Big Changes

June 24, 2008 - 9pm

I’m going to have some really big changes coming up in the very near future. I received a letter from my landlord a while ago saying, “Hey, your lease is up on August 14th. Want to renew?” My immediate response was, “What the fuck?”

Our lease expired in October of last year, and we’ve been living on a month-to-month basis since then. If he had sent a letter saying, “Renew or leave by the end of August,” that would have been understandable. This letter seems to imply that he has no idea what terms he agreed to when he signed our lease, since a.) he never contacted us when the original lease expired and b.) if he already knew we were living month-to-month, he’d have given us a deadline for August 31st, not the 14th.

Since our apartment is a dump, (leaking ceiling and faucets; tiny, uncleanable bathroom; no air conditioning; horribly expensive to heat; no laundry facilities; etc.) there’s no way we’re renewing the lease. This is forcing several issues.

First, Megan and I broke up quite some time ago, but we’re still living together. She has no reason to stay in Madison, and she’s trying to get into a massage school in Oregon state. Living without her is going to be really strange and difficult. I’m going to be a mess for a while afterwards.

Second, I just got my Linux+ certification. (94%! Whoo!) I’m hoping to parlay my new certification into a new job in a new city–with a lot of luck, Google in Seattle.

If all of these things happen–no Megan, new job, new city, new life–it’s going to be the most significant shake up I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t know if I’m ready for it.

Johnny Cash – Hurt

October 20, 2006 - 12am

A while ago, Karyn showed Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt.  It made the front page of Digg Videos today, and I was reminded how emotionally powerful it is.

I’ve always loved cover songs, provided a few caveats: the coverer has to add their own distinctive style to the song, and they have to improve upon the original.  Cash easily does both.  Trent Reznor even said the following about the video:

    I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning–different, but every bit as pure.

Although the song was released on his 2002 album, American IV: The Man Comes Around, the video is interpreted as after his wife’s death–Johhny followed his wife into the grave four short months later.  It’s heartbreaking to watch Johnny’s shaking hands spill a glass of wine on a feast table as images of June and his life flicker on the screen.

I couldn’t help but tear up watching an old man mourn for his wife, waiting for death to take him so that they could be reunited.

You can find the video here.

Congratulations Christine and Mike!

October 16, 2006 - 12am

Christine got married on Saturday!  For those of you who don’t know, Christine and I dated for something close to a year total, split between two semi-functional relationships.  And in what I’m sure sounds like a very backhanded compliment, I’ve never been so glad that she and I broke up.

That requires some explanation–watching her and her new husband last night at the reception, it was obvious that she was very much in love, very happy, and very excited.  The two of them were adorable.  Never in all the time we dated were we anywhere near that happy; we weren’t even close to right for each other.  She and Mike definitely are. (Not this Mike, who shall henceforth only be known only as “Mikey” to reduce confusion.)  If she’d never had the good sense to break it off with me, she never would have found Mike.

Congratulations, Mike and Christine.  All my best to both of you.

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