Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in milesarcher's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
7:07 pm	Dearest Dearest, I find myself consumed by the fullness of losing you. All of the cracks and fissures filled by you have been laid bare to me. I have been granted a truer picture of what I am alone, and the emptiness of that image consumes me. Your love, the subtle mis-directions of your beauty helped me to overlook my foundations for a time. Now, in your absence, my failings are clear to me. I am an empty house, built on shaky footings. My existence as a place of shelter, a soft place for you to land, is gone now and I must be put to other use. There will be a time when my gardens will bloom again and my roof will be mended. There will be a point where the emptiness that leaks into my corners will be filled again. There will come a time when the life I know will be replaced by the life that will be. But that time is not now, and may be a long time in coming. For now my walls are bare, and my hearth is cold. For now my goal must be to build fires and paint walls. I must rededicate myself to cleaning, fixing and sprucing up. I am a house with potential. I must take this time to rebuild those things, which have fallen into disrepair, and those things that were poorly fashioned from their beginning. When I am whole again, and filled with a life that is my own then love can return to my home. Until that time it will be hard for me. There will be times when I will think that things are complete and I will assume there is no more to be done. At those times I will need to take stock and reevaluate my successes and my failures. I will need to decide if I have fixed all the cracks, if I have achieved the success that I had sought. I suspect that many will enter my work in progress. Maybe you will even see it from time to time. On one level, I hope that you will see my house, and see the work that you initiated. I hope that you will see that much of the work began because of you. I further hope that I can see that while you initiated this renovation, you did not inspire it. You were the one who helped me see the cracks, the water damage, the bare cold walls. I must however do this for myself. When you walked into my life, I took your beauty as my beauty. I took your cares and your likes and your desires as my own. There was only you. But you yourself knew not your own desires. As I desired only you, you were not ready to desire only me. Yet still things were done for you alone. Fires were kindled, floors were laid, counters built and dressers refinished and arranged to make space for you. Now those efforts must be returned, and turned inwards to myself. It pains me to do this this way. I am drained by the loss of you, that I can no longer be your soft place, your shelter. I am sorry that I must leave you. It pains me that you must shelter yourself now, that the cold world is yours to face. But I was not a guide, I was a resting place. I could not transport you to newer and safer places. You will grow and you will build shelter for yourself. When it is complete your house will be totally your own. When it is complete (wherever it is) it will be splendid. You will be splendid. Maybe then we can once again be splendid together. Neither you nor I can know however if that day will ever come. It is tempting to think of that day as the goal right now. It is tempting to think of these repairs a project undertaken for you. Unfortunately I must resist that temptation above all things. This is not a task, which I am undertaking for you, but one for myself. While it is you for whom my heart aches, my house needs to be in order for all who enter it, especially myself. Without making the repairs and taking the time I will be left unfit to house, shelter or welcome anyone. So dearest, I will fix me for me and when I am whole again, and my work is finished, I will fling open my doors and the whole world will enter. Maybe you will be there and maybe you won’t. You will always be welcome. But if you never again cross my threshold I wish for you nothing less than love and happiness for all the years to come. -Yours (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 25th, 2005
10:26 pm	Homeowners Insurance. There are many stresses and stressors which those who do not own a home are happily free of. I am slowly discovering this as I begin to navigate the stormy seas of Homeownership. Today I discovered a whole new level of frustration (I admit, this is probably not the last time I will say this) with the homeowning process. This was bigger than the garbage company failing to pick up my trash last Friday. This was more troublesome than a hunt for the cricket in my basement at 4:30 in the morning on Tuesday. This was less pleasant than the mess (the extremely heinous mess) left by the previous occupant of my house (though this was a bit less smelly, and certainly left me a bit less sticky than the mess). This was simply a letter from my (formerly beloved) insurance company. I know it is strange to refer to an insurance company as beloved, but I have been happy with this one for about 5 years (in the form of car insurance) and was hoping to remain happy with them now that I had a home. I was happy when they sent me a refund check for the remainder of my car insurance premium (to account for the dual policy discount I had newly aquired). I was happy when they knew that Morris Cove, though technically in New Haven, can count as East Haven for insurance purposes. I was happy to know that the owner of the agency from which I bought my coverage had been servicing my family for nearly 40 years, ever since my Father and He graduated from college (they were old High School buddies). All of these things made me happy to be in good hands. So you can immagine my surprise when I got a letter from them today. My auto premium is not due until November, and usually, once you have documentation, you don't hear from them again for a while. I openned the letter to find, much to my chagrin that there is a clause (an unwritten one might I add, given that I spent all night going through fine print on everything they have sent me) in my Insurance policy that will hereafter be known as the "White Trash" clause. We will call it the WT clause for the sake of brevity. The WT clause apparently states that the capable hands of your insurance company may be withdrawn, without any notice that they are thinking of dropping you, at any time if the Insurance company in question deems you to be WT. They apparently have secret WT police who come by when you are not at home and double check to see if you are WT. I can only assume that part of this clause involves cars in the front yard which do not work (I am not in violation of this part to be clear). Apparently I am WT, and therefore in violation of the WT clause. The letter I recieved today explained in fewer words that I was in violation of the unwritten WT clause and that my policy would be cancelled effective September 30th. I am in violation for the following reasons. 