Lazy Week

Having turned back the clocks by an hour last night 9:30am this morning was really 10:30am according to most people’s internal clocks and thus the coffee shop was a bit more crowded when I arrived than it usually is. Most of the inside seats had been taken, at least the ones where a single person can sit without looking like some kind of ass for taking a table that can comfortably fit 4. There were seats outside though and the weather this morning was warmer than expected due mostly to the fact that the sun had been out for an hour longer than usual as the result the “fall back” portion of our bi-annual time travel experiment.

At any rate, I got my double mocha with mexican chocolate in a to-go cup and sat out on the patio of Epoch Coffee and began my Sunday morning ritual with the opening of this week’s Austin Chronicle. At fist I thought it had just been me, but after a few pages of the Chronicle I realized that it had been a slow week for everyone as the paper was fairly dry and uninteresting. There really didn’t seem to be anything new or interesting going on this week. For me personally the week as a whole was something of a non-starter with every day constantly feeling like Friday. On Monday I came into work after lunch due to a server integration that was supposed to have taken place earlier in the day, but was still going on, meaning I had no real work to do except for one fairly productive creative meeting. Tuesday was another late start but little work got done as we spent most of our time testing the stability of the latest server build. Wednesday was business as usual, but since the week had failed to start correctly it never really felt right. I suppose by Thursday I started to get into the swing of it and by the end of OT on Saturday I had gotten a decent amount of work done in what was otherwise an unremarkable week.

There haven’t been any new movies recently, at least not any that haven’t been sequestered to limited New York and LA only releases. That coupled with my disappointment at Tim Schaffer’s new game Brutal Legend and the fact that my efforts on the dating sites this month have all fallen flat has sent October out with a whimper and sigh. November looks to be starting off with a bang however. If the calendar doesn’t waiver there are new games and movies every week this month and I’ll be heading up north for Thanksgiving, which will be a nice break. I also decided to renew my Match.com membership so we’ll see how that works out.

Today (aside from the coffee earlier) I’ve been sitting here listening to bands in my “One More Time” playlist. These are new albums this year that I have already listened to at least a couple of times, but haven’t quite judged as good or bad. I just finished listening to “Population” by Most Serene Republic, an auditory cross between Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Polyphonic Spree. It’s not bad, but it fails to really identify itself or grab me in any discernable way. Friday night I listened to “Golden Vessel of Sound” by Yume Bitsu, an album that starts with a strong track and immediately falls apart, never managing to reorganize itself into something worth listening to before it ends. Right now I’ve got the latest release from Kupek “Tries Again” . You’ll likely never see Kupek in stores as it’s a side project of comic book author Brian Lee O’Malley, which he releases for free online. There are a couple standout tracks in this release, but overall it’s not as impressive as his previous albums. Still, it’s pretty damn good for what is essentially a home produced and recorded album.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be heading to Waterloo Records later today and I’ll be back on the dating sites later tonight to see who I contact this week. It’s a lazy end to a lazy week.

The New Geography of Dating

I guess I’ve decided to take my first stab at dating here in Austin. At some point during the past 6 months or so I must have re-upped my Match.com profile for 3 months and then forgot about it and let it re-up again for 3 more months. While I was still in Virginia I didn’t see much point in checking it as I knew I was going to be leaving, but since I’ve still got another month to run out on it, I figured I’d give it a whirl.

I’m no stranger to Match, I’ve used it previously with mixed results. I’m incredibly picky when it comes to these things though so the people I contact are few and far between. If someone happens to contact me, either through a message or a “wink” that tends to smooth things over though. Last weekend a cute Asian girl, a few years younger than me, winked at me. Last night I decided to reply to her wink with a message. We’ll see where things go from there.

If anything, I’ve become more pragmatic when it comes to dating over the last few years. I know what I do and don’t want in a person and in a relationship. My only problem tends to be that when I find someone who meets my criteria, I don’t meet theirs. I have to admit that I’ve often chalked my lack of success to geography, or rather the type of people I met in my previous geographic location. I’m hoping that a new latitude and a city like Austin will find me people more my own speed and ideally women who meets my standards while I meet theirs.

What I Did for My Summer Vacation

I really need to write here more often. I suppose a quick summer recap is in order.

