duck-shaped pain

I'm in a better mood now. If you read the last entry, you may have been able to tell that I was surly as all get-out, pissy like the wind. I have improved since. Getting paid helped. Eating a big plate of Mexican food helped, too. So did a lot of sleep. Waking up late this morning was just gravy in comparison to the rest of it.

I found a new place to get coffee. It's not really new, just new to me. It's been open for several years now, but it's sort of out of the way, yet close enough to the bagel shop to completely not register in my mind. I took a couple of hours off of work Tuesday morning, because I needed to get away before I stabbed someone in the hand with my pen, and went to get some coffee. I was planning to go to the bagel shop, drove by there, and saw this really annoying guy that I'm trying to avoid [1] sitting out front. Like there's anyway I could have snuck in without him seeing me. I sped around the corner and there was this other place and I decided, why the hell not?

Plus, it has it own parking lot.

I think I've avoided this place because I thought it was tiny. It is tiny, but not teeny tiny. All you can see from the outside is the cash register and a stool. But there are actually tables inside, even if they only hold your cup and the average trade paperback.

I ordered an americano [2] and was very surprised, since this place makes them the way I like -- hot water goes in first, then espresso. [3] Don't ask why, Just picky. And they have nice green mugs, which, unfortunately, people keep stealing.

Mildly Angsty!

Friday afternoon, I went back to Teeny Tiny Coffee [4] and had another americano in an attractive green stoneware mug, and was attempting to read or write or do something productive.

It didn't work. My mind kept veering off into a hundred different ditches.

I thought about my upcoming trip, as I was making out a list of things to do and buy before I leave. I'm pretty pleased I'm going. I've had this incredible travel urge the last few months and it's about time I did something about it. This is just a bush-league trip, a mere weekend jaunt compared to some of the trips I'd like to take. I'd really like to take some extended trips � like a month or two months or even longer � to places like New Zealand or China or back to Japan. But whenever I think about taking these trips, they seem sort of distant, like the kind of thing I'd be doing three or four years from now.

Why this is, I don't know. I somehow feel like there's things that I should do before I venture out on any big adventures. Things that seem like something someone my age should do. Find a new city to live in. [5] Pick some sort of career out of the many jobs I've worked at. Things like that. Then, after all these things get accomplished, maybe I can do something completely different and muck about in another country for awhile�

Of course, if one follows this logic long enough, one never does anything at all. I mean, by the time I've done all the things I think I should do before traveling, a whole new set of obligations could replace them.

So, I started thinking, why not travel now? Not the right-this-minute kind of now, but later this year or early next year. I don't really have any reason not to, the more I think about it.

The conditions are right. I have very low living expenses. My medical bills from the accident last year are paid off. I'm within a few months of having all my credit card debt paid off. I make enougb money from my job to buy most of the crap I want, still have a lot of money left over to put into savings � and I still don't work more than 30 hours a week, most of the time. Because I'm a contractor at work and not a real employee, I can take large chunks of time off of work at will. I don't get any paid time off, but I also don't get any hassle about leaving. I can kind of come and go as I please, given enough advance notice. The only possible stumbling block I see is if I have to have more leg surgery this fall, to take some of the metal screws out. So far, my doctor thinks such surgery would be completely optional � "You could keep that stuff in there for the rest of your life if you wanted to," he's said � but it's something that could possibly happen.

So.

I might do this. I might take the money I have now (or, in reality, the money I have after the SF trip and then taxes) and put it into some sort of untouchable form, like a long-term CD or something like that. That way it will still be there for moving. Then, I'll start over, except all the money I save from that point will be for travelling. I'll up the number of hours I work, which won't be difficult at all, what with the only other non-scientist employee going on maternity leave and a bunch of new projects starting. And, oh yeah, I'll make serious plans to travel.

The thing is, if I decide to do this, I actually have to do it. I can't just sort of put it off and put it off some more, as I am famous for. I have to actually commit to doing it, work to make it happen, and actually take the plunge. It all sounds so appealing, yet it's also a big enormous deal that will require lots of planning.

Oh yeah � I can't complain about it, either. I mean, I complain a lot about being here in The Town That Mill Tailings Built. I just don't really believe that I'm here most of the time � it's just a stop on the way to somewhere that's hopefully a lot more interesting. But if I decide that I'm going to stay and work through the summer, then that's a conscious decision [6] on my part and I'm just going to have to deal with it. So no why the hell am I still here??? for me, or you're all entitled to slap me from afar.

I still don't know. It's a big decision. One that requires more thinking. I'm sort of saving my energy for this until after I get back from SF. I think I'll know more then. Or not.

[1] Short story made shorter: Really Annoying Guy asked me out on a date last November. We went out, he wasn't interesting. Didn't try to talk to him again. Not giving him my last name or phone number was a good idea, in retrospect. Ran into him a few weeks ago, chatted idly and vacantly for a few minutes. Now I see him everywhere, and he gets less and less charming each time. And he likes to talk about his novel. Not his published novel, mind you, just his 400-paged typed manuscript he has with him at all times. As far as I can tell, it's about hard-drinking wanderers who hitch around the country, generally giving The Finger to The Man, The System, or whatever else crosses their paths. So shocking and new.

[2] Which brings the number of places in town that makes them to three. Not counting Horrible Coffee, which calls them "americanas" and defines them as a mix of espresso and brewed coffee. Not quite.

[3] If you think about it, though, the name "americano" is not really complimentary. It's not like someone decided that those world-beating coffee demi-gods, the Americans, deserved to have a strong, robust coffee drink named after them. Compared to regular espresso, americanos are not terribly sharp, kind of lackadaisical and all about quantity -- sort of like a lot of people in this fair land. I still prefer them over brewed coffee if I have the choice, though. With brewed coffee, you really have no way of telling how long it's been sitting unless you're actually there to see it made. But I've had a lot of standard coffee that tasted old or burnt or off, and it's always sort of a crap shoot. Americanos are made to order, though, and you are at least assured that it's reasonably fresh.

[4] It needs a name. Actually it has one, a pretty generic one: Colorado Java.

[5] Yeah, I'm vacillating on this again. Won't bore you all with the details again. It's just that my fear of Picking Wrong keeps coming back to bite me in the ass.

[6] Okay, moving back was also a conscious decision, but I haven't really been thinking of it in that way. It seems like it just happened somehow, which is really not true.

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