handsome_rob

hey kids! it's been a bit, thought i'd update.

anyway, i went to a show at the blue shop on friday night. well, it wasn't a show so much as a party with a donation jar and bands upstair sand downstairs just fucking off on stage.

but it was cool, i saw adonis and andy and natalie and abe and all my friends i usually see at shows.

natalie (who introduced me to emily the last time i went to the blue shop) pulled the same "hey, i gotta show you something!" routine and i thought maybe emily had got the night off work and was there, but alas, it was just shaina, emily's college dormmate.

so we tlaked a bit, and she says to me (and sends me for a loop, temporarily):

"so, you're the first guy emily's dated that i don't know."

the trick here is we aren't dating. i've hung out at her house twice, albeit for several hours at a time, but we've just watched movies while i burned to say somehting or lean over or whatever, and have been afraid to do so.

i managed a cat-like reflex moment and landed on my feet. "dating? yeah, right. that'd be fuckin cool as hell though if we were."

i think, as i recall, i mentioned really liking emily a lot and how it would be cool if we could go out but i'm a total chickenshit when it comes to talking to girls. then she had to leave so i said bye and chilled out for a bit more before i left.

anyway, saturday then, i got a cellphone. it's been since spring 2002 since i've had one, and right now i'm not getting calls becaue i only told emily and norm and they have wack schedules. or maybe mine just sucks. whatever.

point is, while i got finagled and do not have speakerfone, i DO have a camera now.

i'm not prepared to subscribe to the unlimited uploads thinger yet, but i have like a free month of it so i'm taking advantage. if this runs out, i pay a quarter a "picture message" so i just send as many pix in a message as i can.

so my meandering but evenually reached point is that i have some new pictures to post.
in the meantime (as in, while they upload), saturday night when i called emily i told her that i met shaina, and that we talked a little. i didn't mention the "dating guy" thing yet because i will be seing her either monday or tuesday when she come sback to town before starting her new semester in earnest. this weekend she just had to work in iowa city at the hospital sat and sun, and staye din her dorm over the weekend. anyway, she is borrowing my slc punk and neurotically yours dvds until then, and i hope to mention the "dating guy" part of the conversation, hoping that shaina has time to say something to her about it as well, and if i'm lucky i would like to give her a kiss before she goes to iowa city until probably march or april.

if i soud a little immature in how i'm going about this, it;s because i seem to have an almost physical block in my way when i want to talk about somehting like this to the actual person, and while i'm working so hard on beating that block, in the past i've had to wait for the rhetorical "her" to make a move, which never happens because my block makes me seem uninterested rather than interested but afraid.

or, someone else breaks the ice for me. or i write it and let her find out after i have written it on a blog or whatever.

i don't think she reads this, in fact she seems to have a disdain for the concept of SG, mainly because she thinks all the tatted girls aren't enticing, but then again she is a girl and i don;t think she's bi or anything so iono how a girl is supposed ot react to punky and gothlike hotties.

digression.

so i made mention on my xanga about being stuck because of nerves and that if i seem frigid it's not because i want to be, or because i don't like someone.

i also think she might have the same thing going on. one of the things that struck me abotu her is that she has neurotic shit going on like me, and also recognizes it to deal with it, rather than deny or not know about the symptoms and side effects.

for her privacy i;m not going into details, but there are things she deals with that i can understand, and vice versa, and that makes me feel like maybe there's a connection. i've been sofucked in the head these past few years and so few people have really understood how i feel, but she has a lot of the same things, i think.

that was repetitive.

anyway, last time i hung out, we watched slc punk and then surfed channels, and an hour after she mentioned going to bed, we finally kiled the ocnversation and i got up, she go tmy coat, then i noticed she went back to the sofa to get a blanket and shawled it to be there as i opened the door myself and then said goodby and left. i might be off here, but it seemed like maybe she was waiting for me to make a move or osmething, if she went for a cover to just be by the door for a second. i mean, if i'm leaving there's no real need for that for such a brief moment, unless she was anticipating something.

this i only noticed as soon as i got ot my car, and it was toolate to go back. her dog goes apeshit if you knock.

so i went home and wrote the blog entry about nerves and i haven't really talked to her since

so anyway, enough there. if anyone reading this has any thoughts, i would greatly appreciate them. i'm lost in this game. i never had the rules and i don;t catch hints dropped until way too late. and anything i think i catch at the right time, i can't be sure of and i waste the opportunity to say something and then the chance is gone and yet again i look like i don;t care or am not interested.

