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Moving is rarely a pleasant experience. I have bruises all over my legs from hefting boxes around, and a couple on my forearms to match. I’ve been eating horrible food because we hadn’t been grocery shopping in weeks. We haven’t unpacked yet, so we’re still rummaging around various boxes to find the things we need from day to day. Also, I appear to have come down with a cold. Bleh.

On the plus side, the apartment (flat) has been wonderful so far. I mean, sure, it has its pitfalls (top floor gets pretty stuffy, people beneath us smoke and it drifts upward occasionally, etc.) but for the most part it has been lovely. I wake up to natural light, can get ready without turning any lights on, and don’t have to turn them on until late evening. We have food in the cupboards like real adults and I even have HOUSEPLANTS. My avocado plant survived the week we were gone, plus the week of the move. It now has several nice, green leaves and I have no idea what to do with a three-foot-tall stick with leaves at the top. Seriously. It is the stupidest looking plant ever. Is there any way I can stunt its upward growth? Or growth in general? I don’t know the first thing about houseplants. I dread the day I will have to commit a mercy killing because I can’t handle a 40-foot stick with leaves on top in my apartment.

I’m really looking forward to doing something cool with my yarn and crafting supplies. We’ve considered using the main closet as a sort of craft room, since it’d be big enough to house some shelves and possibly a small table of some sort. Ideally, I’d like to commandeer one of the bookshelves and then stack my yarn there so I can see it all, because I have a tendency to not use something if I don’t see it. Daniel got me a gift certificate to Hello Yarn for my birthday and I can’t wait to use it on some pretty wool.

I promise to try to post some photos. I forgot to take any before we started filling the place up with stuff, so now I sort of want to wait until we’re unpacked before I document just how much junk we really own. I’m continually amazed at the amount of things one can fit in a tiny apartment if allowed to do so. I found a pair of shortalls (you know, overalls? But with shorts instead of long pants? The ones that I wore in the 8th grade and have not touched since?) that I put in the give-away pile. WHY DO I STILL OWN THOSE? Argh.

Side note – if you are ever in North Idaho, I’d recommend stopping by the Kootenai County Farmer’s Market and getting some coffee from the wonderful Jon Lewis from Bumper Crop Coffee. *waves* Hi Jon! Jon is probably the nicest person ever and Daniel managed to talk to him twice while we were in Idaho. Also? His daughter is Too. Freaking. Cute. Our friend Rita here in Portland knows Jon because they competed together in the barista championships, so that was kind of a funny coincidence.

Also, we didn’t decide on a wedding location yet. We only looked at one place, which admittedly was very gorgeous on the outside, but the inside was a bit log-cabin-y and had taxidermied animal heads on the walls. I can overlook that pretty easily considering my parents have a freakishly large moose head in their living room, but I will agree it’s a bit unnerving and probably not well suited to someone who is a vegetarian. If we didn’t have to choose a place with a “plan B” in case of inclement weather, this would have been really, really nice. I mean, we could always just pick it and then pray we don’t have to use the inside, but… Ehh. Even though we didn’t pick a place yet, we have some scouts (Daniel’s sister and my aunt) canvassing the area for suitable locations so we hope to hear from them soon. I trust their judgment.

How have you been these last two weeks? I had a birthday, went on vacation, moved apartments (flats, sorry ) and got sick. What have you been up to?

This moving stuff is rough. (We got the apartment, in case you missed that in the last entry. I hid it.) I am living in a sea of cardboard boxes and packing tape.

Compounding the moving issue is that we are leaving for Idaho on Saturday. That means that I have three days left to pack and get everything in order because we will be gone for a week and then THE DAY AFTER WE GET BACK is our official move-in date and we have no time to get things in order then. So I have to decide what I will take with me when I pack for our vacation (oh god, forgot I had to set out time to pack for that. Argh.) and then put EVERYTHING ELSE into boxes.