1. There is dryrot under my bay window (dryrot which is actually carpenter ant dammage and existed prior to purchase of the house which, I admit I have not gotten around to fixing). 2. My soffits and eaves are in need of paint, (they are, but so are about 2/3s of the soffits and eaves in the continental U.S.). 3. There are discarded appliances in my yard (this is also true, but with the caviat that the stove was so filthy that it needed to be removed, and the city didn't have a bulk waste pickup day until October 13th). So I am WT. Of course, I am a handy and fairly responsible guy, and so had I known that these things could get me dropped by a pair of good hands, I would most certainly have rectified the situation in a matter of hours. Of course, I was not notified I was just dropped. I am tired. In the morning I must call my former insurance agent and ask for some kind of explanation. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, August 19th, 2005
11:55 pm	War and Peace I finished reading War and Peace today. I orriginally started reading it nearly 2 years ago in the interest of proving my dedication to a young attractive violin player. We stopped talking after some time, and I stopped reading at about page 400. I brought it with me to the Dominican Republic last year to read on busses to and from the work site. At night in the common room, I wrote in my journal. During the daytime, and on those busses I slept. Only read 100 pages there. I resolved to read the remaining 950 this summer, and today I finished it. I had assumed that it would serve as an act of divestment. It hasn't. All of the feelings I might or might not have had about the violin player are still there (there are very few to speak of to be honest). I am however happy that I read it, and happy that I did so for my own reasons, even if it took me two years. Now I am reading the Autobiography of Mark Twain (at least one of the editted versions that have been published as he intended, posthumously). I love that word. I missed London this evening. I love my home, and my city, and frankly (though this is not the kind of thing a liberal should admit too freely) the U.S. However, tonight I missed London, and England specifically. It is not that I had any great friends in England, at least not any great English friends. I had a few great American friends, but I don't need to be in London to be around my American friends now do I? I do miss the English though. They were so nice in general, and everyone on a bus (or many of them) would help you to find where you were going. They might all have different routes to suggest, but they would all get you there just the same. You don't find that here so much. Once while in a shop in London (just down stairs from my flat in actual fact) I helped a little old English man place an order (his eyes weren't good). He thanked me, and told me "I hope all your problems are little ones." I loved the statement and thought it quaint enough, but when he came back to me 2 minutes later and added "not children" I thought the world of him. I wish more Americans were like that. I try to be, but I fail more often than not. I don't really keep to the rules of conversation so much as I should. We tend to be a bit more every man for himself than the English. We haven't really gotten it through our cultural heads quite yet that we are all in this together. I think it was the tailgating that got me the most, and that may be why I feel this way tonight. On a couple of occasions today I was followed extremely closely by some driver in a hurry to go somewhere. On two occasions I was driving down the main road adjoining my street, and someone wanted to be going far too fast for a neighborhood. I naturally slowed down. (I know Gandhi would have liked us all to avoid faulting people for flaws we all possess, but I couldn't help it). On a third occasion, I pulled into traffic with plenty of space, only to find moments later that a man in a cadilac was honking at me and tailgating me. It was tiresome. I don't pretend that they don't have these issues in London or in England. Road rage is pervasive, and the English drive as badly or worse than we do on any given occassion. That may be because they are on the wrong side of the road. Nevertheless, I didn't drive in England, I only took the train, so I was safely off the road for the vast majority of the time I was there. It is harder to get angry with people on the train, then it is in a car. I have been angry with people in both situations, and don't get me wrong I have been royally pissed off at people on a train, but those were largely long distance trains and not the tube. The Tube carries with it a sense that we are all in this together, and a polite "Sorry" will suffice for any given offense. On the tube you can't hide from your fellow man, especially on the central line at 5:00 PM, when he is pressed fully up against you on all sides. America needs more trains, and more people living in cities, so that it becomes harder to ignore the simple fact that we are indeed all in this together. Ok, I think that is enough for now. (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
