Looking at this panorama of Paris at night made me foolishly realize just how f’ing lucky I am.

I recognized that landscape, because I’ve lived that picture…walking across the bridges where painters still sit, lazily along the banks of the Seine, downstream in a boat. Drinking wine at the little cafés on the corner.

My problem of not living for the moment (instead, living in the past) causes me to take so much of my life for granted.

I’m so unspeakably lucky. I don’t deserve one second of it.

Change, though inevitable, scares me. And in the coming month, I’m poised to get a whole heaping pile of it. I must have been storing it up over the past three years or something.

By Thursday of this week, the roommate will be gone. Our internet connection will be kaput. The house will be relatively empty.

By next Monday, the power and gas will be shut off.

A week from next Monday, I will officially be living in Louisville, Kentucky. Yes, Kentucky. Lord forgive me for I know not what I’m about to do.

Today I officially accepted a job as a web designer at the University of Louisville. I will be the sole designer for the Health Sciences campus, which all that really means is that I (yet again) cannot escape the clutches of the medical profession in my life. I sincerely believe that God is shoving it in my face that everyone I know is a doctor, and that I took the artist route. Stupid creative desires.

Most importantly, I will finally be living in the same zip code as my fiancé. No more Sunday Blues, having to reacquaint and leave every few days. No more squeezing quality time in with weekend chores, house duties, errands, social time with friends, etc. No more $250/mo. gas bills. Words simply cannot express how happy I am that this part of my life has come to an end. There were times when I sincerely thought that my heart would break if I had to leave her one more time.

I will most likely be living with either her sister or parents…living out of a suitcase with just my laptop, server and headphones. I don’t need too much, and the wedding (and thus moving in together) is only a few months away.

I think what intimidates me the most is all of the “little details” that accompany a move. The older I get, the more the paper trail seems to lengthen. Investment companies, insurance companies, banks, credit cards, internet registration, cell phone service, drivers license, car registration, magazine subscriptions, and on and on…they all have to change. And in order to get just one done, a million smaller steps are required. I’m speechless at how much is involved with moving (and to another state, no less).

So this summer will see a definite change in my life. First time I’ve left a company, second job out of college, first time moving out of Ohio, first job in a downtown area. I embrace all the newness and uncertainty that the coming months bring.

Though that doesn’t mean I’m not just a teeny bit terrified.

Alright. At some point here I will review the new album, Make Believe. But I want to apologize first of all to the band for sleeping on their past few records.

See, I absolutely adored the Blue Album. I still consider it one of the best discs in my collection. The problem is, I’m a Weezer snob, and cannot move past it. I compare every subsequent album release with their original 1994 debut. This, my friends, has led me to be a very bitter and disgruntled Weezer fan. And here today, I’ve come to repent.

No arguments, I never re-bought Pinkerton when it was stolen from me in 1999. I never bought The Green Album or Maladroit. Hell, I never so much as listened to the last two, other than what made it to the radio. I refused to believe that a band that proved so promising, so exciting and new in 1994 could suck so bad afterwards (or so was my assumption of Pinkerton after giving it one listen).

Well fast forward to last week. On a whim I gave the new album a listen to. Whoa. Not what I expected. Did someone forget to turn the Suck Dial up on the recording? Where was the cacophany of guitars, the wandering and rambling melodies of their sophomore album? Where was the whiney “oh poor me” attitude of the lead singer? Instead I have presented to me a tight, happy collection of pop/rock songs written by noneother than Rivers Cuomo himself. Mr. Buddy Holly. Huh.

In all seriousness though, Make Believe has received some dismal reviews from many a music jerk like myself, who undoubtedly is still searching for the past (except they hold Pinkerton’s introspective and smothering sound to be the Holy Grail of Weezer). Nothing, and I mean nothing, is meant to be repeated twice on record. So why am I still searching for it all these years later?

Here is what I’ve learned from Weezer’s ironic catalogue. Though millions of fans despise their “new” sound, feverishly yearning for the style of years past, in front of them is the same basic formula and presentation that made the band famous in the first place. Now having listened to Pinkerton, Weezer (green), and Maladroit again, I see it so clearly. Rivers is still the same awkward, maladjusted fool he was in 1994…still simaltaneously embracing and loathing his rock-icon status. He still writes beautiful pop songs, knowing just when to wrap up an album so as not to drag it out. So we should all just get over it.

