mike in progress

I dreamt that I ran half a Marathon last night.  I KNOW!  I can run, I just hate it.  And I did 13 miles.  Which is not a short distance!

So as time marches on, and spring approaches, my time in Connecticut is quickly coming to an end. Next week is my last at work, and the week after I will be spending moving. It’s creeping up, and even though it is all very real, it still has an air of unreality to it. It also makes me think about everything that’s happened to me since I came here.

So I thought I would recap everything that’s happened to me here.

I arrived late in summer of 2006, fresh out of college, and fresh out of most of a summer spent in a drunken stupor in Buffalo, NY.  I started work with a defense contractor.  I started dating this med student named Ashley.  She was cute, smart, and fun.  One problem, ego clash like whoa.   So that ended.  Work continued, and as time passed, it was getting less and less cool.  I realized more and more what a twit one of my bosses was.  Come March 2007, I was pretty fed up with my job.  I quit and soon started to work where I do now.  I got a promotion in September, and got to spend two weeks in California.

The holidays passed and then I met Elizabeth.  And that’s over.  And here I am, moving to Boston.

I fear that I will pick up a Boston accent while living in Boston.

We met as soul mates
On parris island
We left as inmates
From an asylum
And we were sharp
As sharp as knives
And we were so gung ho
To lay down our lives
We came in spastic
Like tameless horses
We left in plastic
As numbered corpses
And we learned fast
To travel light
Our arms were heavy
But our bellies were tight
We had no home front
We had no soft soap
They sent us playboy
They gave us bob hope
We dug in deep
And shot on sight
And prayed to jesus christ
With all our might
We had no cameras
To shoot the landscape
We passed the hash pipe
And played our doors tapes
And it was dark
So dark at night
And we held on to each other
Like brother to brother
We promised our mothers wed write
And we would all go down together
We said wed all go down together
Yes we would all go down together
Remember charlie
Remember baker
They left their childhood
On every acre
And who was wrong?
And who was right?
It didnt matter in the thick of the fight
We held the day
In the palm
Of our hand
They ruled the night
And the night
Seemed to last as long as six weeks
On parris island
We held the coastline
They held the highlands
And they were sharp
As sharp as knives
They heard the hum of our motors
They counted the rotors
And waited for us to arrive
And we would all go down together
We said wed all go down together
Yes we would all go down together

Yesterday, I was napping in my apartment, when Jared texts me to suit up and meet him at a local restaurant.  I do, and another friend, Chuck, meets us there as well.  That was just the beginning of the night.  It ended up being quite legendary.  And to be sure, I paid the price for it in the morning when I had to wake up to get to work.

So the just the day before last, I went up to Boston with Marcus to go apartment hunting.  We found the perfect place, and we are currently applying.  But that’s not the good part of this tale.  First, I have to provide some back story.  Boston streets aren’t the best.  Marcus hates potholes.  He feels that hitting enough of them causes his car to become unaligned.  So I made fun of him for cursing every single pothole that he hits.  So there we were, driving in Back Bay from Cambridge to get some dinner before we head home.  It’s about 6:30.  He hits a pothole.  Not all that hard, but pretty hard.  He gets pissed, then all of a sudden, warning lights go off.  Low tire pressure.  We pull over and I check the tires.  He has a flat on his front drivers side tire.  We pull into a parking lot, and I ask him if he knows how to change a tire.  He has no idea, so I end up changing his tire for him.  That alone is enough mockery to last a good month or two.  But then we head to the closest Lexus dealership.   They don’t have a spare and they don’t have anyone around to change it.  We head to a Bridgestone, and they don’t have tires in stock.  They send us to an NTB, and they say we have to get all the tires changed.  His car is an all wheel drive model, and you have to change all the tires together, else the transmission will go.  So long story short, he gets four new tires, we go out and have dinner, and we head back.  I get home a bit past midnight.

So that was a much more interesting story when it was in my head.  But the thing I am really taking away from it is that for the first time I really realized that I was in the city that was going to my new home.  It hit me for the first time.  And as much as I am looking forward to going, there’s still a lot that I’m leaving behind.  More than I realized, after tonight.  I have to go, because it’s the best thing for me to do right now.  But there’s a part of me that will still wonder, “What if?”

Life is full of what ifs.  And as much as we can tell ourselves that they don’t matter, they still factor into our thinking and decision making.  So what does one do?  I don’t know.  If I ever find out, I’ll tell you.