Happy early birthday to meeeeeee

Z: "Are you blogging from my lair?"
me: "Yeah, is there something wrong with that?"
Z: "Only that it interferes with my Star Trek watching."

Dork.

We just had dinner at Mr. Sushi (for my birthday), and the food was excellent as usual while the service was unfortunately sub-par. I had strawberry mochi ice cream for dessert! I <3 mochi ice cream.

Today this guy came into the store and I instantly recognized him as my old art teacher from like 2nd-4th grade. He was kinda kooky (still is, I guess) and when I told him that the one thing I remembered from his classes was this time we drew ginseng roots and tried to make them look like people, his eyes got all big and he said, "That was the most important thing I ever taught!" He then expressed curiosity at the etymological roots (ha ha) of the word "ginseng" and I said I could look it up for him in Chinese since I'm a linguist and all that (or, as Z says, a "linguician," i.e. linguist + magician), and he got all excited again and gave me his business card with his email address. Also apparently he was Harvard class of '70. Never would've guessed, somehow.

Wad and Nougat! Where are you guys?!

"Remember when we used to just be friends who played StarCraft?"

Life is good, although soon to change very drastically. Z is all settled into his new apartment - well, at least basically settled in, since he only moved in this past Sunday. All last week he was living with me in Dunster, which is the stupidest, most cramped, and poorest-ventilated house ever. We were in a suite with a double and a single, and I got the single, only the people in the double had to walk through the single to get to the bathroom, which led to a couple annoying/awkward situations. We were also on the fourth floor, which meant both that the walk up the stairs was long and our suite was supposedly senior-quality housing, which does not say very much for the quality of housing in Dunster for juniors and sophomores. But I digress.

So technically Z and I have been dating for almost three months, but since most everything prior to 15 days ago was long-distance, it really feels like all that was kind of a preamble and now things are really getting off the ground. And not just "getting off the ground," either, because for the past two weeks before he moved into his apartment we were really living together in every meaningful sense of the term. He asked me how it was different from my visiting Rochester for a week or 10 days like I did before, and I realized that actually there was a world of difference. I wasn't just waiting around being lazy and playing videogames while he was in class - we were in the "real world" (since I was working 10-6:30 at the store every day while he was at the lab 9-5) and actually depending on each other to get through the important little decisions that make up each day. How many times can we hit the snooze button? When do we catch the M2? Where do we meet up again after work? What do we do for dinner (i.e. "how can we eat without spending any money?")? It was intense, but ultimately a lot of fun.

Oh, and we (re-)watched the Batman movie with Adam West. Wish you'd been there, Wad.

Being in a new relationship is really something else. There's just so much momentum and so many little moments of intense beauty.

I head out to Australia on Friday. Apparently there will be a blog on hrcm.net/tour where we can all post our thoughts and pictures and such. That's probably what I'll be doing while the others are out on the wine tour or buying tons of souvenirs or something.

Then I turn 20 on Sunday. I won't be a teenager anymore! I will, however, be jetlagged :-P.