It’s been a busy two weeks in Lake Wobegon….

Another long overdue update, but life gets busy from time to time. Behind that cut-tag below is a fairly boring account of the last two weeks, but if you’re interested.

Ever since Kitty and I broke up, I’d been sleeping on the couch in telynor‘s living room. I knew I wanted to find a place of my own near my office, but the rents in Alpharetta are pretty high. I put in a raise request in December, but hadn’t heard anything yet. So I’d pretty much been in waiting mode. This isn’t so bad, as Harper and her family were very accommodating, but I really wanted to get into a place where I at least could have my own room.

One of my co-workers told me about an apartment complex about five miles from the office that had a great special that brought the rent down to what I considered reasonable for a one bedroom place. So the last week of January, I went to take a look at it. Very nice community, clean, spacious apartments, quiet, secluded — just what I was looking for. Since the price was right, I decided to go ahead and jump on it, and three days later, I had the keys to my very own apartment. (Go me!) The next three months will be a little tight, since I’m still paying half rent on the old place until the lease expires (an agreement I made with Kitty when I left), but I think I can scrape by if I’m careful with my funds.

It’s kinda weird having a big empty apartment — I have no furniture at the moment, aside from a bed, a table (which the computer sits on), and two folding chairs that I bought at Wal-mart. (Actually, I bought a LOT at Wal-mart….I expect a personal thank-you note from the Walton estate any day now…*grin*). Oh, and I got one of those generic 72″ bookshelves to put what few books I managed to take away from my old life. Still, it’s nice and cozy, and I have enough stuff int he kitchen to cook my own meals as long as I don’t get fancy (or require more than one pot and one skillet *g*)

My morning commute is now lovely. After 3.5 years of driving a good 45 minutes to work every day, I can leave my house at 10 till and be sitting at my desk on the hour. (One advantage to having worked in this neighborhood for the last 6 years is already knowing where all the various backroads go. I already found a route to my office that avoids entirely any major roads.) It’s a marvelous thing, and I’m very happy with it. 🙂

The timing on this was especially fortunate, because last weekend Kitanzi came down to visit me again. We had a lot of fun at Gafilk, but we were both looking forward to a weekend that didn’t have any outside events taking up our time with each other. I drove down to the airport and picked her up, and we went back home for some snuggle time before I fixed dinner. We then sat and had a nice picnic of tacos on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Saturday was out and about day, with a Gafilk concom meeting in the morning that required a last-minute venue change, after the entire population of North Fulton county apparently decided to have breakfast at the same place we had chosen for our meeting. After finally descending on an alternate venue, we had a productive meeting, finally getting out at about 1.30pm. Kitanzi and I then went to visit Harper for a little while, before heading down into Atlanta so i could take her to the Science Fiction and Mystery bookstore, one of my favourite places to shop. We both bought some books and had fun browsing the shelves and comparing our respective reading histories.

Finally, we went back home to unwind a bit. We had a good time snuggling on the bed while listening to “A Prairie Home Companion” and discussing what to do about dinner. I wanted to take her somewhere nice, since we were celebrating our first Valentines Day together a bit early. We ended up at Shogun, one of my favourite Japanese steakhouses, after it turned out that she had never eaten at one before. The chef put on the usual show, and the food was absolutely divine that night — i couldn’t have asked for better. 🙂

Sunday was again reserved for long goodbyes. It’s never easy taking her back to the airport to go home, but we both hold tight to the knowledge that we’ll see each other again in a few weeks. Stayed with her up until she passed through security, and then wandered off alone to get some lunch. Ended up at Dusty’s down near Emory, which is one of the only places in Atlanta one can get decent North Carolina style barbecue. I hadn’t eaten there in a while, but it’s comfort food and I needed some.

After lunch, I went to a bi-weekly get-together one of my local musician friends put together. We are sort of working up a group music project that is still very much in its formative stages, but I like the elements we’re bringing together. It has every potential to turn into a real band of some description. And being around a group of friends and making music was exactly what I needed. I thought about going up after that to either play or observe the weekly AD&D game at World’s End, but I was feeling pretty tired by that point and decided to just go home. I checked on IRC for a while, then went and lay in bed until Kitanzi called to tell me she got home ok, and fell asleep.

And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon…..you can wake up now. *g*