The packing is coming along well though; we managed to get rid of our two twin bed sets (two mattresses, two box springs, and two metal bed frames) through Craigslist – somebody just came by and picked them up. I would have rathered we receive some money for them, but I think these people were very much in need and, well, we needed them gone more than we need the money right now. So it’s okay.

I have absolutely no idea how we’re going to negotiate the computer moving and subsequent cable-hooking-up so you may not see me around here for… a while. Two weeks? I figure that my posting has been erratic enough that you may not even notice. Heh.

In other news, Daniel just bought his first high-end home espresso machine. It is used, but totally souped up and comes with a zillion accessories and milk pitchers and tampers and all this other stuff that makes it a total deal. He’s having it shipped to Idaho so it will be there when we arrive – that way he can test it out and make sure everything is in good working order and then we can just bring it back with us when we leave and hook it up at the new place.

(There is another topic I have been dying to post about – it involves a knitting celebrity – but I have to upload pictures and everything and it will be time-consuming. Will try to post that soon-ish.)

Edited to add: Hate crime in Indiana – Why no coverage? This story is both horrifying and very, very sad. Do what you can to spread the word and try to get some media coverage.

I heard rumors yesterday about our local Hollywood Video selling all of their VHS tapes for a dollar each. Turns out those rumors were true. I managed to find a ton of movies and then Daniel came by after work and found more. We narrowed it down to (I am ashamed) twenty-six. Seriously? If you had the whole pick of the movie store? For a dollar? I had a horrible time trying to decide. Daniel got a ton of music video tapes from the 80′s that I’m sure we’ll never watch, and I got a ton of movies I’ve wanted for a while but probably would never buy on DVD.

The finds I’m most proud of, though, are both of the Ewok movies. EWOKS. I love the Ewoks. I grew up watching Battle for Endor and had absolutely no idea it was even remotely related to Star Wars until I was in the eighth grade. I understand that hardcore fans of Star Wars are probably booing me right now and I get that, I do, but I still like the Ewoks. And Teek. And Wilford Brimley as Noa.

I also bought Chicken Run, Monsters, Inc., and Where the Heart Is, as well as Willow and Labyrinth. All in all it was a very productive evening. :cheer:

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Finally – some good news on the apartment front:

We went to look at a place last Wednesday. It was 875 square feet (our current place is 525) and was a top-floor apartment in a four-plex. Rent is just under $800 (very reasonably priced for a huge 1-bed in this neighborhood), and the apartment had hardwood floors, lots of light, a good bathroom and kitchen, and a little nook-type thing for a dining table. There is a porch out back and an assigned parking spot, should we need it.

When we went to see the place, it was an open showing so there were about six other people milling about checking it out. The lady showing it went through all the details and then mentioned she would take the applications first-come first-served basis. I have never filled out an application so fast in my life.

Problem was, neither Daniel or I thought to bring any cash for the application fee. The lady said she’d take the first app that had money with it, so while we did finish our applications and turn them in first, Daniel still had to run out to find an ATM and another girl turned in her application with her money while he was gone. Apartment Lady kept mumbling “Ooh, this is hard… That was in first, but without money, but the other was in afterward with money… Hmm… This is difficult.” I casually mentioned that we had rented with this particular company before, and wondered if that would make any difference. After I said that, the lady got this huge smile and was like, “Ohhh… FABULOUS. We may not even need your application fee, since we’ve already done a background check on you.” Sweet.

She still seemed a bit wishy-washy even after that, so when most everyone else was leaving, Daniel and I stuck around and chatted with her a bit in hopes that she’d decide she liked us more. We were instructed to call the office before 5pm on Friday to see whose application they ran and if we’d need to bring in our money. After our call on Friday, Daniel and I were still no clearer on whether we were going to get the place or not. From what I understood (since Daniel was the one who called) they mentioned something about running the other girl’s application first but they weren’t sure and we could call again later. It infuriates me that they’d run the other girl’s app first, since we got ours in before she did and they weren’t going to need our money anyhow.

