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Hooray! New apartment! With space! and closets! and light! and air! and, as of half an hour ago, internet access.

Moving was moving; a longer post about that will be forthcoming. Enormous gratitude to [livejournal.com profile] whuffle, [livejournal.com profile] halleyscomet, [livejournal.com profile] happyfunpaul, and [livejournal.com profile] quezz, and my parents.

I spent yesterday unpacking my bedroom and my kitchen, and cleaning things as I unpacked. I'm getting away without rent for August because the place needs cleaning, so I'm cleaning it. Yesterday involved one trip to the grocery store for things like light bulbs and toilet brushes and a larger broom, and one trip to the hardware store for tension rods and shelf space not in the pantry. Neither errand took longer than an hour and a half to get to, get done and get back from. That was a shock.

Today's list, now that the RCN guy has been and gone, involves fabric shopping for door curtains, hardware store again for Metro shelf clips, getting the gas turned on for the stove (did that, since I found the number online, since I'm online again), and trying to hunt up more bookshelves and counter space.

Due to its previous life as a dining room, my bedroom has two entry doors. One goes into the hallway and the other goes into the kitchen. I really want a curtain on the kitchen door, to the point where I'm willing to hand-sew it. I think it's fabric-shopping time, after I hunt up some lunch.

Hooray!

frazzled

Aug. 17th, 2007 10:26 am
dchenes: (HELP)
I'm almost certain I had a good reason for throwing out the box my featherbed fit in, but I can't think of what it was, and I wish I hadn't.

Four days later I still haven't cleaned the oven. I guess I know what I'm doing tonight when I get back from dinner. (Well, that and putting all the utterly random leftover stuff in a box or so. And trying to figure out what to do with the trash, since trash day isn't until Monday and I can't get at the trash cans. And packing all the cleaning products and open condiment bottles in leakproof containers. And and and...ARGH. I shouldn't have bothered putting the sheets back on the bed this morning. I'm never going to get there tonight.) My parents and the pickup truck are coming too, so at least there will be more cargo space and moral support and traffic direction.

Of course, in between now and dinner, there are only six or seven urgent things I have to get done at work. Our newest staff assistant quit as of the end of Wednesday, so we're short-staffed and doing the workload shuffle again. I need a vacation.

I know it will all work out in the end, but I wish I were at the end already.
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Four more days and I still won't be able to find anything, but at least then it'll all be somewhere else. Grocery shopping is fun when you start thinking about things you can make without cooking and then realize that you can't make anything at all because everything you could put it in afterward has been packed.

This morning I woke up early enough to lie around in bed for a little while. Unfortunately my brain chose to use its free time to dwell on the things I still have to do packing-wise, and some various other details I wish I hadn't thought of. I hate it when my brain does that.

It will be good to have places to put things when they come out of boxes. If I'm really good about unpacking, I bet I can get it done by Tuesday night.
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When I got home on Friday, somebody had been in my apartment. I can tell when that happens because I lock the deadbolt but not the knob. If the knob is locked, somebody else has been in the apartment. Nobody showed up on Sunday. Therefore, the showing that was supposed to have been on Sunday was probably on Friday. Is it Saturday yet?

The other thrill I could do without on Friday was the shooting I heard on the way home. I knew what I was hearing, but I was hoping it wasn't that. I haven't seen anything in the news about it, and I didn't see it myself because I was halfway up Gardner St. and whatever went on was on the corner of Malcolm X and Columbus, where I had been five minutes before.

I got a fair bit done on Saturday, to the point that it was 11:00 on Saturday night and I had just taken my contacts out when I remembered [personal profile] skreeky's party. Oops. Mostly I bought hardware on Saturday: tension rods for door curtains, poles and casters for Metro shelves, and stuff like that. Then I waited around for a bus for 45 minutes, and came home and packed some more stuff. This must have been a bus-free weekend as well as a tax-free weekend, because on Sunday I also waited 45 minutes for a bus.

Yesterday was supposed to have been cleaning day, but I only got as far as cleaning the bathroom. Mostly because I can't find the floors anywhere else just now, and I didn't want to deal with cleaning the oven. Cleaning the bathroom involves inhaling enough chemicals; I didn't want to cope with oven cleaner on top of that. However, the bathroom (except the floor) is clean.