The new album is filled with gems. Long gone are the days of El Scorcho and Tired of Sex, where Rivers’ self-loathing bleeds onto the record. Instead, for the first time in a decade, the kid is looking up. His lyrics are more optimistic then they have ever been. Though they may border on a self-help manual (undoubtedly influenced by his immersion into Eastern meditation), it still rocks. His quirkiness and awkward honesty are still there. It’s just instead of saying “maybe you’re not good enough for me,” he’s making ammends for those that he’s hurt in the past.

All in all, this is a great album. There are a few 6/10 tracks, but there are also some really stunning pieces. The trick here is to stop looking for a duplicate album, a repeat performance. Instead, I throw my hand in the air, triumphantly making the metal sign, and bob my head to well-crafted pop rock songs, with crunching guitars and soaring melodies.

Rivers is one messed up dude. His band is completely dysfunctional. But in my newly reformed opinion, he still knows how to write catchy-ass, head-nodding pop/rock songs. And you know what, that’s what matters.

Never be ashamed of your music. Music is art and entertainment, and if it entertains you…then rock out to it like there is no tomorrow. Don’t apologize to anyone for what you listen to, unless of course the volume is too loud. In that case, apologize and turn it up just a little more.

Alright, I confess. Having a small amount of income leftover to “play around with” can be nice. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel badly about buying frivolous, not-needed items. But sweet candy on a stick, some things just make life better.

So I grew up a coffee lover. Hell, most of my high school years were spent hour after aimless hour at one of three coffee shops. My weekend nights were based geographically around at least one stop to Sufficient Grounds, Brewed Awakenings or Maxwell’s Brew. Heck, towards the end of my senior year I just gave up and studied at Maxwell’s.

Needless to say, I love me some coffee.

Actually, now that I think about it, I just like lazy beverages. I drink gallons of water a day, and stay almost exclusively away from soda/pop/Coke. I don’t do juices. For that matter, I rarely drink alcohol these days…and I never just “grab a beer” with someone. But with casual beverages (like a rare iced tea on a hot summer night), I like to incorporate them into my daily life.

Let me introduce you to TEA.

So I’ve always thought tea was the wussy cousin of coffee. While I was consuming up to two pots a day in college, I would have maniacally laughed had you suggest I try tea. Well, all it took was a sludge-like substance that my office pretends to be coffee to get me to switch. Plus I was enamored by the ceremony of it. You just *get* coffee…but with tea, there’s preparation.

I started back in the fall, with Kroger brand green tea bags. The first half of the 60-bag box had a defect that didn’t sew up the bags at all…so you end up drinking the tea leaves. Though I tried stapling the bags myself, it all tasted like the pencil sharpener from grade school (woody yet cheap). Whatever. I thought this was tea.

Well then I decided to splurge. I must have been on drugs, because I got all wild in the Kroger isle one day and shelled out $5 bucks for some Tazo tea. Much better. But bags seemed cheap to me still. So I started reading. Loose tea leaves seemed to be the way to go. So I got a steeping pot. That’s where it all began.

Fast forward to today. I have reached nirvana. Err, actually Teavana. After trying a few health-store packaged brands (way better, but still stale tasting), I gave Teavana a try. When the delivery arrived in my office today, I could smell it outside of the heavy DHL cardboard box.

Good Lord. This…this is tea.

When I switched to tea, I wanted a caffinated casual drink to have while I worked, but didn’t require cream or sugar to mask the horrid taste in order for me to choke it down. What I’ve found (at least in this first cup of Masala Green Chai) is the most delicate, intricate, light substance I’ve ever had. I had no idea a consumable product could be this dynamic and subtle in flavor. Is this what wine snobs speak of? I thought those asshats always made up that crap…

Some day I’ll move back to coffee, trying CoffeeAM.com (where the parents get their incredible coffee). But for now, the pomp and circumstance, the ceremony of steeping a pot of tea is just, cool to me.

Call me a yuppie for throwing $20 bucks away on 120 cups of tea. Call me an indie snob for liking the subculture of tea.

Whatever, dude, I’ve got the best smelling and most rockin’ist beverage on the block.

I start a lot of entries by saying, “You know, there are times in life…” Well get over it, self. Cuz there are times in life where things are just messed up. And I need to write about it today. And not in a pissy tone, just entirely and utterly overwhelmed by it all. So where to start?

