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small figures in the state i am in

February 23, 2012 by EXIT265C

I’m on a posting YouTube video/sharing songs I like kick.

For the past few years, I’ve been tagging general life posts either “The State I Am In” or “Small Figures in a Vast Expanse.” There is a subtle difference between the two. Sometimes, I don’t even know the difference. Typically, SFVE is more introspective and SIAI is more general. The origin of both tag titles are song titles. SIAI has its origins in a post where I played off some lyrics in the song (I do that every now and then). SFVE is purely based on the title.

Either way, I like both songs. I like the Rilo Kiley song more (Small Figures in a Vast Expanse) but that’s because I have a little but of a man crush on Blake Sennett. (I mean, Ronnie Foster Pinsky from Salute Your Shorts makes music! That’s like Danny Tamberelli making albums. Oh, wait. He has.) The State I Am In is a Belle & Sebastian song, namely the first track on the first album.

Anyway, here they are. Listen and, as I mean to say every time I post a video, if you like them, support the artist. If you don’t like them, support No BS Brass. If you don’t like No BS Brass, well … screw you.

The State I Am In — Belle & Sebastian

Small Figures in a Vast Expanse — Rilo Kiley

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roses

February 20, 2012 by EXIT265C

I’ve mentioned many times before how much my maternal grandmother affected my life. From birth to kindergarten, every day while my parents were at work and Theresa was at school was a routine of shadowing her as she read the morning paper, watched the noon news, read the evening paper and watched the evening news.

Our life, especially in the summer and fall, included her rose bush in the front yard.

At one point, it was possible for me to handle the canes mindlessly and not be pricked by a single thorn. She took great care of her pink roses and, at its largest extent, the entire front porch railing was that one plant.

As she grew older, so did the rose bush. I was off to high school and then college. Grandma approached her 90s and arthritis affected her hands. The bush cut itself back to a few canes in one corner of the porch. During the winter, it would look absolutely dead. Up until her stroke, she talked about writing off the bush, which was at least 50 years old, off as a loss and buying a new one. Each spring, despite its increasingly sorry state, there would be a bird nest awash in green and pink. As it refused to die, I often saw myself comparing the prickly but beautiful plant to her.

And then it happened. Grandma was gone.

The following year, my childhood allergies ended. Fort the first time in my life, I smelled the roses that I helped her tend for over 20 years. I never had any idea how fragrant the front porch was. I could see why she spent many days sitting out there for hours at a time.

And then it happened. The bush was gone.

It was a climbing rose and, in lieu of a trellis, the base was lashed to one of the columns holding up the porch’s roof and we wove the canes through the porch railings. After its retreat, there wasn’t enough of it to merge it with the porch properly. After a strong storm that rolled through Hampton early last fall, my mom awoke to the support wires and ropes snapped and the bush toppled. He tried righting it but, after a few days, it was obvious that it was over for the pink roses. It was  a strange sight to come home later and see it gone. Of her belongings that still are out in the open in my mom’s house, it was the largest. There was no mistake that it was her rose bush. Some of my cousins referred to it as “Aunt Mary’s Rose Bush.”

Mom and I talked about planting something its place but not this year. it’s too soon.

I had a dream where my mom said she had a surprise for me the next time I came up from North Carolina. When I got there, she handed me a pot with rose canes. A part of the plant survived, she said. I said I would care for it in the pot until I found my permanent home and put it in the ground (which is my goal with Cecil if I live somewhere warm). I placed the pot in a corner of my room after I got home in my dream where it would be among the first things I would see upon waking. I went to bed.

The next “morning” in the dream, I opened my eyes and it had bloomed. There were countless roses everywhere.

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sha la la la la la la la la la la ti da

February 14, 2012 by EXIT265C

Yesterday should have been my 10th anniversary with Renée. We remember this date better so we moved it to that officially on Facebook and we’re just going to stick with Feb. 13.

On a related note, Van Morrison has been stuck in my head for a few days.

Also on a related note, I want No BS to play this song to her.

