contact has been made

I actually love my bedsheets. I got them for like $10 at TJ Maxxx or someplace– they are flannel with dark rainbow colored frogs all over them. I used one to tie up my futon mattress in the old apartment so I could move it better. Today is the last day I have to go back to the old place… I am so freaking tired, the last thing on earth I want to do is drive over to Allston (with a full load of crap in the car because I’m too lazy to unload last night’s load) just to get my frog sheet and the obi for my kimono.-type robe thing. Obis are $18 at the Japanese store in the Porter Exchange Mall. That’s kind of pricey for a glorified piece of canvas, but those things are awesomely useful (hence why I’m using it to tie up the futon). The sheet? Well… I have other sheets. I still have the bottom frog sheet… so… lazy…

I was in CVS today waiting for my drugs to be ready when I came across this contraption:

The Pet VAc. it’s not for vaccuuming up your pet’s hair (although you can do that as well). It’s for vaccuuming the loose hair OFF YOUR PET. Now, most dogs I know freak out at the sound of a vaccuum cleaner. Do you really think you’re going to get Rover to sit still long enough to be able to suck all his loose hairs off? I got a good chuckle out of that. It seems that everything interesting has already been invented, so now people are inventing silly things.

The pasta maker is another such machine:

It cooks pasta! … and nothing else! Because you know how hard it is to cook spaghetti…

In other news, Stella seems happy in her tank I finally got set up. She’s swimming around like a crack head now. One week in a little teeny tank was totally cramping her style. Also, I got the rest of my crap from the apartment in Allston… minus the futon frame that Pete said he wanted. If I can find someone to help me get it into the car tomorrow he can have it. Otherwise, it’s going in the dumpster, because I don’t feel like dealing with it ever again. the only bad thing is that I used the obi from my kimono and my flannel rainbow frog sheet to tie up the futon so I could move it. If I want those items back I’ll have to go back to the stupid apartment tomorrow. Oy. I suppose I need to keep my bathrobe closed and my bed sheeted. BUT, after tomorrow, I will NEVER HAVE TO MOVE ANYTHING OUT OF THAT APARTMENT AGAIN!!! YAYY!!!!! This 2-week process has been really annoying and stressful. I don’t often get stressed out, but this moving thing has made me kind of a head case. I need a couple of days to not do anything. I will be glad when it’s the weekend!

Operation Homemade Chicken was a resounding success! There’s nothing better than sitting down to a yummy home-cooked meal when you are hungry. I didn’t tell you the secrets of my Leftovers Marinade because I didn’t want to gross you out, but here’s what was in it: cooking wine, lime juice, lots of garlic, and a little parmesan cheese.

I sold a bunch of CDs I haven’t listened to in a while today and bought a bath mat and some groceries. I feel well-stocked, civilized, and ready to watch the yearly silliness that is the Oscars!

Today’s adventure is attempting to cook chicken in the convection oven. The microwave in this house doubles as a convection oven–I have no idea what that means. I thought all ovens work by convection– doesn’t that mean that they use hot air? Anyway, I will discover 2 interesting things: 1. if you can actually bake in this thing and 2. if the chicken I bought several months ago at the old apartment is still good. I made a marinade out of leftover stuff from the old apartment that should kill any microbes attempting to colonize my chicken parts. A dose of the Stop n Shop brand cooking wine should make any bacteria run for cover! Hmm. Something smells like burning rubber. I don’t think that’s a good sign.

…everything looks ok in there– I don’t see any smoke, flames, melting rubber, oozing chemicals or dripping oven parts… we’ll say the rubbery smell is part of the exotic marinade I whipped up.

Do you ever read a book, and get so into it you forget your surroundings? I remember the first time this happened– I was reading about a cat named Horatio in elementary school. He was lost and it was snowing. The poor cat was freezing cold… and I started shivering, even though it was warm and sunny out. That happened to me today on the train. I’m reading n the Beach, which is a super awesome book. It’s set in Australia after nuclear war has destroyed the northern hemisphere. Australians will be the last people to be affected by the radiation because it takes a couple of years for it to drift that far south. Anyway, people know pretty much when they will all die, but they carry on as they always have, some in denial, some because they don’t know what else to do and all that stuff.

Anyway, I’m near the end of the book and I get off the train and note how everyhting is deserted and think about how everyone’s about to die. It was weird coming to the realization that no, I wasn’t living in a post-apocalyptic world and no, Downtown Crossing wasn’t full of Australians dying of radiation poisoning… it was weird. I kept having weird flashbacks to the book where I had to remind myself it was only something I was reading.

At least the book kept me from stressing out about money. It’s bad enough that in the back of my head is the nagging worry that I’m totally broke. In addition, I dreamed all night about being broke. I had this one dream where Tanya was telling me about this place where you could get good cheap ramen (the real kind at a restaurant, not the dried kind that comes in little packets). I went there and the ramen was $18, and I only had $20 to my name… I decided to get some anyway, but the price kept changing. Blah blah blah… it was one of those annoying anxiety dreams that don’t really have a point except to make you anxious. Fuck you, subconscious!

I had to work today (I filled in for a sick person–6 day work weeks really blow but heaven knows I need the kizzash), but tomorrow I’m going to sleep all day. So there.

