Success

"And I said to it, 'Success,
I didn't recognize you at first.'
And I said to it, 'Success,
you don't look the way I have dreamed of you,
dreamed of you...'"
--erin mckeown, 'fast as i can'

I have moved into a new apartment in Greenpoint, the fabulously situated and mightily Polish Brooklyn neighborhood I adore. The struggle for this apartment may be just this side of "worth it." The struggle was due largely to the evil, laughable excuse for an apartment broker which did precious little of value for me, and which instead gave me heart palpitations at every turn. In hindsight, however, it makes a great story, one that I will relate in a future post but can't quite comment on yet. You'll like it though, I promise. It's a good story. Anyway, hurrah, here we are. In a series of fortuitous events, Brian and I both ended up needing to move out of the places in which we previously lived on October 1, and so for the moment, we are the newest residents of Box Street. Lovely!

The apartment is on the north end of Greenpoint, giving us fabulous proximity to Greenpoint, Long Island City, other parts of Brooklyn and Queens, the G train, the 7 train, Manhattan, and the Long Island Rail Road. I actually feel delighted when I think about coming home from wherever I happen to find myself. This is probably a combination of the apartment and the Brian. Fun times.

But the two weeks leading up to move-in were so stressful! As late as 24 hours before I moved in, the joke of a realty firm was still throwing me for anguished loops and casting doubt on whether I'd have a place to live, the jerky bastards. During the apartment search, I sorely neglected running, reading, concentrating on school, healthy sleep/eating habits, and this blog, among other things. So I am all about turning over a new leaf for October.

Then again, many who know me already know all about my whole theory of October = renewal. October brings seasonal change and renewal from the earth in a way that appeals to me even more than spring. It's harvest time, a chance to reap what we've sown. In my own life it always seems to be October when I do things like quit jobs, decide to move across/out of the country, and have various other assorted epiphanies. Furthermore, my family has seen October bring death and birth and poignant lessons about the circle of life. Finally, who can say anything bad about a month that has the World Series, is basically good weather for wearing hoodies the entire time, randomly lets you get an extra hour of sleep one weekend, and culminates with a holiday devoted to having fun, getting dressed up, and indulging fantasies of emotion, decadence, and copious amounts of refined sugar?

So yeah. I love Octobers. Including this one. This month also happens to be the 2nd birthday of my blog. Don't think I won't have a birthday party for it, either. You just watch.

Today I went running. I ran eight miles. My last two Saturday long runs disappeared into the three-week chaos of apartment hunting and such. I am so happy to have got back into my running schedule this past week, and today's run, though hot and a little difficult, felt great. I gave myself permission to take a week or so off after my 5K, but three weeks of sporadic running was less than OK. Speaking of the 5K, I ran it in 27:21, ably beating my goal of 28:44. If anyone cares, I finished 70th overall out of 244 runners, and I finished 7th in my division (females ages 30-39) out of I'm not sure how many, but there were at least a couple dozen of us.

As long as I'm doing the humbers, here are some more: my aunt sent along this link to test your "Real Age." I think I've done something like this quiz before, but probably a few years ago. I took the test again and it told me my Real Age is only 18.4, meaning I'm healthy and stuff. It also told me that I have a life expectancy of 87.6 years. To the extent that we believe what we learn from online quizzes, woo-hoo!

USC remains undefeated. (editor's note, tuesday 10/9: would that i had got around to posting this when i originally wrote it on saturday before USC's numbers became a bit dismal. whatever, stanford!) The Diamondbacks and the Red Sox are both doing their part to deliver up a Boston-Arizona World Series, much to the delight of me and several other members of my family. The sun is shining, the birds are singing. I like things.

Including school, still. In fact, I like school a lot. A whole lot. I was actually rather sad during the evil-apartment-broker time to not be able to give school the focus and energy it wants from me, and that I wanted to give it. I'm still learning many things there and still appreciating my professors more and more every day and still marveling at how much better the second year is than the first. And how much better life is living in Brooklyn instead of on Long Island. Seriously, people. SERiously.

I love everything in the world.

"In a strange bed, strange bed,
bedfellow strange.
Said it to me what they've always said,
said it to me what I've always heard,
'You're gonna make it,
you're gonna make it,
you're gonna make it, girl.
Girl, you sleep with success tonight."
--more of our girl Erin's 'fast as i can'