Pre-Friday five.

Five new and improved questions I am growing weary of answering, in response to the aforementioned five questions I grew weary of answering before I moved, and their answers, in no particular order:

• How's the new place? As far as apartments go, it's almost perfect. It's just the right size, just the right price, on a quiet street, and although I'm on the ground floor and people seem to live above me, I never, ever hear them. Or anyone, really. I'm really close to all kinds of public transit and within walking distance of dozens of restaurants, shops, neighborhood parks and movie theaters. (And Peets! Critical.)
  
  
• How's the new job? Eight days into it, everyone is really nice, and the organization is doing good things. My actual job should be easy and interesting, and there's plenty of room to move over or up within the company. That said, there's definitely some crazy hierarchy shit that I'm hoping to either change or ignore (e.g. all communications with X go through Y and Y only, and Y just ends up forwarding requests to us and then funneling it back to X, so it seems pretty stupid). I'm a bit scared of how fast the company is growing and it's been strange being a recent hire, seeing all the emails about new job postings, and hearing all the long-timers sigh and harken back to the good ol' days when they were a small company. (I've been in their position a lot, but never in this one before.) All THAT said, people seem to recognize that chaos is imminent if the proper steps aren't taken, and already I've heard about numerous communication efforts that have been established, so that gives me hope... But it's only been eight days. Ask me again in December.
  
  
• Have you met anyone yet? Other than people at work, not really. Well, kind of. I met a guy through salon.com personals but that didn't go anywhere, and then I got busy with contract work and real work and consciously put off new-friend-seeking until after my contract project is done. (Because seriously, if I don't finish that soon I'm going to kill myself. Or at least fake my own death.) This week I signed up for a hiking listserv, and I got a tip on another singles web site I might look into, but let's be honest here - I'm not going to be social until I get through the last episode of Season 5 of The Wire anyway (circa September), so I'm not too concerned about it. In the meantime I can practice my rusty social skills on folks at work.
  
  
• How's Her Majesty adjusting? Other than needing to be fired by Pavlov, she's just fine. She loves the sound her voice makes against the bare walls and wood floor (especially at 5:30am!). It's been amusing to watch her find new favorite spots to lounge among the same furniture from the old apartment - the chair she used to love hasn't been touched in months. She's gotten used to the constant banging of the recycling/trash bin doors outside the living room windows, which used to make her run screaming from the room, and the recent bout of thunderstorms has only caused mild concern. If only the neighborhood cat would stop popping up in the kitchen window while she's eating...
  
  
• (And the biggie.) So, are you happy? I think so. Everyone else seems to think so - apparently I sound happy, I look happy. I will say that I definitely feel healthier mentally and physically. Leaving the last job certainly helped in that sense, but I think the entirely fresh start has allowed me to let go of parts of me I didn't like so much in my previous life (namely a lot of guilt about leaving the last job along with associated baggage), and restart parts of me I liked a lot (namely the running part of me, but also the "reading for fun" part of me and the "learning is fun" part of me). In some ways I still feel like a tourist and in other ways I feel like I've been here forever... So for now I'm trying to find a balance between the two - remind myself it's only been two months and take some of the pressure off finding my new niche of NW friends, but also remind myself of the wise words of Pooh: "You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."
  

So that's the update for now. I really don't mind answering questions - this was just churning in the back of my mind for a while, and someone (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) nudged me into actually writing it all down...

Happy annual Will Smith premiere weekend. Enjoy a hot dog and some smokeless fireworks in his honor!