All in all, I think the revival is going quite well. I’ve been more consistent with site maintenance the past week than I ever was, even when this was new. I can see that ever more clearly when I was fidgeting with the archive pages — pages which have proven to be more headache than I had anticipated due largely to my lack of insight into how to style them — and I saw more posts in this month than any previous month.

I’m sitting on the couch in the living room next to Milo who is very noisily napping. He’s been terribly congested of late. His breathing has a high-pitched rattle as he dozes in a nest of small blankets and afghans. My cat snores something fierce.

So, I went up to the local Apple store Saturday evening. Though it should have been against my better judgement, I could not pass up some of the deals awaiting me on the refreshed and returned table. I came home with a more or less brand new AirPort Extreme and a set of cables to go along with the AirPort Express we’d been using for a while now. I didn’t really need either one of them, but both were on my vague and tenuous list of things for my fantasy entertainment center. I had anticipated buying first a receiver and some speakers, but I could not escape the sale.

(I really wonder why all of these AirPort devices were on the sale rack. Methinks, perhaps, those rumors of a video version of the AirPort Express might not be so far off the mark. My local Apple Store had 4 AirPort Extremes, 2 AirPort Expresses, and a set of cables on the refreshed table. Now, maybe someone returned all of that, but I kind of feel like it might have been store models. Maybe.)

Not having a stereo at the moment I hooked it up to the television after reconfiguring my stations to talk to one another appropriately. I also realized that the Express will share the connection through the ethernet port on the bottom so I could finally hook up the Playstation 2 and Xbox (now that the new generation is upon us with all its wifi goodness). I thought I was going to have to buy yet another device to get that rocking. I’m really digging the idea of streaming my music from one end of the house to the other. I’m sure much more well equipped households are scoffing at my delay on jumping onto this bandwagon. It was purely a money thing. . . and I really don’t think I ought to be able to buy the rest of the equipment I need but I sure as shit want to real damn bad.

So why, after six months of silence, do I feel the need to start babbling on again in a public forum (a potentially public forum at any rate). I suppose it has to do with my most recent effort to make sense of my life. This isn’t intended to be a wrenching soul-searching endeavor the likes of which everyone hates to be forced into listening. It will probably turn into one. The best laid plans. . .

So, as I said before I’ve moved some 500 miles from my last residence, started living with my girlfriend (Staci) and her two pets (a dog named Leroy and a cat named Milo), and taken a new job that requires me to wake up around six-thirty in the morning rather than sometime before two in the afternoon. I’ve essentially turned my life upside down. Many of the ideas I’d had regarding this arrangement have turned out to be untrue. For instance, combining two similar incomes towards bills, rent, and food has not entitled me to a seemingly inexhaustible font of cash the likes of which can be used to procure both goods and services at a whim. Also, while the great majority of events both special and otherwise that a person may attend does increase almost exponentially when said person leaves work in the afternoon rather than the dead of night the early morning awakening does not really leave this person with a great deal of energy to pursue them. See also: misconceptions about financial abundance.

See, I used to work the evening shift. I’d wake up around, oh, 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. I’d sip coffee for a good hour or so while reading websites, watching DVDs, or playing World of Warcraft. Then it was off to work, where I’d see folks leaving in the evening announcing plans to go out to eat, to a movie, or just to go home and lay on the couch with their sweethearts watching television. I’d be more than a little jealous, and think “Boy, you sure do get to do a whole lot more when you work day shift.” And I suppose I do, that I just don’t remember it as well because most of the days I don’t do anything more than come home and wait for Staci. That, and I kind of miss being able to slowly sip a couple cups of coffee without having to rush off to work. I’m better off this way. Working at night would make for a pretty miserable relationship.

As for the money issue: I really thought when I decided to move that I’d see a considerable bump in my spending cash. After all, we’d be combining groceries, splitting bills, and chipping in for necessary expenditures. We ought to have more, right? Well. . . maybe, but not nearly as much as I must have expected. I still tend to wind up pretty close to broke at least twice a month. I haven’t exactly been able to just buy whatever I like either (as I thought I might). A couple of times I’ve taken a look at my collections of things and become inexplicably depressive. Now that I’m starting to type this it sounds a bit spoiled in my head. . . but let me explain.

All my conscious life I’ve been obsessed with things: namely the continual acquisition of them. This drive should no doubt be familiar to any of us who grew up feeling socially awkward in the 1980s and 1990s. I used to tape the little product inserts that came in packages of Transformers to my dresser as best to fantasize about finally having all of the parts to one of the “gestalt” robots (I can distinctly recall wanting to collect Superion particularly badly, though I never did. In fact, I never managed to collect all the parts of any of these toys which turns out to be portentous.). I also hung on to the LEGO catalogs, both the large ones that showed every set by theme for the year and the tiny fold-out posters that only gave you a taste. Once I reached a certain age I probably spent almost as much time looking at other things I might buy if I had the money as I did playing with the toys I already had. “If I could just get this entire set,” I’d often think, “that would be great. Think of how much fun that would be.” I never, ever did. Before I could even come close I’d find some new collection of toys that I absolutely had to have.

As I got older, the objects I longed to own changed (though not all that drastically — I bought more LEGO sets during and after college than at any given time in my childhood) but the cyclical nature of my obsession never did. One month I simply had to own all the seasons of Smallville. The next it might be as many different chapters of Final Fantasy I could get to run on the PlayStation 2. I’d run out and get one, spend far too much time looking at places I might buy more, and then forget all about it when I found something new or rediscovered a past obsession. The simple fact is I am addicted to thinking that some complete set of something or other I can buy will make me happier. I’m addicted to finding new collections of things to be obsessed over. A few months ago I took stock on how many first seasons of television shows I had bought and how much it would cost to finish them. In short, it was a lot of money. A lot of money I now don’t want to spend on that. . . It really made me feel awful in a way I cannot adequately explain. I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete. Nothing that makes me say “Aha! So that’s why I felt so awful!”

I thought maybe typing it out this time would help me come to realize it. So far. . . not so much. Some time soon, perhaps.