A new chapter

Obviously, I’m pretty hush-hush when it comes to the process of getting to things like this, but let’s cut right to the chase: I’m a homeowner again.

Apartment life wasn’t terrible, but the reality is that renting always feels like throwing money away, and that the end game is always a home where I can stash all my shit and have a place that I can always call my own, and potentially work it to something that might actually be able to make me money in the future to boot.

I came to a realization not that long ago that I actually managed to amass enough money to where I could actually get back on the path to homeownership, and then once the home-buying bug bit, it was off to the races with trying to find a home that suited a lot of my mental checkboxes.

It all happened pretty quickly and has been quite the whirlwind, and I will say that honestly, this moved rapidly throughout the course of a month.  Yeah, sounds like a lot of major decisions being made in a short amount of time, but I had a particular area in mind where I wanted my next house to be, and that made things a little easy in the sense that I wasn’t going to be searching all around the entire Metro Atlanta area, and had more of a specific zip code in mind to narrow my choices.

So there we have it; I have a house again.  Maybe some of it is sticker shock after dropping a massive sum of money for a downpayment, or maybe it’s the surreal feeling that I’ve already moved onto my second house.  Grown-up adulting may be one of those things I always say is kind of weird to consider, but if I’m already successfully capable of owning my second house, I’m clearly doing something right.

Life is fascinating sometimes, and I look forward to embarking on this new chapter of my life in my new house that will hopefully be full of good memories, lots of growth, and abundant potential for the future.

GLOW was pretty good

It doesn’t happen often, but not only did I manage to dive into a Netflix original fairly close to when it drops, I’m already done with the series and can write things about it in a timeframe where it’s likely that not every single TV watcher on the planet has also watched every single episode yet.  But I didn’t want to write anything about it until I was finished with the series, and ultimately, I’m glad that I waited.

As a wrestling fan throughout most of my life, GLOW was one of those things that I remember its existence back in the day, when they’d manage to sneak in a sparse commercial during WWF Prime Time Wrestling broadcasts, but being the little girl-hating misogynist as a kid, I didn’t think anything of it, other than trying to remember the acronym behind the name.  I never watched anything aside from the commercials, and I never sought out to seek out what kind of product they put on.  I just knew, they existed.  Nothing more.

When Netflix announced that they were doing such a show, I was mildly interested, because I am now an adult, capable of understanding things other than Masters of the Universe and Super Mario Bros.  I’m always intrigued with the wrestling industry in general, and it didn’t hurt to build promotion of the show around Alison Brie, whom every nerdy guy in the world had a crush on while watching Community.

To be honest, in spite of my enthusiasm and anticipation of the show, GLOW was actually a little bit difficult to get into, for me.  But after watching through the whole series, a part of me felt like such was constructed in a deliberate manner, as to really exaggerate the finer points of what progresses a storyline – much like how it’s done in the wrestling industry itself.

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Good riddance, Fulton County Courthouse

When it comes to moving, there’s no shortage of niggling little loose ends that seem to permeate from the furthest and most obscure sources.  My own move was no exception to the rule, and no matter how comprehensive and thorough I thought I was being, for weeks and months after departure, there were always letters, notifications, and things showing up to my apartment that were unexpected, that needed to be addressed.

To be fair, there was a surprising amount of money owed back to me from various sources, which was always welcome and pleasing, but there were the usual share of expenditures, final payments, and other nuisances that showed up and had to be dealt with, like good citizens do.

However, one thing that showed up, way later than everything else, was like one final fuck you from Fulton County; everyone’s favorite civil obligation in the world, jury duty.  Naturally, this was met with the enthusiasm of having your dick placed on an anvil and beaten down with a hammer, and absolutely minus-fifty parts of me wanted to deal with it.

I lived in Fulton County for 13 years, and was summoned for jury duty six times.  Once every eligible two years.  Anyone who tells you the selection process is random and unbiased is completely full of shit, because it’s entirely based on demographics, and Asian male property owners in my neck of the woods is an extremely shallow pool that saw my name get drawn at a guaranteed rate every two years, even if I had just managed to unload said property and no longer lived in the county.

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This Hulk-Wolverine combination can’t be real, can it?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a long way from the days when I used to really, really follow comic books.  When I’m bored at the desk, I’ll often times wander over to Wikipedia and catch up on how absurd comic storylines are getting, and more often than not, I’m disappointed in the direction of where things have gone throughout the years.  The separation of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.  The killing of the Joker.  The killing of BatmanJubilee as a vampire

Needless to say, there aren’t any storylines that are making it remotely compelling to start seeking out comic books these days, and there’s pretty much nothing I can’t use Wikipedia or the rest of the internet to catch back up with.  Television and movies might be bringing a ton of attention to the parent properties, but there’s so much of it, that that’s all that I think people wait for exclusively.

