In less than two days, Everything2 will no longer have any active noders in West Texas.

If you haven't heard the news yet, I finally got a job, after seven months of drawing unemployment. I'll be working at the University of North Texas in Denton, where I'll be an "Online Content Specialist" -- meaning, I'll be helping to make sure that all the university's websites are compatible with each other and fairly consistent in quality across the board.

I start work on Monday, and I'm definitely looking forward to it -- the job description sounds like it was written specifically for me, and the employees I've met so far seem to be great people. I also got my Masters degree at UNT, and I'm fairly familiar with Denton, which is a very nice, scenic city, though it's punishingly hot in the summer. It's got a strong artistic/musical/intellectual culture, thanks to two different universities in town (UNT and Texas Womans University), and while it's close enough to the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex to allow for some fun trips into the big city, it's also far enough away to keep me from feeling claustrophobic about living in a big city. It has one of the most spectacularly beautiful town squares I've ever seen. My favorite bookstore in the universe is located here, and they've actually got two comic book stores in town. I fully expect to love living in Denton.

I'm also going to intensely miss Lubbock. I've lived here for about eight years, and I've gotten very attached to living in the same town as my grandmother (turning 98 in September, and still living on her own), my brother (who has let me live for the past month or two rent-free in his duplex), and my niece (Hyla, my brother's rat terrier). I'm going to miss the friends I've made here. I'll miss the local bookstores, the local grocery stores, the local garage that kept my car operational without cheating me. I'll even miss Lubbock's famously crooked politicians, and the city's tendency to periodically fly into insane moral panics about random inoffensive stuff.

Nevertheless, Lubbock had plenty of chances to hire me for something (and I'm starting to suspect that Texas Tech just shitcans any job applications from Lubbock residents -- it's more presitigious to hire Austinites, don'tcha know), so the Hub City's loss is Denton's gain.

My parents, my brother, and I are planning on trying to pack my furniture into a moving truck Wednesday morning. If we can get it done before noon, without killing ourselves with heatstrokes and heart attacks, we'll go ahead and drive to Denton; otherwise, we'll wait 'til Thursday morning. And once we get to Denton, we can look forward to a fun few hours of unloading all my stuff in one of Denton's spectacularly hellish July heat waves. Here's to lifting with your feet, not your back, and to proper hydration.

That's what's been happening with me, kids. How 'bout you?

Drove from mid-Jersey to Cresskill (north of the George Washington Bridge) this evening in order to drop off my car at the cousin's house where I store it. We (a co-worker was in convoy to give me a lift home) made a wrong turn and ended up getting off the Garden State Parkway north of the bridge, and discovered why New Jersey is peopled at all: it's a damn flytrap. We exit the parkway and turn left underneath it, hoping to immediately get on the southbound side. Nope; there's a huge 'NO LEFT TURN' sign, and the entrance to the parkway is an angled entrance, so we can't make the left. So we continue 1/8 mile to a T intersection, and there is an enormous 'NO U-TURN' sign. So we turn left. About 1.8 mile down, there's a driveway entrance to a corporate park - and it's got an angled entrance, and a big 'NO U-TURN' sign.

Apparently, once you get off the Garden State Parkway in North Jersey, THAT'S ALL FOR YOU.

My friend (who was leading, being a Jersey ex-Native) pulls over. I know what he's doing; he's trying to get his GPS to tell us the route to the bridge. I mutter "DON'T GET CLEVER, DICK!" but it's too late. He takes off down the road. As he does, the impressive lightning display which we'd been watching for the past 45 minutes on our way north suddenly unloads right on top of us - that driving, torrential rain which is so heavy you can't see out your windshield with the wipers full on. We slow down to perhaps 15 MPH but he continues on.

After maybe ten minutes, the rain slackens, and he gets us back on the parkway south at another exit. Hooray! We drive off towards the Bridge. Avoiding going over at the last moment, we exit to get on to the Palisades Parkway North. He lets me lead, because apparently I know where I'm going. News to me. After we get off I-95 in Fort Lee, I follow the sign which tells us to go left for the Palisades only to see an enormous panorama of construction equipment, a maze of cones, and sun-bright worklights.

Somehow we make it through that, and find the entrance to the Palisades Parkway north. Hooray! I zip up the entrance ramp and we're off.

Three minutes later, the rain starts again. The storm we had gone through before has intercepted us again. I feel like Storm Chasers or something. The rains gets heavier. And heavier. And heavier.

I notice there are an awful lot of leaves on the ground.

Like, a full carpet. I can't see asphalt, and this is a two-lane-in-our-direction highway, with a shoulder. Then branches.

Big ones.

Then traffic slows to a crawl in the torrent, and after a minute of creeping I realize it's because everyone is going around the 8-inch-thick tree which is down across one lane. I gulp, we drive around it, and continue on. It's not getting better. More leaves, thicker branches. One, two, no, *five* more trees. We slalom.

The ground is steaming.

What?

Meting ice. ICE. It was 84 degrees out perhaps two minutes prior. There's a blanket of ice covering both shoulders of the road. Half an inch thick, melting fast, in billowing clouds of fog. Melting fast, meaning they just fell there.

Another two trees down across the road. We get off at our exit, and my co-worker phones me.

"Hey. 1010 WINS is reporting multiple unconfirmed reports of tornado touchdowns in north Jersey and Westchester County."

"Yeah, you think? How much do you think we missed it by?"

"I dunno, but the ice hadn't melted."

"Yep. I give it one, two minutes max."