At any rate, I was remaining cautiously optimistic and Daniel was refusing to get his hopes up. After the Friday call, I think we both just wrote off the apartment, figuring they had run the other girl’s application and she had gotten it. I even called another place on Friday to try to set up an appointment. (They didn’t call back.)

Cut to today, noon-ish: I got a call on my phone from a number I didn’t recognize. I typed the number into Google just to see what it’d come up with, and right as the phone finished ringing I realized it was the rental company. I quickly called back, and managed to talk to the Apartment Lady. They did run the other application first (*shakes fist*) but IT GOT DECLINED. I didn’t even consider that a possibility. I know it happens, but I just assume that most people have clear histories.

So! The apartment is not yet ours. After work today we have to take a bus to the rental company and give them some money for the background check (turns out they need it, initial check was over a year ago) and then they will run our application first thing in the morning, and then I think we have 24-48 hours to give them the deposit money and then I think it is ours.

Very long-winded way of saying hurray, we might have a new apartment.

Our apartment hunting isn’t going as well as planned. We’ve looked at several places so far and none of them have seemed “right.” A few of them were okay or even good, but my position is that since we’re in no rush to move out, we can afford to be pickier with regards to the new place.

One place was nearly perfect. It had a huge kitchen, giant windows (light!), a dining room, a living room, and a bedroom; the bathroom was appropriately modern and we could afford rent. Problem was, we were the second people to be shown that particular apartment, and the first people had already submitted their application for it. I’m actually pretty disappointed we didn’t get it. The price was a bit more than we wanted to pay, but we could have made do and it would have been worth it.

None of the other apartments have really measured up to that one. The first one we viewed would have been like living in some mobster’s flat in the 40′s. The bathroom was old and stained, with one of those pressure-flush toilets like public restrooms have – the ones without a tank. Just… weird.

One was kind of nice, but I hated the floor plan. I never thought I’d be someone with an opinion about a floor plan, but here I am. You walked in and were standing in a hallway that went to the left and right, and RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU was the bedroom door. You would be able to open the door to the apartment, take three steps in and be standing in the bedroom.

At the end of the hallway to the left was the living room. It was an okay size, but it was a giant box because it bordered the bedroom. At the end of the hallway to the right was the kitchen. It was on the “pro” list for the apartment because it was big, tiled, had built-in china hutches (which I love), lots of storage, and a huge window. In between the kitchen and the bedroom was the bathroom, which wasn’t bad but wasn’t anything special. It just seemed weird to me that the floor plan was this stupid hallway with four rooms off the far side of it. It was the antithesis of an “open floor plan” and it irked me.

We looked at two 1-bed places that were located a bit farther away than we’d have liked, and I think I could have been convinced to rent them if we were getting more value while being that far away. For instance, if we could get a 2-bed for the same price, or if it had a bigger kitchen, or something really awesome that made it worth being so far out. The on-site manager was this wonderfully nice lady with an extraordinarily well-behaved baby that she wore in a baby-backpack while showing us around. I really liked her. The apartments were new, or new-ish, at least, and it was close to a big park, but I just couldn’t justify being that far away when it was still expensive and there wasn’t anything spectacular about the apartment.

Daniel looked at a great place without me (he had to – I was at work) and he absolutely loved it so we put in an application – sight-unseen on my part – but the guy didn’t call us back. I think there was another lady looking at it and they wanted to get it rented as fast as possible so I’m not surprised it’s gone. That one had a giant shared deck and a big backyard, too.

Oh, and to add insult to injury? Our rent is going up. It’s only $25, which we can more than afford, but this apartment is not worth a penny more than what we are already paying for it. I have honestly been considering writing a nice letter to the management company that says “Please do not try to charge more for this apartment, because it is not worth it.” and then detail the reasons why. (Most of which are complaints about the poor construction quality. You’ll recall the mouse incident and the fact that we have pipes running across the ceiling in the bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom. It’s not awful – it’s laid out very well for the space – but… agghgh.) I’d been considering writing this letter before we got the rent change notice, and now I’m thinking I totally should have done it.

