Sic Itur Ad Astra

I know you've been holding your breath!

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:07:23 GMT

Regarding the Engadget Mystery Box - I'm still sitting on a post about it; however, because the world stopped caring about Iran all of a sudden, as well as the fact that I had swine flu or something half of last week, as well as etc. etc. etc. bawww, I have not finished said post yet and have not set up an ebay auction and still don't know where to donate the eventual ebay proceeds.

Instead, have a boring life update! mumbly_joe is in town, so me and arctangent and alexpshenichkin hung out this weeekend and watched the good two Terminator movies (hint: not the recent two) and had a private cookout by the pool outside our building. We ran late and the public cookout wrapped up before we could get our butts in gear, so we asked nicely and they said we could use the grill ourselves. Yay! I have consumed more meat in the past three days than in the past approx. three months combined. Mmmmmm. We went to Alex's place Saturday night to watch the fireworks on TV with chocolate ice cream and $5 white zinfandel. It was all very decadent and celebratory.

Friday night I suddenly developed severe insomnia and stayed up all night furiously checking things off my to-do list. Then I ran out of things to do that wouldn't wake Arthur up, so I wrote 800 words of a brand-new story, which felt like winning a gold medal at the Finally Writing Shit Again Olympics. This could end up the world's crappiest story, but if I finish it it will represent my first finished new original work in approximately three years. The style's simplistic and sort of choppy, but I was afraid I wouldn't even remember how to write anymore, so having to cast around for a style again is the least of my freakin' worries.

Yesterday the aforementioned folks plus appending_doom gamed like gaming things while I had a quiet afternoon/evening "at home". I had intended to work on the story some more, and write the unboxing post of awesome, but instead I spent an hour and a half disassembling the clothes dryer with my landlord to figure out where the horrible burning stink was coming from (answer: disintegrating drum belt) and discover that this is the entirely wrong kind of dryer to use in a condo anyway. The landlords inherited it with the unit and never gave it a second glance until that moment; because they are awesome, they immediately went out and ordered a brand spanking new ventless dryer...which won't arrive for two weeks. Busting out the drying rack. Upshot: once we have a functioning dryer again, the apartment will no longer turn into either a sauna or a rubber plant every time I run a load.

Anyway, that took quite a while, and then the entire kitchen was coated in dust bunnies so I had to clean, and then I realized we wouldn't have time to go to the grocery store for a few days so I'd better get a trip in now, and why not add a stop at CVS and my last trip to BJ's before my trial membership expires, and then I got home at 9 PM and was too tired to do anything, so I read Asimov's for a while and fell asleep.

All in all, a very nice accidental five-day weekend that turned out to be a rare combination of productive and relaxing, spent in the company of friends. mumbly_joe isn't going home until tomorrow, so there will be more hanging out of some kind tonight, though I may fall over and die due to the sudden sleep readjustment after a long holiday.

Engadget Mystery Box came today

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:33:09 GMT

But it is still on our floor unopened, because I am moderate-to-deathly ill with what is probably flu of some kind, so unboxing hilarity will have to come later, perhaps this evening. The duct tape was a nice touch.

Pathetic nobody makes meaningless gesture; news at 11

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:41:41 GMT

The situation:

An arty dude I fanstalk on LJ and elsewhere (but I KNOW doesn't watch me, so I'm not naming him here) posted a tweet early this afternoon, bitching about how turning your icon green to "support democracy in Iran" and then doing nothing is like hipsters wearing Che Guevara shirts and essentially we should all go to hell for being poser jerks. I was in a pissy mood and have watched some internet acquaintances go to great lengths to do whatever they can from thousands of miles away in the past few days, so I started a reply that was going to quite reasonably tell him he was being a dick and not everyone on the internet is a sucking soulless vacuum of memery, all in 140 characters of eloquence and reason.

But - and you can probably tell where this is going - what I sent him was not, in the end, terribly reasoned or eloquent, and he shot back something that really got my ire up, and so pretty soon we were having our own adorable miniature flamewar which ended in me telling him to, in short, diafplskthx, and him deleting his half of the conversation in disgust.

The thing is, I've watched this guy for probably two years and I really do admire him. I've bought art from him and laughed at his jokes and nodded at his wisdom. I know he's going through some hard times right now, and was probably in a really shitty mood when he made that post, and probably regrets being such a dick now, as do I. I thought about sending an apology through another channel but worried it would sound too stalkery.

The gist of his argument was that if we American Twitterati are really committed to helping out with the revolution-in-the-making half a world away, we should be writing the Iranian Embassy, going to protests, donating money to human rights groups - y'know, not just turning our icons green in one click with a Twidget. The gist of my argument was that some or many of us really do give a shit but don't have a lot of time, energy or money to give, and feel somewhat helpless; we devolved into personal attacks before I could finish my thought, which was that the green icons remind us every time we look at them what is going on, even if we're not news junkies, and keep it constantly in our thoughts, and that is absolutely better than the nothing that the vast majority of the American public is going to do.

I walked away angry and frustrated, because I do want to help, I do want to make a difference, but any heartfelt sentiment I could have offered in that conversation would have been rejected outright due to his general unreceptiveness at the moment and the fact that we'd been sniping at each other for 15 minutes.

So:

About 20 minutes later, I got an email from Engadget saying I'd won their Monday giveaway. I barely remember entering yesterday - entering every random-ass sweepstakes and contest I come across has become second nature - so it was that much more of a surprise. The prize: an "insane grab-bag of stuff". That's it. I don't know what the stuff is, or even really have any idea what it could be. But they're mailing it sometime this week and I'm getting an awesome surprise present in the mail.

It doesn't take a genius to make the connection. I decided then and there to take something from the mystery grab bag of awesome and Auction It For Iranian Democracy, and dedicate it to the unnamed gentleman who so ground my gears this afternoon.

More news when I actually get the package. Human rights group suggestions for the eventual donation would be appreciated.

Alive

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:03:21 GMT

We were driving to the store to buy a bike lock (they only had one) when three fire trucks in a row came screaming past on Van Dorn. This was our first indication that there was a serious train crash on the Red Line this evening. I don't know what's going to come out of this but my best guess is the second train operator had a stroke or something. She's one of the confirmed fatalities so we may never know.

Today we were sent home from work around lunch due to a major power outage in our building. I am sort of curious how many of my coworkers take the Red Line home*, and how many of them might have been on one of those trains had our workday proceeded normally. I was glad of the extra relax-time, and was going to write a long LJ post catching up on the past few weeks, but now I'm just tired. My heart goes out to everyone involved.

