You ever get into a time in your life when everything is moving so fast you can hardly keep up yourself, much less keep everyone else up on what's happening? The month of August was definitely one of those times. I keep having these conversations by phone and online....I'll be talking about the happenings in my life very matter of factly, and everyone is like "when the hell did that happen?!" I guess I'm doing a piss poor job of keeping people up on events....which is obvious when you look at the time between journal entries I suppose.

Well, in case you've not noticed, this entry started a new page of entries, which is generally a signal that a major change of direction or a major event has happened in some part of my life. You see, I am writing this message at my new, and very large, computer desk. I am also posting this entry over my new, and very fast, cable modem. I also happen to be sitting in my new, and very wonderful, apartment. Thus the very large change in my life.

Thankfully, this entry does not need to be particularly long because the actual day to day events in the past month have been amazingly mundane for the most part. As it happens, sometime in mid-July my friend Jack at work, who also works through the same employment agency as me, approached me about being roommates. His roommate was moving in with his girlfriend, and his lease was up at the end of August. This provided a nice full circle element to my life since I had originally approached him about this at the beginning of the summer when I was doing some deep thinking about moving out. It's very satisfying to find that the seeds you've planted have grown into little trees.

So, there was one small hurdle that I had to jump through before this all became a reality. If you'll recall, there were a couple main reasons for me being in a hurry to move out of my parents house. One of them was because I wanted to be closer to Cleveland, both to reduce my commute to work and my commute to my social life. The other reason was becuase I wanted to be able to be out in my day to day life and eventually come out to may parents while giving us both some room to breathe. So, I felt that it was very important for me to be able to be out in my own house. The first week of August I finally was able to go to the Lizard with Jack for dinner and beer. That gave me a chance to have the coming out conversation with Jack before we had committed to being roommates. I didn't want him to feel locked into something that he might be uncomfortable with. That seemed like a recipe for misery all around. At the same time, I was very nervous about coming out to a co-worker because of the potential for it to affect my job status.

As it turns out, I had little to worry about. Like much of the younger generation of Americans that I interact with, Jack has been exposed to a broader range of life than past generations. I think that a lot of that broader range of acceptance and experience has to do with the college experience, especially in large colleges and urban settings. That's not universal, but there is definitely a trend. So, everything went well. Our conversation poked into religion a bit since we are both Catholic more or less, so that was a nice common ground too. We discussed a bit of ground rules for the apartment, and that was about it.

Having paved the way for coexisting happily, we went out apartment shopping the following week. Amazingly, we liked the first place that we actually got a tour of, and we put in our application a few days later. Things moved very quickly, and we were starting to haul boxes by the third week of August. My moving was a very piecemeal process, a few boxes at a time in my car for the most part. Being that I didn't have a deadline to get out of my parents' house, I was able to do that. The upheaval did distract me from a lot of other things though, and was a lot of the reason that my move was not exactly widely broadcast until recently. I'll admit, the place is damn inexpensive, and it's not exactly in a prime neighborhood, but I generally feel at home here already.

As of last week, the only essential item of furniture I still needed is a bed. My parents offered to buy me a full size bed since I've been sleeping on the same twin bed for most of my life. I've been sleeping on the floor or the sofa for the past few days. The new bed arrived this morning, and it is so huge! Actually, I don't feel like it is all that much wider or longer, but it sits much higher than I am used to. I luxuriated in it's softness earlier this afternoon...it was quite a heady experience. I finally feel like my room is mostly completed. I had been sitting on this journal entry for a few days so I could include pictures of the final product.