Category Archives: Blah-blah-blah

love/hate

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Things I Love About My Apartment:
1) It’s mine. All mine. I pay for it all by myself, and I am free to do whatever I like with it. I can decorate it however I want, I can clean when I want to (or not), and I never have to worry about roommates making a mess, being on the phone when I want to use it, watching the TV when I want to watch something else, or borrowing my clothes/accessories/shoes/food/diet coke/condoms/whatever (all of which are actual things that roommates have borrowed and/or taken in the past).

2) Teenie is in it, and she is the greatest sleeping companion ever. (Sorry, Dave, but she doesn’t hog the blankets.)

3) I can see a tiny piece of Puget Sound from my living room.

4) When we were in California, I got this awesome refrigerator magnet at the House of Blues that says:

BE NICE
OR LEAVE
– Thank You

It makes me happy every time I see it.

5) The apartment has a full-size stackable washer & dryer, which I am totally in love with.

6) I can see the Space Needle if I walk 10 feet from my front door.

7) The maintenance man is very nice and always fixes stupid things for me (like replacing lightbulbs), even though he has a creepy 70’s porn star mustache and looks alarmingly like John Oates’ long lost twin. (The picture on that link makes me laugh every time I see it.)

Things I Hate About My Apartment:
1) Yesterday it was 90 degrees outside, and I have no air-conditioning. Today it’s going to be about the same. I’m melting. Someone kill me, the cold showers aren’t helping anymore.

2) They’re building a new apartment complex across the street, and construction starts at 7 a.m. every day, on the dot. Ever woken up to the gentle wafting strains of jackhammers? It sucks. And for those of you who want to offer me a fix-it solution: I cannot sleep with my bedroom window closed. See above. It’s 90 f-ing degrees. I have to be able to breathe.

3) An Irish pub that’s about a block from my place opened recently, which seems to be contributing to much more late-night street noise than before. (Mostly drunken yelling.) I don’t mind it so much on the weekends – hell, I’m probably one of them on the weekends – but it gets irritating during the week. Especially when I know the jackhammers are going to wake me up in just a few short hours.

4) People who live above me throw their cigarette butts off the balcony and they land on my patio. This pisses me off to no end.

5) The apartment manager and her family also have a courtyard-facing apartment like I do, but they’re on the ground floor. She has 2 small children – her daughter is five and her son is three. And every day, I hear her and her husband yelling at them. Not just typical parent yelling, but borderline-abusive yelling. The other day I heard her tell her 3 year-old son to “just shut up”. Um, hello? He’s 3. What the hell do you want from him, lady? Ordinarily this type of thing would be something that I would report to the apartment manager except that… oh yeah… this IS the apartment manager! So instead, I just sit and listen and cringe. I’ve considered recording them yelling at the kids and then sending it to them anonymously with a note that says something like, “just in case you don’t hear how much anger is dripping out of your voice every time you address your children…” But alas, I have no recording device, and I don’t want to get evicted, so I think I’ll just keep my mouth shut and pray that these kids wind up in the hands of a very capable therapist in about 20 years.

modes of transport

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Yesterday I did something that I haven’t done since I got my driver’s license 13 years ago: I rode a bike. Dave and I both feel the need to be more active, and he already has a bike, so it sounded like something fun that we could do together. Krissy is thinking about selling her bike & getting a new one, so I asked if I could borrow hers to see if I wanted to buy it from her. She said ok and we set up a time for me to come get the bike. And of course, this being Krissy that we’re dealing with, when I went to pick it up, it had a flat tire. (Not just flat, blown-out flat. As in, needs a replacement.) So her roommate Judy lent me her bike for a while, even though it’s not for sale. It’s just an experiment to see if I enjoyed bike riding.

