Well, I was driving to work this morning, and there was a white car behind me driving a little too close. This happens often in this area, so I didn’t really care much. The lane I was in started to slow down, so I flipped on my turn signal, looked to my left, saw nothing immediately in the way, and merged over. Unfortunately the white car behind me saw the same spot, and must have sped up really quickly and tried to get there before me. Due to the antics that followed, I will continue to refer to this driver as Mario. I guess my getting there first angered Mario, because he immediately changed lines, pulled up beside me, and practically stood on his horn.

This whole moving thing sure eats a lot of my time. I have signed a lease, and the best part about my new abode, is that it sits two blocks from a Metra stop, and one block from an El stop, so I can basically get anywhere in Chicago or its suburbs without my car. Better yet, I’ll be able to get to work in about twenty minutes. Turns out I will pay $875 per month for this apartment, which includes heat and water. This winter, I won’t be magically paying $200 for natural gas.Hopefully now that many of the stressful situations about this move up North is starting to wind down, I’ll be able to maintain a more visible presence online. I’ll have to see what options this new apartment has for DSL/Cable, so I can figure out whether I’ll colocate my server, or just piggyback it on a DSL line as I did in Moline.All in all, things are looking good. I love where I work, the commute won’t be much longer than before the move, and there’s way more culture and dining up here to keep me occupied. When I finally get to enjoy it, I think I’ll kinda like it here. Heh.Oh, and Blow Me.

Well, it’s been a little over a week living up in the Chicago area, and while I’m enjoying the new job, the commute is killing me. I’ve given up trying to buy a house up here, as values are ridiculously inflated, and my house hasn’t sold yet. I’m going to sell my car, and by the looks of things, I’ll be living in one of the better neighborhoods in Chicago: Andersonville, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, or maybe Gold Coast. It’s weird that each area of Chicago actually has its own name and stated population.You’ve probably noticed my site is being redirected to my Livejournal entry now. This is only temporary while I move up here and find a new hosting provider. Hopefully I’ll have somewhere new to live this weekend, I need to get my ass out of Bartlett.Until Tomorrow

First of all, I’m posting this entry in LiveJournal only temporarily. I don’t quite have a place to live yet, I don’t want to bother with the task of porting my rather crufty hack of a website to yet another hosting provider, and the DSL hosting my server is about to expire.It was an interesting day. The drive from Bartlett to Evanston is almost exactly an hour and a half, but I expected that. I didn’t quite expect having no place to park; there are no parking garages within a mile (it seems) of my new employer. Since I was in too much of a hurry, I didn’t realize I parked in a two-hour only zone, so I got a parking ticket. Yay! I’m fighting with Ubuntu, because they got me a really nice wide-screen LCD and Ubuntu insists on giving me virtual desktop space, no matter how low I set the resolution in xorg.conf. I’d assumed they fixed X’s inability to properly configure the desktop resolution by now, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.I do know that having almost nowhere to park in Evanston tells me that it might be a better idea to sell my car and take the Metra. That means I should start looking for a place to live on or near the North-bound line. On the plus side, that’ll save me almost $600 a month after taking into account the increase in insurance and my existing payments. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find something quickly, I’m not sure how much longer I can take this drive. Too bad my only friends in the area live so far away.It doesn’t help that I didn’t sleep well last night, and have developed a headache. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Now I just gotta have my house magically sell. ^_^Until Tomorrow

I don’t really think I’ve ever felt this guilty for something I’ve felt forced into doing. Comet is now at the Scott County Humane Society awaiting adoption, and I wish there was some kind of alternative.

Why is he there? A number of reasons, really. Since the day he started using the litter-box, he never quite got the hang of actually burying the evidence. And just a short month ago, I’ve found that he’s been pooping behind the water-heater and furnace, a very hard place to clean. The weirdest part is that he’d pee in the litter box, and walk behind the furnace to poop; easily the most unconventional waste-elimination method I’ve ever seen a cat adopt. And finally, while I was petting him and Luna on my bed last night, he just started peeing. He didn’t sit and crouch like cats normally would, he was just lying down like the Sphinx, and let loose. I didn’t realize the problem until he bolted from the bed without warning, and I got a small splash of something wet. The down-comforter is likely ruined, and unfortunately so is my last shred of patience.