"Isn't it strange, the way things can change? The life that you lead turned on its head..."
Since I finally have internet access that is not the property of the Coffee Bean Cafe...here's the skinny.
WORK (POLITICS): I am working full-time in the customer service call center First Commonwealth Bank because I like sleeping under a roof and eating food. I take a lot of abuse, but I worked phone banks for Rick Santorum in 2006, so I've gotten a great many nastier things said to me. I'm interning part-time for Melissa Hart's Congressional campaign, because I love her hardcore and want her to get her seat back. First Commonwealth is a nice paycheck, but not being able to spend every waking hour with both hands in politics is taking a toll on my sanity, and I'm talking with a couple of people about taking a job with the Republican state committee. I do a whole buttload of volunteerish stuff as political director and treasurer for the PA Federation of College Republicans.
LIFE: I have a sweet two-bedroom apartment on Euclid Avenue, right behind the Family Video, and Kelly living with me for the summer. We like to sit on the fire escape late at night while she smokes and pretend that we're in Rent. (The fire escape is the essential ingredient to that.) Julian, Kim, and Lindy are just a few blocks away, and last weekend Joo took me on my first official bar crawl, from one end of Main Street to the other, and I fell in love with Midori & Sprite. Then we ate hot dogs. Otherwise, life is a little dull. My turtle didn't eat for a week, and l panicked and took him to the vet. (If I take good care of this turtle, he'll outlive me and I'll have to provide for his care in my will.) When he started eating again, I was so excited that I spent the next two days sitting cross-legged on the living room floor hand-feeding him. I have my books and my walks and lots of swee tea and I've watched Serenity six times in the last month. I don't need much else.
BOY: Remember last summer? I was interning with the Social Security people and living at GWU, and I met a guy who was interning at the White House and also living at GWU? We liked each other a good deal, but he was going back to Texas and I was going back to Pennsylvania and it wasn't going to work? Well, he's back in D.C. for a summer job with a youth leadership program and then his master's at American, and this time it's going to work, and we've been together since Tuesday and I'm riotously happy. I drove down to see him this weekend, and I'm going back for another visit in less than a month (he can't really leave the city while he's got all these nerdy high schoolers in his care), and he'll come see me in the fall (when I can't really leave PA because campaign season will be at peak madness). He's like me. It works. His name is Austin.
FUTURISH THINGS: I think that once this election is over, so is Pennsylvania for me. I've wanted to go back to D.C. since long before Austin. I'm on a couple of email lists for Capitol Hill jobs. Meanwhile I'll work, walk, read, and wait for the future to reveal itself.