So, we went to REI so I could buy a helmet (safety first, kids), then headed over to Marymoor Park and rode around for about an hour. And that saying about once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget how? That actually is true. But it doesn’t mean that you’ll be very graceful at it if you haven’t done it for over a decade. I was pretty wobbly at first, and the concept of braking with the handlebars was completely alien to me. My instinct was to take my feet off the pedals and put them on the ground (which I’m sure amused plenty of bystanders). I got a little steadier as time went on, and by the end of the hour, I think I was doing pretty well.

And as it turns out, I really like bike riding! It was a lot of fun, and I only sustained very minor injuries. One was when I was pedaling too fast and my foot slipped off the pedal, and it came around and hit the back of my calf. And it’s one of those pedals with the cleat-type spokes on it for traction. So that hurt. The other was when I was first starting off, and in my wobbliness, I accidentally swerved into some blackberry bushes (which have thorns, for those of you who don’t know) and my right arm got scratched. But otherwise, I thought it was a lot of fun and it was a really good workout. An hour is probably not much for an experienced cyclist, but neither Dave nor I are exactly in stellar shape at the moment – although Dave seemed to be suffering less than me afterward. But it was fun.

Other stuff:
* I might have a new project at work, which I’m waiting to hear more about.
* Kris had a 2nd job interview today that went really well, and she’s hopefully going to have an offer in the near future.
* My cousin is now in ICU and on a ventilator, but we’re still trying to figure out how/when we’re going to meet up in Atlanta. Hopefully we’ll all make it there in time.

cocooning

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I’m finding it difficult to leave my apartment. Yesterday, I never got dressed or went outside at all. I didn’t even go downstairs to get my mail. I have a theory that this has something to do with the fact that I’ve been gone so long, so now I’m cocooning myself inside my apartment because I’m afraid that if I leave, I’ll be gone for a week again.

Today, however, I hit critical mass. Translation: I ran out of diet coke. So, pajamas were traded for actual clothes, make-up was applied (albeit half-assedly – it’s just the southern girl in me that won’t let me leave the house without powder & mascara), and I headed out for the supermarket. Over $150 later, I was back in the car, loaded down with groceries, and headed for home. Did I overdo it at the store? Perhaps. But woman cannot live by Lean Cuisine alone, and pretty much everything else in my apartment has gone bad/gotten thrown away over the past couple of months. So I got a little excited at the prospect of buying REAL food. At one point, I was walking through one of the aisles and this large, elderly, African-American woman pushed her cart past mine, surveyed my cart’s contents, and said, “You must have a family.”

I said, “No, actually, I’ve just been out of town for the past couple of months and there’s no food in my apartment, so I have to re-stock everything.”

She said, “Well, you’re doing a damn fine job, girl. A damn fine job.”

Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about that statement, it made me feel a bit like I should be attending my local Overeaters Anonymous chapter.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited about the produce section before. I guess living on fast food and whatever you can scrounge up at 7-11 will do that. I was practically crying with joy. Carrot sticks!! How long has it been since I’ve had a carrot stick?? Broccoli and mushrooms too, I can make stir-fry! And seedless green grapes are on sale! Hooray!!!

So yeah, today was good. And I’ve been productive at home too, I’m studying for my next Microsoft exam, which I’m hoping to be ready to take by Friday. (Fingers crossed.) For now, though, I have to leave my apartment yet again – to go to Krissy’s house to fix her computer, because apparently I am free tech support for all of my friends and family. Sigh.

The Gym

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Last night I went to the gym for the first time in… oh, let’s not even try to guess how long. It’s been a while. Sure, I used the treadmill at the hotel a couple of times over the past 2 months, and I’ve been walking a lot (not having a rental car in a strange town tends to cause that), but I haven’t really worked out for quite some time. So I did, and it was a really wimpy workout because I didn’t want to make myself so sore that I couldn’t work out again today. But it felt good just to be there and know that I was doing something good for myself.