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letting go

February 7, 2012 by EXIT265C

There was a second reason for my stop in Hopewell last week I’m going to have reasons to go to Petersburg and Hopewell for years and years but that trip was it in the sense that, beyond friends I have made, that the trip has anything to do with journalism. It’s just weird that, after six years, that’s over. There was one last person I didn’t get to say goodbye to in City Hall and I was able to. I learned a couple little things that I knew were true but I couldn’t write about because I had no proof. I got the proof because the people who told me knew I couldn’t write about it and most likely wouldn’t feed it to either of the two papers because it would take far too much time to explain what was going on to anyone other than Katy, Hopewell’s no longer her a part of her coverage area and the paper I just left has changed directions to the point where that article isn’t going to happen.

It doesn’t matter anyway. I was also told that Hopewell is going to keep doing what it’s been doing for decades. I was also told that, well, questions when answered lead to more questions. I’ll leave it at that.

I’m doing less work for more money in another state with a warmer climate near the beach.

Why do I have to keep telling myself that?

I guess it was because I threw so much of myself into being there almost six years. It became personal. It was still personal when I moved to Richmond partially to divorce my life off the clock from my life on. The failure of the ethanol plant no longer matters. The Beacon Theatre no longer matters. The growth of Virginia State University no longer matters. The coming of Amazon to Dinwiddie and Chesterfield no longer matters.

I’m no longer battling the Progress-Index. I don’t even remember why it was a battle to begin with except that it brings us here. Let’s have a recap.

My father was last stationed at Fort Lee but didn’t move my mom there. I most likely would have been born in Petersburg or Hopewell and probably would have grown up there. I managed to drive on all of Route 10 before 2006 except for the stretch between Interstate 295 and the Benjamin Harrison Bridge. I slept through a bus trip that went through Petersburg. What should have been my last semester in college started to fall apart the summer before when the documentary studies class I wanted to take died due to lack of quorum, for lack of a better word at 2 a.m. That led to my job hunt starting in December 2005. Ben Bagwell just happened to leave at that point, thus providing the opening. I instantly decided that I could enjoy working for Jon Pope and, other than being homesick for a while and having a  horrible apartment, I did. My dislike of Brian’s leadership style somehow spiraled into … I don’t know. Looking back two months removed from working in the Tri-Cities, I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know, there was a moment when he actually paid me a really good compliment. I don’t know if it was the only one or not because it stands out just because I distinctly labeled him an asshole to everyone who was there the second he left. At this point, I don’t understand my utter disdain. I’ve never hated someone I had met so much before and I haven’t since. Well, there’s no use of analyzing that now.  What’s done is done. I napalmed that bridge. My biggest fear is that he’ll exact revenge for my effectively tangible hatred of him on Katy. Well, I guess if he does, he’ll just prove me right then. I had the urge to call before or after her interview but I figured hearing from me would only hurt her chances.

But I digress.

All that carping led me to leap at the chance to work at a rival paper to prove what I could do. In retrospect, if I weren’t so irrationally spiteful, I wouldn’t have learned layout or did so much heavy lifting in Hopewell, picked up a camera with any degree of seriousness or argued so much for new equipment and resources for my newsroom. In some twisted way, hating him was the best thing that could have happened. I think, at one point, it stopped being him. In proper American military-industrial form, I created some sort of mega-enemy loosely based on reality named Brian in my head that we had to destroy.

My old publisher Mike once asked me want I wanted to do in Hopewell. I held up a Progress-Index and said that, if I had a lighter, I’d show him. He then asked me why and I couldn’t answer because what could I say? Because they don’t dig through the courthouse records room to try to uncover why the city does what it does? Because they don’t follow political candidates at 3 a.m.? Because they didn’t see journalism as not only a battle to hold government accountable but also a vehicle unto which thou shalt dasheth thine enemies against the rock?

At some point, I realized it had gone on for far enough. That was what led me here back when Irene was a distant storm in the Atlantic. I only applied because of my spontaneous trip to Wilmington in college and Jacksonville being nearby. I got this job offer during the cleanup and I turned it down because I couldn’t in good conscience leave that newsroom in the middle of that. I wanted to leave them wanting more. I wanted to leave with a structure in place to validate that little paper’s existence by personally covering statehouse news and getting to the bottom of what was going on in Hopewell and getting the P-I to declare defeat in Hopewell and visit as often as the Times-Dispatch. I earned that paper some respect it lost over the years prior and I knew I couldn’t take it much farther. I wanted to look back proudly after I was gone and say, “They beat the P-I again.”

