" anywhere... but when some odd-looking data yesterday led to trying to look up what county williamsburg is in, i still wasn't expecting the answer to be "none!"

(for reference, my hometown, manchester, has a hybrid school system in which those who live in town go to city schools through 9th grade, at which time they're merged with the county kids, who've already been at the high school for a year... actually, i'm not so sure that i should be pointing fingers at places that choose to have one local government per chunk of land as weird!)

scattered

until i get a chance to call and find out why our home internet's still not hooked up, here are a few things:

• CHEX was super-fun. awesome people, lovely location, excellent DJs. geoffrey was the lone knoxvillain who drove over -- still enough to make me a little homesick, and i've officially realized the shim sham's just not going to be the same without him calling it!
  
• i like living near the ocean. it's still pretty obvious who's from the landlocked state.
• this was the weekend without a hairbrush. or a wallet. or phone. i left my purse in a subway restaurant in kenly, nc. fortunately, people are super-nice. i realized my mistake two hours down the road, got david's wife heather (also our lovely hostess for the weekend!) to look up the phone number, and called -- they had the purse and returned it to me on the way back through sunday. i owe big thanks to jesse and david for letting me mooch all weekend while wallet-free.
• the count basie ghost-band's appearance in the neighborhood = good occasion for a mini-exchange up here next weekend (memorial day). come play?
• i'm closer to unpacked. the boxes never end, though.
  

unpacking

all that was in the cube is now, more or less, in the middle of the new apartment's living room. i'm currently slacking at the library for the sake of an internet connection; the power at the apartment's off while the electric company gets it switched to my name. going exploring again is tempting, but it's cold and rainy and i really think i'd just as soon stay indoors for a bit and do some of the important stuff like getting my address changed all over the internets until it's safe to go home. (and, er, some of the not-so-important stuff, like catching up on the discussion boards.)

before everything arrived, i spent most of thursday wandering around downtown norfolk in the rain and avoiding worst of the rain by spending several hours in the chrysler museum. it's very cool; they've made "the cannonball trail," a big path around town cutting near all the historic areas. i managed to walk enough to make my legs pretty sore.

we went to a dance in virginia beach saturday night. it was planned quickly as a fundraiser for local disaster relief (tornadoes tore up the area a few weeks ago) and was up against a monthly richmond dance, so it stayed pretty small, but good fun nonetheless. jesse's signed us up to teach a couple intermediate lessons later this month, so i'm eager to get a better feel for the local scene and where we can fit into it...

homeless in hampton

just temporarily. i got everything packed up and the apartment cleaned up (eternal thanks to judson and shannon, who came over and helped!), turned in the keys on monday and drove up here
yesterday. assuming jesse gets the signature he needs, we should get our apartment tomorrow.

in the meantime, i've just discovered downtown hampton. it's adorable. and it has free public wireless. i think i might like this town.

tulips and moving boxes: a still life

i was on my way out the door to get a lock for the cube in the last post when i ran into the UPS deliveryman.

i really do have the best boyfriend.

i'd never gotten flowers via UPS before. that part's a little strange.

looking forward to seeing what the purple ones look like when they bloom...

cubed

this is the contraption into which all my earthly possessions (well, except the ones that are still hanging out chez les parents a decade after i went away to college) need to fit by monday.

wish me luck.

unemployment: week 1

last tuesday was my last day of work.

i've been enjoying the leisure -- it's been a long time since i've had a period this long to just be at home. or a period this long off work at all, really. i'm packing some and wrapping up my knoxville existence, but i haven't been able to resist putting some time into staying out later than i normally would with friends, to studying chinese, to jogging in the sunshine, to watching movies... the boyfriend came down to help me pack over the weekend, and that's been the biggest chunk of real work done yet. it's about time to get myself in gear, though.

tonight, i'm teaching my last class for the KSDA. following something of a tradition, it's kinda freeform, featuring things i consider my specialty. problem is, i can't really figure out what that might be. the thing i get asked about most is swivels... i'm still a little hesitant to teach those since i screwed up the rest of my dancing so much for a while when i was learning them, but perhaps tonight's the night. that or pirouette spins... guess i'll see if joey has anything more fun for the guys to play with too.

i'm moving!

i finally handed in my notice at work today, so it's out. i'm moving to somewhere in the hampton roads area of virginia at the end of this month.

for real. no april fool's!