My life feels like it’s in an uncontrolled, chaotic tailspin, tumbling toward some sort of inevitable crash. It has been on the horizon for two months now, and yet I still cannot predict the outcome or final touch-down date.

It feels like pathetic whining to list everything that is apparently shifting in my life right now. But seeing as my purpose for starting denyingphoenix was to archive my life for later reflection, here goes. I want to remember this time in my life as being hands-down the most intense introduction into adult responsibility yet.

My roomate is moving out. That’s up there. We’ve been roomates for five and a half years now. One of my best friends, someone with whom I can have the longest and most satisfying conversations. Someone to whom I’m forever in debt for sharing some very rough times in my life. He’s forced to move out because I up and got engaged. Well this is our last week living together, my heterosexual life partner and I. From here on out, our friendship changes. We shift from a status of never having to schedule face-time and the i-live-with-you-comfortable-pick-up-where-we-left-off conversation status to one where we have to make an effort to get together, to call, to catch up. We’ve seen our other friends move to this near-disasterous status of relationship and I’m hesistant at best to have ours move there. I feel like I’m losing the last remnant of my college life, and not to mention my last remaining local friend.

So, with the roomate moving out, I have no place to live. I’ll probably end up moving all the major stuff to Louisville, and just sleeping on the roomate’s new couch for a few weeks until I find a place by myself. I’m going to try and take Fridays off so that I can be in Louisville for 3 and Cinci for 4 days a week. I never thought it was possible to live out of a suitcase more than I already do…but I was wrong. Luckily I’m fine with my headphones, laptop and a pillow.

I’m also completely torn. With the fiancé living in Louisville, I’m dying to move there. I love the city, and it would be nice having a family nearby. I’m friendly with her friends, and that’s a greater number of “people that will talk to me” than I have here. There are a ton of things I have to work on with the house that we have, and the weekend alone is just not enough time. However, my place of employment is here. This poses a problem that makes my head pound all the more violently. And as our October wedding approaches, the problem has yet to be fixed. I’m determined not to spend the first years of my marriage living in seperate cities, either.

Wedding planning. Period. (websites, invitations, flowers, rehearsals, programs, retreats, readings, and on and on and on).

Add on terrible, disappearing freelance clients, scramble to find funds to pay for a wedding ring & honeymoon in Ireland, and drama at work every day (moving offices, new hires, etc). I’ve determined that my head, quite possibly this week, is scheduled to explode.

Maybe I’ll go to sleep and wake up in October.

There are some things in life that remain a great mystery to me. One, is how a person decides to get married.

Recently The Roomate gave me the news that two more college acquaintances were getting ready to tie the knot. In this unspoken amazing race to the altar, it has brought the wedding tolls within my group of friends to a staggering high this year. Since June of last year, I know four couples that have married, and eight more that have gotten engaged. I worry, though, if we/they are all ready for the big leap.

Ok, so first off, I don’t consider myself better or ‘more ready’ or any crap like that. The decision for me to propose to The Fiancé was one of the more odd decisions I’ve ever made in my life. Normally I obsess and toil over everything, including where to go to dinner on a Friday night. You’d think I was choosing which death penalty I wanted. But not with this. After five years of dating at that point, it just hit me. June of last year rolled around and I thought to myself, “you know, maybe you could start looking at rings.” As I waited for my paranoid other-self to kick in and strike down the notion, I was surprised when the kick-back never came. So I looked. And eventually I bought. I never had a “plan” on how I was going to do it. I didn’t want to stress, and I just wanted to pull the proverbial trigger when it felt right. So I did. And no one knows just how numbingly ecstatic I am about getting married.

But when I look at couples that got married straight out of college/law school/med school, for some reason I wonder if they’re ready. Big life changes are a red flag for me, in my personal life, to question motives. All too easily do we try and pass motives by our own judgement, under the disguise of other pretenses.

So when you graduate from college, you’re going out into this scary world. Alone for the first time. No real plan for most people. Adrift on a sea of responsibility and uncertainty, I firmly believe that (at least subconsciously) many people look for something to hold on to. Others see it as a natural progression, as a timeline. “Well, on to the next step in life. Getting married fits in and makes sense.” Here’s where I worry.

