Make God laugh. Tell Him your plans.

They say when God closes a door, he opens a window.

For me, maybe it was a revolving door, or something. Maybe He pushed back the light at the end of the tunnel. At any rate, my life just got interesting in a whole different kind of way.

For nearly a year, I've been planning to go study in Moscow at the MXAT school this coming January. I've been preparing for this in my heart, in my mind, with my friends, at my job, and with my girlfriend. But now things have altered. A few days ago, I was told the first-year class I was going to join has too many students to add one more; there's just no room for me.

So I panicked a little, and considered possible options. After some discussion with the dean of the school, it was decided the best thing to do is join the second-year students next fall. This way, it won't affect my graduation--I'll still be done at the same time. And it's good, too, because it gives me more time to learn Russian, to gather my finances, and to meet my new nephew before he turns four. Not a bad setup, all things considered.

The downer? I still have to work at the same fucking job. Three years ago, I decided I'd had enough of that place and I need to get out. It's taken this long to find something else I really want to do with myself that will accept me. Now it'll be an additional eight months longer than I'd planned.

The most awkward part is what Lindsay and I are going through. For months, we've been preparing to break up when I go, and the very nature of our relationship has altered significantly because of this—I'll leave the details to your imagination, but I will say it hasn't been easy. What will happen to us now is something we'll only discover over the next few months.

What's that sucking noise?

Yeah. So.

I work. For the last six weeks, it's been six days a week. That's earned me a lot of money--to the point I realize I should have been doing it a long time ago, because my finances have never been in better shape. I mean, I'm still in debt, but I'm not so worried about this month.

Lindsay's mother got breast cancer--again. The first time was 14 years ago, so she gets regular check-ups and this time it was caught at stage zero, which is the best case scenario. Lindz went to Colorado to be with her mother for the week of the surgery to help her mother recuperate, and she gets back to Dallas tomorrow. A 2cm amount of material was taken out of her mother's breast and sent to a lab, and they're sure they got it all, and that's good. They found a stage 2 cancer among the less serious stuff which they didn't know was there, so they don't know how much more there is, so that's bad. Just to make certain, she's going through chemotherapy and radiation treatments just in case there's anything else there they don't know about.

I'm in my Russian class three days a week preparing for the voyage. I recently had a phone conversation with the dean of the school about what I need to do to get there, and he said he'd set things in motion from his end once he gets back to Russia, which should be today (he teaches at Harvard for the summer program every year).

I still need to file my taxes for this year and finish paying for last year. I need to figure out what it is I'm going to sell, and how I'm going to sell it, and how I'm going to pay for taking school in another country and still pay my credit card debts while I have no job. I have ideas on this front, but I don't know how feasible they are just yet and I can't find out until I have more information.

Worse--Lindsay and I are breaking up when I leave. A long distance relationship like this just isn't feasible, so the plan is to enjoy the time we have while we have it, and say goodbye as cordially as possible and remain friends after I'm gone. The reality is that this isn't as easy a plan as it sounds.

So to escape reality I'm spending too much of my time doing nothing that solves any of my problems. I'm not studying as much as I should, I'm not exercising at all, and I'm only exercising the bare minimums of cleaning the house and taking showers and doing laundry and things like that. I'm reading a lot and finding various flash/shockwave games on the internet and I play them for hours upon hours. I download videos and I watch them. I fantasize about the winning the lottery and what I'd do with the money and how much I'd cry as soon as I got my hands on the necessary cash. I pray and I pray that I'm making the right decision by putting my career in front of my relationship (not for the first time, I realize). I smoke. I think scary or depressing thoughts and I try not to bother other people with them.

Until now, I suppose.

I'm an uncle AGAIN!!

While on the phone with my mother the other day, she mentioned that she'd been babysitting my nephew a lot lately. He's 16 months old, so I asked if my sister and her husband had any plans or thoughts for having another. There was a slight moment of silence, and my mother responded sheepishly, "I'm not supposed to tell."

"Okay," I said, "so there's obviously some kind of plan, but I didn't hear it from you. But if she were actually pregnant, that's something I would know, right? You wouldn't hide THAT from me, would you?"

Another pause. Then a very squeaky, afraid voice answered me, "I'm not supposed to tell!"

Eventually my mother got tired of putting me off, and it came out that she is indeed pregnant again, but in the interests of making certain the pregnancy holds, they didn't want to let the news out just yet. So I'm an uncle! Again! I had to swear to my mother that I did indeed have NO information about the pregnancy, and I swore I would feign surprise when I was told by someone else.

The next day, while speaking with my father, he gave me the news again. I put on my best surprised voice, and asked the appropriate questions I had asked my mother the day before. "Really! When did we find this out? How far along is she?"

My father was a little surprised. "I thought your mother told you already?"

"I know," I answered, "but I promised Mom I would act surprised since I wasn't supposed to know anything." My father had a terriffic response to this.

"Yeah, well, turns out Glenn (my brother-in-law) already blabbed to his brother and sister, so his parents know, and I thought, 'Goddammit, if their kids know, I want my kids to know, too!'"

Go dad :)

The only sad part of this is that I'll be in Russia when this kid is born. So he'll be about 3 or 4 by the time I meet him. Sigh.

The anti-socialite

I'll be honest--I'm pretty much a loner. I like smaller groups and more intimate social situations than, say hanging out in bars or with more than a dozen people, especially if there're many people I just don't know.

But here's something I don't understand--people don't ask me out much. Do I give off some kind of vibe that says Don't Touch? I don't mean to. I find out about the bars or the clubs or the parties afterwards--usually the next day, when everyone is talking about how much fun they had and no one asks me why I wasn't there. I can't go to a place if I don't know it's happening. People have seen me at Industry Bar exactly three times, and everyone there was surprised--but it's only been four times that I knew anyone was going to be there.

I'd like to think I have a decent track record for showing up when someone invites me somewhere--someone tell me if I'm wrong.

I prefer "acquiesed".

So I gave up. I avoided getting a MySpace account for so long, and I realized I'm outside the loop of what so many of my friends are up to. So here I be, jumping on the bandwagon and joining the crowd.

Beyond that, I'm proud to say I've started a more rigorous exercise regime. I'm working out right after work nearly every day--got the mp3 playlist, jogging and weightlifting for about 45 minutes a day, five or six days a week. If, by the time I go to Moscow, I don't look the way I want in my Superman costume--well, I don't know. Ask me when and if it happens.