12:03 am	My ficus is dying I am not sure about the spelling of ficus. But nevertheless, it is a small tree I bought at IKEA, and it seems to be losing a lot of leaves. My mother says that happens when you transplant a ficus. I don't know. I have never had a ficus before. I like it alot though and therefore I hope it pulls through. On other fronts I have been playing video games and planting cielings lately. The video games are vintage Nintendo. The cielings look like crap (at least a third of them do). I have also been eating too little on long bike rides. I need to figure out the whole cyclist's diet thing. So far I haven't really pulled that one off beyond cliff bars. Even those don't really do it for me. My bowling friends nicknamed me the P-Master today. Read into that what you want. I haven't been doing very well lately in talking to my friend's significant others. They say things or do things that don't make sense to me. I have never been very good at letting go of things that don't make sense to me (or worse, that I think are bad ideas) and it comes out occasionally in conversation. I hesitate to call it a bad habbit, because it is more a part of me than it is a habit. I would say I need to work on it, but I have said that before, and it obviously hasn't worked as well as I wanted to. I am almost done with War and Peace. Surprisingly, even as I race to the end, I am not sure I want it to end. The next book may not be this good. I am done. Current Mood: indifferent (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 10th, 2005
5:53 pm	A "New" Schedule Today has been (considering it is not over) a relatively good day. Today I managed to get paid, (the afformentioned paycheck was lost in the mail). I managed to get my schedule for the coming school year (which is exactly the same as my previous schedule with the exception of one World civ class being replaced with one AP Psychology class). I read War and Peace, in my favorite coffee shop, and in my hammock. I rode my bike. I napped (in between chapters in War and Peace) in my hammock. I organized my kitchen, solving the problem I was having storing my food in the same way that it had been solved (I suppose) by a previous owner. I even cleaned the bathroom. I am quite content with myself, and tonight is bowling night. Current Mood: content (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005
8:22 am	Another morning, and the list. I have a list. As a teacher with less than three weeks remaining to summer, and the owner of a new home, I have a list. This is, naturally, a to do list, but it has no deadlines. As a result of my complete lack of deadlines, I have been putting off anything that might further the completion of this list. I get up, I make breakfast, I putter around the house for a while (paying particular attention to the internet), but I don't really try to accomplish anything on the list. I should do something about that today. So today I resolve to do some of those things on the list, rather than sitting around for the next 2 hours. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 7th, 2005
10:41 am	Bicycling, houses, and cleaning There are varying levels of clean that are possible in a new (slightly used) home. I am discovering this slowly as I continually battle to keep my new house clean, without having fully unpacked. Many things simply do not have a place to go, and so I am living in clutter. I am also discovering that there are benefits to more expensive bicycles than the ones that I already own. I have been a firm believer for a long time in very cheap bicycles. I buy $15-20 bikes, mostly 70s and 80s road bikes, whenever they are available. They are good for parts, and they can be converted quite happily (with much grease, cursing, and strange looks from the high fidelity like bike shop guys) into fixed gear bikes. I have however recently been riding a Ross Eurosport, with some kind of semi automatic transmission, which I am very happy with, but I am discovering that there is a level of speed which I cannot attain on my old clunkers. Lance Armstrong (and I am not in any way shape or form comparing myself in speed, physical fitness, cancer survivorship, looks, riches, fame or any other measures which one might compare oneself to Lance Armstrong) averaged around 25 mph during his most recent tour de france. My bike can't (the Ross) actually reach that speed ever. I rode 10 miles up hill in VT, and rode that same 10 miles back down, and barely broke 25 on the way down. I love the thing, and my legs are getting stronger, but I am slow. It is perhaps time to consider a more expensive bike, or perhaps a more modern one. Of course i have no money to do that, because my solution to the previously mentioned computer problem, was to buy a new Ibook. So now I am slightly more in debt than I had been (given the crippling mortgage debt, the additional computer money seems a small amount). I think I have rambled enough. Current Mood: thirsty (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 20th, 2005
2:08 pm	Life Just finished HP6. I am left a bit dazed, and a bit lonely for Harry. I am still decompressing. In other news, My Ibook is sick, and so I have to take it in and pay enormous sums of money to get it fixed. The house is still a mess. Wow, this is really depressing. On the bright side it is less humid today. Current Mood: gloomy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 15th, 2005
7:36 pm	My second journal entry My summer is progressing faster than I am comfortable with. It is after all already the middle of July, and things will keep moving this fast for a couple of weeks to come. I am just coming to the end of a rather major residential program at a local university, and that is big enough (not to mention the coursework which will be due at the end of the month), and I don't even have time to think about it. This afternoon I purchased (at a surprising discount) a whole load (9 gallons) of paint for the purposes of making my new house look like less of a dump. The previous owner was a slob, and so there has been much cleaning, and there will be much painting for the week. Hopefully tomorow will result in a newly white and yellow kitchen, and if I am lucky, a white bathroom. Wish me luck (though I am not sure anyone is reading this anyway). All this will be made more difficult by the fact that tomorow HP6 comes out, which will require a good deal of my time in the coming week as well. It is interesting how little attention one can pay to any one thing when one has many many things going on at once. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 14th, 2005
8:07 pm	Welcome So this is my first ever livejournal entry. I suppose that should be exciting to me. Perhaps if I say something exciting, it will feel exciting. Today I almost got hit by a car. I was on my bike. She was very rude. She beeped 3 times fast, and then passed me so close that her miror grazed my elbow. I was very very angry, and thought of many mean things to call her. Then when I passed her (hah she had to obey stoplights) I thought better of it. Well. That was exciting. Current Mood: amused (1 Comment |Comment on this)