But that would have just continued my unnecessary hatred.

At some point I transcended it. I think it was somewhere around this entry. I think that dream was when I began to let go. Katy picked up on it. She always picks up on it. If I haven’t yelled STOP BEING SO RIGHT ABOUT MY LIFE to her yet, I really need to. She said that I had a great friends, I rediscovered someone I loved very much and I wasn’t afraid to walk away from there. When it all went down at the end, I was fine. Beyond giving me the tools to be where I am now, all of that was unhealthy and downright nasty. I hope I never go down that road again.

That was why I stopped there last week.

I was briefly angry that the Hopewell News wasn’t still pushing the Bonhomme Richard into battle but, after I looked at an edition back in early January, I decided that it didn’t matter and I let go. Although I wouldn’t mind writing about Hopewell again, it wouldn’t be to dance around with my middle fingers raised in the general direction of the Progress-Index. I bought an online subscription to the P-I.

I want to see it all roll on without me.

A part of me wants to say the past six years were for nothing but I know it isn’t true. I squandered those years, though. Especially the last four or so because I was so driven by wanting to leave and then beat the P-I. Although I have a twinge of remorse, given the chance, I’d do it all again.

It was messy but I like how things turned out so far. There are too many causes and effects. If this was how it had to be, warts and all, I just hope the next step has far less collateral damage.

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fall

February 5, 2012 by EXIT265C

This is one of my favorite songs. I’m glad that Patrick Phelan uploaded his song to Soundcloud because I’ve been wanting to share it since I first heard it on WRIR. I can’t tell you exactly when it was but I know it was a Saturday during River City Limits. I thought it was in July 2010 but the file info for the song lied to me. It was April 3, 2010. I was running some errands and stopped back at my house before heading out for the night. When I go out on Saturdays, I blast the two shows that come on after: Frequency and the DJ Spotlight. I sometimes listen to River City Limits beforehand because Richmond bands are awesome. Greta Brinkman, who has been a bassist for Moby, was DJ’ing that night. I caught the show a few into “Marring the Frame,” and I was like, “OK. I can dig this.” And then “Fall” came on.

I was in love.

I was overjoyed that she mentioned the names of the two songs and the artist. She also noted that she was playing on “Fall.” I scribbled information down and, that Monday after work, I downloaded all three of his albums. Not long later, I found the album for his former band, South.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played “Cost,” the album from which “Fall” comes, and “Parlor,” the home of “Marring the Frame.” I’ve already decided that if I open of coffee shop or bookstore, “Parlor” is the first album played, mostly for the second track, “Crippled For.”

Overall, the minimalist, ambient nature of Phelan’s music is puts me in a sublime state. There’s the unleashed tension in “Favor;” the funereal keys in “Headlines;” the repetition and pace of “A Moment A Broken.” But there is just something about “Fall” that keeps it on repeat at times.

It might just be that I’ve been moving toward slower, quieter albums over the past few years. I mean, I absolutely love yelling with No BS and I’m going to see Bassnectar in April (and I’m pretty frickin’ excited about that) but the simple but elegant balance of mood across Phelan’s releases makes them my go-to albums when I just want to be.

It usually doesn’t jump out when people list cities known for its music but I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I think I like my music better when it comes from Richmond.

You can buy the entirety of “Cost” on Amazon here.

This Patrick Phelan is not to be confused with the video game music composer or another guy on YouTube.

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entry one thousand five hundred

February 4, 2012 by EXIT265C

I went to Richmond for my weekend. It had been almost a month to the day since I moved to North Carolina.

Because my weekends are radically different, I’ve renamed days so I won’t forget to go to work. If I didn’t do this, I’d wake up tomorrow, realize that it’s Saturday and not go to work because it’s Saturday. I’m going to list my days in order. Each line will go in the following order: Actual day of the week, what it is to me, what I’ve renamed the day.