I’m hoping we find a place soon. I’m just sick of people not calling us back, not emailing us back, taking applications but not responding, and renting places to other people once we’ve seen them. Frustrating!

In order to understand my book collection, you have to understand how I purchase books; rarely do I buy anything I haven’t already read. This may seem strange to some, because why get it once you’ve already read it? With me, I buy books generally because I read it and loved it so much I had to own it. I’m very, very big on re-reading books.

Without further ado, here are some books I’ve read recently and would like to recommend:

A Handmaid’s Tale
I’d only heard about this book, but never talked to anyone who had read it and hadn’t ever had it recommended to me. The subject matter seemed interesting and I’d heard it was somewhat of a classic, so I got it.

If you have any interest in books about future societies (e.g. George Orwell’s 1984), women’s rights, or just well-written books, you should totally read this. I think it’s especially appropriate given our administration at the moment.

The Leap
This is by Jonathan Stroud, the same guy that wrote the Bartimaeus Trilogy that I liked a lot. The story follows a girl who is recovering from nearly dying trying to save her best friend. Nobody believes her story that he’s not dead, and her family constantly tries to take her mind off of the situation. Then she starts having weird dreams where she gets hurt and wakes up with real wounds. She just knows her friend is still alive, and she’s determined to save him. It’s a young-adult book, but very, very good.

The Notebook
I rented the movie The Notebook on a whim because 1) I heard it was good, and 2) I heard people kiss in the rain. Really, how could you go wrong? I ended up loving the movie and when I found the book at a thrift store, I picked it up. It’s very short, but it’s absolutely beautiful. Both the book and the movie make me cry – in a good way – because you can just feel the love that these people have for each other. Sappy but true. It’s a wonderful book.

Blink
This talks about your gut reactions to people, places or things and how they can actually be beneficial to you. Malcom Gladwell, the author, contests that your instincts are not often wrong, and this book talks about the times they do go wrong and what you can do to avoid that. It’s thought-provoking and interesting.

Edited to add:
Eats, shoots & leaves
A must for anyone who likes grammar and spelling. I bought this on a whim because I heard good things about it, and it’s seriously so great. If you see signs like, “All patient’s welcome” and cringe because you know they’ve misused an apostrophe, this book is for you. I love it.

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Otyg – “Trollslottet”

I’ve been reading a lot lately on organization, clutter, and hoarding. I stumbled across a site called Squalor Survivors a while ago, and while my problem is not nearly as bad as some, I realized I have tremendous difficulty throwing certain things away. The difficulty usually involves some emotional attachment to an item, more than it deserves, and I feel bad about getting rid of it. Either that, or I overestimate its future use and keep it around “just in case” I may ever need it.

My problem stems from worry: I have difficulty getting rid of something I feel I may need in the future, or something I feel holds sentimental value. Case in point: a few days ago, after reading bits of the Squalor Survivors site, I decided to go through a cardboard box that had been sitting in our bookcase since we moved in over a year ago. In it I discovered things like:

• A cardboard box from a Slinky I once bought
• Two AA batteries
• An empty film canister
• An old toothbrush

What you should also know about those things is that I know they came from the time I lived with Callie in 2003/04. Three year old batteries. For what purpose? Furthermore, the old toothbrush? Was once used to scrub dog poop off of a pair of shoes. AND I KEPT IT. I kept it thinking “Man, if I ever have to do this again, I should use this same toothbrush so I don’t mess up another one” and I packed it up in a box and moved it into not one, but TWO new apartments. Of course, now I can recognize that as totally bizarre behavior, but before, I apparently thought that was perfectly reasonable. Moving a dog shit toothbrush to two new apartments under the guise that “I may need it someday.” How screwed up is that? I threw it away.

I got so motivated that I grabbed another box off another shelf. In that I found some things that I did want to keep, but one item was an empty, plastic water bottle. It was the bottle that the singer of Moonspell drank out of and then threw into the crowd one of the times I saw them. Cool, right? A rock star’s water bottle? I thought so. Except, do I really need it? I remember it happening – I wrote about it on my website once (can’t find the post, may have been before I installed WordPress and did it manually), Daniel remembers it, I’m writing about it here… So I decided to throw it away. Yeah, it was awesome, but I don’t need to keep a mangy old water bottle around for 40 years just because it was awesome. I’ll remember it.

