Did not get into the .MOBI world much today. I did make it up to John’s rogue payphone, where I deposited $1 in quarters thinking I might make a phone call. But no. Nothing connected. I went to the nearby CityBridge phone. It now asks for 50 cents per call. That’s scandalous, especially since the phone does not even work.

It feels like I am in foreign territory. This kitchen of mine, semi-rearranged, is looking positively respectable. Spacious, even. I intend to print out some of my pictures, laminate them, and post them on the wall. I do not like surrounding myself with myself but some of the pictures make for good conversation pieces.

I remember going over to S.’s place on 27th street. Must have been 2005 or 2006. She had just moved in. This was a house warming of sorts. This party/gathering was actually my idea, though getting credit for my inspiration got lost in the shuffle of logistics. No matter. I got to meet her fianceé, who was as much of a jerk as all involved had led me to assume.

But that is not the point of this reminiscence. The point is that when I walked in to her place the first thing I noticed was that her wall was completely covered with printouts of pictures from my web site. It was strange but, of course, not as odd as it might have been had the wall been covered with pictures of me. Ahaha. I should go after some girl now and print out pictures from her web sites and plaster them all over my walls and then invite her over.

I am going to print some stuff out momentarily. No idea what, but that’s the easy part. Running the laminating machine is irksome. It smells bad. I can do that here, in the spacious kitchen, by the vacuum of the outdoor-facing window fan.

My love for my Sangean Internet Radios has only increased the last few days, as I discovered that I can play from my virtually infinite library of MP3s downloaded from Usenet over the last 20 years and stored on my RAID. Much of that music has gone unheard since I downloaded it. Of course much of it will remain unheard as it would take 3 lifetimes to listen to all that stuff. But I am loving those Sangean radios, and looking for release dates of the newer models in the U.S. New models are out in Europe and Asia but not here.

Lifetimes are too confusing. I don’t know what to do first, what not to do, what to forget about, who to forsake and what to care about. Things are different from years ago. When I first started slinging web pages the most important thing was writing. Content. Originality. That has evolved. Style prevails over substance, technology continually interrupts my creative efforts, and the room I have for being myself is less and less. I consider a move to retail, because I liked that Tower Records job years ago. I had a future there, too. I did not want that future, and I regret not for a second letting it go. But I liked the job. There were people there. I interacted with people who otherwise would never have anything to do with my path in life, nor I theirs. That was what I liked about it, among other things. There was always something to do. I liked that, too. But there was also room to slack and be lazy, to find efficiencies and pace yourself, to build conspiracies with the security guards or the supervisors to slowly establish seniority and fob off the real work to the ambitious/desperate new hires.

Most of all it was good to be around people, feeling like part of a team, that kind of thing. I never felt like a team at corporate. People had differing ambitions, different paths in life from which this corporate dalliance was just one step leading to the next. Some took a corporate job as seriously as they might have in the glory days of careerism and the so-called permanent job. Others thought that to be a quaint way of looking at work. When there were layoffs the younger people acted like a mass murder had just occurred. The older workers shrugged it off. Older meaning 40s and maybe even 50s.

I cannot concentrate today. Slept until 11, because I needed it. Going to keep working on this kitchen. Or something. Watching QVC because it is fun.