Personal: J-Girls: Jenny and Julie Make My Wednesday
Just in from an evening with Jules, and taking a breath before tackling all the piled laundry. I didn't realize it, but she's got to move to a friend's for a month before she moves to New York in August for the start of her doctorate, and moving twice just sucks rocks. She was grumpy about that, having been all consumed with packing earlier in the day and not wanting company, but happily I didn't fall under that prohibition, and her preemptive apology for her mood was unnecessary as she was soon laughing as we talked away. I saved her a hundred dollars or more – I hope! – by showing her, once we'd gotten to Best Buy to get her an external hard drive, how she could use her iPod Touch to transfer the files from her old PC to her new Mac laptop and back everything up. She was in one of her occasional cravings for a dish from the Olive Garden and so we headed over there, talking The Dark Knight, awkward relationships with friends, the Sex and the Soul book I'd mentioned the other week in a popular entry which I thought would be cool to hear her thoughts on since she does family/sexuality stuff in her psychological work, and starting-your-Ph.D. stuff, among other subjects. She said something she was afraid was really daring to me, or maybe even inappropriate, about some stuff from last year, but I loved how frank she was, and since I entirely agreed with her about the thought, it wasn't nearly as touchy as she'd feared, but I loved her for daring to be so frank. Afterward we wandered into that north side Half Price Books and I picked up a few movies I'd been looking for and a bit of music. And so music and music-mixing was a big part of the talk on the ride back into the city, with her making me listen to a few favourites and talking about my "Musical Autobiography" mix idea which I'd been hoping to see her pick up. Back at her place we unloaded all her new boxes and packing stuff, talked with Jackie as she walked through the door about weird prank calls and gossip among friends, and took off. A good breather.
I also had a fun call from Jenny in the afternoon, just sort of catching up from the previous week and why – along with most everyone else's – I'd not dug my way back to her earlier email from when I was on the road. So that gave me a chance to answer on the phone, which is always more fun than typing anyway. She made me laugh as she described some of her frustration with the new tutoring job she's been doing, and having to teach reading instead of math, which it seems everyone there assumes no one wants to touch except some math professor they have on retainer, while all the while she's craving to do math instead. I'd pay money to listen to Jenny grouse – actually, Julie, too – and so she just had me laughing as she hammed up her annoyance: she has so much more verve to her annoyance than I do.
