I've barely been at my computer this past week. Most of my time has been spent working on various projects in Danae's condo. Having solidly defined tasks that I can fully grasp and accomplish is a fundamental contrast to my experience in New York, and is making me deeply happy. I feel safe, and just as importantly, valuable and competent here.

I'm doing so much stuff! I found pegs and put more shelves in the living room shelving unit, then unpacked and alphabetized all of my media, and then Danae's, putting them in their own places. In the entryway, I took all the boxes of tile, cans of paint and recycling to their respective places, then hung a big heavy mirror in the entryway and set up my cheval mirror there too. It's looking really nice! In the bathroom I replaced the showerhead with my Waterpik wand; the low-flow setting helps make our little water heater last through the whole shower by reducing to a trickle while lathering or conditioning. That's made everyone living here really happy. Danae ordered a wall mount for the 32" flat screen we picked up at a thrift store years ago; it's been sitting on top of the low TV bench with a box of tile in front of it to keep it in place. I installed the wall mount, then disassembled the two TV benches to remove their back panels so I could put A/V equipment inside the bench's cubbys and run wires to them. After planning discussions with Danae, her roommate Nathen and I drove out to Ikea to buy several hundred dollars worth of closet organizer parts, and a few other odds and ends. One of those odds and ends was a suspension rail for one of the TV bench units; I got on a stepladder, attached the rail to the wall, and with Danae's help, mounted the bench unit above the TV, level with the media shelves to its right. We took it down and put it up a few times, playing with the configuration of drawers and shelves in it, and finally decided on the look we want. Then I moved all my CDs into it; it looks really nice! And I can wall-hang furniture now and use wall anchors now! First times for me on both counts. Today, I emptied everything out of one of the two closets in the bedroom so I could install the closet organizing stuff. To do so, I had to remove the existing shelf and support brackets, but doing so left large patches of unpainted space and several holes in the plaster facade of the wall. So instead of installing mounting rails, I did another first; plaster patching. It's certainly not the best job ever, but I got better as I went. Tomorrow will be sanding and priming, though a large hole may need more patching goop.

And that's been my life. That plus doing the household grocery shopping, walking to the local hardware store several times and driving to a more distant one once for drill batteries. Driving Danae to school and back, offering opinions on her papers, feeling appreciated and loved, enjoying fun, safe social contact with she and Nathan, and having wonderful conversations. Conversations such as the following one.

I was up on a stepladder in the living room, measuring and marking the suspension rail position. Danae was talking about her current writing on the topic of the public sphere as conceived by Habermas, and some of philosophers he drew on in forming that conception. I noted that some of these ideas, about who constitutes the public sphere and how it operates were pretty damned elitist, and that I took exception to the idea that uneducated people do not engage in rational debate; that it is somehow an ability limited to the bourgeois. We talked about how Habermas' ideas are really more complex than that, and how the people he was referencing were situated in a very different time and place. Having read Lisa Fraser this past semester, I'm kind of skeptical about many aspects of the public sphere; for me, it could represent this nebulous group formed of whatever is outside of the particular counterpublic one is thinking of. At some point after that, the conversation took a turn like this:

"Are you feeling oppressed by the bourgeois?" Danae asked.

"Well, I'm up here on a ladder, shirtless, installing furniture for you, the bourgeois. I'm clearly the proletariat."

She smiled at me. "Does it make you feel better that the proletariat fucked the bourgeois this morning?"

I paused. "....yes. Yes it does."

I love her a lot.

So I continue to be hermity. I'm in my warm safe cave, where I am loved and appreciated and feel competent and productive. I want to start engaging with more of the real world soon. But perhaps not quite yet. For now, I have closet systems to install and and bedroom to organize! And beyond that, Danae has some social plans for us that will start getting me back into the big wide real. I'll write more about that later on.

Danae has started using a gamified task management system called Habit RPG. I'd already been using Remember the Milk for to-do lists, but I decided to play around a bit with Habit too. It's fantasy RPG-themed, with cute 8-bit graphics reminiscent of the original Legend of Zelda. You can buy equipment, find pets, and if you don't get all your daily tasks done, you take damage and you have to buy healing potions. At the moment, Danae and I are in a joint challenge against an evil Basi-list, which we damage by completing items on our to-do lists.

It's more motivating to me than just to-do lists, partly because I'm accountable to my avatar to keep him from getting hurt, and even more because I'm accountable to my partner to make progress against the monster we're fighting.

The social aspects include 'guilds' for people with shared interests. One of them is a grad student guild, whose members have created a number of 'challenges,' which are lists of tasks you can import to your own lists. Today, I took on the "Hit the Scrolls" challenge, which includes tasks like 'study a scroll' (read a paper or a chapter of a book or similar), 'copy to spellbook' (make notes on what you read), and 'cast a scroll' (write about or talk to someone about what you read). I'm hoping this will help keep me more on track than I might otherwise be over the Summer.

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It's warm and humid outside, but sitting in front of the large living room window and reading in the sunlight was a really pleasant use of some time just now. With the windows open, the noise of Evanston comes inside in a continual rush of wind, traffic, and L trains, punctuated by bird calls, sirens, and occasional human voices. I feel as though I'm listening to the operation of a great urban machine I live within. It's soothing. It makes me feel at home. I'm starting to feel truly settled in here.