Tuesday
My entire kitchen smells like nutmeg. It took me a couple days to figure this out, but sure enough, once I finally said to myself, "This is nutmeg you smell every time you walk into the kitchen," I realized that the nutmeg container must have leaked during the various bouts of storage and moving. Thankfully, it appears to be the only one.
So yesterday I resolved (because it was raining and I think it's closer to the apartment) to try out the Coffee Pot and Mail Drop over on Archer rather than go to the Bridgeport Coffee House. It's a pretty nice little coffee shop with a performing arts space in the basement and that also happens to rent mailboxes. I asked about this, and was told by the owner that he used to run a Mailboxes Inc., but hated the company, so he changed to a coffee shop. He seemed to imply that he liked renting mailboxes too much to give it up, though.
When I entered the coffeeshop for the first time, a girl standing in front of the counter started staring at me. As I approach the counter I start to give her a curious look. She looks as though she is about to speak, and just before she does, a voice behind me says, "[girl's name]?". She turns to this voice and asks, "[boy's name]?", then turns back to me with a questioning look. I take a step back and say "I'm just here...." As the confusion washes off her face and she turns back to her blind date, I also turn to look at him. The reason for her confusion becomes clear: We are both wearing glasses, ponytails, and black zip-up hoodies that say "STAFF". We both came in listening to iPods, tucked into our hoodies in the same manner, even. And we'd apparently come in withing seconds of each other. I found it amusing.
Saturday
Reading Anna Karenina, drinking too much at housewarming parties, and having strange dreams. Eating too much meat, sleeping at irregular hours and in strange circumstances. Keeping company with people I don't understand. Constantly resisting the confusing impulse to drink solution of Murphy Oil Soap. Talking too much of the future, thinking too much of the past. It's been a strange time for me, exciting and anxious.
Things keep falling into place for me. What am I being prepared for?
Friday
Sadly, the wireless I can so easily access on my back porch appears to only occasionally involve an actual connection to an Internet, so I'm back in the (extremely charming) Bridgeport Coffee House, wearing down the battery on Pyxis Mali looking at my brother's Boundary Waters photos on Facebook, balancing my chequebook, and organizing my social calendar. I know as soon as I go home, I'll remember something else I wanted to look up online, but I've been sitting here a while and all my hot chocolate has been consumed, so perhaps it's time I did some more cleaning and unpacking. No sign of Lorange yet, so I'm trying not to consume the entire closet, and also clear entirely out of the living room. I think I'll wait on tackling the kitchen or bathroom until she gets here, and I should probably wait on painting until the new doors get put in.
But something tells me I'll go paint shopping today anyway.
Thursday, fifteenth week after Pentecost
I discovered last night that I get great wireless connectivity out on the back porch, but that does me no good when it's pouring rain. I suppose I should be glad I got everything moved yesterday when it was dry. At this point, both the big bedroom and the closet are swept out, removed of cobwebs, nails, and other unwanted wall fixtures, and scrubbed down within reason. The lil' bedroom and living room need the same treatment, the kitchen needs a rather more thourough cleaning (for reasons both of health and of having so many shelves), and the bathroom and back porch are just filthy. The front porch has a bunch of stuff on it, but as it's also the back porch of our neighbor, I'll leave it alone for now.
Eric, our superhip landlord, has agreed to fix the existing doors, put doors between the bedrooms and between the lil' bedroom and kitchen, and take a look at why the tub seems to leak. Other than that, and needing a coat of paint, the apartment looks great, but it does have a few problems I only recently noticed: I knew the floor was uneven in the kitchen and bathroom, but I didn't look at it in the bedrooms. It turns out to be, yes, uneven, causing my bed to slant to the side and wobble, which drove me crazy at first. Then I broke the bed. Not permanently -the midbar just twisted and the slats fell out- but it was annoying. I spent the rest of the night trying to lie very still. In the morning I set out to replace burnt-out light bulbs, and discovered that a few of the light fixtures just don't work. One of the sockets in lil' bedroom, the entire kitchen fixture, and (unless it's controlled from within the front apartment, which seems silly) the front porch light. The former tenants seemed to be aware of this, as they left a helpful lamp plugged in next to the kitchen stove. A number of electrical outlets seem to be duds as well.
