flakey.

I have to give myself a pat on the back: for someone who is typically antisocial (in the respect that I immensely enjoy my alone time at home, puttering around the house), I have made a tremendous effort to create social activities for the massage therapy student base at the college. This I have done because I will be sitting in class nearly every day of my life for the next one to two years with these people. However.. something is strangely amiss. Everyone is interested in said planned activity, but no one actually shows up. Is it a case of "I'm too weirded out to go alone", or are the massage therapy students as a whole just like me? Enjoying their alone time too much to bother branching out? Well, at least I tried. 

Making friends is shockingly difficult once one has made the exodus from university. Now, being back in school, I was hopeful for the prospect of socializing and making new friends, but those prospects are looking dim. The fact is that Bend is just a difficult place to make new friends - most people already have established groups that seem somewhat exclusive to newbies. Oh well.

On the bright side, a friend of mine from Washington College rang me today - a one Jari Simila from Finland, that is. I may not be making any new buddies, but at least my old think of me still - even from across the Atlantic. Jari is more American than most Americans I know: he has no discernible Finnish accent, and he thinks the phrase "bad American movie" is a blaspheme that cannot be applied to any film ever having come out of American cinema. 

In other news, I have my second interview at the High Desert Museum on Wednesday. I will meet all the bigwigs who would become my associates and bosses, and I will have to 'put on' a prepackaged program, one that the position would require me to do often with groups of students. Groups of students do not make me nervous, but doing the program in front of an entire group of people who will be discerning my financial future (ie, whether or not I have one) makes me more than a little uncomfortable. I plan, however, to forge ahead and win their hearts anyway. Afterwards, I will go to the bus station to pick up a long lost friend that I went to South Africa with back in 2004. She's spending Thanksgiving with me, which is really a relief, because with Erin AND our new roommate Willow gone (and of course me being friendless), I'm feeling terribly lonely. I'm sure my poor mother feels the same way.

Our new house is the epitome of cozy, especially at the moment. I cleaned up the living room and kitchen, put my favorite afghan on the sofa (picture the collection of 1970s colors: orange, brown, light brown, gold, and green.. $5 at a thrift shop, and worth every penny in my opinion), and have the fireplace going. I shouldn't, because apparently the fireplace uses an obscene amount of gas, but I really can't help myself. I can't understand why people would put gas fireplaces into a house... perhaps wood burnings fireplaces are too messy? I have no idea. I just know that there is nothing like a fire where wood is being burned, and you can listen to all the creaking and popping as the flames change atoms and create ash, and the heat radiates throughout the house for most of the night (if you get a good one burning that is). 

Oh, and I don't have to leave the house to do my laundry. We lucked out and got a washer and dryer set for $100. Unfortunately the dryer doesn't fit into the wash room right and sticks out so far that the door has been rendered useless. I can't say I mind much; the ease of owning your own washer and dryer far exceeds the cons of having to listen to them run through an open doorway. 

Erin is away for the week in Montana and I'm glad for her. I really wanted to go with her, but I've realized I'm one of those people that doesn't have much need for personal space from a significant other. Maybe some people would call that clingy, but I think I'm just content to spend my time with her. It's hard for me to understand how a significant other (because this is a recurring theme in my relationships) needs and wants to spend time with people without you sometimes, but I realize that I'm the odd one out here, not them. (Thus my failed attempts to create social activities - you can't say I'm not trying to branch out.) Point being that I hope the week away from me (and then another in December) will give her the space she needs. 

Holy crap! Hark! People are coming over! I gotta go! WHOOPIE!