I suppose the short of it is that during the summer I decided I needed to get out of my job and began looking for options. There had been a possibility of a job in California that I was considering, but the company doing the hiring was in no hurry and the process was dragging toward early-mid August. It was around this time that an opportunity came up for me to transfer within my company at large. I suppose at this point it might be prudent to mention that I work for a large game publisher. This publisher owns a number of developers across the world and it is possible to jump from one developer to another with more ease than say … coming from the outside to the same position. The only requirements for jumping are that a position be open at the destination company and that the origin company is willing to let you go.

Several positions became available at a company I had wanted to work with for quite some time and on a project I was very interested in and while some people in power at my current workplace did not want to let me have the opportunity to go, a good friend in a position of power (who realized I had one foot out the door anyway) made the case for me and I got to interview. And so it happened that I got a job in Austin and the remainder of August (which at that point was about 2 weeks) was spent finding a place to live in Austin and moving out of my place in Virginia.

I drove down to Austin over the course of 4 days, during which my left arm got sunburned and I stayed at several hotels ranging from “awesome, my room has it’s own living room” to “I just killed a lizard on the wall with a phone book”. I arrived in Austin on August 30th and started work the next day. My belongings arrived at my new apartment roughly a week later. Since that time I’ve been living here in Austin and trying to get a feel for what I’m told is as near a city to Boston as I’m like to find outside of beantown itself.

I have my own hierarchy of needs when moving to a new place and it looks something like:

1. Music Stores: I need to find a good place to buy hard to find music. Should, but does not need to contain decently priced used discs

2. Movies: It is necessary to locate both a good theatre to see mainstream movies (ideally with stadium seating) and a place to see limited release movies (can be the same place)

3. Comics: I must find a comic book store that carries all my monthly books (without my having to ask for them) while maintaining a well-stocked library of trade paperbacks and graphic novels.

4. Walking; I need someplace where I can walk around. Preferably 4-5 miles worth of non-repeating walking space. Ideally a park or other public ground.

5. Coffee Shop: I’d like a place where I can go on weekend mornings, get a cup of coffee, and read the local indie paper. Chain coffee shops do not count.

In Virginia the music stores were only so-so. The one’s in DC were hard to get to and very specific as to their stock (only punk and metal, etc.). That is until I found CD Cellar, which I had somehow managed not to notice for a year. Even then, they only had used stuff so obscure new releases were not likely to be found. Movies were a different story as nearly all the theatres in Virginia and DC were excellent quality and the E-Street theatre was a great place to see limited release films. The comics situation wasn’t so bad, although I did have to go to a couple different stores to find everything I was looking for. Walking was a bit of a pain, at least for my tastes. If I wanted to walk I usually went to the National Mall and walked the monument circuit. I’m not going to get into the coffee situation. There were definitely decent places, but they were so few and far between that the other bohemian wannabe’s crowded in before I could ever get there since I had to drive to get there and they lived within walking distance.

I’m still getting a feel for Austin and I’m not seeing the Boston connection at all (more on that later), but I’ve been able to satisfy my needs fairly well. There are two great music stores within walking distance of each other that have huge new and used selections. The theatres are not as modern as Virginia, but the area makes up for this in variety. You don’t have to go far to find a place to watch a movie, including limited releases. When it comes to comics, there is an excellent store about a 2 minute walk from my apartment. Despite their odd organizational style, it may be one of the best stores I have ever shopped at. Walking is something I haven’t really done yet. I walked downtown a little bit, but I really don’t have a feel for it and unlike Boston it almost felt abandoned. Then again it was a Sunday and I might have been on a less populated side of downtown. I have hopes of the park near the river being a good walking area … once the weather is cooler I’ll check it out. And lastly, the coffee situation has been much better as well. So long as I’m there by 9:30/10:00 on Sunday morning, there’s a coffee shop about 7 minute’s walk from my apartment that I’ve gone to the past couple weekends.

And that’s my Austin experience so far. I think the one thing I need to divorce myself from is this idea of it being like Boston. This may be true for the casual observer, but Boston and I have a special relationship. I know that city better than any other place and the wealth of memories I have from that place, both good and bad, have given it a special place in my heart. That being the case, I can’t expect to get the same effect or vibe from Austin. I just don’t know the city well enough. That being said. As I walked to and back from the coffee shop last week I felt like the city bared it’s soul to me a bit. I don’t really expect anyone else to understand this though. I just relate to cities in a different way than others.