I hope I don't sound too down on this place; I love it, I really do. It's crazy cheap, and there's some degree of "you get what you pay for", but on the whole it's a great find: a big backyard we can garden in, modest but not cramped rooms, walls we can paint, beautiful (if worn and crooked) hardwood floors, good water pressure, fantastic air circulation, within walking distance of chinatown and pilsen, within blocks of the orange line, the halsted bus, all-night convenience stores, a produce market, a thrift store, a cool coffeehouse, and a couple nice looking take-out places. Now I just need to find a place to do laundry. Maybe I can wash it myself in the bathtub or something.
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
"If grave-robbing is a crime, then yes I am guilty, but only of disagreeing with a society that hates tap-dancing reanimated monsters!" -Penguin, 08/20/2008
So I made another pie today. I mean, I made the same pie again, but everytime I do it seems a little bit better. It was well-received. In fact, I now have place to live for September and an in on a possible job that doesn't involve selling out. Don't you like not selling out? Working for money is for fools. Fools and liberals.
Maybe it's the familiar jokes, maybe it's the pixellated blush effect, (maybe it's the fact that I just watched Wall-E and everything seems cute right now,) but I find this strip adorable. Maybe I should get a[nother] black T-shirt and hit on girls with dreads.
To continue on to yet another unrelated thing, I finally got my grubby little pseudopods on the retail version of Stay Positive, and I've been listening to the bonus tracks. I gotta say, "Slapped Actress" was a strong way to end the album, and these three songs would be far better off in the middle. After looking forward so hard to "Ask Her for some Adderall", it was kind of... disappointing. It lacks the energy of the live version, and without it, the instrumentation seems a lot more repetitive, even boring. There's also a couple weird bridges that weren't there before? It's still a rockin' song though, and if I'm not perfectly satisfied with it, then I'm at least happy to have it around. Of the other two tracks, the second I found lacklustre in the same slow, dreamy way as a couple of the other songs dragging this album down. But the final bonus track, "Two Handed Handshake", surprised me. After one listen, I thought, "I like this." After two, it was bumped up to constant rotation on iTunes. After three, it was five stars and I was hooked. A cautionary song about the modern modes of life, it makes me feel a little guilty everytime I hear it. Totally just what I need, right. But it speaks to me. Sings to me. Whatever. So.
Despite my initial soggy review of the album, it did grow on me, a lot, even the sad slow boring songs. It's not the album to buy if you want to learn to love the Hold Steady (that's still Separation Sunday), but it's probably about as good as Boys and Girls in America overall, if you get the retail version with the bonus tracks.
When did I start reviewing albums? I gotta keep things like this in check.
Wednesday (Feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux)
Saint Bernard was the patron of the Knights Templar, apparently. And possibly of dogs with tiny kegs of brandy? That might have been a different Saint Bernard; there were like five of them.
In other wonderful facts, I just learned that avocados have as wide a range of proteins as an egg, and were a favorite food of dinosaurs. Also you can call them alligator pears, because they're called that, just like you can call a mountain lion a cougar or, if you really want to pump it up, a puma. Bonus points for the British pronunciation. I kind of want to have an avocado party now, but everyone would just bring guacamole. That would be distressing.
I finally had dream that was not stressful and tedious, and I was so excited by this that I immediately went back to sleep.
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Officially sick of the season after Pentecost, and Advent is still nowhere in sight. Sigh.
So the problem with having recurrent dreams and dreams about technology is that, if you should go a couple months between the dreams, you end up spending half your time dreaming about trying to look up how something works in a manual, and you still can't save your android friend the third time around.
In more lucid news, the pie came out great. I was worried, since I haven't made it in a year and a half, but it was just about perfect. Nancy and Alexis came over, we watched some Olympic swimming events, and played "Let's see how fast Wikipedia gets updated." Usain Bolt was fast, but Wikipedia editors were faster.
And now it's pie for breakfast. I love this part.
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