I also decided to go through a giant box of school papers and organize them into plastic folders for the stuff I actually want to keep. I’m going to recycle the rest. I don’t need to keep the half-inch by 4 inch scrap of paper that an instructor wrote a grade on, especially since I have no idea who the instructor was, what the class was, or what the project was. Recycled. I don’t need to keep every quiz I’ve ever taken. Papers, maybe. Sketches, yes.

My next project is going to be getting a filing cabinet and organizing my important financial and school-related papers. I have a small-ish plastic filing box, but I feel like it’s not big enough to do a decent job, plus Daniel has a bunch of stuff he could file and my little file box can’t handle it. I found a decent filing cabinet at Target for $40, so I’m sort of looking into that – I just have to make it to Target somehow. The section on the website about Paper and Bill-Paying was especially helpful to me and gave me lots of good ideas on how to get a handle on all my papers and documents.

I know that most people are generally pretty good about getting a handle on their messes and throwing obvious trash away, but I thought I’d post about it in case any of these things ring true for you. Take things slow – maybe just go through one box. You don’t have to do everything all at once; that’s a surefire way to get nothing done since you’ll be so overwhelmed. I’m actually making pretty good headway on the piles of papers surrounding my computer. Yes, there are a few piles that need to be taken care of, and a plastic bin that needs to be dug through, but I’m making progress.

Rolling Stones – “Sympathy for the Devil”

A few things of interest:

I wrote a little page on Animal Crossing Tips if anyone is interested. Animal Crossing is my favorite game, so I put up a few tips for gameplay. It’s just for the Gamecube version, not AC: Wild World.

The property management company for our apartment decided it was restructuring how they do things, and sadly, we are no longer going to be receiving our $200 rent credit each month. We can afford the jump in rent, but it was so nice not to have to worry about it each month. Granted, we’re each still paying about half as much as we did at our last place, but I really, really liked having obscenely cheap rent. I’m trying not to dwell on the fact that in order to even pay this month’s rent, I have to wait for Daniel’s half of it to be transferred from Paypal into my bank account, otherwise I’ll be overdrawn. Stupid adult stuff. Fortunately I start working when school starts again, but I’m sure it’ll be another two weeks or so until I get paid. Lame!

I’m still sickly. I’ve been resting a lot and drinking lots of fluids, so I hope it goes away soon. It’s miserable.

I’ve been lurking around HP book 7 message boards and the like, doing some more speculation. Apparently, J.K. Rowling revealed recently that the question she wishes people would have asked her is “Why did Dumbledore have James’s invisibility cloak at the time of James’s death, given that Dumbledore can turn himself invisible?” and she mentioned that the answer was “crucial” to the story. AUGH. I have no idea. I’m up to page 24 on that thread and I haven’t found a reasonable explanation I agree with yet. I’m thinking it’ll be a situation like the last book’s Horcrux thing – there’s no way we could have guessed that, as we didn’t even know it existed. Maybe Dumbledore had it so he could put extra defenses on it (charms, etc.) and it would have changed the Potter’s outcome had they had it that night?

It’s so hard to guess this stuff! I don’t think I heard Snape being guessed as the HBP, since we had no idea what his mother’s maiden name was. I thought it was Hagrid. Same with the Horcruxes – we didn’t know anything about them. Maybe we don’t know anything about the invisibility cloak either?

I do like that somebody brought up Aunt Petunia in passing, though, since we know that she had contact with Dumbledore before (“Remember my last!”) and we know she may become more interesting in the book 7. I still don’t know who it is that will do magic later than normal, and we still don’t know what will become of the mirror that Harry had so he could talk to Sirius. So many things to think about!