I'm going to be very unhappy if Aleve doesn't work for me any more. The stuff I took at 7:30 this morning has worn off already.

blue

Aug. 10th, 2007 12:22 pm
dchenes: (Default)
Today I'm blue. I'm not truly depressed, sunk in angst, worried or scared or anything, just blue. Weather-wise, it's a good day for it. I wish I knew how to make it go away, though.

My apartment is being shown again on Sunday afternoon. I did point out that it won't be pristine because I'm packing. That was the second call from my landlady this morning; the first was her asking me when I'd be moved out so she can have the cleaners in. She thought I was moving next Friday. Apparently she doesn't actually have to read my written notice of intent to move, even though I was required to write it. I said I'd be out by 4:00 on Saturday.

I think I'll do the hardware store/bare necessities run on Sunday afternoon so as not to be home. That means I can use tomorrow to clear off the rest of the horizontal surfaces and clean everything I can reach.

Bleah, I say, and I say it with great emphasis.
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Gadget envy has triumphed over Luddite tendencies. I replaced my old cell phone with a Katana, which takes pictures and plays Tetris and sends text messages (except I still hate text messages) and does practically everything else except the laundry.

Speaking of gadget envy, I want to set up my apartment after I move so that the cable modem stays in the living room and the computer stays in the office. I think I need an AirPort. When I went buying tools the other night, I did stick my head in the Apple store, but I forgot about the networking idea. I was too busy drooling at MacBooks. Maybe in a couple of years or so...if it had been less busy in there, I would have uttered a dirty word and asked if any of the demo machines were set up to run Windows. I want to see how that works before I go off and start hoarding change to buy a MacBook with.

I came in this morning and found that the Shelf Fairies had finally visited my office early this morning, so now I have shelves on the wall and I can stop keeping everything on my desk or on the floor. I would almost rather the Shelf Fairies had visited my boss first, so she could take her 8 boxes of stuff out of my office. I don't need the collating space yet, but I will, and the boxes are sitting on it.

I don't recall asking for rain this morning, but it makes the green and growing things happy, so I'll cope.
dchenes: (Default)
YouTube is a wonderful thing in that I can watch old Bugs Bunny cartoons on it. That fact, however, has led to me walking around singing "Why look so perplexed? Why must you be vexed? Can't you see you're next?" from The Rabbit of Seville intermittently for the last couple of months.

My other favorite quote-out-of-context lately happens whenever I'm at work doing something and get interrupted. When I get back to whatever I was doing, I generally think "Where was I?" and the answer comes back courtesy of Mr. Dickinson from 1776: "Somewhere between New York and Pennsylvania."

Other news: I've got most of my kitchen and most of my living room in boxes, if not officially packed. I got to the point yesterday of being disgusted that nothing fit in any box I tried it in the way I wanted it to. (What do you mean, the tube pan won't fit in the stock pot?) I think I'm fighting a losing battle there and I should probably just throw a lot of sweaters in that box and call it done.

Tonight, I buy tools. I need allen wrenches to take the futon frame apart, socket wrenches to take my table apart, and a mat knife (mine cracked in half crossways last month when I tried to use it on the stuck-together paint on a window I wanted to open. The window is still shut.).

I've been living paycheck to paycheck for so long that the idea of not having to do that any more is somewhat daunting.
dchenes: (Default)
OK, so here's the official notice:

I am moving from Roxbury to Brighton on Saturday, August 18. I need two or three people to help me with the furniture, of which there isn't much. I'm moving out of a first-floor apartment and into a second-floor apartment.

I have a 10' truck reserved and will be picking it up at 9 AM on the 18th. Anyone who wants to show up in Roxbury at 10 AM will be fed, and will probably be done in Brighton by 4:30 at the latest. Anybody who wants to show up in Brighton will be fed too.

Any takers?
dchenes: (Default)
I don't particularly enjoy the work-related "print this letter and get it signed, but don't send it yet" dance I end up doing sometimes, because sooner or later it's September and I end up sending a letter dated July. I don't know if I'm the only person around here who cares about that, but it makes me feel silly.

Speaking of feeling silly, today I am filling out paperwork for somebody who was approved as a professor last October.

