Little bit of come on, little bit of play

2006-10-30 - 4:56 p.m.

I really need to learn to keep my fingers to myself when driving. How long have I been saying that? Today, as I was driving home from the Safeway on Capitol Hill and enjoying the view of the Space Needle, the Sound, and the Olympics, some guy in a Mercedes pulled out right in front of me. I expressed my feelings on the matter by showing him my middle finger. He slammed on his brakes--I very nearly ran into the back of him, groceries were thrown everywhere in my trunk--opened his door, got out, walked back to me, and looked right into my driver's side window. I had the windows up and the radio on so I didn't hear what he said to me, but his facial expression and gestures weren't exactly friendly. Apparently he was in so much of a hurry that he had to cut me off, but not in so much of a hurry that he didn't mind stopping in the middle of the street to have a talk with me. Anyway, he did eventually get back in his car, no actual harm done, but I really need to be more careful. The world, at least my teeny section of it, would be a happier place if I stopped waving my fingers around.

Saturday I officially started moving. We don't actually get the keys to our new apartment until after Thanksgiving, but our new apartment is in the same building as Lolo's current apartment and his move-out date is later than mine, so we've decided to start moving all my little stuff (anything that will fit in my car) to his place. We stopped by our hospital and grabbed some empty cardboard boxes and then took them to my place and filled them up. We took two car loads of stuff from my place to his. Mostly books, but also CD's, DVD's and stuff I have stored that I won't be using for a while like camping gear. Stuff that could be packed and moved as-is. Now I'm mostly down to stuff I need to sort through and clean before it's moved. Ugh. I'm not looking forward to this process.

Saturday evening we went out to dinner with Lolo's parents. This is the third time I've met up with his mom and the second time I've seen his step-dad. We had dinner a month or two ago at their house, but I don't think I wrote about it here. His step-dad looks like Kenny Rogers. He likes to drink and play golf and he has an opinion about nearly everything. He's a much better talker than a listener and I can tell he gets on Lolo's nerves. We told them that we're moving into a two-bedroom apartment together. He told us we should buy a house instead. I found it amusing that my parents are somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of us living together at all while his parents want us to buy a house. I don't mind listening to his advice and his opinions. Just because I'm listening doesn't mean I'm going to change the way I do things. But I can imagine how that sort of thing could wear on you after twenty-some years. We had dinner that night at the country club that his parents belong to. They introduced us to everybody there and talked about the owners and the chefs as if they were old friends. After dinner they showed us their golf cart. Apparently it's the fanciest and fastest golf cart at the club. Woopty-doo. Anyway, they seem to be nice enough people, even if their interests don't overlap mine very much. Looks like we're going to have Thanksgiving dinner at their place with Lolo's grandmother. That should be nice.

Sunday was a lazy day. We spent the morning reading and watching football, then in the afternoon we went to work to do some online training modules for a new program that was starting today. Back to my place afterwards for a game of Scrabble (I won, woo-hoo!) and then he went back to his place. I would've liked him to stay, but he had other things in mind. And really, that's ok. He says this is our last month living by ourselves, we should take full advantage. Ok, whatever, I need to clean anyway. Not that I actually have cleaned...my goal for tonight is to finish my book. I'm reading The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin. I started it because it won the National Book Award for science fiction in 1980--one of only two years the award was given in this category. But really there's no sci-fi in it. It's purely fantasy with too many religious references for my taste, although I probably should've been able to anticipate that. So the goal is to finish this book tonight and get it out of the way.