Overdue for a

Of all the life-altering, heart-warping, & soul-squishing encounters I've had in the City, I find it cruel that I choose to rant about the my living accommodations. Maybe the whole lot is all too weighty to be pooped out in digital text on blogger.com

"Blog more, you'll be glad you did" sounds cute enough, but I think the best reflection and processing of this semester is to be had over a beer (or three) or in a cramped Mexican restaurant, where we can at least have the option of making eye contact & you can hear the wavering of my voice when I tell you how much I don't know about Being, Humans.

So, I will tease my three readers (& two followers) with the following nuggets, before proceeding onto the ever-shrinking patch of carpet between my desk and our bunkbed:

1. Working in public health is about as unglamorous as it gets for people at the post-doctoral, post-master's level. A favorite task has been to corner employees of San Francisco General Hospital—who could clearly be earning a killing at other medical facilities—& to ask them why they do what they do, where they do it. You would be surprised how quickly people light up when you ask them about their work.

2. If people change, it is a very slow & delicate process.

3. Jesus is still important.

4. If your favorite possession is a quilt your mother made for you, tell her so.

Now that that's out of the way, I can freely restore this blog to its function: complaining about my tiny room.
Fall Holiday came (thanks, Christopher Columbus) & we went camping. & hiking. & typhoon-dodging. Wednesday meant another day at the (unpaid) internship. Eight hours out of the house during which my tall, white roommate decided to clean the room. & change his sheets for the first time. (I'll change mine soon.)
I doubt I mentioned publicly the seven-foot climb from seabarf green carpet up to my dirty bunked mattress. 45 consecutive nights of jumping, clawing, & praying that I wouldn't fall out of bed. Lord knows the floorboards in this house couldn't withstand my hairy body plummeting from the attic, if I did roll out.

Back to Wednesday. After a long day at the internship, & a frustrating bus ride home (see Teasing Nugget #2, above), I hiked upstairs onto the set of Extreme Room Makeover. The seabarf carpet's color and consistency stayed unchanged, but there was more of it; literally square yards of floor were visible between the front door and the fire escape window. Our beds were made up, & in an act of pure selflessness, Nate had swapped our mattresses. No longer do I have to pull out the trampoline to get into bed. I can now climb out of my covers and feel the balls of my feet touch the ground. Thanks, Nate.

The beds made, carpet vaccuumed, & even the surfaces of our desks organized, I peered into the bathroom. The characteristic stench remained, but the familiar snarls of body hair & toilet paper were distant memories. My roommate CLEANED HOUSE!

Fast forward five days & a hundred "Let's-keep-it-this-clean-forever" promises, & we are back to the beginning. The bathroom tile is again sticky, more of our carpet is missing under piles of socks, ties, & underwear. A good day is one where I don't find an article of Nate's clothing tossed carelessly on my bed.

But this is how it should be. When the City calls, you'd better answer. Unless you're too busy trimming your beard (almost) over the bathroom sink.