I decided earlier tonight to write another post here, and while trying to decide on a title I thought of the phrase “a rolling stone gathers no moss.” Originally I had considered “Moss gathering”, as a play on “woolgathering”, before I remembered the Bob Dylan song “Like a Rolling Stone”.

I resolved the lease dilemma (at least for now) by talking to my apartment complex office and deciding to go month-to-month, so that allows me to move on to the next problem. Since I’m not tied down by a lease, this does allow me more flexibility than if I was still tied to my current apartment for another year.

I suppose the next major thing is to find another job. I was talking to my dad earlier today, and I’ve been sporadically saying for at least a couple months now that I need to get back on the job search. I don’t remember when I last submitted a job application, but it might have been like October?

Working on Super Bowl Sunday could have been worse- this is Chiefs country, and I had expected it to be busier, but other than multiple orders that were all due at the same time, for once we had a decent number of people and preparation in place so we were ready for it to be busier. Once the game started at 5:30 and the pre-game rush was over, it was pretty dead the rest of the night. I had thought we might have a half-time or post-game rush, but I wasn’t following the game too closely and that never materialized. Of course, it was also a Sunday and most people would have had work and school the next day, so that was also probably a factor.

I had been amused lately by the 49ers facing the Chiefs for two main reasons. A few weeks ago I was talking to my mom on the phone and I used the 49ers as an example of a team that nobody around here would care about, though I felt a little foolish later that night when I read that the 49ers were facing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl this year. The other reason I was amused by the 49ers facing the Chiefs is that I was remembering a couple years ago, when my ex asked me to give her a ride so she could buy her boyfriend (now-fiancee, or so I’ve been told) a Valentine’s gift. He was coming to visit her for the weekend and had apparently mentioned that he had a gift for her, she didn’t have time to order something online, and so she turned to me, asking if I knew where she could buy sports stuff because, as she would tell me, her boyfriend is apparently a 49ers fan, and here in the Midwest (see what I wrote above about this being Chiefs country), it’s hard to find 49ers stuff in stores. As I remember, I gave her a ride, she bought him a hat, and then she ended up forgetting it in her dorm room when he picked her up. She was going to return it for a refund, but apparently the store would only accept a return for store credit, so, at the time, I think she said something about giving it to him for another occasion.

Now that I think about it, I wonder at what point writing about details like that crosses the line. It seems like it’d be bad if I mentioned some of the stuff she told me after we broke up, probably presuming I wouldn’t write about it in a blog post 2 years later, and frankly I would feel weird writing about some stuff, particularly in a public blog entry. (“Here’s the gory details about what she told me 2 years ago about her first date with her fiancee the first time we saw each other after breaking up when she was almost certainly trying to make me jealous, they’re getting married in a few months and I hope they or their progeny read this at some point! Ha ha ha!”) Maybe it’d be different if it was, I don’t know, a memoir or a private journal entry or something that I knew nobody or only a few people would read, but I can’t imagine writing about some things in a public forum.

Anyway, after telling a coworker recently about my ex, breaking up with her a couple years ago, and her continuing to ask for favors until I got a new phone last spring (and didn’t give her my new phone number), I almost feel like I’ve been thinking about her more recently than I have for some time. I know there have been a few times I’ve thought about contacting her, but as I know from experience, that would probably be a mistake- even if I want to know what she’s up to these days (I presume wedding planning, work, and watching Netflix or something similarly prosaic), there’s no guarantee that she would be as talkative as I’d prefer. Just because I’m lonely and want to socialize doesn’t mean that she’d be interested in talking to me. If nothing else, she’s told me that her boyfriend doesn’t like her talking to me, and I have wondered before how much she’s told him about me.

Anyway, I remain convinced that looking for a significant other probably needs to wait until I have a better, or at least different job. Unfortunately that’s not much comfort at times, but it seems most practical. If nothing else, being able to boast about recently getting some white-collar job seems more “marketable” than working at a convenience store.

In other news, my graduate class this semester hit a bump in the form of some intellectual property problems. Apparently, the previous instructor whose notes we had been using for the class had been explicitly prohibited from using some material by the intellectual property owner, and as a result of that kerfuffle, the instructor for the class has been forced to ‘reboot’ the class. Fortunately, due to this the assignments we had due last week were canceled (and everyone got full credit). Also fortunately, no assignments this week. I’ve read the PowerPoint slides for this week earlier today, so I’ll have to watch the videos and study at some point.

I was going to write about how lately I’ve been playing Rimworld and sporadically reading, but now I don’t know if I want to- this seems long enough.

One of the books I checked out from the library last month was Harry Turtledove’s Joe Steele, an alternate history novel published in 2015. The basic premise is that Joseph Stalin, instead of becoming the dictator of the Soviet Union, grows up in California as the son of Russian immigrants and is elected President in 1932 after FDR, the other leading contender for the Democratic nomination, tragically dies in a fire at the New York State Executive Mansion. I’m not well-versed in Russian history, but from what I understand the book is basically Steele/Stalin enacting FDR’s domestic programs and additionally (at least some of) the programs he enacted in the Soviet Union in our timeline. For example, the two main characters are a pair of newpaper reporter brothers- one lives in Washington DC and is pro-Steele, while the other lives in New York City and is anti-Steele. The pro-Steele brother is on good terms with the Steele administration and gets to report on Steele’s purge of anti-Steele Supreme Court justices and empowerment of J. Edgar Hoover and creation of the GBI (presumably, an alternate history version of the FBI mixed with the NKVD/KGB), among other things. Both brothers also get married over the course of the novel. I’ve read about halfway through the book- at the risk of spoilers, in 1938 the anti-Steele brother is hauled away by the GBI in the middle of the night after writing an anti-Steele article (apparently the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, since this was far from his first one) and sent to a work camp in Montana- presumably, an equivalent to a gulag in Soviet Siberia, possibly even in our timeline’s 1938 (aside from Russia, as far as I know, lacking any kind of history of a free press and freedom of speech). I can’t say I’ve read a lot of Turtledove, but there are certain things that seem common in his books, or at least the few I’ve read.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. I’d like things to improve, but I can’t really do that without effort, as my parents will remind me. Unfortunately, I have to apply to jobs, rather than the other way around.

I went for a walk yesterday- the temperature yesterday afternoon was about 70, and today at the same time it was closer to half that. Apparently we’re supposed to get some freezing rain tonight and a few inches of snow tomorrow before it warms back up for this weekend.