Hello Russia

Last night, I got my computer running in my apartment, so I now have internet access from my home. I got phone service a couple of weeks ago, but I only recently got a monitor, which I needed to make the phone service of any use to me. When I called SBC to see whether my phone service was working or not (I didn't feel like going out and buying a telephone to test out the jacks), they told me that it was hooked up, but that there was something wrong on my end - the connection hadn't been made at our apartment's phone box, something the apartment manager is supposed to take care of. The apartment manager, a gay film producer named Armando, didn't understand what hooking up the phones involved, so I decided to try and do it myself last night. I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how the process worked by looking at the phone box before I noticed that my phone was, in fact, actually set up correctly (already).

Ah, anyways, it's odd having internet access in my apartment. Throughout college, it was such a necessary part of my daily life that I was surprised that I had got on fairly well without it over the last few months. Having it again feels like I've gone backwards or something.

I wonder why I've been so okay with not really owning anything - I'm sitting on a pillow right now, the monitor on the floor. I don't own much furniture, a bed (thanks Caniprokis), a couch, and a couple of tables. I bought the couch and the tables from a woman who was moving to Minnesota. She sold me the couch (old, nice quality, leather) for $30 and the two coffee tables for $40 (good quality, I guess). I still wonder how anyone could think that two coffee tables would be worth more than the couch in that situation. It felt odd paying more for the tables.

I don't know why, though, that I've been ok with not having anything up. I have a few posters rolled up in a tube, they've been sitting at the Harveyopolis offices for, what, a month, now.

Pappy and I went to IHOP on Christmas. I used to think that place was awesome, back in CT (mainly because it involved a trip to Hamden, I think, long distance). It's still good.

I got a book of poetry by Wallace Stevens today. Good stuff. This is one of his poems:

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

I'd like it if people started posting more. I'm interested in hearing what's been going on back home, maybe just what's been going on in your daily lives.

Stun