  • Friday. Monday. Dweezil.
  • Saturday. Tuesday. Moon Unit.
  • Sunday. Wednesday. Frank.
  • Monday. Thursday. Steve.
  • Tuesday. Friday. Clarence.
  • Wednesday. Saturday. Caturday.
  • Thursday. Sunday. Doc.

I have my reasons. The first three days, of course are named for the Zappa family. Why? Why the hell not? Steve is named Steve because, when the topic of strange things people name their children/unorthodox spellings for common names for children come up, I typically say something like, “I’m waiting to see a kids whose name is in Cyrillic but it’s pronounced ‘Steve.’” My Friday is Clarence because, when I first floated the idea of renaming days on Facebook, Clarence was one of the names a friend threw out there. We call him Stevo. The day before Clarence is a coincidence. Caturday shouldn’t need an explanation. And Doc? Because, almost every time I’ve heard someone name the Seven Dwarfs, the list ended with Doc.

That all said, let’s start with Caturday morning.

I woke up early so I could get to Central Virginia by 1 p.m. but I couldn’t leave until 10:30 so I got to Hopewell at 2 p.m.

Hopewell?!

Yes, Hopewell. The Wonder City. I had to tell Renée that I was buying her flowers for Valentine’s Day because I couldn’t think of a way to ask for her work address without explaining why. I don’t always buy flowers but when I do, I prefer The Gardner’s Gate. The owner is the mother of my former roommate and coworker. While I was there, I decided to pop into Hopewell City Hall one last time because I missed saying goodbye to some people when I went back in December to get my last paycheck. I ran into a few people in and around the building and I learned a couple of three things I wish could be written about in the paper. I have a feeling that the story of what goes on in that city will be a part of my life for a very long time. Who knows? I may wind up freelancing something. I’d do it for free.

Afterward, I got to Chimborazo in enough time for Loaf to spend about 20 minutes sitting on me. Seriously. He ran to the door when I came in, I put my stuff  down, sat on the couch and he sat on me and refused to move. He missed me. When I finally extracted myself from over 70 pounds of oh so dangerous Labrador retriever-pit bull mix, I had convinced Craig to go with me to Baja although he had to go to work the next day.

Originally, I hadn’t planned to go out at all that night since it’s Wednesday in the real world and I figured no one would want to do anything. Then I realized these are my friends I’m talking about so I thought I made no concrete promises of anything but I was sorely mistaken.

I had to deal with overwhelming homesickness for Richmond, because I probably came back too soon, and an argument that took me over 12 hours to understand what it was about. In the end, I realized that I drove nearly four hours to enjoy myself in that city because I love it so much and wanted to pack in as much of it as possible into two days so I set out to make Doc the greatest day possible.

I took Loaf for about a two-hour walk. He was so anxious about it, he literally dragged me out of the house before I was 100 percent ready. I didn’t have my phone so I couldn’t take pictures. I probably couldn’t anyway because he went exploring in the woods at the bottom of Chimborazo Park. I generally let him go wherever he wants when I take him for a walk mostly because you try to make 70 pounds of almost pure muscle do what you want instead of what he wants. I think his lab genes took over and, the next thing I knew, we were in the no-man’s land between where Franklin ends at 31st and where Grace follows the edge of the hill. It was there that we discovered an art piece made out of the trash people have been chucking off the hill since perhaps the 1890s.

Overall, I’m glad that it’s kinda winter and that the ground was parched enough that a good chunk of the rain from the night before went directly into the ground.

Later that day, it was the main event: seeing No BS. That was the whole point of the trip. I had hoped Reggie would have been there but he had already left for New York since he’s going to be on SNL with Bon Iver. This is one of those moments where I regret not having a TV anymore. I do plan on getting one by June or so but we don’t have cable or anything. I might at my next place and I’m considering video games again but I’d probably go on a quest for a Sega Genesis, Gamecube or PS2. I want to play old games.

But I digress.

They’re working on their new album, RVA All Day, and played a few songs that will be on it. I should have some extra cash before the year’s over and I kinda want to blow it on a crappy car just so I can get North Carolina plates that say RVAALDAY and plaster it with RVA and Richmond band stickers. That thought was inspired by the title track alone.

It was a spectacular night of singing along, yelling and hearing my favorite song. I slept well.

