Finally pulling all the pictures off of my camera, hundreds of pictures that I've done nothing with since, oh, mid-November.

I've got pictures from the night when I sat in a restaurant and cried because I had left GV8. Pictures from the Elephant High Dive Revival, from a concert, from the night Pseudonym Pending and the Broken Prince rammed into me like a perfect set of hole-filling pistons.

And then I have pictures from the family thanksgiving gathering out in Los Feliz, pictures from the day I cast myself towards GV8, the dates that followed, the night of the Hollywood Christmas Parade, eating at Cafe Was, the wonderful day at Disneyland... and then the fall out and subsequent devastation.

I also have pictures of the hospital, of sitting in the waiting room, the exam room, my father asleep on the hospital bed. I have pictures of the guest room we stayed in, of the psychotic notes left around the house, the rearranged furniture, the damage.

It's been a busy two months.

I took an extra hour over my lunch break to go sign the lease paperwork, pick up the keys, and show my mother the apartment. It's such an old building, things are... falling apart. But in that attractive, old building sort of way. The kitchen in pink, I'm thinking of doing a sort of Alice in Wonderland theme in there. We'll see.

I also realized that my bookcases aren't going to fit. I gave away nearly one thousand books around this time last year, but I'm still worried about how I'm going to get all my books in that apartment, then display them so I can find the one I'm looking for, whichever one it is, at whatever time.

GV8 is trying to buy me a $995 bedframe. It's monstrous. It's also an absolutely gorgeous gothic canopy deal. But it would dominate my living space. I'm going to have to take some measurements before I give him the go-ahead on that one.

Went to Ross after work, picked up some dinnerware. White, square dishes with asymmetrical black flower designs on them. Ran over to Home Depot and got the keys copied while I was out and about. Spoke with Rick on the phone, who told me that he's getting fat due to his wife's excellent cooking and he's truly proud that I'm finally moving out on my own with no major male influence. That I've needed to do this for awhile, which is true.

I'm hitting a small point of buyer's remorse now, over the apartment. It is so very old, lots of damage due to the simple (is it ever simple?) passage of time. The wood flooring by the bathroom is water damaged, the linoleum in the bathroom itself is torn. One of the knobs on one of the kitchen cupboards is broken off, leaving the screw embedded in the wood. There's not a lot of storage space, though I think there's enough to get by. The vertical blinds are visually appalling.

But it's cheap, it's mine, only mine. It's across the street from a very popular hang out, which means whenever I want to go get my flirt on, bring someone home with me, it's simply a matter of walking straight out the front door. The neighbors are, thus far, quiet. And I actually have a parking space, something near unhead of in this city.

It's just odd to think of.

Even odder is that GV8 put my last name together with my father's first name. Somehow. He doesn't know how. And he knows where my father went to school, or at least grew up. GV8 grew and ran in the same area, though he's a few years younger than my father. So they might know each other from before my parents ever met.

Strange? Oh, yes.

I'm going to be dropping all my classes tomorrow, then adding just the one for this semester. My boss has (very) begrudgingly allowed me one day a week to leave at 3PM to make it to this class. He says that I shouldn't even go to school, that I'm working in a fine industry where education doesn't count, only experience, and I have years of experience in this field.

He's not the smartest at personal interactions, I'll say that much.

How weird it is, entering into the world of adulthood. Finally. Bills, debt, monitoring your credit score, being accountable only to your financial accounts. Watching every dollar. Making everything count, making everything stretch.

Self-definition. Something I've said, and still believe, that I lack.

Maybe this will let me know who I am, or at least who I could be.