*EDIT: Turns out it was the inbound rather than the outbound, so trains were much less crowded than might have been the case.

Other bike's gone.

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:02:05 GMT

I am somewhat philosophical at this point. I figured we could put off buying it a lock until after my parents' visit this weekend, because I was too exhausted to go anywhere every evening last week and the bike was unrideable, its tires completely flat. Apparently I was wrong. I don't know how far you can get on a bike with two flats, and it's entirely possible that it will turn up in a ditch down the road, but I'm assuming someone has to have driven up and physically placed it in a vehicle under the cover of night.

If nothing else this may make the manager of the building, who promised to review the tapes last week when Bike #1 vanished and hasn't contacted us since, sit up and pay attention. I'm assuming we'll never see either bike again, but perhaps they'll angle one of the security cameras to take in the rack as well so there's no longer a blind spot, and whatever we manage to scrounge up in replacement will be safer as a result. Perhaps we'll be compensated, which would be great. I still haven't looked into renter's insurance claims, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to go after every avenue of compensation possible.

We went to the bike store today and bought Arthur a helmet, then made a hasty trip across Duke to go look at an old men's Ross posted to Freecycle. It's rather antique-looking and is finished an electric blue, but I rode it around a little and I think all it needs is a tune-up (grease, tires, brakes) to be perfectly functional for recreational use. Now I just need to find something with two wheels and a gearshift. Shouldn't be too much trouble.

At least I had the foresight to take my nice biking gloves out of the saddlebag. I figured nobody would be dumb enough to try to ride the thing away but they might steal the bag. What the fuck.

update update yarp

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:15:52 GMT

I can't remember what I've noted here and what I haven't, so have a blogblob.

EDIT: Manager is having someone look at the security tapes for the parking lot, so maybe we can pinpoint when the bike was stolen. I am much less angry and more philosophical about the incident today, since we had invested no money in the bike as of yet, it had no nostalgic value, and there is the possibility of either a renter's insurance claim or a "sorry you got jacked on our property" reimbursement from the condo management itself to help offset the cost of a newer, better bike for Arthur.

Saw Brian Posehn do standup at the DC Improv weeks and weeks ago with Alex and Arthur. He was quite funny. It's interesting to see people in person that one has only known through the TV screen (/obvious). We got there early and got a table right up next to the stage so he was RIGHT THERE. Um. Tall. Lots of dorky jokes about D&D, sex, farts, etc. A+++ would lol again.

Saw Up with Alex, ~~Arthur~~ George H (forgot George was there whoops) & Andrew more recently - missed the first 15 minutes or so, and thus might have not received the full emotional impact, but I liked it a lot. The characters were definitely stronger than the plot, which is not always a bad thing.

gerbilicious85 was here for a week. I did not go crazy. Arthur took care of being the entertaining host and let me be antisocial, which I was. (Things were rocky at work and I was stressed to hell, but have stabilized again, I think.) We went to Artomatic for an evening and enjoyed it greatly - Arthur and I may make it back to see the rest before it closes.

Another adoption fair has passed and we still have Cinnamon the Difficult Foster Cat. She has in fact become much less difficult, and is now a delightfully fluffy, nearly-cuddly presence about the apartment. (She won't flop down on your lap, but she'll sit three inches from your leg and purr loudly.) She adjusted extremely well to the move and has claimed the new place as her own. However, I'm convinced that she needs a home where she's not going to smell other cats at all, or the peeing problem might come back. She needs either an open-minded first-time owner or an experienced and patient person who only wants one cat. Both of these are hard to come by, so we might have her for quite a while. :/

Saw Hot Fuzz most recently with many folks. It was great. I'm not terribly familiar with cop films but I got enough of it to be highly amused.

My family is coming to visit this weekend, and bringing extra furniture (rugs, chairs, etc.), which will initiate more reorganizing in the nearly-organized apartment. I don't know why moving was so much more stressful this year than last, but here's hoping the trend doesn't continue. I'm down to just a big pile of odds and ends in the middle of the floor, most of which I hope to sort and put away this evening. Then we will be Done, at least for a little while, and ready to move on to other important things, like car maintenance, furniture repair, and bicycle shopping.

I'll admit it's hard for me to post simple banal life updates while people are rioting and being shot at in Iran. The many Twitter feeds bring the fear and the anger and the precariousness of life and politics out into the wider world, even as the mainstream media has been slow to catch on. This is bottom-up organization at its finest, and there were over a million people marching before the gunfire started. Here in my comfortable desk job, it's hard to find the relevance of my life.

Yet, I suppose there is always gunfire somewhere, and in our hyper-connected future I will always hear it, and the task becomes merely to choose my battles (literally) and avoid mutating into the kind of news junkie who reads and watches and types but never does anything.

Hackers around the world are pounding the shit out of the Iranian government websites. I don't know what they expect to accomplish, but I can't help but cheer them on.

WELL FUCKING A

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:23:55 GMT

Someone stole Arthur's bike.

It wasn't really Arthur's bike yet. It was going to be Arthur's bike, once we got that one and mine fixed up from their 2+ years of disuse, this weekend or next. They're both beat-up and a little sad-looking, and I figured that if the dusty-looking old bikes on the rest of the rack weren't locked, ours didn't need to be, either, since bike locks weren't really in the budget. I guess I was wrong.

Someone either pulled mine off its hook or just shoved it aside, finding its two flat tires unrideable, and lifted Arthur's down. They did this with impunity, because the hook rack is a mysterious security-camera blind spot. This happened sometime in the past 24 hours, because I check that the bikes are there every time I enter and leave the parking lot. The pimply bastard at the security desk appeared deeply unmoved by our problem, and joked when I said I didn't think anyone would steal our crappy old bikes that "it beats walking". Ha-ha, asshole. What if someone stole your smarmy grin? How would you survive?

So the price of going biking with my boyfriend just doubled, at least, because now I'm buying two bike locks and a new bicycle on top of the helmet for him and tune-up for me. Which, well, motherfucking fuck.

Why can't this bullshit happen to someone who can afford it?

Weekend: Accomplished (though three days was too short, send time machine pls)

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:15:25 GMT

Arthur made it to Philly and back in one piece on the Chinatown bus, and by all accounts it was a very nice graduation. The notoriety of the transport method is well-earned, though - he got back so late yesterday that the planned evening Up viewing was postponed to next weekend. (Birthday excursion, alexpshenichkin?) He said one of the famous and accomplished alumni speakers described himself as a really shitty student and another said she graduated swearing never to return to that campus, so I guess there's hope for me yet.