One annoying thing is that I forgot my walkman (it was still in my backpack from the plane trip), so I was forced to listen to the music that the gym plays on the loudspeaker. Which is ok, I guess, but I’m not a huge R&B fan, so it gets irritating after a while. Plus, I’ve found that when I have my own music on, I can zone out because I’m listening to a song that I really love, and I forget that I’m working out. Without my music, exercising can get a bit tedious.

So I found a new hobby to pass the time: make up stories about the other people at the gym. I’ve discovered that it really is a great place for people-watching. I mean sure, there are more than enough gym rats, and I didn’t waste much time trying to think of anything creative for them because I really just see them as mindless drones whose only thoughts are of the superficial variety. But there’s the middle-aged woman who’s in so-so shape and is working out like a maniac… I wonder if she’s just had a rough day at work, or if maybe she’s going through a divorce and is trying to get herself into prime dating shape. There’s the young girl who appears to be struggling with an eating disorder – running on the treadmill for an hour, with her ribs plainly visible below her sports bra, and her upper arms thinner in circumference than her elbows. There are the couples who work out together, and I imagine them at home, measuring out portions for each other’s meals, making sure that they both stick to their diet.

And then there was the guy who made me sad. He was hard to miss at the gym, because he was all over the place. Sometimes he’d just pace around the floor, sometimes he’d do a little dance around the room, sometimes he’d shadow box, sometimes he’d do these amazing Rockette kicks in the air. But he never stopped moving. It looked completely random, and he appeared to be mentally unstable. Then I noticed that he was pretty badly burned down one side of his body. I wondered if that was the result of a bad accident, or if (based on his ethnic heritage) he was the victim of a hate crime. Both ideas made me almost ill with sadness. Later, I saw another gym patron talking to him, and he appeared calmer. In fact, that was the only time I saw him stop moving. Maybe he’s just lonely and spazzing out is a good ice-breaking conversation piece. Who knows.

Point being, I really have to remember to bring my walkman with me to the gym.

The final vacation update, complete with Disneyland pictures and all, will be posted later. I’m still trying to get used to being home. (To quote Martha, it’s a good thing.)

tattoo!

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The pictures from my tattoo are posted now. For those of you who see it and wonder what the hell I got inked on myself, I’ll explain: it’s the symbol for Capricorn (done in garnet red, which is my birthstone), and it’s supposed to look like a stained glass window. You can see near the bottom where it looks like light is coming through it. It’ll take 2-3 weeks to heal, then I’ll have to figure out if it needs any touch-ups. At this point, the only thing I notice is that I like the purple background (I chose that color myself), but it may be *too* purple. I might have him go over it with some white to make it a more lavendar-ish purple instead of the dark purple that it is now. But I can’t really make a good judgment call on that until it heals, so we’ll wait and see.

Anyway, this weekend was a lot of fun. A bit of drama on Saturday night, which I don’t want to get into because it’s too long a story and I don’t think I could articulate it here in a way that would make sense. In any case, everything turned out to be fine. Dave and I had a great weekend together, and I flew down to California late last night. Only 81 & 1/2 hours until I get to go home again. I’m counting.

high school haunting

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In just a few short hours, I’ll be getting on a plane headed for Seattle. Hooray! I’ll be getting back around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, and I am going straight to Dave’s house to see Teenie and to lounge in his big jacuzzi tub until he gets home from work. I have been counting the hours until I get to enjoy those jet-produced bubbles since yesterday. I absolutely cannot wait.

Other news: A couple of months ago, a guy I went to high school with called my mom because he’s organizing a class reunion & wanted my contact information. I had just moved, and my mom (being a total scatterbrain) couldn’t find my new address, so she just got his email address & said she’d have me get in touch with him. This is not a person that I have particularly strong feelings about one way or the other – he was a relatively nice guy for a jock-type. The weird part about him contacting me is that I technically didn’t graduate with him – I skipped my senior year of high school & graduated in ’93, not ’94. But I guess my graduating class was small enough (about 30 people) that he was trying to get as many people as possible. And we did go to school together for 7th through 11th grades, so I suppose that’s close enough. Fine. So I emailed him, said hi, gave him my address & phone number, and told him that I probably wouldn’t be able to attend since I live in Seattle now and only get back to Mississippi once a year at Christmas. It was quick & painless, and I thought that was the end of it.

