chipotle | Staring carefully at the crullers (Reply)

(Started around 9:15 a.m.)

I’ve stopped at a Krispy Kreme near the office to have coffee and a donut (just one) and chew on writing for a little bit. It’s already late so I don’t have a lot of time to chew, but I haven’t been able to get into the right headspace for even simple journaling recently.

Being here, in a fairly quiet, antiseptic-looking place dominated by faux-retro steel and pastel, brings back memories from about fifteen years ago, when I used to go to a Dunkin’ Donuts with Bart, a friend who was my story guinea pig: I’d give him first drafts of stories and he’d, well, react. It wasn’t a critique so much as the literary equivalent of a test screening. At any rate, while I suppose this place violates a lot of ideas of “comfortable writing space” that most people would have, I like it: a fairly open table to take over, very little ambient noise—I’m the only customer in the seating area, even though they have seating for 40—and, of course, coffee. Not gourmet, but solid enough. No wifi, but in some ways that’s a benefit. (Technically, since it’s in Mountain View, there’s Google’s free wifi service, but in my experience having Google free wifi is like having no wifi at all.)

So. Catching up: I’m moving.

As I’ve written recently, this isn’t out of the blue, but the speed is unexpected. The friend I’m going to share the apartment with has a tendency to move rather fast, and we went from looking at apartments to having a signed lease within a week.

I’ve been having some panic over the last week or so over the move—mild panics, not panic attacks, just a holy crap I’m not at all ready yet feeling. And I’m not. I have the sort of perverse advantage that I never completely unpacked what living room and kitchen stuff I moved out here with. Of course, I can’t remember what most of that stuff is at this point. I have a cheap kitchen knife set somewhere, and a stereo that’s now quite behind the times but should hopefully be solid enough to keep working. Did I bring speaker cables and speaker stands with me? How about towels—did I unpack those and mix them in with the household’s? And so on, endlessly.

However, the panic and nervousness is being joined by excitement, too. I’ll have more space; I can use this as an excuse to replace some old furniture (and I’ve already started on that); I’ll be in a new place to explore more thoroughly than I’ve been able to so far, and I’ll also be much closer to Bay Are public transit stations and so a whole new set of things to do—without driving—might open up. The place I’m moving to is a pseudo-town named Foster City, just outside San Mateo. I may well try to corral duncanroo into giving me a tour, or at least advice on where he goes, since I believe he’s lived in San Mateo for years.

I’ll write more about the move as it happens, I’m sure; I’m expecting for me, at least, it’s going to go on throughout this month and probably a bit into December, presuming my (current) housemates tolerate it. I hope to be completely moved in

Somewhat coincidentally, my physical this year was scheduled for just after my birthday. I got what I’d call a clean bill of health with an asterisk, and the asterisk is what doctors could just about have preprinted on cards to pass out for patients: better diet, more exercise. My cholesterol’s a little high, my blood glucose also a little high (but not diabetic). Yes, I am aware of the irony of writing about this at a frikkin’ Krispy Kreme, but like I said, I’m only having one donut. I’ve actually been better about my diet the last few months, although I need to make sure I don’t slip back into old habits—which are, basically, too much soda and too much reliance on fast food, both a curse of the modern age.