I muddled through the weekend with a great deal of napping and even more unpacking which seems to have STILL barely made a dent in the living room. There was a brief excursion to a friend's housewarming (huge townhouse, I'm jealous! (srsly their basement is almost the size of my apartment)), where we watched Howl's Moving Castle and I was subjected to (and successfully resisted) fiendish peer pressure to buy what looked to me like more fetish than steampunk gear off the internet. (You steampunk people are all EEEEEVIL with your awesome clothes that also cost money.) If I someday own a corset it will be all their fault. NOT in the budget right now.

Today: I fail at brain, work is correspondingly slow. Tonight I will go home and mindlessly unpack and organize until there is no more unpacking or organizing to do.

Carside to Go + making your own fun

Sat, 30 May 2009 04:52:23 GMT

Me: What kind of wine goes best with a "quesadilla burger"?
Arthur: I would think a wine that is not very expensive.
Me: AWESOME.

Also, I stacked a coupon with a gift card I got with "points" from my newspaper subscription such that our $21 meal was actually $6. We are so wild and crazy it's mind-blowing. :D

Moving is officially done, because we got up this morning, cleaned the living crap out of the apartment, passed our inspection with flying colors, and turned in the keys. Arthur is busing up to Philly for Swat graduation tomorrow - I would like to come as well, but I don't have the energy after the moving hell that has been the past week. We came home from the inspection and I immediately took a several-hour nap, which I'm about to follow with a several-more-hour night's sleep. Goodnight!

EDIT: Okay wait I had to come back and show you this. It's like that "Tribute" video we made in college except it's by guys, it's a rap, and it's about the joys of conservatism (so okay, really all they have in common is the incredibly low production values - and ours was made in 2005, so I don't know what their excuse is. Maybe they're shooting on a cell phone?). Srsly, watch it, it's so full of fail it wraps all the way around into win. If this doesn't end up on the Daily Show there is something wrong with the world.

Images (collected)

Wed, 27 May 2009 17:31:07 GMT

Down syndrome four-year-old having a meltdown in the middle of a sidewalk. Blonde southern-accented mom trying to talk her down. She looks exhausted and fed up. I wish her well, and hope she's not regretting her choice. I don't think I could purposely choose to raise a severely disabled child, not when I have my own issues to deal with. If I thought fibromyalgia was inescapable I wouldn't pass my genes on at all.

Three feral cats crossing the apartment parking lot in broad daylight like they own the place - the slight, solid-black female I've become acquainted with over the months, plus two larger males who must be her sons or her suitors. She leads, they follow. One male is gray with irreglar white socks and a splash of white across his face; the other is a tabby, also with white socks. The tabby's tail has been almost entirely amputated; there is only the barest of furry stumps where it should be. It doesn't seem to bother him. They walk with utmost confidence until I call out to them in my cat-voice; then they suddenly metamorphose into skulking wild animals who melt away under a parked car.

Man in full-body camouflage blasting down the sidewalk on a Segway, probably its top speed. He is leaning awkwardly over the handlebars, trying to light a cigarette. If he lets go the Segway will stop. The wind of his passage is blowing out the lighter, again and again. He is not looking where he's going and nearly runs over a man coming out of (inevitably) a Starbucks. Thank you, Segway, for inventing an entirely new class of dangerous driving, and thank you, America, for hurting my brain.

Waking up on my first day of work in the new apartment, and outside it's raining sideways, trees tossing wildly. The view gives me little surges of glee every time I notice it. The old place was on the second floor, looking out on...some bushes. And a major road, a hundred yards from the Beltway. An entire wing of balconies could peer in through my window. The new place is only on the fourth floor, but the entire building is set on a hill, such that the nearest neighbors are distant points of light surrounded by trees. The sense of space is amazing, and possibly a major part of the reason I sat down and wrote for two hours Monday morning.

Er, anybody want to buy a 9,000-word romance involving a 10,000-year-old giant robot and a gengineered product of deep-time space colonization? Loosely based on Beauty & the Beast such that it starts fantasy and ends science fiction? Now it is time to shop it to magazines with a cheery READ MY BRICK PLS cover letter.

Yeah, I'm ril gud at writing sellable stories. >.>

Mov'd

Sun, 24 May 2009 03:38:53 GMT

90% of life moved to awesome condo of awesome. By coincidence, there was a kicking-off-the-summer-type poolside cookout dinner tonight. Continuing my so-far-100%-right theory that I can't go anywhere without immediately tripping over SWIL, the first nice older couple we started talking to (and spent most of the party hanging out with) turned out to be huge dorks. Topics of conversation included, but were not limited to: NASA, space meorabilia, science fiction fandom, book collecting, pocket universes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thunderbirds, Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa, 80s television shows in general, knitting, bike trails, alcohol is bad, etc. etc. etc. Someone else heard me mention that we'd just moved in an hour before and yelled "So how do you like your welcoming party?"

Me: "It's great! You folks do this every day?"
Him: "Only when you guys show up!"

It was actually kind of awesome to, y'know, socialize with my neighbors. It's the kind of thing I never managed to accomplish at the old place, no matter how hard I tried. We were the youngest adults at the party, which probably gives a good indication of the demographics of the building - smattering of kids from toddler to ten, one teenage lifeguard, bunch of late-20s early-30s types and at least 50% of attendees with gray hair (plus some more who were obviously dyeing, among...other things...Lord, those short shorts cannot be unseen).

The last couple days have been kind of a blur. We spent all of Thursday night through Friday night packing, with one excursion to buy cleaning supplies, during which we stopped for gas and I tried really hard to pretend I wasn't avidly watching the two-bit drug deal going down in the McDonald's parking lot next door. Body language is such an interesting thing.

[Also protip: don't bring your already-high and/or borderline retarded friend to the buy, because she will yell something hilariously inappropriate from over by the gas station vending machine like "Did you get it? Where is it?".]

I think that's the second one I've seen in my life, the first being that time we parked behind that furniture store next to the movie theater in Bethesda (thought that was a number of guys standing shiftily around a car trunk, so it could've been anything illegal), which I suppose means I am both an intensely privileged and intensely boring person.