Edited to add: Someone mentioned (on an early #30′s page of that forum) the cloak may have been used to hide someone, and Dumbledore has said (to Draco, on the tower in HBP) that they can fake people’s deaths – they’ve done it before – what if it was being used to hide Professor Slughorn? He was the one that initially told Voldemort about Horcruxes, and maybe he gave Dumbledore that awful altered memory of his, whereupon Dumbledore recognized it as a crap alteration and knew he needed the original, so he used James’s cloak to hide Slughorn to preserve the memory. This doesn’t explain, however, why that would have been done right around the Potter’s deaths and yet we don’t hear of Slughorn until over a decade later. I like the theory though. He was a potions master, Snape took over his job, Lily Potter was his favorite student, we think Snape may have had a thing for Lily because she was nice to him…

Also, I forgot to mention that I finally got around to reading George Orwell’s “1984″ yesterday. I’ve been meaning to do it for years and just never got around to it. I liked it, I suppose; it wasn’t bad, but I don’t know that I’d read it again anytime soon. I just wanted to read it since it’s pretty much a classic and it felt like everyone had read it but me. I never had a reason to so I just didn’t, and now that I’m all sick and stuff I figured it was perfect timing.

old Symphonic Band stuff from high school

This morning was eventful, to say the least.

Daniel had an interview at noon, so he left a bit before then and I was just on my computer doing nothing. A while later, I get a call from him saying “A refrigerator guy is going to come by within the hour with a new fridge.” I hadn’t showered, I wasn’t even dressed, he just got the call himself and hurried to tell me before his interview started.

I went to the kitchen and decided to take all the magnets off the fridge. That took a while, and the thought occurred to me to take the stuff off the top of the fridge, but I decided to get dressed instead. And then I thought, “My hair looks really gross. I should at least wash my bangs.” but I thought no, as soon as I do that the guy will show up. So I sat at the computer for a minute and then realized Daniel said “within the hour” and thought, I totally have time. I ran into the bathroom, grabbed some shampoo and wet my bangs and began washing. No sooner than I got my hair all soapy, my phone rang.

The guy was right outside the door.

I told him I’d be out in a minute and quick rinsed my hair and went out to open the door for him whilst looking like a drowned rat.

He came in and there was this whole complicated mess of the refrigerators not fitting through the kitchen door without taking the doors off and I didn’t have time to empty the old one before he came by and ugh. I was throwing food everywhere and stacking it around the kitchen and generally making a huge mess. He replaced our fridge (the new one is actually new – shiny and white) and then Daniel came home.

His interview went really well. The owners seemed really cool, they got along well, had the same ideals, etc. Promising! Yay!

We spent a while putting everything into the new fridge and admiring its shiny, white beauty. Then we had pancakes. I’m currently trying to catch up on all my homework I’ve been neglecting this term, because somehow it all seems to be due this coming week.

nothing

The refrigerator repair man just left our apartment, declaring our refrigerator “toast.” It’s dead. It’ll still keep things colder than room temperature, but not by much. It’s old, it’s rusty, and he said with about two hours he could probably fix it, but he’d still recommend that the management replace it and then they’d be upset that he wasted two billable hours fixing a dead refrigerator.

He basically told us to take a weekend vacation or to buy a cooler. Nothing can really be done about it until next week, so “don’t buy groceries.” We’ll be notified when somebody decides to do something about it.

Moulin Rouge – “Your Song”

Aggg. Aghgh ghahg hghag. Grossest thing ever. I just went to the kitchen to pour a bowl of cereal for breakfast and I got out the cereal, put some in a bowl, and got out the milk. I tipped the milk carton to pour some into the bowl, and it sludged out all gross over my cereal like yogurt or applesauce or something else equally as gross. GAG. I don’t know if it was slushy like it had been frozen, or if it was gross and old, except it didn’t smell bad and it doesn’t expire for another week. My stomach is still in knots over it. Milk is not supposed to be partly solid.

Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – “Irish Whiskey”

No knitting today. I think I am scarred from The Hat Incident. My next project is a pair of plain gray mittens, and I have the ribbing for the cuff of one mitten done – decided to try to do homework yesterday instead of “wasting” my time knitting so that’s all the farther I am on those. Regrettably, the homework is about equally as finished. Damn business plan for a business I don’t even want to start.

What does it mean when a refrigerator does not keep things reliably cool? And the attached freezer does not so much freeze things as keep them very, very cold? And occasionally, either on the front left or back left corner, there appears a small puddle on the floor? There is a problem, yes? Daniel and I are going to put in a maintenance request for it pretty soon because if something is supposed to be frozen, it is not supposed to feel squishy to the touch. We had to throw away a bunch of food that got all weird in the freezer from not being frozen and that’s just sad. We’re sort of hoping the whole damn thing gets replaced because it was probably purchased in the 80s and is a weird mustardy color and is generally just sort of old and rusty. It came with the apartment so I guess we can’t complain too much, but it isn’t doing its job.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

This morning has been rather uneventful for the most part. Daniel got up early, went to work. I had a weird dream involving an orange cat, a white horse, and a skunk. I got up around 11:30 and played on Teh Intarweb for a few hours, and then worked out.

I intended on doing two of my 15-minute mile walks and got the bright idea to put some laundry in between the two. I just finished my first walk and gathered my laundry together and found some quarters to put in the machine.

I went into the laundry room and saw that the right washer, the one I normally use, was already in use by someone else. So I did what any normal human would do and put all my clothes in the left washer. I put in my soap and my quarters and pushed the money tray in for it to start.

Then I hear it.

It was this ghastly “blubbing” noise, like when you fill up a cup of water and you can hear that noise as it gets closer to the top of the cup. Except that times three thousand. With more blubbing.

I turn around only to see this weird pipe thing start GUSHING water out of the top of it. THINKTHINKTHINK. I grab one of the plugs in the nearby outlet and hope that it’s the right one. I pull, and the washer lights go out (thankfully) but the pipe continues to spew water. I run back to the apartment – possibly thinking I could call maintainence, I guess – look around for a second, realize I’ve no idea what I’m doing there, and I run back to the laundry room.

The pipe has stopped blubbing water. My clothes are still in the washer, not wet, and the concrete behind the washers is covered in water, though it’s draining out a weird hole in the floor with a pipe in it.

I leave the washer unplugged, take all my clothes out, and retreat to the apartment.

Guess today won’t be laundry day after all.

Opeth’s Blackwater Park

I taught myself to knit about 15 minutes ago. Well, more accurately, I re-learned to knit. I first learned when I was 10 and in 4-H, and I absolutely despised i—

Um, this post has been interrupted because THERE IS A MOUSE IN OUR APARTMENT. YES, I SAID IT, A MOUSE. I was over here, typing away when I watched it scurry behind the Poof Chair toward the kitchen, stop, and scurry back toward the corner. I screamed (well, yelled really, an AHHHHH! noise moreso than an EEEEE! noise) and Daniel jumped up from the Poof Chair and his video game and I shrieked “A MOUSE! THERE IS A MOUSE BEHIND YOU!” and it was all very loud and scary for the mouse I’m sure, and now he’s hiding. Somewhere. In the apartment.

We pulled back the couch to find him, and no mouse, but sure enough, mouse poop. Side note: over in the corner where the non-functional radiator and the built-in bookcase are, there was a weird… “open” area when we moved in, so I just covered it with a piece of cardboard. Upon further investigation tonight, the cardboard is bent (as if a mouse pushed under it) and the other wall just stops and the carpet stops and there’s a couple-inch-wide gap where you can just see dirt. Like, there’s not really a corner to the wall, it just goes directly to “under the building.” Fantastic. :faint:

I don’t know how I missed that when we moved in. There’s seriously no corner to that wall.

On the right, you can see the bent cardboard, and to the top of the photo is the, um, gap. Obvious, no? Maybe the lighting was just bad – we didn’t notice it tonight even until Daniel got down there with a flashlight. And sorry for the weird rotation; it looked stupider at the angle I took the photo, I rotated it so it’d be easier to understand, I guess.

