What is the sound of one geek clapping?

After all the hassle I posted about earlier, about my landlords holding my security deposit because I didn’t give them 45 days’ notice, I checked my mail yesterday only to find that they had sent it to me anyway. This just about made my month.

In other news, my company has decided that it wants to change from a 5×24 setup (Monday–Friday, coverage from Monday at 12:00 am to Friday at midnight) to 7×24 coverage, and as such is asking us if we’ll be willing to work a different shift. There’s still a contingent of people who will be working on the regular Monday–Friday, 8–5 shift, but the company offered us each more money if we’d be willing to do an off shift, so I decided to start working Sunday through Thursday instead, which I think is going to be extremely weird, at least for the first long while. I’m sure I’ll get used to it—hell, if my brother can work 7pm–7am for five years, I can work a regular shift with one day transposed. It’s gonna throw off my weekends, but at least I still have my Fridays available, and if I want to tough it out, I could go out on Saturday night, too.

I do have to say that I like the rigid Monday–Friday schedule, but the deal from my company was just too sweet to pass up.

For years, ever since I moved out on my own, when I’ve gone shopping for shoes—which, believe me, is different from “shoe shopping,” which men do not do—I’ve laced up a pair of sneakers and slipped them on my feet, only to hear the words of my mother echo in my head:

“Make sure that you leave enough room for your feet to grow!”

I wear New Balance shoes exclusively, because they’re the only sneakers out there that come in wide varieties. (Nike, Reebok, et al: Take heed! People with large feet want to wear your shoes too!) A size 13EE shoe is not easy to find in a store. And given that any pair of shoes that I buy will be the only pair of sneakers that I wear, sometimes for years, proper sizing is crucial. But today, while trying to find a new pair that I liked enough to buy, something occurred to me as I tried on two brand new shoes: I’m twenty-seven years old. I don’t need to leave enough room for my feet to grow. This revelation led directly to another: I don’t actually have size-thirteen feet.

I have size-twelve feet.

While part of me laments this discovery as it was almost a badge of honor (“I have enormous feet!”), the rest of me realizes that I probably won’t have to repeat today’s ordeal of going from store to store in the mall—I managed to visit all five stores that sold shoes today before finally finding a pair I liked that fit me—in order to find nice shoes that fit. I mean, it’s not like a 12EE is that much easier to find, but it’s easier nonetheless.

So hey, Mom: Don’t ever say I didn’t listen to you.

Three weeks that I’ve been in my new apartment and I still don’t quite feel at home yet. It kind of dawned on me yesterday that I actually live in this new place. I think now that that’s kind of gotten through my head, I can really start making the place my own. First up is to get the stuff out of her that still needs to get out of here, like the entertainment center that’s still in pieces (need to find out if I can just drop the pieces on the street on trash day or if I need to take them to a dump or something) and the love seat that I really just don’t have the space for. Then I can finish getting unpacked and really get comfortable in this place.

Having 12-foot ceilings is really nice, too, but it poses a wall space problem—the problem being, of course, that I have to find something to fill them. I’ve been thinking that I could take some of my own photography and put it up in large-format prints (poster size, perhaps), but part of me says that it’s a bit conceited to do that and part of me realizes that in order to do that, I have to actually go take photos in order to get them printed and put up on the walls.

In other fronts: I went back to Plymouth last weekend to perform in a 9/11 Memorial concert. A bunch of alums and community members did a performance of Mozart’s Requiem, and the orchestra debuted a new piece by my former composition professor that was based on a poem written by another faculty member. It just blew me away.

Speaking of 9/11… At first I was going to write something about the anniversary, but I realized, as we got closer to the date, and especially after I did the concert, that I really didn’t know what to feel about it. I was confused, hurt, angry, morose, and just plain annoyed at everything. The politicization, the pseudo-patriotism, everything about it just kinda made me sick. What drove me over the edge, though, was hearing the letters to NPR’s Morning Edition this past week. I know that NPR can choose to run whichever letters it wants to, and so to some degree even this was politicized, but some of these letters just made me literally sick to my stomach. To suggest that a media outlet is committing sedition by running a segment about Muslims in America on the anniversary of September 11th is the absolute height of idiocy.

The close of this very strange, unique week was the I AM festival here in New London. One of the myriad of benefits of living in this very interesting city is that I get to be exposed to its rather large and thriving indie music scene. The I AM festival is New London’s own little indie music festival. I only caught the tail end of it (having completely forgotten about it until I was eating dinner), but I managed to make it down to the docks in order to catch a couple of bands, then heading to the after-party at a local club and catching another couple bands. Some of the stuff I heard was flat-out amazing, whereas other bits were, well, less amazing. All in all, though, it was a great way to close out the week, especially because my job has been asking us to put in extra hours, so I feel the need to kick back and relax with a little more force than normal during these times.