Packing. I tried to avoid turning the packing into one 36-hour extravaganza right before the move, but it happened anyway. This means the move was more trash-bag-oriented than I would have liked, but so far we've only had one major ripping problem. The UHaul depot, a creepy seedy dump backed hard against the Beltway, was staffed by astonishingly kind and friendly older men. The hired brawn showed up a little late but stuck around almost 45 minutes extra to finish the unloading, even though they had another job to get to, which was very nice of them. Tipped accordingly. The new apartment is full of bags and boxes and furniture askew. The old apartment is full of dust, the remaining odd thing-that-needs-to-be-moved (suit jackets, fridge contents, hamster, all my plants) and my feet are double balls of agony right now, so I believe I will go to bed.

I am a leaf on the wind.

Tue, 19 May 2009 17:34:14 GMT

In karate we "meditate" for about a minute before and after class; I love the ceremony of it, even if I can only tolerate so much spirituality in my continuing ass-kicking education. I don't know why, but my mind blanks immediately, no matter how stressed or tired I am. I concentrate on my breathing, drawing the air in through my nose and letting it form a Broadway-belting column on its way out - the eyerollingly-named but deeply important Dragon's Breath. It is something I can do quietly at work, when I am frustrated beyond belief by another paperwork snag. It is something I can do quietly on the train, letting the day's stupidity slip away, knowing I will soon be home in the arms of my love. I am coming to new realizations every day, new little discoveries. I am "growing as a person", or regenerating, as the case may be. This time last year I was lost without my cane.

I'm reading astronaut tweets from orbit and dreaming with an urgency I thought I'd lost forever. The compass just below my sternum was knocked spinning when I got sick, and swung wildly through swaths of possible futures for over two years; but it has once again settled true, and it points into the deepest, darkest part of the forest, full of brambles and bandits and pitfalls, and I can do nothing but ready my senses and my fists and wade in swinging.

For this day, this moment, this cusp of bated breath, I am at peace with life.

Dreams

Wed, 06 May 2009 04:14:42 GMT

Two nights ago: I lived in some kind of small town. There was going to be a job fair. My brain decided to interpret this literally as a cross between a fair-fair and a cat adoption fair, where people go to shop for their rescued pet if they don't have the stomach for the shelter. It was a big outdoor event, at which dozens of besuited hopeful-looking people sat at card tables with neat stacks of CVs, waiting for employers to wander by. Many people, including dream-me, went just because they were curious. One of these non-employers might approach a table, curious as to what the occupant did, but the looks of warring hope and desperation on the unemployed's faces drove everyone quickly away to the games and turkey-leg stands. I played a few carnival games and bought some chicken on a stick, but it was impossible to forget why everyone was here, or fail to notice the bubble of Sargasso calm around the tables, and so eventually I just went home, feeling terribly guilty that I couldn't offer anyone a job.

Last night: I lived on a dreary, nearly-barren rectangular island at the edge of an archipelago of similar islands, laid out in a grid pattern, all in the middle of a dark, putrid sea. We all fished, with lines over the side or spears in the caves beneath our feet; some of the islands near the center of the cluster had trees and grass and other vegetation, and they were where all the powerful people lived. In my dream, over the course of several weeks, I crafted an intricate necklace from fishbones and the colorful scraps of plastic that the sea flung onto my island, then swam to the center of the archipelago to make a pre-arranged trade. I had no bag or pockets, so I swam back to my island with my payment in my mouth. As soon as I crawled back onto my habitual fishing perch, I carefully spat my prizes into my cupped hands and counted them to make sure I hadn't swallowed any; then I clutched them to my chest, filled with elation. They were a handful of melon seeds, and they were my ticket to a better life.

For consideration: I totally stole "for consideration" from crisper. But also: Looks like I've finally internalized the gloom'n'doom!

You know you're a city dweller when...

Tue, 05 May 2009 03:53:38 GMT

While I was reading the paper and waiting for the train today, this panhandler came up and started giving me this long spiel about how he needed $2.60 to get to his friend's for some reason (he had a speech problem or something so he wasn't terribly understandable). I took too long thinking about it (I'm carrying $2 and I need it for exit fare because I forgot my stupid Smartcard on my desk this morning...if I give him some nickels and pennies will it make him go away faster, or will he just be pissed at getting such a small return on investment?) which apparently encouraged him, because he kept coming up with more and more reasons why he needed $2.60. After about 20 seconds I said "Sorry...can't help you," and turned back to my paper.

Usually they accept this and leave, but I guess I'd accidentally gotten his hopes up, and so instead he started berating me about being a lying lie-face liar. I told him calmly I had two dollars that I needed for exit fare and he could go straight to hell. The people around us edged away. Finally he wandered off, muttering about what is the world coming to, liars, etc. I turned back to my paper. When I first moved here, this might have bothered me, but instead I forgot completely about the incident until just now.

I'll be a real city-dweller when I can keep reading the paper like he's not there; but I always look up, in case it really is someone in need. I'm pretty sure panhandling inside the Metro station is illegal no matter what.

Then, coming home from karate tonight, I was nearly sideswiped by this skinhead asshole in a red sporty number doing about twice the speed limit and weaving through traffic. I watched him slow when he saw there was a red light ahead, then turn into the side road to Huntington to bypass it. This also had a red light, but ah-ha! He was tricky. He turned into the parking lot next to the road in order to bypass THAT light, too. Except that that light turned green as soon as he made the turn, so he suddenly swerved around and tried to get back into the lane that was now full of cars not being driven by assholes, including me. He started to pull out like he was going to try to cut me off, but I was already practically on top of him and would have hit him if he hadn't stopped. I slammed on my brakes, then leaned on the horn and gave him the finger as I drove by, zipping through the yellow light. He ran the red and tailgated me by inches for about a hundred feet, honking like a douchebag, and I thought it would be hilarious if he actually rear-ended me and I jumped out in my karate uniform. But instead I turned into my apartment building and he blew past like his ass was on fire. He did it to himself, really, but I'm glad I got to be the instrument of karmic justice.

In other news, I totally learned a brown-belt form in karate tonight! It was awesome. My regular instructor was out so I had the substitute guy. He was all like "Don't tell anybody I taught you this!" So I'm telling the entire internet. I can't actually use it in class, though. I'll miss this dojo - I'm switching to another one that just opened this winter and is much closer to where I'll be living for the next year. They're the same franchise and all group classes are open to students of any one of the three dojos in the area, so I might come back and visit sometimes if I can haul my ass out of bed on a Saturday.