Then the day before yesterday, I got an email from him, which had absolutely nothing to do with class reunions or high school, it was just some forwarded thing about not using Swiffer WetJets because they supposedly have some chemical in them that will kill your pets (which I’m almost positive is an urban myth). But the email was addressed to everyone in his address book, which includes damn near everyone that I went to high school with. I can’t explain how mixed my feelings are about that. Some of them are people who I wouldn’t mind talking to, just out of genuine curiosity to see how they’re doing or what they’ve done with their lives for the past decade, and a few of them are people who I still actively dislike to this day. I don’t like knowing that I could contact them if I wanted to, or (even worse) that they could contact me. So for the last 2 nights, I’ve been having dreams about people from high school trying to track me down, with me trying to run away and escape. It’s weird because I know that I’m not the same person I was in 1993, and I’m sure that none of them are either, but I don’t want anything to do with them, as childish as that may seem. You’d think that since I’m proud of the accomplishments that I’ve made with my life, I might want to get in touch with them just to show off – like, “look what I’ve done, ha!” But that’s not me. I have never regretted skipping my senior year and not graduating with the rest of my class, and I always thought doing that would make me exempt from these particular types of situations, but apparently not.

More in the other news department: My cousin, who’s four years younger than me, just got engaged. I know I should be happy for him, but… throw up.

Oh, and I’m getting my tattoo tomorrow. Pictures will be posted. Yay!

need happy thoughts

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I’m taking a Microsoft certification exam tomorrow. It’s my first test on Windows Server 2003, so it’ll make me an MCP, or a MS Certified Professional. Six or seven more exams (I forget exactly how many) & I’ll be an MCSE (Systems Engineer) in 2003. I already did this years ago with Windows NT, but I have to stay current with the latest & greatest software or I’ll be relatively unemployable. With this stuff, I’ve been studying the material for months, but I wasn’t willing to fork over the $125 to pay for the test myself. And what do you know, my current employer is more than happy to provide vouchers to pay for the exams so they don’t cost me a dime. Yay!

Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these things, and I’m really nervous because it’s only my 2nd week, so I really, really want to do well to make a good impression. How much would it suck if I flunked my first exam on my 2nd week? That would NOT look good. So I’m sending out a request for all of you who read this to send me your best “you will remember everything you’ve crammed into your tiny little brain and won’t mess this up” vibes. It’s much appreciated.

A few random things:
* There’s an Elastica song being used on a hair color commercial. I don’t know why that strikes me as so strange. If the Cure can do HP, Elastica can do Garnier. It’s just weird to hear those types of songs in advertising.
* My boss has a bumper sticker on his door that says “My kid reads your honor student’s email”. I like that. It’s much better than that “Got milk? This room reserved for nursing mothers” sign at my last job.
* The mirrors in the ladies’ room here totally wig me out. They’re like circus mirrors — I look skinny, but my head looks like it’s shaped like an eggplant. I can’t look at myself in them, it’s too freaky.
* The cable guys came last night to fix my TV. This is the 4th or 5th time someone has been there in the 2 weeks since I moved in, and no one seems to be able to get it working. Yesterday, they sent 2 technicians out. I met them at the front of the building to let them in, and when we were all in the elevator, I said “Wow, I get 2 guys at once? Lucky me.” After I said it, I realized how completely dirty it sounded & I couldn’t stop blushing. I have no idea what they thought of me. I’d rather not think about it.
* I have this idea for a tattoo that I really want (no, it’s not the Winnie the Pooh thing, I gave up on that), and I can’t get it out of my head. I even have the picture saved as the wallpaper on my laptop. I figure I’ll stare at it for at least 2-3 months, and if I’m still in love with it, I’m going to get it.