I’m moving again. There’s a pile of boxes, some random furniture, and a couple of cleared off bookshelves and some tables in my living room, ready to be moved over later today to a new studio apartment closer to my son’s house. I’ll also bring his bed and his things, ready to occupy pride of place in the new apartment. I need to buy a bed and a mattress for myself; the queen size bed I have now doesn’t make sense for a studio. I’ll get a ZipCar van today and get the bed, then swing by my current apartment and pack the rest of the furniture, and move in.
Living in exile
When I left university and moved west, my parents found a great birthday gift, a t-shirt that said “Born in Maine, Living in Exile”. It remains my favorite t-shirt, although by now it’s barely holding together after twenty plus years of wearings and washings. I only bring it out on rare occasions – for example, I wore it to Safeco Field for a Mariners-Blue Jays game. Since most people at the game were Canadian, I thought I might get a good reaction, and sure enough, some Newfies now living in Vancouver who were following the Jays spotted the t-shirt and we struck up a great conversation about growing up on the Atlantic and living on the Pacific.
A twist of Lyme
This wasn’t the vacation I was expecting. They never are, but this one was more unexpected than normal.
Community affairs
I have friends from across the political spectrum – an increasingly rare and difficult thing to pull off these days – and while they have vastly different reasons for doing so, they all complain about “society” and its rejection of their values or political views or whatever. My right-of-center friends complain about how media – both news media and movies and television – reflect a version of society that is uncomfortable for them, filled with gay marriage and casual sex and with no room for faith. My left-of-center friends complain about the persistence of traditional notions of marriage, gender roles, and the pervasiveness of casual violence in society. They all talk about how “society” seems to denigrate what they hold dear, and many of them talk about how they have felt isolated or rejected by society for the choices they have made.
Side effects
The rash is about nine inches in diameter on my upper thigh, with a darker red center about the size of a two pound coin. The center is a little firm to the touch, but the rash as a whole is a bit warmer than my surrounding skin. The doctor asked when I first noticed it – about four weeks ago – and asked if I remembered what gave rise to it. I told her I thought it was a spider bite, but I really had no idea what had caused it – it had itched, though, and I was pretty sure it was some sort of an insect because at the center of what was now the dark red bit, I remember feeling a mosquito-like itch.