the thing is, and while i haven't been to a professional yet, i seem to have a lot of signs of rapid cycling bipolar with ocd tendencies, as i've noted on here before. the reason i bring it up is that i feel like i might be reading way too much into things, as i have a tendency to obsess over things like this but not know what to do about them, or the object of the obsession is not interested in me and i've read far too much into things.

coworkers and friends all tell me to go for it, she sounds like she really lieks me too, but i don't know. i can usually read people but when it comes to girls i like, i lose that entirely. so i'm torn as to whether this is another case of overreacting to small things or if i'm just missing it.

the thing shaina said about "so you're the first guy she's dated..." is what keeps me thinking i'm not wrong. why would she make that assumption unless i'd been the topic of conversation. and she and emily are close friends, plus dormmates, so if the twice i've hung out and the five or so phone calls for hours at a time have been brought up in their conversations, it must mean somehting, right?

but again, my insecurity and inferiority tell me that i'm wrong. i guess i can answer myself by saying i need to talk to her abotu it, but breaking that barrier will be tricky.

and though i wish for the easy way out and let her say something, i want to break thi sbarrier on my own and mabe that part of my insecurity will go away.

this is too long of a post. i'm done. i'llpost pics here in a minute.

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ok, here's some pix.

^that's me being too cold to do anything close to smiling. 2:30am, crapo park.


^ that's me trying to smile after taking the first pic and seeing that i was looking pretty weird.


^ why i couldn't smile if i wanted to. that temperature is from inside my engine compartment with the engine running for over half an hour. temps from the local banks and stores all said something more like 4-ish.


^ i took this facing east on the fourth street viaduct. the bridge looks pretty cool and the camera can't pick up the beams of light that can reach almost a mile straight up before fading, coming from the spires. with all of these pics, as well as most pictures in general, you kind of have to be there to appreciate the view, but these look cool all the same.


^ here's a shot from north of the bridge, in the port of burlington parking lot. i was extra careful not to let the ultra-hideous catfish bend riverboat casino ruin my shot. sadly, the statue of liberty pic will have to wait because she stands right in front of the best view when the boast isn't there and i flat out refuse to put a pic of that monstrosity boat on here.


^ here's another shot, this time of the ice floes on the river. in this one i tried to get a better look at the patterns in the floes. i don't know if it's obvious or not, but there is a line parallel to the shore where the nearer ice doesn't move but the current still carries the mid-river stuff.


^ there's my ride. well, one of them. the only one that ic an drive right now. sort of. '92 lincoln continental. it's be better if the steering didn't jag to the right and the electronics weren't all goofy and the brake calipers never froze shut and the trunk cinced itself shut and the power steering didn't hemhorrage a half pint for every trip i take locally. and if the ex hadn't hit a deer with it the week before she dumped me (unrelated to the dumping, however).


^ ok, last one for now. this is the small man-made pond, called lake starker after local beneficiary ernest a. starker, whose name also adorns the outside of the building enclosing the olympic-sized pool at the Y. this shot is abotu 50 feet from the shore, behind the skatehouse (to the left) and a very old tree (to the right). i would have gotten closer but a this poitn i was also about 150 feet from my car in a city park that has been closed since 10:30pm (and it was 2:40am at the time).

what i wish i could have gotten was a pic of the radass blue plaid pants i wore along with the kgb coat on this adventure.

i went driving after my sister, kendra, came home form partying and said it was snowing. i jumped at the opportunity to take my new camfone out for a spin and enjoy the snow while not being depressed.

plus, as a bonus, my brakes went out halfway through the trip so i was very careful while traversing town for good pictures.

one of these days after i get th ebrakes done, i'll get osme pics of the river from mosquito park, up on the bluff.

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note: please don't get me wrong. i HATE HATE HATE my town. i just also happen to know a lot fo really cool vistas during the fall and winter,having lived here for 24 years and lived near some historic sites on north hill within the last 5 years.

also, i jsut remembered kendra has decided to get a degree in business management at the local comm college, so she can open a headhsop/cool apparrel&stuff store around town. my dad doubts the market here, but she and i knwo better. pacifica west does well, btu they sell chitzy crap, too trendy, and everyone has all the same shit. hot topic is an hour in any direction tot he nearest, and the porn shop has some cool stuf but you gotta be 18 to go there.

i say she'd have it locked down tight in a year.

anyway, that's it. good night all. any help on my above situation would be rad. and comments on the pics, too.

later.