Driftwood and Seashells (original) (raw)

The welcome back is duly appreciated, believe me.

The single biggest reason I'm a homebody these days is the money. Specifically, the fact that two students can't afford a car. We borrow the in-laws' van on weekends and occasionally put gas in it or wash it as our contribution to its upkeep. Asking for the van during the week is plausible, but there are tensions associated with that. If the reason touches on the hot spots in our relationship that we otherwise Do Not Discuss, it gets hairy. By this, I mean either my religion, my sexual orientation, or my relationship orientation. Let alone if we ever wanted to, say, explore the local kink community. This effectively cuts us off from what would be our usual sources of friendships down here.

There are some weekend options, though. I tried out the local pagan circle and discovered I'm too used to the Bay Area's pagans. This crew was perfectly nice but not overtly friendly and nearly universally eclectic Wiccans. Their regular gatherings are what I'd call Paganism 101. Yes, I'd say I was spoiled rotten all those years (and I miss you all, yes, even you). I've toyed with the idea of attending the local Unitarian Universalist church and may act on that after I transfer to National. I'll need the people time. blackfyr is an introvert, so he's doing fine as we are. He does support my needs, though, so if I say we're going, we go. The UU pagans are likely to be similarly eclectic, but a church congregation's going to be larger than the pagan circle and so we may have better luck.

Fortunately for my sanity, I'm still on Second Life. Seven years of that and going quite strongly. I even did an essay for English 1a that defended the concept of an online social life as useful for those who are stuck at home and got a near-perfect score (195 out of 200, and yes, I remember that a year later, why? ;>). It mostly pays for itself with the DJing I do inworld since in-game currency converts to US dollars and what I earn covers the membership costs. I even have a few loving relationships that I keep up via SL, not to mention a newly acquired friend with benefits who must be awesome to his wife considering how good to me he has been so far.

We're also relatively close to an old friend of blackfyr's. He lives an hour and a half away, but that's close enough for the occasional road trip to kick back and socialize on a Saturday.

On a different note, I need to fix my mood icons. Unfortunately, I'd have to rebuild the ones I based on Two Lumps since the files are on a dead hard drive and we couldn't afford the hosting costs for the server. We found cheaper hosting but only after the files were lost. Back to a system set for now.

I could go on a riff about losing things and the move, but I don't think I want to on this post. At some point when I feel strong enough to discuss it, sure. Amazing how coming back here makes me want to pour out a few things. It's like I never left in that regard.