But if there’s one current storyline that I think will be safe from adaptation, it’s this one that I saw recently pop up on a social media discussion: a Hulk-Wolverine Hybrid character.

Why?  Because it sounds absolutely stupid as shit.

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I don’t want to tip my Uber drivers

I hate tipping.  Tipping sucks.  I still do it when it’s expected (required). 

C’mon, I’m not Scottie Pippen.

Generously, too, because I like to think I’m a decent human being, and I also understand that those working in industries that expect tips are often ones where the laborers themselves are grossly underpaid and that it’s the unfortunate responsibility of patrons like me, to make sure they can make their ends meet.

But still, I hate tipping.  It’s a practice that reeks of labor abuse, and that companies that allege to care about their customers, put the burden of paying their workers onto them.

What I liked about Uber, aside from the obvious reasons that it’s not a dirty, rickety cab driven by an asshole that smells like one too and they show up relatively quickly and have (usually) better cars is that I don’t have to tip.  I know my cost up front, it is taken out of my PayPal account, and I get from point A to point B with full transparency on cost, who’s taking me in what type of vehicle, and a fairly accurate estimate of time it is going to take.  And at the end of the ride, I don’t have to tip anyone, don’t feel obligated to tip anyone, and the drivers (I hope) aren’t expecting any tips.

That is, until soon, since Uber is apparently rolling out tip capabilities across the board.  Initially, they’re claiming it’s to keep up with their rivals Lyft, but really for both companies and all other rideshare clones, the integration of tipping is something that is closing the gap between rideshare and taxi, but in the wrong direction.

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A political blurb

Yeah, I know, nobody really likes to talk about politics, and frankly I don’t really either.  But thanks to the world around me, I’ve become more aware of politics, even if I can’t necessarily believe that the decisions of people so high will ever affect me at my ground level, but it matters to a lot of people in my little world, so I acknowledge a lot more than I’d really want to admit to.

Anyway, a big deal is being made about the recent Georgia 6th Congressional District race; and how it ended in a manner very disagreeable to the vast majority of my friends as well as the Democratic liberal people primarily of my general era of likeminded peoples.  Basically, in spite of all the social media activism, lobbying and celebrity involvement, a Republican defeated a Democrat, and nothing at all seems to have changed.

In short, a woman who has gone on record and went viral for saying she does not support a living wage won an election for a Congressional seat.  The majority of American people also voted for a man with no military or political experience who has said similarly deplorable things and has a laundry list of sexual deviancy allegations as President of the United States.

If elections were decided by the internet and on social media, Democrats would probably steamroll every single one.  Liberals love to talk a big game, and post and share and retweet all the virtues of their preferred candidates and just how bad the Republican candidate is, with all applicable factoids.  But when it comes time to deliver, quiet conservatives are still the ones with the tenacity and drive to get out of their houses, get on the roads, and pack the voting stations and cast their votes, and the proof is in the results, whether they are liked or not.

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Not a day goes by

I’m still subscribed to my former home’s community on NextDoor.  Partially, because it slipped through the cracks and I neglected to address it after I had moved out, but also in part because it’s turned into this inadvertent source of amusement, fascination and a constant reminder of how glad I am to not live in the community anymore. 

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the shit out of my old house.  The house itself was great, and if it were remotely possible to uproot homes, and plop them down onto other places like Sim City, I totally would.  It’s just that it just happened to exist in a community that went in completely the wrong direction from where I had hoped it would.

Needless to say, based on shit I read on NextDoor on nearly a daily basis, the neighborhood has progressively been getting worse since I moved out.  And after every single I read about disgruntled residents of my old community, and all the neighboring communities dealing with some unfortunate issues on too often of a basis, all I can do is shake my head and take a huge sigh of relief.

Like, the first few weeks of life after the move, I was admittedly in a state of unease at the general change in life.  But as the transition eased, and the NextDoor notifications continued to trickle in, with stories of break-ins, shared security cam recordings of suspicious activity, and oh yeah a shooting incident, all melancholy feelings were gone and completely replaced with pure, unadulterated relief.

Residents airing out their grievances, passively-aggressively shaming behaviors they don’t agree with, and my favorite, the rant featured above, are daily occurrences on NextDoor now, and it’s like a trainwreck that I can enjoy even more, now that I’m but a mere bystander, and not a fellow resident.

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