We dropped my car off at my cousin's house, and had to leave it blocking her driveway because her lodger had parked in front of the empty garage space that's mine. I left it there; she has keys and can move it inside tomorrow. The house was dark; eithe they hadn't woken up, or had gone back to sleep. That far off the highway, there wasn't nearly as much debris on the streets; it might have just been a quick windstorm.

I'll call her tomorrow and tell her the tornado left her a BMW and she should put it in the garage quick!

E2 seems to be sort of alright, and other people have posted nodes, so hopefully this won't bugger anything up.

When I choose my username I had absolutely no reasoning for it. There are some things that just are, and some of those things at the time of my first log-in were these: I shall join E2; my username shall be tentative.

I did not think about capitalizing it and now I am glad. I hate seeing it with a capital letter unless it is at the beginning of the sentence. I liked it before when I thought that yes, it sort of suits me but not really, but it doesn't really matter anyway. It is just a label, just a name, it doesn't have to mean anything.

But I chose an adjective for my user name and so what I should have realized that which was fact before is now truth. I don't know if I changed to fit the name, I don't think I did. I think it just happened.

I am tentative.

And there, I am not using it as a name.

I will tell you a story that I think some of you would want to hear anyway.

(For those who already know a little about what this story is about: he is the arrogant guy, he is the guy I asked to the Japanese Garden, he is the Warhammer 40K guy, he is that guy you have already heard about. It is only one guy. I tell too many people about my life.)

I have a best friend. I have known her for 9 years and she is... I shall not attempt to describe her to you beyond this: she is the opposite of me in every way. Where I am quiet she is loud, when I am awake she is tired, where I am tentative, she is not.

She wants to be the good little Christian girl. She wants to meet the boy of her dreams, she wants to get married and live happily ever after loving God and her husband and her life. This is her dream. Right now, I want both the physical and emotional sides of a relationship. I want anything; I want something.

I doubt there is a boy out there who has met my friend who has not fallen in love with her, if only for a short time. She somehow meets these boys from all over the city and before the week is out she will be talking to them 3 hours every night. She will kiss them and then she will tell them: I don't want a relationship. Then she will kiss them again. (Remember her dream.)

I suppose I am not painting a pretty picture of her, but I do love her. She is a great person. If you met her, it would be hard to not love her. She is very tiring to be around.

This sort of relationship is what the boy I want to talk about has come from. They were never going out. Friends with benefits is, again, the wrong term. But they had something for a while.

I have been talking to him online for a long time. I started talking to him last year because I was afraid he would hurt my friend. I kept on talking to him because apparently we were somewhat alike. And now, recently, yesterday, I realized that he is basically me. Not in his interests, not in everything, but in many of his reactions to things he is me.

He tells me that he can only talk to girls he is not interested in. If he is interested in them, he cannot work up the courage to speak to them.

Which is why this is not meant to be about him this is meant to be about RAGE

Because I am so fucking sick of being me. This is not hate at him because I think he is a great guy. This is anger because tentative is who and what I am and try as I might I cannot change that.

In someways I am not. When I am around horses I am anything but. I am loud and bossy and confident, I will yell at a 500 kilogram beast, I will slap him and push him around. Around my friends of course I am myself. Around people I barely know and do not care to know I will be myself. I will talk to strangers, I will...I don't know what I am telling you anymore.

But I am tentative.

And I am sick of this. I am sick of not knowing what to do and analyzing things and worrying and I am sick of being me.

I don't know what I am trying to say.

I am angry because although I told myself this would be nothing when I got off the bus it was nothing when I saw a leather jacket and two books and I knew it was him it was nothing and when I walked up to him and knew for certain because of the shape of his lips it was nothing and the whole day was nothing except for a walk to find the Japanese Garden and lunch in the mall and trying to find him a comic book and walking and walking and walking.

Walking here means talking and talking and talking. I think it is why we did not find the Japanese Garden, we were too busy talking about $80 gloves I did not have the means or desire to buy, or maybe about eating babies' souls.

He has a lovely voice, and it is not his accent that makes it so (he too says I sound British), but his voice just makes his words so much more interesting. He is not different in real life to online. Not at all.

Apparently I am quirky and interesting. I think he is wrong. (All he does is analyze people so once I have written this I will go over and think that yes he is right I am quirky and weird, and maybe I am interesting but right now he is wrong.) I think I am tentative. If you ever need to describe me in one word, use that: tentative. I am tentativetentativetentative. I will never be less. I will never be more. (But yes I think I am quirky and interesting so thank you.)

I knew it would be nothing and I told myself it would be nothing but then I was talking to my friend and she was remembering times with him from a year ago and I was jealous.

I am not allowed to be jealous.

I am never jealous, not even when he got a girlfriend and I stopped being that person to him.

I am not allowed to be jealous, I am not going to let myself be jealous of my friend.

That is my problem: I think how something could hurt me, so I make myself stop it. I do not let myself be interested in someone who is interested in somebody else. I do not let myself be interested in someone if I think they show no interest in me.

So I shall stop being jealous. I shall stop thinking why was it nothing? I shall not be disappointed that it was nothing. I shall stop being upset because by wondering if it was something I am really wanting it to have been something.

I am wrong. I have learned this. I am always wrong.

I don't know where to go from here. (Because I am never confident enough to do the things to start what I wish would happen; because I do not know how to do the things to start what I wish would begin.)

I don't know if I am meant to do something or if I should do something or if anything should be done. Do you want something to happen? Or would you rather stick to your girls who you never talk to?

I think you would. They are prettier and nicer and because you are a little bit afraid of them they are so very interesting.

I am not in love. It is just a phase that I'm going through.

Don't worry. I'll be over it soon enough. I always am.

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