EDIT: Monday night I dreamed that I was still in class, practicing the move over and over again, and getting pointers from my dream-instructor. He gave the kind of tips I know he would have given in person. I'm not obsessed with karate, I swear.

Closing a tab, and a list.

Sun, 03 May 2009 05:18:24 GMT

This entire thread is still the best thing to come out of Livejournal, ever. If I can someday have an art battle somewhat approaching this in awesome, I will die happy.

I was taking stock of my worldly possessions for moving reasons and it occurred to me that I've accumulated a lot of cruft for hobbyist purposes, some hobbies in which I have lost all interest or motivation. I figured I should make a list of it here, in public, to help motivate me to either start things or admit it's never going to happen and give the components away.

----------------------

THINGS: Working Mac Classic and working Mac Color Classic, with one working set of peripherals between them (power cord, keyboard, mouse)

PROJECT: Both of these were abandoned by people at Swat, and I took them in because a) they fill me with nostalgia for my childhood, and b) I thought it would be awesome to refurbish them, fill their tiny brains with old Mac games, and give them away again as presents or sell them to collectors. I never got very far with this idea, for reasons that should be obvious - their original brains are actually so small that you can't fill them with anything - that's what the floppy drive's for, after all - and I don't have the money or the know-how to rip out their pristine old hardware and cram them with modern components.

VERDICT: ABANDON. Fuckers are HEAVY and I'm tired of schlepping them around. I'm never going to get around to using them for anything. If anyone has a cool idea for a project with these, or just wants one for the same nostalgic reasons I originally got them, comment and we can figure out how to get them to you. Otherwise I'll make an offering to Freecycle.

---------------------

THINGS: Derringer the laptop.

PROJECT: I got Peacemaker, my current laptop, because the motherboard on Derringer stopped charging its battery and getting increasingly unreliable. I eventually ordered another motherboard and performed laptop brain surgery, but I think in the process I may have dropped the hard drive or messed up something else I'm not even aware of, and now it won't boot even with the old motherboard back in. So now it's sitting on my bookshelf, useless, because I don't have a professional repairperson's diagnostic tools.

VERDICT: KEEP. For now. I'd really like to have a backup computer in case Peacemaker starts to go - the USB ports are already acting up on occasion - but I may have to bring in a professional for this one. I'll just get right on that budget, shall I?

---------------------

THINGS: A broken plate, a beat-up old cutting board, some other broken glass and junk

PROJECT: I'm still excited about this one and recently acquired the next-to-last things I need to complete it, with an eye toward joining Artomatic this year. Didn't happen - I don't really have anything to exhibit that would have been ready in time. High hopes for next year. Meanwhile, I'm keeping an eye out for the final components.

VERDICT: KEEP. Hanging onto all the bits for now. It's not terribly often that I get an extremely specific sculpture idea that follows me around for months.

---------------------

THINGS: A box of drawing implements and like five sketchbooks of varying sizes. Also a Wacom tablet, wtf. Also a drafting table.

PROJECT: Ongoing art efforts. I say "ongoing" in spite of the fact that my very ability to draw seems to have atrophied after I got sick, possibly from literal muscle loss. It's only in the past few months that I've really begun to feel like myself again (thanks, karate!) and I'm slowly trying to get back into comics-y things. That said, I'm not allowing myself to buy/collect any more pencils or markers or sketchbooks until I actually run out of them. The drafting table's a recent Freecycle acquisition and doubles as an extra desk since it's lame for me and Arthur to share the one I have.

VERDICT: KEEP. They've sat around for a long time but I'm making a good-faith effort to get back into the swing of things. I guess if I need some quick cash at some point I might sell the tablet with an eye toward buying a better one when I'm more committed and well-heeled. But I'll hang onto it for now. The drafting table is useful as a desk if nothing else.

--------------------

THINGS: Several dozen t-shirts + a quilting mat, rotary cutter and large ruler.

PROJECT: I've been collecting t-shirts since I was in high school. Some of them, especially the funny thrift-store ones I sleep in, are in varying stages of decay and can't really be worn in polite company or repaired easily. Others I barely ever wear anymore but cling to for nostalgic reasons. My eventual solution for this is simple: Make a t-shirt quilt. I got the quilting supplies off of Freecycle, and once the moving hoopla dies down I'd like to make a go of getting some iron-on backing and making a few squares by hand. If this proves too annoying I'll try to get my parents to let me borrow their sewing machine.

VERDICT: KEEP. I haven't ignored this project long enough to become discouraged about it yet. And it really does solve the space/guilt problem of dozens of t-shirts I never freaking wear but can't bear to give away. And at the end I get a memory quilt I made myself. Win-win.

--------------------

THINGS: An under-the-bed storage bin full of odds & ends, mostly plastic, some metal and wood. Also a broken DVD player I found somewhere that I intend to break down into more odds & ends.

PROJECT: I have this long-held dream of creating little robot sculptures out of junk. Before that it was really awesome technophilic Halloween costumes. The last year I dressed up for Halloween I went as a Borg, with a styrofoam arm-encasement thing that had a toggle I could secretly press to make the end spin like a Borg's arm-stabby-drill-thing. It was truly a glory of engineering, and it wouldn't have happened if a bunch of random crap I'd been collecting for a year hadn't suddenly come together in a flash of inspiration (and a lot of hot-glue and black spraypaint) over the course of the previous month. So I collect bits of things.

VERDICT: KEEP. This is probably the oldest physical hobby-project I have, and if it hasn't let go by now it's probably never going to. But I should break down the DVD player before the move so I can chuck the case.

--------------------

THINGS: An older-model electronic keyboard/synthesizer with stand and a regular hammered dulcimer.

PROJECT: I still like making music on occasion.

VERDICT: KEEP. There isn't really much to it. They don't take up enough space to annoy me, they're not difficult to move, and I like having them around.

-------------------

THINGS: Single-piece molded aluminum chair I picked up off a curb while on an unrelated Freecycle run.

PROJECT: I want to paint it. I have a fairly specific idea of how this should work, but I lost all my momentum when I started looking up how to actually sand, prime and paint the thing. It's a lot of specialized chemicals and equipment I can't really afford or store right now, and I don't have a well-ventilated artist's studio with which to create my great work, so meanwhile, it's a chair.

VERDICT: KEEP. It's a good chair.

-------------------

THINGS: A pair of knitting needles and a small quantity of yarn.

