I’m presently coughing and wheezing my way out of a summer cold, but in my downtime I put together a couple of photo sets from my new apartment in Astoria and my trip to Maryland and DC with Kristin.

As of exactly one very busy week ago, I am moved out of Mamaroneck and into Astoria in Queens, NY. At long last, after seemingly endless months of isolation, I’m done paying for my ex, literally and figuratively.

The flip side, of course, is that if my life continues to be a struggle — and I don’t think it will, since things are already looking up — I can’t blame anyone else anymore. As Trillian says early in Hitchhiker’s Guide, “We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.”

Once the dust settles, I might find myself saving a little money again. My rent is high, but lower than paying rent for two. I liquidated my car on Friday, netting a couple grand and saving me $100/mo in insurance (which would have been $150 at my new address). A monthly subway pass is only $90 versus $205 for an MTA North pass. Heating and cooling this place should be cheaper, since it’s smaller and a brand new construction. I’m saving $20/month on my gym, thanks to my corporate overlords.

I may be the only person in the world who can move to New York City and spend less money on the necessities.

I’ve been taking a ton of photos lately, including a large set from my trip to Illinois to visit family this month, so check them out if you like.

I have a few shots of my soon-to-be new apartment still on my camera, and I’m sure I’ll have even more photos to come now that I’m going to actually live in New York instead of just working there and living in the boondocks.

Seven months since my last post? Sounds about right. My life changed a lot during that time, and it isn’t done yet. It turns out, everything I wanted to say about any of it could be posted as short status updates on Facebook, with the added bonus of immediate feedback from friends and family.

I like having this page around as a repository of useful links, though, so I’ll keep it around even if I don’t blog. Anyone who wants to keep in touch should do so on Facebook (at least until it fades away like MySpace). If I want to write something super-long or HTML-heavy, I’ll write it here and post a link there.

(Oh, and I disabled comments. I logged in here last month to find 20 pages of spam to delete. Oops.)

Yep, it’s that day again. I’m celebrating by going to work, dealing with an internet outage at home, and possibly getting rained on later.

Meanwhile, here’s today’s theme song:

MC Frontalot – This Old Man

Yo, please save me from the wrist-hurt disease…

I have yet to sort through the mountains of photos on my digital camera left over from my trip to DC. Most of them were taken walking around the Mall and museums in the crowds and heat and humidity, and I’m afraid that the later it got in the day, the punchier I became and the more I just pointed my camera randomly and hoped for an interesting shot.

Unfortunately, the best parts of my week barred me from taking photos, so I have no sharable record of them.

First, I went to see the Senate in session on Monday. Not only do they ban photos, but they confiscate all electronics on the way in, just in case.

It was the first day of the Sotomayor hearings, but I got there way too late to see that. Instead, I saw Carl Levin (D-MI) rail against the procurement of F-22s in a room that was empty except for staff, pages, and a late-arriving John McCain. I listened to Levin read letters from Obama and Gates into the record for over half an hour before leaving. Sure, it’s not as exciting as a Supreme Court nomination, but it was still important enough for the Washington Post to write it up.

Then, yesterday I finally got into Mecca itself as I attended a taping of The Daily Show. The episode aired last night, with guest HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (who mostly stuck to talking points rather than answer Jon’s questions). Such a strange feeling to finally be in the studio after watching the show, almost without fail, four times a week since 2002.

Cameras and cell phones were allowed inside only if they were turned off the whole time. A few people snapped photos of the set on the way out, but I just left instead. Once I get around to organizing my DC Tourist/Fugue State pics, I’ll post a link here.

I went on my first hike with the Appalachian Mountain Club on Sunday. I chose one of the shortest and easiest hikes available in their schedule (6 miles, moderate pace), yet afterwards I was still exhausted, hungry, and sweaty, with sore feet.

I think what I enjoyed most about the day was using my camera and looking for shots that might be interesting. I just put up a Flickr group for the day’s photos. This one is probably my favorite, since I was lucky enough to get the bee in the shot.

Things I will need the next time I do this: arch support inserts, especially for my left foot; a proper backpack with a chest strap; an actual lunch rather than hoping snacks will last me for 6 hours; a hat and poncho, even though I was lucky enough to avoid rain this time.

The news is out there, so there’s no reason not to comment on it: yesterday, I survived a rather drastic round of layoffs at work.

Three years ago, CourtTV was split into In Session (daytime court coverage) and truTV (nighttime reality/documentary shows). Now the Turner mothership has decided to run In Session directly, meaning some positions will be eliminated as of November while others will vanish from New York and re-appear in Atlanta. According to this, either “up to 65″ or “around 100″ jobs will be cut from the NY location, out of a workforce of 300+.

Yesterday afternoon, the major department heads called mandatory, all-employee meetings on short notice, a little over an hour in advance. They explained what was going on and told us that by the time we returned to our desks, we would have emails saying whether we were laid off or not.

My job has almost nothing to do with In Session, so I’m still here. However, the press release includes this bit:

A second change involves a restructuring and new identity for truTV’s marketing efforts. The newly formed Brand Strategy & Marketing umbrella will include the Digital Content & Multi-Platform Development group, formerly the online group. truTV’s affiliate marketing activities will move to Atlanta, which is the base for the overall affiliate marketing team for truTV’s sister networks, TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies.

I’m in the Web Services group, not Online, technically, but we’ll still have to see whether this affects us in the future.

Yesterday was the semi-official fifth anniversary of this blog. It went live days before my first-ever visit to Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Before three cross-country moves, before migrating from MovableType to WordPress and from my old web host to Dreamhost… before a lot of things.

And the state of the blog today? I’ve almost stopped updating it altogether. Presently, the first 10 posts on the front page go all the way back to mid-March, which is still less dead than a lot of personal blogs, but would have embarrassed me when I first started out and was writing something — anything — here almost every day.

Why have I stopped?

Partly, since Internet years are even longer than dog years, this site is roughly the equivalent of this. New toys become old toys, and the compulsion to keep playing naturally fades, especially as shinier tech like Facebook passes them by. I’m linked to practically everyone I know there, so it’s easier to update my status if I have news to share or just want to remind people I’m alive.

Partly, I don’t have as much time as I once did. Work has been too hectic lately to goof off and write blogs, and my hourlong commute cuts into the rest of the day.

And partly, life isn’t going all that well for me these days, either at work or at home, and I tend to not write when I’m unhappy. I’m not the type to publish my personal life in a public space (at least I’m not anymore), yet I get too distracted by my problems to blog about much of anything else.

So what should I do with this place? Since Facebook has blogging capabilities and a larger (and controllable) audience, I’m tempted to just keep everything over there. On the other hand, I still use my front page every day as a control panel and convenient link collection, so I want to keep it around. Whatever I decide to do with the blog, thank you for reading it.

My new desktop wallpaper, courtesy of Kate Beaton:

I’m sure I’ll have a few words to say about the new Trek once I see it.