I really wanted to beg off work this morning and go puddle stomping. Somehow the thunderstorm got mixed up with a dream I was having, in which I was trying to call somebody at MGH and couldn't hear them because of the thunderstorm, but they wouldn't believe me because there wasn't a thunderstorm going on over there.

In the process of trying to look busy while the Comcast guy disconnected my service yesterday, I found the Packing List with the shopping list on it. If I had bubble wrap or packing paper and sufficient motivation, most of my kitchen could get packed tonight. Since I don't have packing paper, it'll probably get packed on Wednesday at the earliest.

The Question is, what am I going to read for the next three weeks? I read a lot more when I don't have internet access. The Answer is either three or four very long books (think Shogun-length), or most of a shelf of short ones. Problem being, I want to pack the rest of my books, so not packing most of a shelf is not going to help much.

I think part of the problem is that in spite of moving day rushing up at me, it isn't really real yet. I know in an abstract way that it's going to happen, but Moving is getting filed with Vacation under "Mythological Creatures" in the back of my brain.

Sometime today I have to go hunt up that other mythological creature known as the post office. I've only been meaning to do that for about four days now (not counting Sunday).
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Getting the cable reconnected did not, in fact, cost me anything. The guy fixed it in ten minutes and marked it off as "disconnected in error". It seems that when they tried to reconnect it on Monday, they reconnected it to the wrong thing.

I could live without whatever insect it was that bit me on the right foot six times yesterday.

Dar Williams reminds me of Christine Lavin and somebody else I can't think of right off the top of my head. (I listened to The Honesty Room three and a half times on the way home last night.)

I'm going to have to make a case at work for not doing final meetings the way we have been, because it ain't working so well and I'm getting tired of being perpetually behind the 8-ball because of it.

One of these days I've got to get serious about packing. (Just as soon as I get to a point where I only have one too many things to think about, instead of however many I've currently got.)
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I got the laundry done this morning, which is good. I don't know if it's the weather or the number of washing machines that are out of order or both, but the laundromat smelled like mold and mildew. That was less good. I still have to wash towels and blankets, but those can wait a week. I always seem to have slightly more laundry to do than I can carry in one trip. Not for long, though.

I have a whole list of things I could pack if I could get myself to do it. What I really want is a staging area in which to put things to be packed. If they're staring at me, I'll do something about them. Unfortunately the best place for that is the table, and the table is where everything that doesn't really have a home lives. I'll have to clean that off first, and I'm having a terrible time convincing myself to get around to it.

Speaking of getting around to things, I suppose I should go close the shutters before my bedroom gets rained into.

I am so ready for the July SOP meeting and the office lambada to be over with. I really do like my job, but I needed vacation at the end of May and I haven't had it yet. I'm at whatever's on the far side of done. Next year I'm taking a week off in April and a week off in August.
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One of these days in the not incredibly distant future, laundry won't be such a production that even thinking about doing it after a moderately busy weekday makes me sleepy. This is why I am not doing laundry tonight.

I need a new doctor. Two weeks ago mine gave me an appointment in October, because that was the first available, and then she canceled it yesterday. I have to reschedule it myself, and I really am not interested in trying to.

I move (about 10 feet) from my cube to my first-ever office next week. I don't know when exactly, although I've heard rumors of Tuesday afternoon, after the SOP meeting gets going. The office I'm moving into was emptied today, and I wish it was being painted because one of its walls is pink and the others are off-beige, but it's an office.

I ought to be packing. I ought to be sorting things out and throwing things away and making lists. I'm not doing any of that stuff, because my brain has had it with me and has packed up and gone off somewhere without even leaving me a note. I wish it didn't have to be back tomorrow morning. Right now I'm almost wishing I could go back to having my overtime paid in time instead of in money. I still need the money, though.
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I won't say today was an absolute wash, because I did get my hairs cut (thank goodness) and I got a birthday card from my grandparents with a check in it, but I spent most of the rest of the day being a lump. Mostly my day consisted of waiting half an hour for the bus (have I mentioned lately that I really don't like the 66 on weekends?), eating too much, falling asleep for an hour in the middle of the afternoon, packing exactly two boxes of books and nothing else, being completely uninspired about what I'm going to eat for lunch next week (except that it's going to have chicken and lime juice in it), finishing the book I was re-reading and starting to re-read another one, hearing my neighbors tromp up and down the stairs and slam the front door on the way out and have loud conversations in the garden, and minor embroidery.

