weekend update

There'll be a lengthy update about my awesome weekend in buffalo soon. :D

buffalo daydreams

A tentative life plan was forming while I was in Buffalo (posts about that are currently on the Newton, and will be posted this evening), which was pleasant to daydream of.
I was thinking about how soon we could possibly move out there. Our lease expires in February, so the earliest we could move there-- well, I'll have to talk to the landlady and ask her about whether that *includes* February.

We might want to move as early as mid-January. Just to get started. I'm thinking of borrowing my van back from my parents to get started-- I need to get insurance anyway, so... I could start moving things to their house-- at least the things I'm giving back to them. (OK, Katy's bed.) Might be helpful to go through some possessions and pare down a bit if possible... We'll have to rent a Big Truck anyway to move out to Buffalo, but I want to be a bit more organized. What if the apartment ends up being a bit smaller than we'd hoped? Things to ponder.

Anyway, regardless of timeline... I'm thinking we move out to Buffalo as soon as possible. (Depends on Dave. He needs to find a job. Worst-case scenario-- he can't find a job. Don't know what to do then. I am not staying at my job beyond February. Possibilities include moving to a cheaper apartment here, temporarily, or us having to split up. Blech.)

So we move to Buffalo and everything's hunky-dory. My plan is initially to focus on expanding my freelance writing business. If I can convince my current job to fire me, so much the better-- I can collect unemployment benefits for maybe a couple of months while I sort things out. If not, well I'll have to pinch pennies a bit more. (Heh, progress is good-- I've gotten two scowls today from the boss, and he's only seen me twice. Then again he's been doing that for months now, so it's not really progress.)
If within a couple of months I can't get my revenue up far enough, I'll take a course in bartending and try to get a job as one. In the meantime I plan to work on my biceps and abs, and build up a wardrobe involving low-cut shirts-- if I'm going to be a bartender, I want decent tips, and my fabulous breasts are the key to decent tips. (I'm not bragging. I'm simply stating a fact I observed while out pubbing this weekend. Boobs are A Good Thing and since I've got some... Dave wholeheartedly agreed. He also agrees that I need more corsets-- they're uniquely suited to my figure. Real corsets, not lingerie corsets-- I need real ones with steel boning that hold up to serious gravitational forces.)
So, bartending several nights a week, preferably somewhere that doesn't play music too loud for me to think straight, and writing by day. I could do that.

Perhaps by next year Dave will have sorted himself out and will want to finish up at R.I.T. He's got less than a year left, but they've changed some of the requirements for his degree so he may have to repeat or replace some of his classes. :( We'll have to see. Hopefully, he'll be able to take night classes at RIT while working in Buffalo. That would be ideal, and would involve a minimum of rearrangement on our part.
However, if that doesn't work out, we could move temporarily to Rochester. The writing business-- the point of it is that I can easily relocate. I could also get a job as a bartender in Rochester in the meantime. (Bartenders are everywhere.) I'm hoping to be able to do for Dave what he did for me, if it comes to that-- pay more than half of the rent if I'm making more than he is, or possibly even offer him space rent-free. Because he did for me, when I didn't have a job. And that's something I haven't been able to repay, no matter how badly I may want to.
Once Dave's finished his degree, he should be able to get a really good job somewhere. I haven't really thought that far ahead. But by then I should be well convinced of whether I want to stay in Buffalo a while or not.
A possibility I'm considering is taking my bartending experience and my relocatable writing business, and spending some time in Ireland or England. I haven't seen my friends there in six years, mostly-- I don't know if any of them still remember me, besides Ursula. But it's a compelling possibility and one I could happily daydream about all afternoon.
H'm. I might just go do that. :D

On Loss

The Buffalo sports scene is not having a good year. But at least Baby Joe Mesi is still undefeated. By barely two points, but still undefeated. I don't follow boxing, but I watched Baby Joe because he's from Buffalo and I was in Buffalo. Had just watched the Sabres get trounced by the Tampa Bay Lightning. I'd make some comment about how it's not like Tampa Bay even has ice, but it's not like any of the players are from there anyway.

I was in the living room of a stranger, with a bunch of boxing fans, drinking Canadian beer and learning about the fine sport of boxing. We were there to see a friend of Dave's, name of Sean. They attended the same Catholic boys' high school, and Sean graduated a year ahead of Dave. They met on a school-sponsored trip to Germany.
Sean's a big lad of Irish descent, fond of hard drinking, and the sort of person to whom good stories of reckless behavior seem to be attracted. He's also an accomplished classical guitarist with an associate's degree in music, but nerve damage in his left shoulder left him unable to play for several years, and he's only just picking it up again.
He decided last year that he'd been in Buffalo long enough, and it had little to offer him. So he joined the Army, and has recently finished his training to qualify him to be a crew chief for a Blackhawk helicopter.
The rest of his unit's just shipped out, but he was left behind. We didn't know why, but as we hit the town with me designated driver, he explained that his mother is terminally ill and he's currently awaiting approval of family emergency leave time from the Army.
The Army really tries to take care of its own. But they're primarily a bureaucracy, huge and unwieldy. They told him he'd have approval in 48 hours, but it's been several weeks and he still doesn't know.
However. Rather than languishing in some base somewhere, he's at home while they decide. So it's working out well for him in the meantime. Well, as well as can be expected. I can't imagine watching one's mother die qualifies as "things going well", and his own observations on the topic confirmed that.
Sean and Dave got slightly drunk, and discussed a lot of very deep things. I was very interested to hear Sean's views on military life, especially his views on women and officers in the Army. My sister is now a captain in the Army, having just served a rotation in Iraq.
But far more poignant was the discussion on losing one's parents. Dave's father (as most who read this probably already know) died suddenly in May, in a fishing accident. He was 51 and in perfect health, and had just hosted a huge family party to celebrate his son-in-law's attainment of his PhD. After all the party guests left, he went off to Canada for a fishing trip, and somehow, he fell out of a boat and drowned. He seemed to have hit his head on the way out of the boat, so it's fairly certain he was unconscious before he hit the water. It's likely he was dead before he knew what was going on. Why he fell remains uncertain; all that's known is that he went suddenly.
Sean's mother is dying slowly, of a rare and complicated disease. If you had the option, when you saw someone for the last time, of either knowing or not knowing that this would be the last time you saw them, which would you choose, Sean asked us. Dave said he'd probably rather not know, and Sean concurred. Knowing this is the last time he'd have his birthday with his mom, the last time he'd have Thanksgiving, the last time he'd have Christmas... it's a difficult, slow, painful loss, quite aside from his mother's actual suffering.
I was the only sober one there, and the only one crying.

Road Trip: The Despair

I wrote a semi-humorous essay on driving to Buffalo, and posted it here:
Driving To Buffalo.