"Shaun of the Dead"

Brilliantly funny film. What I particularly liked was it wasn't really "campy". It was most definitely a dark comedy, but it also had some great emotional acting when it counted and a fun story with cool characters. Parts of it are pretty traditional 'zombie-movie gory', but overall funny as hell.

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Wow, some really crappy dreams last night. All the usual angst elements over past relationships, powerlessness, and that ever-present sense of profound loss. Oh, and to help matters Koshka decided at 7am that I really should get off my ass, make the bed, and let her sleep under the covers. I ignored her. She repeated the demand every 15-30 minutes from 7 until 10. When I finally did get up, she had given up and was asleep in the papason chair. Man did I have the urge to go bug her every 15 minutes...

Could be worse, the mood could have stuck around. Thankfully it didn't.

Had a good breakfast at Alki with loree, after which we checked out an open house or two. I think I'm going to look at buying a house next year and probably somewhere in West Seattle--if I'm going to have to commute more than 5 minutes, it might as well be the place I really want to live. Wish I had a half-million dollars to spend, but I should be able to find something a bit more reasonable with some effort.

I went to divinemisso's birthday yesterday, which was interesting. I really don't 'get' kids for the most part, but Olivia is definitely getting much more interesting to watch explore and scoot about--she doesn't really crawl as much as army crawl. It is nice to get a chance to visit with rubylou and drakemonger, as well as jeliza, since I don't get to see them as often now that none of us attend the weekly dinners at Crossroads these days.

Speak of which, jeliza and I have plans for a date tonight after she gets off work. We seem to manage about once a week between her schedule and the rest of her household's scheduling. I don't expect our dates will ever get really that much more frequent, but I really enjoy the time we do have to spend together.

Otherwise, just enjoying some 'sitting around time' this afternoon. Booked my trip back to Texas to visit my folks for Xmas and see friends in Austin. Wish work would send me on a biz trip to Austin sooner, but doesn't seem likely to happen.

Farscape

When Sci-Fi announced that they weren't renewing for a fifth season, I was pretty irritated and lost a bit of interest in seeing the last of the current run until more details were forth-coming. With the announced mini-series coming in October, I pulled out my stack of unwatched tapes and did a quick inventory of the episodes. Looks like I have the last half-dozen eps of Season 3 and most of Season 4 to see, but I'm missing "Mental As Anything" (S4#15), and the last three episodes of the series (S4#20 - #22). Oh well, I should get caught-up as best I can and hopefully I'll find these eps somewhere...

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"I'm not exactly the king of letting things go..."


The dreams last night were pretty typical for the kind of crap my subconscious likes to dredge up on a regular basis. For someone who is a romantic at heart, living single for almost six years is pretty much a constant reminder of unfulfilled dreams. The first few years were spent trying to get the tight ball of pain around Kim to let go, and I really didn't want to make anyone else deal with it. I wish Andrea had been a bit more understanding when she and I started dating, but it played too easily into her own sense of worthlessness. Falling in love with her gave me hope of being able to actually move on, and the physical relocation 2300+ miles from all the old haunts really helped. Unfortunately, it also cost me the relationship with Andrea to do it in a way that actually involved being employed.

The years since have been spent trying to build a life in a place where I knew no one. Some people seem to find comfort in tearing up all their roots and starting over fresh, but it was the single hardest thing I've ever done. It didn't help that I was still in love with Kim--which in hindsight only resulted in her totally losing respect for me as person and didn't make the good impression one might hope. It didn't help that Andrea was 3+ hours away for the first year, and then she was totally unreachable.

The gig at Beep did help, and I'm grateful to have a good job now at Microsoft. loree was a fast friend and a great help through those first few lonely years, and things all-in-all are pretty good now. Still, I have no idea where a shared life could possible begin from here. I guess I just have to have hope, and do my best to focus on the here and now. I'm really enjoying the time jeliza and I have together, and it is wonderful to have her and her family as friends. I'm making good progress financially and hopefully I'll be able to finally settle down in a home of my own in the next year.

It occurred to me today that the reason I find my chick-rock musical tastes soothing is that many of them are stories told from the same perspective on love and relationships. So many of those songs are about trying to find a way to let go of what your heart believes is true when it clearly lost, and trying to find hope for the future. I guess it is just nice to be reminded that I'm not alone in my particular form of self-delusion and mental outlook.