Tomorrow is looking like more of the same, except it ought to have more cooking and less waiting for buses in it.

My new tattoo is mostly healed. It's still shedding, but it's pretty much done shedding color.

I've drunk the Kool-Aid and given iTunes a credit card number, mostly because of Lifted and the DaVinci's Notebook song "The Gates". That song was the one they opened with on September 11, 2002, when I saw them live. Being the day it was, I had been in a very introspective and depressed mood all day, but it took about five seconds of that song to make me start laughing. The words are very funny and the tune is a song I've known since I was two years old. Some of my strongest associations seem to be music-related. There are certain songs that always make me think of where and when I heard them first, or sometimes if I bring music someplace with me, it gets permanently linked in my head to where I went. It's funny how memory works.
dchenes: (Default)
It's a good thing I'm getting a haircut tomorrow, because my hair has needed cutting for about two weeks now and it's driving me insane.

It's also a good thing that Lifted is available on iTunes. I know at least three people who should really see it, but won't go see Ratatouille.

The fact that it's Friday is a very good thing because other than getting my hairs cut, I don't have anything planned, so I can concentrate on packing. (How do you pack an apartment you're living in and keep it suitable for showing at the same time when you have no storage space?)

I'm slowly getting through a largish list of fairly trivial stuff that's been hanging over my head for weeks. At least now I have a truck reserved for moving, and I called up the place I ordered my contact lenses from on June 21 and yelled because they haven't shipped yet, and canceled the consultation appointment for the tattoo I've already gotten, and found the remittance address for my brand new (lower, yay!) loan payment, and did all that responsible-adult sort of stuff. Things still on the list: buy cat carrier and make tooth-cleaning appointment.

It's sort of too bad it's too hot to make Welsh rabbit (or rarebit, or however the heck you spell it). What else am I going to do with almost two pounds of medium-sharp cheddar and the Black Toad ale I'm getting tired of drinking?
dchenes: (Default)
Ahhh, Saturday. Does it count as productivity if you can cross a lot of things off a list even though they didn't actually produce any concrete results?

Last night I went off to Harvard Square for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I ended up in the Coop, bought a book I didn't know was in print in this country (the author is British), fell asleep in it last night, and finished it this morning.

The other thing I did last night and this morning was finally figure out what my next tattoo will be. I already knew where on my person I wanted it; now all I need is to find somebody to do it. I don't know how to get to the place in Providence that did my other ones except by highway, and the place I've heard most recommended in Boston can't even give me a consultation until late July. I know that because I went there this morning. Anybody want to come on a field trip to Providence?

Having had that fall through, I went to Coolidge Corner for coffee, Allston to look at prices for Metro shelf poles and butcher block tops, Downtown Crossing for shirts (and a sandwich), and Chinatown for muslin to make at least one door curtain. I didn't find any shirts, because the Eddie Bauer outlet's selection is downright paltry just now. I did find muslin, and was followed all over Winmil Fabrics by Winnie, the resident cat. Good stuff. Now I have to figure out whether I want to paint the muslin, or draw on it, or dye it, or try to embroider it, or do something entirely else.

(By the way, [livejournal.com profile] whuffle, check this out for undyed (or dyed) silk. I'm considering buying some dyed cotton from them myself.)

I really must remember to buy a beach towel and some more packing tape. Providing I can find anyplace that actually has packing tape, anyway. I've tried to buy more twice now and both places were out.
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Why is this week not over yet? Actually, why is July not over yet? It should be July; I've done enough work in the last two weeks for it to be July by now.

This week hasn't quite been a disaster, but it's been so bloody busy that I can't keep track of the five or six time-sensitive projects I'm working on and where I'm physically going at the same time. I keep forgetting where all my edges are and crashing my elbows into things, or dropping things. And every time I talk to anybody, I end up with another project. (One of today's new ones consists of showing somebody else where to find the data for a project everyone admits I'm too busy for. Problem being, I don't even have the time to show this person where the data is. She asked me twice today and I couldn't stop for long enough to show her.)