When you are more in tune with the timeline of your life, as opposed to the timeline of a relationship, you project one onto the other. It is so easy, when you’re in love, to wish things to be right, to be better than they actually are. You can make yourself think that things are going well, things are healthy, things are moving in a good direction…when everyone else around you is cringing with anticipation of an implosion. When in love, you can be so easily blinded to a rooted, grounded sense of truth and reality. Therefore, it is too simple to think that “it’s time to move to the next step” in a relationship…when really you’re just moving to a new level in life (job, etc).

All of this simply stems from my most sincere worry about some of my friends. Though I don’t question any of their engagements (lest they question mine), I do pause for thought. I pray that no one simply settles, takes the plunge, moves ahead because it makes sense on an intellectual level. If it doesn’t feel right in the heart (and not by means of the head convincing the heart), look out below.

This guy’s a contender. No, seriously. This guy is a really big winner. Apparently someone is *forcing him at extreme gunpoint* to not only fork over money to a school, but also to attend classes. According to Senor Bloodpressure here, I have offended him and his almighty knowledge.

Or at least enough to warrant three responses for every one of mine. Let’s follow along, shall we? [first email remains in the oh-so-mature format of all-caps, to retain both flare and style the author intended]

WHEN IS THE CLASS INFO FOR THE SUMMER TERM GOING TO BE AVAILABLE ON [SCHOOL’S] INADEQUATE & OUTDATED WEBSITE? I’D LIKE TO BE ABLE TO SEE IF MY INSTRUCTOR HAS POSTED ANYTHING TO BLACKBOARD, OR AT LEAST WHAT BOOKS I NEED TO BUY. YOU GUYS ACT LIKE WE HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD. I’M OUT OF THE COUNTRY FOR 2 WEEKS AFTER THIS WEEKEND AND I’D LIKE TO GET SOME OF THIS DONE BEFORE I RETURN AND START MY CLASS. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! HELP! I’VE REQUESTED HELP FROM YOU GUYS DOZENS OF TIMES OVER THE PHONE AND YOU GUYS JUST DON’T TAKE CARE OF PROBLEMS. AND YOUR WEBSITE JUST FLAT OUT DOESN’T WORK AND YOU GUYS ARE CHARGING $600/CREDIT HOUR FOR THIS BOGUS SERVICE! RIPOFF!

Alright, so the guy’s peeved. I get it. Not being helped is frustrating. However, I try and smooth things over (and figure out what the hell he actually needs). I write:

[name], Thanks for writing. I’m sorry you’ve been having difficulty finding the information that you need. However, I’m not quite sure what information you’re looking for. If you’re looking for Blackboard info, have you used your portal account and checked the class page yet? That may also list the syllabus in which you can find book information. Let me know if there are any other questions you have, I’m more than happy to help as much as I can.

Well apparently this helpful tone was not the correct choice for this bloke, as three consecutive emails, timed between 12am and 7am, were dispatched my way. With love.

Listen, It’s as simple as this. You guys have not loaded any term data for summer or fall. I WANT TO SEE SUMMER. GET ME THERE PLEASE!

No clue what you’re talking about pal. None.

The bottom line is that according to your out of date website that must be left over from 1997 or something, I’m not registered for any summer and fall courses. I call your MBA program staff, registration and the bursar. They continue to tell me a bill for my summer courses are in the mail. This has gone on for weeks. [school] simply cannot handle computers AT ALL! Go back to pencil and paper. That’s my suggestion. You guys are forcing me out of your MBA program due to your 100% lack of ability to provide any sort of information to me. Lame! And you guys think your tuition hike is justified. Around the nation, [your school] has a POOR academic reputation that I’m paying a premium for. You deserve no pay hike. Please have someone get these things done for me.

Wow. Apparently our deciding to ditch paper record books in favor of more efficient, money-saving databases has caused this guy to be a national barometer of educational reputation. Wait, that didn’t make any sense. Oh well, neither does he. Here’s the oh-so-thrilling final email:

Bottom line is that if you guys can no longer service your customers, I want all the money back I’ve spent working myself halfway through the MBA program. I wouldn’t recommend [school] to my worst enemy! [school] is a rogue and UNETHICAL Institution. Please have someone with some kind of knowedge about something who tells the truth (if such a person exists at [school]) at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Ah thanks buddy for wrapping it up so coherently. I’m reeeeeallly tempted to phone the number you gave me. Just to call you an asshat and hang up on you. Because you can’t form a coherent sentence.

Jackass.