Too well.

My goal was to get back to North Carolina by 2 p.m. because I’m hoping I have a very important piece of mail by now. I set an alarm to 8:45. Because I forgot what real day of the week it was, it was set for the wrong day. Since I use the stock clock widget for my phone, I can’t just set an alarm with the anticipation of it going off the next day. It confirms my decision but why would I pay attention to what I’m doing?

I woke up at 9:45. I didn’t get out of Richmond until about 11:30. I got to work with no seconds to spare. Fridays are a little lax and my schedule is really to get there at 3ish but I don’t like getting there later than 3:15. I’m thankful that there are 70 mph roads and ample passing lanes.

At least work went well. I designed my two favorite pages in this layout thus far. I figured out how to do a couple of effects on InDesign and I managed to make the most of an order for a photo page  but only having half a page as my only open space. I would share them but I have them as pdfs and I don’t feel like working with it this time of night, especially since I don’t have Photoshop on V.

Anyway, I’m thinking that I really just needed the trip. I don’t miss it as much as I did before going there. I think I needed the trip to cement that I love it and I know it but I don’t live there anymore. I’m close to what will be the new normal and it’s time to move forward.  It was fun getting to this point over the past 1500 entries. Let’s see where the next 1500 take us.

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1499: wilm

January 25, 2012 by EXIT265C

Today is my Sunday. This was the first full weekend I spent in North Carolina where everything wasn’t torn up and crazy and all. Basically, this was my first normal weekend since Dec. 2.

This is how I spent it.

I was up late Monday night talking to Renée because we talk at night due to our work schedules and, if not for falling asleep next to her for a few days since November and back in 2002, I would swear that she doesn’t sleep. Regardless, I set my alarm to 8:45 because, if you’ve actually been reading this, I only spend about one weekend a month in my room/bed. I don’t care how long or tiring my work week is. My weekends are for me and for them being for me, that means not rolling about in bed all day. I can’t do that, especially now. My work week is get up almost too late to do anything constructive, go to work and try to find something to talk to Renée about when I get home although my entire day can be summed up as “I woke up and designed pages.”

Back in Richmond, I would spend the week in Hopewell, go home, cook dinner, watch the Science Channel or Jersey Shore and then go to bed after talking to Renée. At least, back then, I could share a story about Hopewell or something that frustrated me at work. Nowadays, it’s just a job where I can have some degree of creativity and turn work off when I go home.

Either way, I need my weekend and I need my weekend to be spectacular.

So I puttered around for a bit because I was exhausted and then JD, Jamee and I went to North Topsail Beach, one of the closest beaches to our house, for a few hours. It was 70 Tuesday.

North Topsail Beach

It was cloudy when we got there.

North Topsail Beach in mostly sunny 70-degree weather in January.

Then the day looked awesome.

YOU ARE SO JEALOUS OF MY LIFE.

Really, really awesome.

At one point, on Facebook, I thanked my former publisher for all that happened because I now live near an oceanfront paradise where it’s 70 degrees in January, I have low-stress work to do and JUST LOOK AT THIS. THIS WAS TOTALLY WORTH STICKING IT OUT IN THE TRI-CITIES UNTIL IT CHEWED ME UP AND SPIT ME OUT.  I’M THE LUCKIEST SPIT IN THE WORLD.

After that, I finished organizing my room. I have a place for my CDs, my two framed pieces of artwork are up (I still need a frame for a third but I’ve been saying that for an entire year) and everything is where it’s supposed to be. All I need to do is get a real mattress in the next couple weeks. I’ve been stalling on that because I’m owed some money and I want that first. This cot is fine since it’ll be a little while before Renée comes to visit. I’m content with my four walls for now.

Today, I went to Wilmington. I love that city. I’ve said here a few times before that I want to live there. I still want to live there. I plan on going to visit it a lot now that it’s so close. It would be nice if I could go with someone but there is about 10 hours of road between me and my girlfriend and two between me and my nearest friend. And, if it comes to seeing Joseph, I’ll just go to Chapel Hill.

I stayed in Wilmington until sunset. I capped that trip off with taking a photo of said sunset from Wrightsville Beach and snapping a shot of the Shell Island.

