Ericaland

Sophy gave me a garden for Christmas and after two days of watering, things are growing. This is my most successful batch:

Moving is mostly! complete. I feel like once there are no more boxes and the place reaches some arbitrary level of tidiness then I’m going to call it done. I spent probably 9+ hours cleaning and tidying the old apartment this week on top of the time me and Jeremy spent cleaning and tidying together last week. The landlord spent 4 minutes doing the inspection! This makes me feel like I shouldn’t have done such a thorough job cleaning the blinds.

And lopsided ears.

I’m also capable of shrinking pictures so they’re not ginormous.

Moving is mostly complete. There’s still a lot of tidying left to do and we have to clean the old place soon. The problem with moving a block away and in the middle of the month has been us not having to clear all of our stuff out of the old place all at once. The last week has been gathering up the remaining stuff and hauling it over to the new apartment.

The new place is the first apartment I’ve lived in that I like. Previously I’ve always lived in these old buildings with crappy kitchens, little storage and hard to keep clean everything. The new place didn’t take long to clean and wiping down the bathroom and kitchen was amazingly easy. However, there’s no oven! There’s a nice gas stove, some sort of convection oven/microwave thing that doesn’t currently work and no real oven. That does suck.

I have a lot of other things to get to over my Christmas break besides finishing up moving, but sleeping in has been really nice.

We’re moving! A block away! A block further away from BART! But we will have a garage for a car. I want a Nissan Cube, or maybe a Mini Cooper? Something that could be cute and that Jeremy would use to pick me up when it’s dark and I’m heading home from fencing or other things. I may even drive again!

The new apartment has a decent kitchen with a little dishwasher. I want to paint the walls a different colour without having to paint them myself. I’m looking forward to moving, and not looking forward to packing.

A gigantic scone from this afternoon:

Outside the front door of my apartment:

Cuteness (Hello Kitty Tea Party and Little Big Planet) and awesome (craziest, happiest election ever) pretty much sums up my week.

My cold is almost gone, but I’m still coughing a lot. I was taking Buckley’s at least twice daily when I was home. I’m used to the taste now.

There were flowers in the SFO bathroom:

There wasn’t much to do in between family stuff because we were staying at my dad’s fiancee’s old condo. No internet or cable or really any furniture besides a couple of chairs, some sparse bedroom furniture and an air mattress. I was alone for almost two days too, as Jeremy went back to Nanaimo for Thanksgiving. So I spent all my alone time reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. I sort of randomly picked it as I was wandering through Chapters annoyed with myself for not bringing something from the pile of books I have been meaning to read. The review on the book said that it “should be required reading for the entire human race.” and I think I mostly agree with that, however it can be very confusing when reading a story where at least 21 (I lost count after a while) of the characters are named Aureliano.

We have a large, new tv.

It’s Lovefest weekend and I didn’t go to the parade today, but I did go see Kaskade at a Lovefest related show last night. I don’t remember the last time I went to a show, but the one last night was fun and made me feel like I should go to more.

This morning I woke up and dragged Jeremy over to a coffee shop that opened up 2 blocks from our apartment. I’m liking drinking a sugar filled hot drink with a baked good on the weekend. We’re more seriously looking at moving and I’m going to miss the closeness of the coffee shop/decent pizza place when we do leave.

There’s more onsen and nerding out in Japantown tomorrow and we’re heading home for thanksgiving Friday. It’s a direct flight even. I’m excited.

Well, I think it’s done. The buttons are attached, all the ends weaved in. I’ve decided against blocking it. I’m still not sure about the fit and I’m still focusing on the bits that aren’t perfect, but it’s finished! Picture:

Sister was in town last weekend, so we all went to see a musical based on a play written in 1891 by Frank Wedekind with modern alt-rock music by Duncan Sheik who had like one or two hit songs in the 90’s. It was pretty good, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack all week. Nothing like upbeat songs about depressing subjects.

This week was full of fanciness. Monday I had dinner at the Slanted Door, which is a popular (month in advance reservation type deal) Vietnamese place. The food was decent, but not as good as I would have expected for all the hype. Thursday, Jeremy’s friend from San Diego was in town, so we went to the House in North Beach for dinner which is always good. They had a Kobe steak special which I wanted to try, but I can’t yet get myself to order expensive beef. Friday I ended up at some ad agency party with a couple coworkers. I never found out the name of the ad agency, but I got to drink some free cranberry juice and listen to an opera singer sing an aria from Romeo and Juliet.

I have an Oakland library card and a twitter account.

Well, like between 6 months to a year. I am happy about this because it means I can use the stuff in the fridge for dinner. I am sad that I didn’t buy the cheap asparagus I saw yesterday. I think about dinner way too much these days, but it wouldn’t be terrible to be one of those awesome grandma cooks when I’m old.

I need to figure out how to vote…