- Just returned from Portland, which is wondrous and fantastic and filled with skyscrapers and parks and trolleys and green and yellow trees and fountains and bushy-faced backpackers. More later. But before I describe it, you should go. Now. Because it is that splendid.
- When artists give you cooking directions, they are illustrated. I need a scanner to do justice to the bread recipe Rah gave me, I really do. In other news, when artists do an extra batch of baking because you want some of their soft, round, warm buns to take with you on the plane, and they have enough left over to make a loaf, they do not make a loaf. They make a manatee. With authentic propeller-scars across the back. Because they are artists, and also have a thing for manatees.
- Taking other people's characters out for tea is a wondrous thing. Especially when you take them to the Portland Classical Chinese Garden, which holy shit wow. It's just... wow. You know? Or, to be specific, it's like being picked up and dropped into a scholar's garden in Ming Dynasty Suzhou; or like being dropped into every Chinese brush painting of a garden ever, only in full color with goldfish nipping at the falling leaves and sugar rocks sparkling in the nest of tea in the bottom of your cup. I plan to move there and live in a pavilion--possibly the scholar's studio, which has a window with a view that has its own name. Because the Chinese of that era were like that. This was the period when the elite gathered at the full moon to get smashed and write poetry; giving a window a name as though it were a painting was just what you did.
- Tea! I discovered mixed flower tea this evening at the Chinese grocery--little bags that are two-thirds dried flowers, one-third rock sugar crystals. One contains French rose, lily, honeysuckle, chrysanthemum, chamomile, and hawthorn, and is more delicately flavored; the other contains globe amaranth, lily, honeysuckle, nasturtium, hawthorn, and tangerine peel, and is more robust and citrusy. Both contain enough sugar for me, which means they're too sugary for you, but the rock crystals are beautiful. (They're at the bottom of the bag, so you can pick them out before you oversugar your tea.)
- House still full of a tragic number of boxes. Mother arriving Friday. ACK.
- ETA: I passed through airport security twice with a switchblade forgotten in my purse. A teeny one, admittedly, but longer than a boxcutter. Don't you feel safe now?
GRAAAAAH.
Okay, it also has Ariel Winterbourne milking alien sheep.
Happy now?
Will begin as soon as I can figure out how to make Ariel & Quin stick to the plot. I grabbed a famously bad book and said, "I bet I can do this better!" then discovered that sticking the Winterbournes into it caused it to not happen at all. Because they think it's stupid. Because it is. But that's okay, I tossed alien sheep at them as a stick and offered them a hot older nonhuman as a carrot. ...And discovered that Quin is still Quin and is not up to doing what the plot demands even if the hot babe is green.
Oh Quin.
Hellish multistage move was hellish in several stages. Many thanks to all the people who braved Hell to help get me to my new home. The move knocked out my Internet, and then Verizon dropped the ball in several ways and kept my Internet down for two weeks. (It would have been three, but I had a fit at a manager and they expedited my service. A week late. As you do.) The fact that my Internet is now up is largely ceremonial, as I'm now in Portland bunking with mad artists; but IT IS UP.
So Verizon says.
They've been wrong about this before.
Anyway. If you wondered where I've been for the last few weeks, the answer is: yelling at someone about my missing Internet.
(And that was the FUN part of the month.)
May November be quiet and filled with people. And wordcount.
Moving still aaaaaaugh. Packing getting more aaaaaugh as the space fills up with boxes. Painting the new place slightly aaaaaugh; the trim is NOT bright white, whether through age or design, so I can't finish the trim on any of the rooms until I match the color. Something tells me much of the trim will get finished when the next person moves into the apartment.
Computer still fouled up.
WTF NOVEMBER AAAAUGH
( Error messages! )
So far today I've broken my jade plant and my new front door. Both will be better for it in the long run, though they and I are regretting it now. However, I'm quite done breaking things for the greater good. Tonight will be Watch NCIS in Front of the T.V. While Winnowing Out Domino Magazines Night.
Many thanks to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
verdelite for coming out and helping me move breakables, being my sanity watch while I packed, shopped, and threw out, taking away a trunkful of random foo, feeding me French toast, and generally being awesome.The Internet is our kung fu, and it is mighty.
Also, the victim? Has not forgiven him. She wants to forget, but she hasn't forgiven. So put down that fucking "It's okay because she forgave him!" banner.
If you're not from the Boston area and would like to come to the festivities anyway, I'd be happy to have you! There's room for two more people here--more if you bring an air mattress. Email or call me as far in advance as you can and I'll make arrangements.
ETA: OMG HE HAS BUFFY DOING IT NOW TOO IT IS LIKE A HERD OF SMALL WOOLLY MAMMOTHS IN HERE SEND HALP
This morning there's moldslime under the things in the sink, which supports the Toxic Black Mold theory. I was planning on throwing out most of the things around the sink anyway; but does anyone know about eradicating black mold? Is is omnipresent, and the important thing is to not let it grow? Or is its existence in my apartment itself a danger sign?
In other news, I'm looking forward to being moved and settled in, and getting my brain back.
The time has come to:
- gather boxes
- buy a small swimming pool's worth of primer and paint and the largest tube of spackle on the planet
- disassemble everything I installed in the old apartment
- paint until my arms fall off in self-defense
- paint some more
- put everything back up in the new apartment
- shove my entire apartment into boxes
- tell most of the planet that I have moved
- have all my utilities rerouted to the wrong place
- thoroughly photograph the old apartment, because I am a dork
- finding a permanent job
- freelance writing
- keeping my websites cooking
- think quietly and calmly about NaNoWriMo
- eat sometimes
...*thunk*
It's around the corner from downtown, in a neighborhood so beautiful that I used to wander it just looking at the houses. A few blocks off the main roads, but so quiet that only one car came by while I was there to get the keys, and that was the realtor's. And it has parking. Off-street parking. Off-street GARAGE parking. You do not get garage parking in apartments in the Boston area. it does not exist. If you park in a garage, either you own a house, or your high-rise downtown condominium costs so much that you might as well have bought a house. You DO NOT GET garage parking with cheap apartments.