Cords? Check. Blazer? Check. Unsigned band T-Shirt? Check. Wayfarer frames? Check. Hat? Check.

I dressed like a hipster today.

The Cape Fear River

The Cape Fear River from an overpriced parking garage that shall never see my car again.

Wilmington Post Office

It looks like a larger, less curvy version of the Petersburg Post Office.

Riverwalk

This boat has cruises up and down the Cape Fear River. I think I shall take Renée on one.

I WANT TO HEAR THIS.

Hopefully, despite having that previous weekend off, I still have a "normal' weekend to see this.

I'm sure he was entertained.

George Washington: Define "entertained."

SPANISH MOSS

There is some spanish moss in Jacksonville but I think Wilmington is the true upper limit. It allegedly grows as far north as southside Hampton Roads but I've never seen it.

The Shell Island Hotel, Wrightsville Beach, N.C.

The first time I stayed in this hotel just east of Wilmington, I was in Room 803. The next time, when it's the off season, I want that room again.

Pretty!

Sunset over Wilmington from the southern tip of Wrightsville Beach

It’s back to the grind tomorrow. I’m thinking about a Richmond trip next “weekend” but that depends on Shaunelle’s work schedule. If I stay in North Carolina, I’ll probably bug Joseph after work, hang out at the beach again or start haunting the Cape Fear Museum. I meant to go there today but then I didn’t. I even walked up to it. I guess that and other things will give me an excuse to go back.

If anything, these past two days have shown me that I can’t live too far away from the coast. This salt water is in my blood. Although Raleigh/Durham and D.C. are options in 2014 after I put a ring on it later this year (it’s not a surprise proposal — it’s more of a matter of me wanting to meet her father first), I want to live in Wilmington and be near this.

If we didn’t finally realize that we don’t like Hampton Roads anymore, we’d just head back. My mom’s house is going to be legally mine in less than 10 years and there will be at least one newspaper down there still that has a copy desk in Hampton Roads.

But, I like it here. I’ve liked it here ever since I randomly picked Wilmington as my spring break trip in 2005. It’s like the opposite of how I wound up in the Tri-Cities (picked it because I had never seen that part of the state).

Yet again, it seems like my life is leading up to something. At least, this time, I’m going to take someone with me. It feels good to say that. I’m not slighting you readers, of course. Since 2004, I’ve always considered y’all as a part of the ride. I’m just looking forward to how this adventure builds up to Renée officially joining the quest for me to live up to the nickname I gained when I moved to Richmond that wound up on a T-shirt in my closet

If you don't know, ask me, in person, what's on the front.

If you don't know what's on the front, ask me in person, preferably when I'm near a computer.

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1498: thin ice

January 19, 2012 by EXIT265C

If you read this directly from exit265c.com, you see the anti-SOPA/PIPA banner in the right hand corner. When I was the editor of a newspaper, I would have written an editorial on it and explained why I was against the acts. Now that I’m a worker bee, I almost feel that this is inappropriate but I see it as a nonpartisan cause to get behind. I don’t know or care what our corporate thinks and it’s not going down until either they cancel the vote or take a vote. The wording of the bill needs to be refined, plain and simple. Copyrights need to be preserved in this digital world but this is the wrong way.

If this passes,  the far extreme of it would be that I couldn’t post things like this song just to say that it’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard and that, if you agree, I suggest that you buy Pasión by the Eroica Trio.

Pirating is bad but so is this bill.

Anyway, listen to Oblivion. It’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard and I wanted to share.

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1497: training wheels off

January 18, 2012 by EXIT265C

I did the entire local section myself today. It was my first time. I almost freaked but then I remembered that I have been a journalist for nearly six years, I have been doing pages for two years and I’ve studied design for many fives of years. (Fact: I sketched out a newspaper with a friend in fifth grade.)

It’s my Friday night. I’ll have weekend duty for a while, especially since I’m the newest, for a months. I was told that they’ll work around any obligations I have on weekends, which is good. I have at least one wedding, a double date, a road trip and my birthday between now and August let alone trips to visit Renée in our compromise city of D.C.

