jens

And believe it or not, it has absolutely nothing to do with turning 28 in two weeks. No! Rather, it has everything to do with my ventures into Boston this weekend to see this gorgeous Swede. Yumma.

I had big plans to make a few days of it, get some socialising time in there with not one, but FOUR different people! I was gonna go up on Thursday, meet a long lost, wildly successful high school friend for lunch, then see another friend's new house and stay the night. On Friday I was going to meet up with a college friend, then go out to see the gorgeous, talented Jens with Emilie. Needless to stay, it didn't happen.

I blame the monster snowstorm... that mysteriously never materialised. And my inherent laziness, of course.

Instead, I drove up with my sister at about 6.30pm. She has become friends with Emilie as well, and Em must have sorta invited her, to be polite, and she jumped at the opportunity, even though she had never heard Jens before. I couldn't exactly uninvite her (we've seen the disastrous results of that before, haven't we?) and the ride ended up coming in handy. But it meant no alone time with Em to catch up. So far, we've seen each other twice, both times in the company of Sandy, where the whole marriage subject is taboo. Em tried to bring it up over dinner last night, warning Sandy not to pipe in and be oversensitive, but it didn't work.

We were about an hour late getting there, had a leisurely hour-long dinner at this quaint rustic Italian place (made a bit less quaint by the fact that it had rustic in its title), then went back to her apartment, arriving at the venue (located only 10 minutes down the road) quite late, so late in fact that it was full. Argh! We hung out at the bar, and eventually I managed to sweet talk my way in, for a reduced price at that. Go me! Em and Sandy felt terrible for making me late, and did their best to get me in as well, regaling the doorman in sob stories about the distance I had traveled and all that, while they volunteered to just wait at the bar. Aww.

So I get into the packed back room and it is close and hot and smelly from the collective sweat.. of hippies. Yes, there were many, many hippies in the crowd, far too many for my liking. I have developed a dislike for hippies after several years living amongst them in close quarters. I don't mind the true hippies, but there aren't very many of them these days, just the SUV-driving, gold-card carrying, jam-band loving fake hippies. Grrr.

Those who were not hippies were hipsters. I'm not sure which is worse actually. I hate hipsters. You'd think that Glasgow would have its fill, but actually Boston appears to be much, much worse, judging by last night's crowd. The worst type of hipsters are ignorant poser hipsters, which make up the majority, come to think of it. A prime example was standing directly behind me throughout the show, her lips precariously perched near my ear, so I heard every... painful... word... of her conversation with record shop boy. They were, of course, discussing music, and at one point talked about Kings of Convenience, who were playing to a sold-out crowd across town at that very moment. The girl was going on about how they were overrated and didn't lend themselves to a live show, etc etc. Unsurprisingly, however, she swiftly changed her tune when she spotted Erlend himself rushing in at the very end of the show to catch the last few songs. Speaking to a different boy, she was suddenly gushing about how amazing they were, spouting off random group trivia, obviously starstruck. GAWD.

So I had HER behind me. In front of me was very VERY drunk annoying girl who was literally falling off her boyfriend, alternating between making out with him and trying to have a big relationship talk. Having lost the ability to whisper, it was quite loud and distracting. And ANNOYING, of course. Then there was the dancing hippie to my right and the big fat man to my left, who had plenty of room to move over, but decided he'd rather nuzzle my arm and jolt my purse all night. Maybe it was the fact that I was unintentionally wearing a revealingly low-cut top. Indie boys are awkward enough around indie girls; throw a bit of cleavage into the picture and they don't know what to do with themselves. Still... ARGH.

Luckily, Jens was fantastic. Adorable and lovely and the music... so good! If only I could have enjoyed it under different circumstances. Maybe I'll invite him to play the Winchester Club or something, entice him to Glasgow. Mmmm.

In other news, I've been debating whether to buy a new laptop for ages now, ever since I realised I would make twice the amount of money that I was expecting. Basically, my current laptop is in dire shape, its power cord frayed to a dangerous level, its memory all but gone. It IS five years old, and was already refurbished when I bought it, so it's outdated by any standards. Despite all this, I was still hesitant because it is quite a bit of money to part with - tho not as much as I expected either; they're downright cheap these days - and Richard has a perfectly good desktop to use. In the end, the temptation was too much to bear, and I've spent the past few days obsessively scouring the internet for the best deal. I think I finally found it - a barely used unit, last year's model, with 2ghz processor, 512mb RAM, 60gb hard drive, CDRW/DVD combo drive, wireless connectivity... for a measly $600! Woo! By far the best deal I have seen, yet I still hesitated to press the Buy Now button because I'm a big wimp. The deed is now done, and the computer is (hopefully) winging its way here from California as I type.

While looking into the purchase, it dawned on me how little time I have left! I was customising a new laptop from Dell when I looked at the ship date, which was Wednesday - it takes a few days to build the things, apparently - and realised it wouldn't arrive on time, unless I forked out an additional $70 for expedited shipping. Damn! I'm outta here in just over a week's time!! Lordy!

I've already started packing. Not necessarily because I'm anxious to get the hell out of here, but out of necessity. See, my mother has insisted that I clear most of my shit out of here, which is a HUGE task. We went through the garage the other day, sorting through all the stuff left over from my old apartments. I got rid of a surprising amount. But the bedroom is another story. I had already gotten rid of several trash bags full of stuff shortly after arriving, a cathartic experience to be sure. Now I've added two more bags of clothes and a box of albums and books and shoes. But I suspect there is more to be done. And I dunno where I'm going to put it all. I took out the third suitcase/huge duffel bag to begin filling it with miscellaneous items I've acquired since arriving, and it's already overflowing. Shit. Then I had the ingenious idea of upgrading my carry-on to a bigger backpack and filling it with all the heavy/expensive/breakable stuff, and now I'm barely able to lift it. That will be fun. I'll fool those baggage allowance weight limits, but pull my back out as I try to manuever my way through two stopovers.

As another part of my packing exercise, I went through my various photo albums - I have about 10 of them - and assembled a collection of favourite photos from each period of my life in one album which I shall bring with me. I'm in the process of doing the same for my writing. As a result, I've created a bigger mess than I've cleaned, and my mother is getting increasingly worried. She's allocated me one big storage trunk to fill; anything else will be trashed. It's quite a challenge, but I'm confident I can do it. Or at least successfully hide the rest somewhere else in the house. It'll be difficult though.. I have a LOT of books.

My next project is arranging my trip to western Massachusetts, which will require bus travel and borrowed accomodation and several lunch dates and a GUEST LECTURE! Yup, I've been invited to inspire and help mould the minds of future journalists at my alma mater... and they'll pay me for the priviledge! Muahahaha. Should be fun! And terrifying. But I've done it before, and survived to tell the tale, so hopefully all will go well.

Oooh I finally took the time to remind myself how to do html links, could you tell? Muahaha. Dangerous.