PROJECT: I keep swearing up and down I'm going to learn to knit someday, or learn well enough that I remember how a week later. Make a few things. It seems like a good skill to have. I even got a really simple pictorial book about knitting out of a bargain bin somewhere.

VERDICT: KEEP, with reservations. I may still dump it on one of my knitting friends at some point. There's not a lot there, but I know how knitters collect yarn.

-------------------

So, I guess that's a KEEP (for now) on everything but the computers. Anyone want a functioning Mac Classic and Mac Color Classic?

Urgh. I have too much stuff. There isn't a whole lot I want to get rid of, but I have to actually advance some of these projects before I get hooked on any new hobby-things. Or, I guess, take stock again next year and give away more stuff if I'm never going to get around to it.

Blah.

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:40:44 GMT

I've had a rocky past couple of weeks. Work has been frustrating and depressing in the most mindless and bureaucratic manner possible, which drives me to anxiety for no reason. Additionally, about a week and a half ago I developed a never-identified medical problem with my throat that did not interfere with speaking or breathing but made everything to do with eating kind of awful. My hunger reflex practically disappeared and swallowing was acutely painful.

I was so positive I had strep throat that I went to the local MinuteClinic for confirmation, only to learn that my health insurer is in the middle of some kind of contract dispute with them, meaning that I am effectively a second-class citizen to every clinic in Northern Virginia. My choices were to drive to Maryland (it was after work, everybody was about to close), gamble on my primary-care provider having an opening soon (remember when, due to searing back pain, I thought I had a kidney infection? Yeah, they sure did a great job of fitting me in for what might have been a life-threatening illness) - or bite the bullet and give them a hundred dollars. I chose the latter, hoping at least for prompt treatment, only for both the five-minute and overnight strep tests to come back negative. Great.

I never did call my primary care provider, since it never got worse and I was too disorganized/exhausted to schedule an appointment for what apparently was not the urgent illness I thought it was. I'm now convinced that what I actually had was a canker sore right on my uvula.

Lesson: Both MinuteClinic and Blue Cross Blue Shield can blow me. I could really have used that hundred dollars. The pain's finally gone, and last night my hunger reflex came screaming back from a week and a half of involuntary starvation dieting, so I'm finally feeling like myself again, just in time to panic about the fact that I'm moving in a little over three weeks and haven't even hired a truck yet.

Last weekend I took Cinnamon to another adoption fair. I'm sure that even with her multiple issues she'll find a home soon, as soon as she STOPS PEEING ALL OVER MY CLOTHES. B (the foster group head) was kind enough to give me a plug-in Feliway diffuser. This seems to make the cat happier, but she's STILL PEEING IN MY LAUNDRY (on the rare occasions that I leave any laundry on the floor these days). Argh. It's a very strange and very specific behavioral problem, and I'm half-convinced she just doesn't like me.* She yells at me to feed her, and she seems to enjoy it when I pet her, but we have not developed what I would call a rapport, possibly because I've been either working or exhausted and don't pay enough attention to her. If she's still doing this in a month I may request that she be moved to another foster home to see if I'm the issue - though if it's a more general anger and frustration at being ripped away from her original home of ten years, this runs the risk of exacerbating the problem.

My longest excursion of the weekend was a trip over to Alex's, where I provided moral support and fashion consultant for his long-overdue wardrobe update (his mom thinks Sears is only for old people, feh) and we watched a bunch of recent South Park and S3 Venture Bros. Also I clipped Mamacita's nails, a process which required both of us to hold her down (one 13-lb cat can produce a surprisingly vigorous amount of PANIC FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL).

This weekend: MAKE MOVING PLANS ARGH. This should have been done last weekend at the latest but I was too miserable to think past the next hour, much less the next month.

Also, sleep. Also...no, I'm not going to set any more goals, since I'll just spend the whole weekend researching moving options until I'm crazy.

* EDITED TO ADD: This is not as silly as it sounds. She already has a pattern of revenge-evacuation whenever she's placed in a carrier. I have to bring an extra towel to adoption fairs, and until I figured out not to feed her breakfast those days, I had to scrub poop out of the carrier in Petco's bathroom, too. I'm fairly sure it's not panic-crapping or nausea-crapping - she's very careful not to get it on herself. She is an elegant and beautiful lady of high standards and multitudinous opinions, and she does not hesitate to let me know when I'm pissing her off (literally).

"Next time it'll be the sheets, bitch!"

Hey, baby

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:34:08 GMT

Hey, baby
Originally uploaded by Rice Rurouni

Cinnamon is super-fluffy and very pretty. That is all.

Well, okay. I took her to her second adoption fair with me today. She was very unhappy about this. The closest thing to an application she got was a woman who said she'd promised herself that the next cat she adopted was going to be a black cat from a high-kill shelter because she'd read that something like 95% of those get put down....but was obviously very, very taken with the pretty lady here. She said she had to think about it.

Cinnamon's age, minor health issues and leeriness around other cats are major strikes against her, but it seems like she meets at least one person every fair to whom they would not be a problem, so here's hopin'.

Meanwhile, a nice family came in and wanted to adopt a single kitten, but were told that the young kittens have to go in pairs for socialization purposes. I suggested a nice youngish gray male over on the other side of the fair, and by the time they left they were already talking about how long it would take for their application to be approved. :)

All our yesterdays

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:14:36 GMT

Since I spent much of the weekend too exhausted to so much as get up and vacuum, I started going through old LJ entries again to annotate and weigh them against my current and future reputation. Did I swear too much in this entry or that? Not as much as I remember. I have made entries that were angry or upset, but taking the cussing out of them would be neutering the force of emotion behind them. I have edited nothing but the occasional broken link, if a new one is available.

Mostly I'm kind of amazed, going back, to realize the workload under which I was constantly straining as college progressed. Two years out it feels like a nightmare that just happened to leave lasting scars, but ended all the same. I'm trying to work up the nerve to go through junior and senior year. Those wounds are close enough to fresh. I'm still wondering at how I ended up in a position that was so obviously bad for me, but was so trapped in a hell of my own devising that I couldn't even process the fact that this was not normal, this was not how it had to be. I raised my head sometimes, but it was usually to reassure myself that all I had to do was hang on for another little while - halfway through! Three-quarters of the way through! Almost done! - and everything would get better. I bought in so completely that I broke myself trying to live up to the image of the perfect Swattie.

I've bitched about this before. I'll bitch about it again. Two years out, and I'm still angry, and will remain angry for a long time.