New York City is about 10 hours from Jacksonville. I drove for a total of 26 hours this weekend. I finished the last stretch directly before going to work because, at about 11 p.m., something told me to stop driving and go to my mom’s house. It’ll take us around the same amount of time to get to Washington and, when the time comes, it is our first choice for home.

I have a bed now. Sorta. My mom bought me a cot. I can’t afford to buy a mattress until the end of next week because I had expected three unemployment checks but I got two. I also find it amazing that I left Hopewell literally two weeks before they owed me two weeks of vacation. I’m sure they had that planned. I would have fought it but I literally moved on to bigger and better things. This month is just going to be awkward and everything will be fine by Feb. 1. It just sucks because it’s only Jan. 18 right now. But I’ll be fine. I’ve been through worse. There was a point in 2006 when I only ate once a day and made three pounds of chicken stretch about a week because my beat was a 504-square-mile county when gas skyrocketed the first time, I was only getting paid 24 cents a mile, I had just started car payments, I lost my savings from having to chip in over $400 for the fuel bill at my fraternity house and from not having a job for three months and having no concept of unemployment at that time.

I’m not bragging but I’ve had it rough before and I got through it. This is nothing. This is why I don’t freak out about problems anymore. It freaked Katy out that I wasn’t freaked out when I suddenly didn’t have a job in December. Two people at work today apologized for things that were going on and it took a lot to not explain how their issues were nothing compared to what I have seen beyond saying that I’ve been through worse. I would say that I’m just lucky that everything has worked out so far but it’s not luck. It’s to the point where it seems like I’m being pointed toward something. I don’t believe in that destiny crap beyond figures of speech but let’s see: If I wound up at the Daily Press like I had hoped, I probably would have been caught up in that Tribune bloodbath by now or would be worked like a government mule right now. The publication I shot for that the Virginian-Pilot owned folded. Media General has had some issues. I left just before layoffs started at the Progress-Index and there was a point where it was costing me more money to go to work in Dinwiddie than what I was making. Deep down, I’ll always resent how things went down in Hopewell but I’ll be vindicated and I have something extremely nice to put on my résumé now called a local family of daily papers with a sizable circulation. The next step is either me swelling with pride and screwing myself or leaving things at this extremely long paragraph and moving forward.

It’s just tempting. I want to brag and I feel bad about the little things I’ve said up until this point. I regret the previous two paragraphs but I had to get something out. Although this blog doesn’t have the widest viewership, I hate how the Internet has taken off. I can’t vent here with reckless abandon like I could 1400 entries ago. I may have to go back to scribbling things in notebooks and destroying them later. (Fact: I’ve destroyed all traces of my first novel and I still don’t know what to do with the second. The one I talk about now is my third.)

Next Thursday marks my first new normal work schedule. In about a month, I’m being switched to another daily newspaper (currently, I’m paginating and editing the largest daily). The new one has an earlier deadline so my schedule would be somewhere around 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. instead of my current 3 to 11. I won’t know for certain until we get to that point. My weekends may shift again at that point. I was told Tuesday-Saturday when I was offered the job and, next week it’s Thursday-Monday. I don’t mind because my second nearest close friend has odd rotating schedules and, much like many of the Marines here, I’m a geographic bachelor. This means that, this weekend, I get shown a Sunday paper. I’m slightly freaking out about that because I’ve never had to paginate a definite bread and butter edition. Although the new Hopewell publisher didn’t want it that way, as far as content and extras, as far as the newsroom was concerned, our Thursday edition had to be our biggest in the T-Th-Sa publishing schedule. It wasn’t marketed as such. Now that I’m back in the dailies, I have to think about presenting the crowning edition of the week. For a paper the next paper size down from the current broadsheet. Although it probably will happen, I hope all dailies don’t go down to this size. It’s OK but the more oblong paper size allows for more creativity. I have my fake double truck as my desktop background at work to remind myself of what is possible with more real estate. But I look at it this way: along with being well versed in two types of pagination software, I also can say I know how to lay out a sexy page in two different sizes. I’m wandering into bragging again. Stop it.

I had a reason for this entry about three hours ago but I had to stop and I felt obligated to make a post anyway since the last one was on the 12th and I’ve really slacked off in updating in the past year or so. I’m just going to end it now where it’s all good and awkward and I’ll also choose to not tag this at all so it can eventually disappear like so many of the initial entries.