Anyway, the gap. And the mouse. And I re-learned how to knit, I think. I casted on a bunch of stitches correctly and got one row actually knitted. I may make a scarf. You know, now that it’s getting to be less cold here. I’m still on a mission to make a Gryffindor scarf someday.

Damn mice.

Scissor Sisters – “Filthy Gorgeous (ATOC vs SuperBuddha Remix)

Yesterday, I tied for the highest grade in the class on my Sociology test. I got a 59/60. Paul and I made a bet that whoever got the better score – by at least three points – had to buy the other lunch. Needless to say, I totally won. Paul was a good sport about it though. Kudos to Paul.

I also discovered yesterday that someone I (barely) know has made an “art project” for me out of a photo of me they stole off of my MySpace profile. I would like to say to that person, because I know they’ve looked at my site before and are likely to look at it again: DO NOT EVER DO THAT AGAIN. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it was all done in a friendly nature, but it creeped me out something awful. And I’m all about the creepy – I can do creepy. This, however, was blatantly taking a photo of mine, manipulating it into a weird fan-art type thing without my permission, and I BARELY KNOW YOU. Had you asked my permission, I probably would have said no, but at least you would have asked. I just want to make it clear that I am not cool with you doing what you did. I understand you’ve apologized, so I’d like to just drop this whole thing and forget it ever happened, and I suggest you do the same.

Today, I received Bubs‘ valentine in the mail today! Thanks, Bubs! It’s awesome. I hope you like yours; I drew it in Illustrator based off of some frame-able things IKEA put out a while ago. I thought the animals were adorable.

I also left class early (8pm instead of when it ends, 9:45pm) and came home to an empty house. I’ve no idea where Daniel is at the moment, but he didn’t take his iPod with him so he can’t be too far.

My cousin had her baby a few weeks ago (Jan. 29th) – she’s the one I went to the baby shower for over Thanksgiving break. They had a baby boy and his name is Connor. They sent a picture in the birth announcement and I can’t quite tell who he looks like yet, but he’s pretty cute for a newborn. So, yay for baby Connor!

I don’t have school tomorrow, because Monday is President’s Day. Yeah, I know. But we’ve already had a Monday off this term, and they don’t want us to miss too many of the same classes, so they’ve made Friday our day off instead. We have to register on Monday, so I have to be up insanely early. Next term is going to sort of suck, because I’ll have five classes instead of four, including Senior Seminar which is basically a huge research paper akin to writing your thesis. I am not enthused.

[edit: 11:43pm]
Forgot to add: There was a house fire in the apartment building next to ours yesterday. Daniel was home when it happened, and started smelling a weird, electrical-fire type smell. He wasn’t too alarmed at first, since Portland (oddly) smells like that a lot. That and toast. Anyway, after a while, it was getting worse and he was sniffing his computer and stuff and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, so he finally went outside. There were a ton of fire trucks and police cars and an ambulance (just in case, I think) and an apartment was on fire. Crazy. There was a pile of random stuff (jeans, cups, miscellaneous paper items) in their driveway/parking lot thing when I went to work this morning. I feel so bad for those people, that has to suck something terrible. And now our apartment smells like burning and sort of like tuna melts and general weirdness. :o

Oh, and I think I figured out why our apartment was smelling like death there for a while. Daniel was really the only one that noticed it at first, but then I started smelling it, and I thought it sort of smelled like urine. Fantastic, no? Then I went to do laundry the other day, and realized that all of our dirty dish towels had been sitting in a milk crate in the kitchen, with a bunch of plastic grocery bags on top of them. Yeah. Totally gross, I know. So I grabbed them to throw them in with my laundry, and OH MY GOD they smelled so bad. Not like the death/urine smell, but just bad. Soggy, old dishtowel bad. Since I washed them, there hasn’t been any death/urine smell, so I’m pretty positive that’s what it was. Ew.

I swear we are not gross people. These are separate, coincidental smelly occasions.
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