Chaos At Home

I arrived back on Sunday morning after a 16 hour flight. I managed to catch up on some of the Japanese and Korean flicks I’ve missed over the past few months. “200 Pound Star” featured a hottie (made up to look like a whale) who goes through plastic surgery to get ahead in Seoul’s music industry. “Tofu” was about a Meiji-era guy who wants to start a Kyoto-style Tofu shop in some village where the tofu trade is practically controlled by the mafia. The last one – “Bubble Fiction 2: Boom or Bust” – was really weird. A woman is sent back in time to make sure the Japanese Finance Ministry does not pass liberalizing laws that end up crippling the economy a decade or so later. After that series of movies, I watched the Matrix. I just couldn’t resist. I also saw a cartoon about a surfing penguin, and possibly a forgettable action flick from this year. I only slept a couple of hours so the movies helped kill the time.

I got home fairly early in the morning and spent the day doing chores – getting ready to move to a new apartment in Queens the following week. The switchover seemed natural but in retrospect it made the whole homecoming seem like a non-event. I’ve been away from my wife for nearly three weeks and when I got back home it was like I never left. This is one of those things that unsettles me but probably should not.

So our new apartment has lots of issues and is not really ready for move-in and it is impossible to get any of the building staff on the phone or to return a call. Connie has been freaking out about this on her own while I was away so now she is ready to just throw it all in my lap. I unwittingly accept because I can see there is no other option. She doesn’t like stress and this has been building up for a while. Thus, I am spending the week half catching up with work (project due next Friday looks like it will be messy…) and trying to convince the Parker Towers people to fix some of the most pressing problems in the apartment. On top of that, I am packing the old apartment, interviewing for a new job with Google, and planning my resignation for Monday, October 15. This has been a long time coming, and I can almost taste the end. Just have to get through some of this in-betweener stuff. Connie is leaving for a two-day recruiting trip upstate. If I didn’t know better, I’d say our marriage was in trouble, but I know better. This (week), too, shall pass.