This is why I haven't started packing yet. I can't make a decision about anything outside of work. My brain is interested in the abstract idea of packing, but it refuses to do anything about the concrete act.
dchenes: (Default)
It's officially moving season. Somebody got a truck stuck under an overpass on Storrow Drive this afternoon. (In semi-related news, whichever auto manufacturer it is with the "it's truck season" ad campaign always makes me wonder if, since it's truck season, it would be legal to go out and shoot a truck. It gets very meta when you start thinking about how you're going to get your truck home once you've shot it, though.)

Anyway, speaking of moving season (and meta), I'm realizing I've been in limbo since I got back from grad school. The amount of thinking I've been doing about what I want to do with my new/old apartment woke me up to the fact that I actively want to live there. That's the first time I've actively wanted to live anywhere in four years. My grad school apartment and my current apartment were a means to keep the weather off self and possessions. Now I want a place with defined areas to do things in. I'm looking forward to not eating at my desk and not having the computer in the living room unless I want it there.

I'm getting the idea, finally, that even though I haven't got the faintest idea what's next, there will be a next. All I have to do is go look for it. I wonder what it looks like?

date grab

Jun. 14th, 2007 05:58 pm
dchenes: (Default)
Here's the deal: I'm moving on Saturday, August 18, and I can't move furniture by myself. Anybody out there want to help me move a fairly small amount of furniture up to a second-floor apartment?

In unrelated, but happy, news: Hooray for the death of the gay marriage ban, at least for another five years. This is about the only reason I'm actively proud to live in Massachusetts (otherwise known as the Home of the Blue Law).

HTML*

Jun. 6th, 2007 07:35 pm
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2 pairs of jeans
1 pair of bike shorts
1 pair of pajama pants
1 pair of shorts
21 shirts (no wonder I couldn't find any clean ones)
2 sweaters
3 pairs of socks
multitudinous underwear
2 bath towels

I really don't like doing laundromat laundry, which is what happens when I wait until the last possible day to do laundry and then do it all at once. For one thing, that much laundry is heavy. For another, it means I'm stuck in the laundromat for an hour and a half. The day is coming, however, when I won't have to do laundromat laundry any more. I'll be able to do laundry whenever I damn well please, or whenever I damn well need to.

Life in Brighton won't be all wine and roses, because life never is, but every so often something like that will occur to me and I'll just grin from ear to ear for a while. I'll be able to eat in the kitchen, at the table. I won't have to keep my bicycle in my living room. I'll have a pantry to put food and things in. The bathroom floor will be warm in the winter, at least in places. The laundry hampers will have a closet to live in.

This will all happen in less than three months. This makes me rapturously happy.

Since the Brighton apartment has been painted white and I've been requested to leave it that way, I'm seriously considering having an art party by way of a housewarming. By which I mean I'd invite everybody to come create things to put on the walls, or in the doorways in the case of door cloths, so as to liven up the place. Am I cracked or does that sound like an idea?

*Hey! Too Much Laundry
dchenes: (Default)
Long week, this one. Mostly good, but long. (I still don't like filling out self-evaluation forms, but being told I've got to do it posthaste because they've got to have it on file in order to give me a bonus is a pretty good incentive.) When I wasn't doing that, I put together all of five meeting packets and most of two others, came up with a concept for a committee tracking database that has nothing to do with the current one (which I need help to implement because I can't program it myself), got as far as I could with the pre-SOP paperwork, and explained the difference between the OFA calendar and the Senior Appointments calendar roughly eighteen times.

If this keeps up, I might end up being the auxiliary Access database guru for the office. Or somebody else's office eventually, maybe. Not that I want to leave where I am now, but it's a thought.

On top of which, I applied to consolidate my student loans, upped the percentage of probability of my moving to Brighton to 99 (the human chimney, aka the current tenant, is now projected to be moving out before the end of June, which works out perfectly), seized this week's budget and throttled it, and got a couple of truly sneaky ideas about various projects.

One of the projects I haven't got a clue about yet is whether I want to hire movers this time. It would be easier than renting a truck and imposing on people again, but more expensive. The only thing I really need help with is the furniture and the mattress, and I don't have that much furniture. I feel like I shouldn't yell for help from friends now that I'm over 30, though.

Tomorrow, exciting stuff on the order of haircut and laundry and washing of floors. I should've washed the floors last weekend when the weather was weather, instead of whatever it thinks it is now. Procrastinators unite...eventually.
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