I’ve decided that it’s high time to use all the various bath potions people have given me over the years because I’m too cheap to buy soap. Chicks always get bath products– bath oil beads, shower gel, skin cream, various other smelly stuff for presents. it’s the obvious present to give females when you are stuck for an idea. As a result, I have a zillion different scents and textures of things that will make me clean. I don’t know why I never use them; probably because I always have good ole soap and shampoo and want to save them for a Special Occasion or something. Or, maybe it’s because I’m allergic to like 70% of things you can smell. However, jst because I may be allergic is no reason to avoid everything, right?

Thus my first gift experiment was with some bath gel/shampoo that is “margarita” scented. Lo and behold, it really does smell exactly like a margarita. it’s kind of a sensory confusion, I mean, I’ve never drunk a margarita in the shower before, so my brain was confused. Anyway, it smells pretty good. And, I’m only getting itchy allergy patches on my hands, which is a good sign–usually I won’t get them on my body if my hands start itching right away. There’s nothing more embarassing than being at work and suddenly convulsing into a shivering mass of frantic scratching all over my body. So, there’s one way I can save money– I won’t have to buy any personal hygiene products for a while!

Saving money is a good thing, seeing as I actually have $0.73 in the bank, thanks to having to pay triple rent this month because of the move. I forgot to bring cash with me this morning to do inventory in Natick, so I had to pay the Mass Pike toll with a check. Seriously, the Mass Pike takes checks, even for the amount of $1.20. Because of my bank balance, the check will bounce, though. How sad is that? To bounce a check for $1.20? oy. I transferred $2.00 from my savings account. I guess $2 won’t make that huge a differece to my travel fund. I still want to go to Prague or Berlin or budapest this summer, but I seriously doubt I will make it there the way things are going. Humph.

Sudoku still sucks. I attempted another one and got much farther than yesterday, but still screwed it up totally and gave up. Grrr.

The assistant manager at the store got transferred out to another store– that’s pretty sad for us; he was a cool dude. Alas. However, I managed to sort of get the “kitchen”/living room/studio sorted out, at least enough to watch E.R. tonight! I just have to figure out where the cat box is going to live and I’ll be all set with that room at least. Now I just have to unpack everything (and find the shower curtain)! Damn this is going to take forever. I still have to go back and clean up the old apartment as well. I am so not looking forward to that. Add to it all that I had to pay 3 months’ rent this month, so I currently have about $2.07 in the bank… and I have to be in Natick tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. to do inventory… I’m not terribly psyched about my weekend.

Note to self: I need a can opener.

Seriously, I HATE sudoku. I spent about 3 hours today trying to solve this one puzzle. It was in the Metro, which isn’t known for its difficulty in anything– I finished the crossword puzzle in about 10 minutes. This sudoku thing is so frustrating! I will finish it if it kills me, though.

Seriously, I smell really bad. I just went through every single box I packed in search of my shower curtain but to no avail. I think I’ll have to risk getting water all over the bathroom for the sake of avoiding spreading toxic fumes and causing an environmental hazard. If I weren’t such a cheapskate, I’d just go buy a new one; but Aunt MJ gave me this one for X-mas, and it’s cool. It has a world map on it, so it’s educational as well– I can be cleansed and learn world capitals at the same time!

Today was my Very First Commute on the Red Line. Boy was it exciting! I got mildly lost on the way to the T–if Cambridge were a normal city, it would be easy to get there. however, being Cambridge, and part of the Boston Area, all the streets make unpredictable curves and dead end suddenly. It’s the Winchester Mystery House of cities.

Getting to work wasn’t anything too exciting, but coming home was an adventure! I was sitting on the Red Line, reading my book (On The Beach– it’s awesome) when all of a sudden, the train stopped. It stopped and made that powering down sound and then just sat. At first people just continued listening to their iPods, reading their papers, and just waiting. After 10 or 15 minutes, people started looking around, checking their watches, and talking quietly to their neighbors. After a little while more, the conductor announced that we’d have to leave the train. I was psyched, picturing an Irwin Allen-scale disaster. I envisioned helping little old ladies through dark tunnels (although there weren’t actually any old ladies in my car, just one middle-aged Asian women who kept complaining to her husband about the situation), crawling over abandoned train tracks, getting to use long-forgotten tunnels built when the rail line was first laid… The conductor opened all the doors to the cars, and we went through each car until we got to the front one… which was in Harvard Square station. It was totally anti-climactic. I took the Stinky 96 bus (the one I used to ride every day when I worked at Harvard and lived in Meffid) and came home. There were no sinking ships, no marathon swims, no escaping fireballs… just a walk home. Oh well.

Dammit, WHERE IS MY STUPID SHOWER CURTAIN?!!?

I woke up this morning in my new apartment to strange sounds that took me a moment to place… BIRDS! It’s weird, there’s like a philharmonic of birds outside right now. It’s kinda nice! I had completely forgotten what massive amounts of wildlife sounded like. In Allston there were crows and starlings and the occasional seagull, but nothing like this! I remember I bought a birdfeeder for the window in Allston, but not a single bird touched the seed in it over a period of 6 months, so i took it down. While moving, I found the jug of birdseed in the closet and left it there, because I had no ieda what to do with it… now I can bring it here and feed it to actual birds!

Note to self: get towels from old apt. I have no idea how I managed to overlook those! I frantically went through all my boxes this morning looking for the shower curtain, but I still can’t find that either. I guess I’ll just have to smell bad. Sucks to be my co-workers!