The only problem with that is, since my frequency has gone down so much, this will be on page 1 until at least Feb. 20.

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1496

January 12, 2012 by EXIT265C

So far, so good. Because of my trip to New York this weekend that was scheduled well before this rigmarole started, Monday/Tuesday seems like the day I will get my bed unless I can get same-day delivery before 2 p.m. Thursday, which I doubt. I was going to go the used mattress route but most people have jobs that run for normal hours so I wouldn’t be able to get one until the weekends, which would leave me sleeping on couch cushions for up to seven more days (I think my work schedule will be what it’s going to be starting Monday. I think I actually don’t have any of the traditional weekend days off at all since I’m the new guy so I may be MIA longer than I thought I would.

Other than the bed, almost everything in the room is where I want it. I just need to build a case for my CDs (I never finished uploading everything and I think my external hard drive is in Richmond and it’s possibly stolen). and put my books on the shelves. I haven’t put the books up yet because I’m suing them to mark out where the bed would be and stop the couch cushions I’m sleeping on now from sliding. I’m pretty much stopped moving in my sleep but I had gotten used to a queen bed and those first couple nights were an adventure. I haven’t put a lot of things up because I’ll be out of here in a few months. There haven’t been any problems and I think we’ll be friends but it feels a little awkward to have a complete opposite sleep schedule from everyone else in such as small house.

I go to bed between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. so I’m as refreshed as possible for work but I typically spend those overnight hours afraid to breathe too hard. I’m probably overreacting but I’d rather overreact than be that asshole banging things around at 3 a.m. They mentioned being afraid of waking me up in the morning as well but I lived in a frat house so, once I’m out, I tend to be out. The weirdest things wake me up but, typically, something going on in an adjacent room does noting for me, with the exception of when I had the ill fortune in Petersburg of having my bed directly opposite the bed of the other apartment where they did nothing but argue and have loud sex for a good portion of every night. I would up sleeping in my living room. I’m doing some preliminary looking around at places now. I found some that I like toward Wilmington but I’m not up for commuting 20+ miles to work again. It’ll work out; this feels like a combination of my move to Petersburg and my first six months in Richmond right now. It’s a little freaky that way.

I got good news out of the Virginia today. Once again, I can’t and won’t explain what’s going on but Katy was out of a job too. She is now at the one job I ever truly ranted about online. I didn’t hate the place. I was mostly annoyed at one person. Back when overtures were made last year, I told her that it was nothing but a clash of personalities and she should go for it when the opportunity arose. I actually went out of my way to not talk about my time there with her before that point because I didn’t want her to think it was an awful place because it’s not. If anything, everything went as it should. If I was 100 percent content, I probably would be there still, hating that, six years later, I was still writing articles. Being annoyed and leaving there allowed me to spend almost three years practicing layout and design in Hopewell which allowed me to move on to a daily copy desk since, between the time I started college and finished, copy editors and paginators became one and the same. I would have been stuck as a reporter because I never would have had the opportunity to learn how to design pages. At the end of the day, I’m glad I left both places in Virginia when I did because I left with good information and an impressive résumé: over three years of daily experience, writing experience, nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills, photography experience, social media experience, three years of managerial experience and experience in InDesign and Quark. I want to hire me.

But I digress.

Anyway, she’ll be fine there. I still have some connections if she’s ever in a bind, she already knows some people and she has at least one loyal friend in that newsroom.

And I’ll get to live vicariously through her. I’ll probably end up pitching story ideas to her just to get updated on people I miss. I just have this soft-edged, sepia view of Dinwiddie County. I still miss it. I don’t think I’ll ever stop. I wasn’t completely joking when I told someone I would be content in my old age to have a house on a couple acres there. It’s probably the country boy in me. I’m only one generation removed from the farm. I have no idea how to farm but I tell you, if I get my own grain to sway gently in the wind, I’d be the proudest man in Dinwiddie.

Oh God. This is going to be my midlife crisis, isn’t it? Why can’t I have a soft-edged, sepia view of me in a sports car?

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