In happier news, I've finished reading the first three books in John Scalzi's Old Man's War "trilogy" - minus Zoe's Tale and The Sagan Diary - and I <3 them bunches and can't wait to read everything else associated with this universe. I don't pretend to be a professional reviewer so that's all you're getting out of me. Also: OWN THEM.

The obligatory comment on the teabagging of America

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 03:10:58 GMT

Well, hope you had fun, kids. Because the protests themselves sound like they were the worst combination of stupid, lame, and more revealing of the participants, sponsors and not-so-secret cheerleading squad than fruitful in any political sense. The Washington Post covered our local 'rebellion'. I could describe it, but I think I'll just end with what the journalist himself used, since nothing else sums it up so neatly:

Bunny Monroe, a retired teacher from Fairfax County, said: "I'm really concerned with what's going on with this country. . . . I'm afraid of what's going to be happening. . . . There is no place like this country. . . . I'm afraid that [this] America is not the America that I was born into."

No shit, Sherlock. When you were born all the black kids in your neighborhood (if there were any) went to their own special school with the leaky roof and the 20-year-old textbooks. Women were teachers or librarians or secretaries or housewives. The environmental movement was not even in its infancy, it was a fetus, and many separate and wide-ranging interests were trying to abort it as quickly as possible. The America you were born into was either suffering its biggest economic catastrophe in history, fighting valiantly against a powerful and obvious evil fascist threat, or, if you're on the young side, entering a mini-Golden Age of unsustainable growth and suffocating conformity in which the worst you had to worry about was BEING NUKED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH. But seriously, none of that compares to taking our first hesitant steps out of a national nightmare of Orwellian madness to find A BLACK MAN IN CHARGE OF THE COUNTRY TRYING TO FIX ALL THE DRASTICALLY BROKEN BITS (HINT: MOST OF THEM) AT ONCE USING THE SAME KIND OF DOLLARS THAT PAY YOUR TEACHER'S PENSION.

BE AFRAID, BUNNY. BE VERY AFRAID.

(P.S.)
(10:15:42 PM) Alex: I love how they protest waste by... throwing teabags into thrashcans.
(10:17:34 PM) Alex: Maybe next time we can have rallies in support of traditional marriage.
(10:17:41 PM) Alex: They will consist of man-trains.
(10:17:45 PM) Eliza: XD
(10:19:27 PM) Alex: Hey, it's just like supporting our troops.

Coming down, thoughts, random

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:30:38 GMT

The only cons I can think of to the apartment: the kitchen could stand to have a little more counter and cabinet space, but I doubt it's going to bother us. I was thinking it would be pretty cool to have a balcony this time around, but it's not a major requirement - and it would only mar the lovely view from soon-to-be-our windows. Maybe next year.

The slate floor is going to be cold, but I'll put a rug on it. The landlord said the pool isn't as popular as he thought it would be, which indicates that there aren't a ton of noisy kids around, but we might still get pool noise this summer. I've lived across from a pool for a year, though, and it hasn't bugged me.

So really I can find no glaring flaw that might make me rue my choice; I shall continue to regret nothing. :D

************

Coming home last night, still in a joyous tizzy about the apartment I had just fallen in love with, I stopped at a light behind a little old lady in a tan Civic. She seemed to be doing something with her red-light time, but I couldn't see what it was - until the driver's side window opened and abruptly issued a torrent of soap bubbles.

I wondered if I was hallucinating, but as the bubbles drifted away, the lady reloaded and fired again. I laughed. This was the Best Thing Ever. I rolled down my own window and tried to pop a couple, but the wind carried them out of my reach. It was dark, and I couldn't see what the other drivers around me thought of this oddity, or whether they even noticed. Soon the light turned green and she pulled away. I imagined her driving in her little-old-lady manner with a cheap bottle of bubble solution clutched between her knees or close at hand in the cupholder, slowing for the next light, preparing to make everyone's commute just a little magical.

When I get paid I'm going to buy some bubble solution.

***********

I went to feed the hamsters this morning and immediately noticed the faint smell of death. Mouse passed on sometime during the night, or possibly yesterday - I didn't pay any attention to them when I got home, I was so excited about the apartment.

The character and frequency of their little tussles had changed in the past few weeks - I heard Mouse shriek and separated them to find a bleeding bite on his foot. I immediately jammed a piece of cardboard into the center of the cage such that neither could dig or chew his way around it in the short term. The bite seemed to be healing well, but I suppose it might be an infection that killed him. At least his final days were bully-free.

I don't feel anything at all about it, really, which itself saddens me a bit. I've had enough hamsters over the years, or perhaps I grew so attached to Critter before she died, that these two got the least emotional investment I've ever given a pet (including Zamboni the praying mantis). They've had a quiet life with plenty of food and water, occasional terrifying handling sessions, and each other. The last bit may have been a mistake, but I thought the way they cuddled together when they weren't fighting meant that they did draw some comfort from each other's company. Perhaps in the future I'll preemptively separate males, even siblings who've grown up together and have a chance at getting along.

So. I wrapped Mouse in a paper towel and put him in the trash. There's really nowhere around here I can bury him, built-up as it is, and I didn't want something distressing to happen like Faffer gnawing on the corpse. Faffer the Bully has the whole cage to himself now. He himself is showing his age. I suppose sometime this summer I'll be hitting the animal shelter again and coming home with another small&fuzzy or two - last time they had mice, rats, and both dwarf and Syrian hamsters. The cats love having their own entertainment system, and I like tending to the basic needs of little fuzzy things.

********

Yesterday at work we went out to lunch on the boss's dime to celebrate an important milestone. My team stayed out a while longer to get margaritas. We jawed and sipped and laughed, and I felt a great weight lift from my shoulders, at least for a little while. Maybe I could be happy here another year. Maybe I don't need to start looking yet.

HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS (LAST APARTMENT-SEARCH POST SQUEEEEEEE) :D

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:06:22 GMT

I am so glad I backed off from that first place I was interested in, because while it seemed perfect for my purposes at the time, there was a great deal more awesome to be had - as evidenced by THE TOTALLY FLIPPIN' SWEET CONDO I JUST COMMITTED TO RENTING STARTING IN MID-TO-LATE MAY.*

HOW DO I LOVE IT? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS:

NO PET DEPOSIT OR PET RENT

ALL UTILITIES INCLUDED

JUST OVER A MILE FROM A MAJOR METRO STATION

BUS STOP RIGHT OUTSIDE THE BUILDING

FITNESS CENTER WITH ALL-NEW EQUIPMENT & LARGE TV & ALSO A SAUNA

QUIET PRETTY COURTYARD IN BACK W/ BIG POOL (APARTMENT FACES THIS)

WASHER/DRYER IN THE APARTMENT

BIG CLOSETS

PRACTICALLY AT THE CORNER OF TWO SUPER-CONVENIENT MAJOR ROADS

CRAZY FUNKY SLATE FLOOR IN THE LIVING ROOM & WOOD FLOOR IN THE BEDROOM

CRAZY FUNKY ACCENT WALLS (RUST IN LIVING ROOM, BLUE IN CLOSETS, RED IN BEDROOM I THINK FOR SOME REASON?)

NICE KITCHEN/APPLIANCES WITH A COOL WINDOWY-THING INTO THE LIVING ROOM

DESIGNATED PARKING

24-HOUR ON-CALL SECURITY & MAINTENANCE

JUST ACROSS THE STREET FROM A PARK WITH A CREEK AND A COMMUNITY GARDEN AND A BIKE TRAIL INTO OLD TOWN

SUPER CONVENIENT TO GROCERY STORES & MALLS & STUFF & A HUUUUUUUGE LIBRARY RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER

SUPER-NICE LANDLORD COUPLE WHO ROCK AND ARE WILLING TO HOLD THE APARTMENT FOR ME UNTIL MAY

I WAS GOING TO SLEEP ON IT JUST IN CASE BUT I WAS AFRAID SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT LOVE IT AS MUCH AS I DO SO I CALLED THE GUY AND HE'S LIKE "SO WHAT DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD DO BEFORE YOU MOVE IN, PAINT OVER SOME OF THOSE CRAZY WALLS MAYBE?" AND I'M LIKE "NO DON'T CHANGE A THING IT'S PERFECT"

OKAY I THINK THERE'S MORE BUT I HAVE TO STOP NOW BECAUSE MY THROAT HURTS FROM SQUEE AND SUBVOCALIZING ALL THIS SHOUTING

SIGNING OFF

(AWESOME)

* THE REST OF THIS POST WILL BE IN ALL CAPS TO INDICATE HOW TRULY HAPPY I AM TO HAVE FINISHED MY SEARCH AT SUCH AN AWESOME AND WORTHY...FINISHING...PLACE. SHUT UP I'M TIRED

I'm sure you're all fascinated by my apartment search.

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:28:18 GMT

Condo rental application half-finished but stalled due to discovery that condo's so-called "fitness center" is more a notion than hard reality. They have a sauna, but wtf, I want at least a freaking treadmill. Thank goodness I haven't committed any application-fee money yet.

Digging for more leads on Craigslist and such, with the help of my mom, who has more time to surf the internet than I do - nice responsive condo landlord over by Landmark says he could even hold his place until I'm ready to move in, pending application & security deposit, and once again it sounds almost perfect, but it's at the absolute upper end of my price range. Will visit tomorrow and see if there are further incentives to wring from the poor nice man, because I am rapidly becoming very cynical about this process.

Another place is just across the street from my Metro stop, but it seems kind of dumpy and awkwardly-laid-out, and I'm worried about Metro noise, since the elevated track goes right over that area. I love the elevated track - it's like flying off into the sky when I leave for work every morning - but I don't know if I could live under it.

Another is out in NW Alexandria where I don't know the lay of the land. Their prices are tempting but their public transportation access is iffy and my commute would turn into either a long, odd switchback or Arthur just driving me the two miles directly to work.

And there are plenty more possibly-awesome places that may not be willing to hold until the end of May. Maybe I should just wait a little longer and roll the dice on whatever desperation deals may appear in another 2-3 weeks.

Housing

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:29:18 GMT

Am applying for one condo rental, though I'm second in line due to being unable to eat the cost of paying for two apartments for all of May. Hope the other applicant has bad credit or something - I'd really like this place. Have made inquiries on another lease takeover in the same community as Original Lease-Takeover Lady's, though it turns out this other apartment is still smaller than I'd like.

A late-night scan of Craigslist last night when I should have been sleeping revealed an increasing number of good leads. I will make inquiries on as many as possible when I get home today and start going at this in earnest. Hard-and-fast deadline is in two months, and I'd like to not be still looking a week before I have to freakin' move.

This is such a damn hassle. I can see why people work so hard for homeownership, even though it comes with its own long list of annoyances. Maybe I should start playing the lottery to see if I can win enough for a down-payment somewhere in this ridiculously expensive market. :P

Sigh

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:09:02 GMT

Lease-takeover lady keeps calling me (and asking for Arthur, because she assumes he's the decision-maker in the relationship, because I usually make him talk to her due to aforementioned accent-comprehension problems). She still has nobody to take over her lease, and she's willing to put a considerable amount of money into the deal (I think her last offer was like a 40% rent subsidy all the way to the end of the lease). I don't know why exactly she's having so much trouble, or why she can't just break the goddamn lease if she's got so much money to throw around - but she says management is pretty strict, in that the new tenant has to have, like, a job, and this has been a sticking point with the people she gets off Craigslist.

I told her there were many reasons why we'd decided we couldn't take it long-term, and that even if we lived there for a summer, I have a medical condition and can't handle the stress of moving my worldly possessions twice in four months on top of a full-time job. (I don't know how I managed to convince myself I could for a while there.)

She asked me if I knew anyone trustworthy who might be looking for a DC-convenient apartment right now. Because I am a sucker, I said I'd ask around at work. But I figured I'd also ask here, since you're all nice people, right? It's not a bad apartment, just smaller than I want, and if you're still used to dorm rooms it'll feel like the lap of luxury. It's all of 10 minutes by bus/car to the Metro and beautiful Old Town Alexandria, with a Metro shuttle during rush hour weekdays. Rent's nominally a grand a month, but will average much lower because this woman is willing to throw money at any respectable employed person who shows interest.

Feel free to pass this along to those in your social network you can imagine not cocking up a basic rent-paying situation.

EDIT: Okay she called me AGAIN this afternoon and I didn't answer. She never leaves messages. Goodbye forever, lady, you're veering into creepy territory.

So much for that

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:14:18 GMT

Ended up calling lease-takeover lady and saying no thanks. Crappy apartment was not worth continued agonizing, no matter how good the deal. Now trolling Craigslist and elsewhere looking for anything good. Not the end of the world.

(Pronouns are for sissies.)