And it's $50 a month.
For those of you who live in actual sane areas, this statement is akin to adding, "...and you get a free pony!"
You know how I'm addicted to repainting and putting up shelves? The place is already painted. And if I repaint or make any permanent improvements to the apartment, I take the money out of the rest. The landlord is subsidizing my addiction.
There's a foyer, already painted plum; very dramatic, won't fit much stuff, but very dramatic. And also there is the drama. There's a front room with two banks of windows, roughly the same size as my current place but with different dimensions; and it's painted orange so vivid that you can see it in the dark, which I would have been all over six years ago, but which now makes me wince. There's a bathroom, small and splendid, with windows artfully placed so the neighbors can watch you pee, and a picturesque sink with separate faucets for hot and cold, and an antique medicine cabinet with failing hinges; and the room is painted cream, which is the color I was thinking of painting my current bathroom, so score. There's a galley kitchen with a great layout and awful cabinetry and a brand-new stove and two built-in glass-fronted bookcases, one of which already holds my bento stuff as a token of how srs I am about this place. And there's a ~*~dining room~*~ with a built-in china cabinet that already holds my Sarah Monette books, because again: srs tenant. The ~*~dining room~*~ will quite naturally be the library, but it's laid out in such a way that I may be able to put a little dining table in it just to use up the space. Which would be a first. Dining tables, who uses them? The ~*~future library~*~ and kitchen are painted brown, which isn't awful but which doesn't speak to me. The bedroom is Northern European ass color, which also doesn't speak to me.
Am thinking green for the living room, which is a problem only inasmuch as my last two living rooms have been green, and I sense a Theme. But I can't think of any other color I'd like more. The kitchen/library may be blue, another problem because again, the librarylike foyer of my current place is blue, and I'm not fond of it.
The bedroom will be linen white. Yes, I know. I'm willingly painting a room white. But it works with what I have and lets me have a purple-and-turquoise room without the levels of pain associated with the phrase "purple-and-turquoise room."
Oh--closets OMG. Not a one of them is the standard New England closet, 18 inches deep and five feet wide. There's a stuff closet in the foyer with shelves preinstalled--refreshing, as I'm usually the one installing the shelves. A deep, wide closet in the living room with shelves in the far end for random unstackables. An even deeper closet in the living room that
lagaz said she could live in.THERE ARE PLACES FOR MY STUFF.
So now I'm ferrying boxes over there, because the realtor gave me the keys and invited me to go ahead. The kitchen's already stocked for ramen. The kitchen's already stocked with ramen.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go fondle my built-ins for a while.
I GOT IT!
YESSSS.
YESSSS.
Move in-date October 1 (agh, paying for two apartments at once, EXPENSIVE), but I'm getting the keys today and will be able to start going in as soon as the check clears. Which gives me, oh, six weeks to move in?
I'm thinking of doing the big move on the 10th or the 17th, depending on whether my landlord will give me money back for moving out early. Anyone like to come over and get a totally sweet workout?
kestrell 's, and a massive, messy, exhausting, less splendid day of rinsing and rinsing and rinsing and rinsing, I have:- A white tank top with purple spiral splotches. There was a lot more purple in a lot more shades before I put it through the washer, but most of it rinsed out. Ah, well. It's still nice, and the next time I tie-dye, I'll dye lavender over the purple.
- A yellow and blue tank top. this was the "sunny day" top that selkiechick recommended: yellow to mid-chest, sky-blue the rest of the way down, with a splash of purple at the bottom to darken the blue up. The concept turned out very well, with some neat grass-green patches where the bright yellow and cerulean blue mixed (the grass is floating, apparently), and the purple darkened the blue without looking PURPLE. Success! Except--needs more dye! Agh! This was the last shirt I did, and I thought at the time that I'd learned not to completely saturate the shirts. What I'd actually learned was to not use nearly enough dye. The blue turned out all right--could use a little more, but eh--but the yellow was way too thin and patchy. It looks like someone peed on it. If I tie-dye again, I'll add more yellow, and maybe create some shaded bands down the blue part to simulate the darkening sky near the horizon.
- A headkerchief in purple and blue and green and lavender. I tied it up using the random method, with very fine crinkles, and it came out with a great marbled effect. The dye was very deep, with almost no white spots. Points for loose-weave cotton. I gave it to verdelite , who put it on and looked like, in her words, a hippie babushka.
- A gym T-shirt with concentric circles of purple and lavender. My gym has a color scheme, purple and gold, which it is utterly obsessed by. And it hands out cheap white T-shirts with an ugly-ass purple and black (and a little mustard) logo smack in the middle of the chest. I don't wear white t-shirts, ugly-ass logo or not. So I started from the logo itself and made circles all the way back, then dyed it in thick rings of purple and thin rings of lavender, keeping the logo itself white. It came out amazingly well. The patterns are wondrous and random, and down the back is a circle-chevron that I have no idea how I got. It's the best of the lot. And, ironically, it's the shirt I tossed in just because otherwise it was trash, and I might as well get some practice on it. I can't stop wearing it. It's wonderful. Damn logo.
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