Always Coming, Never Here

Stayed home from work today for a day of rest. Nose is running like a river, but I feel almost human. I've already been through half a box of tissues; I drink water, and it just comes right out my nostrils.

I somehow have to work up the willpower to go outside and do a load of laundry, as I have no clean underwear or socks. bah.

I woke up at around 1:15 pm today. I woke up pretty early on Saturday and had a damn full day - I was expecting guests for breakfast, but didn't receive any. I had roused at about 7 am in order to clean up the house and get the kitchen ready for some cooking; I frantically cleaned the kitchen, dining, and living rooms. When no one had arrived by about 10:30 am, I figured I wouldn't see anyone for a while, so I started cleaning the shelves in my pantry (to make space for dishes and pans and such that were all over the counters).

I got the kitchen into a pretty nice state - it's really solid now, all the appliances are in the right places, and I've made some good prep areas, and I cleaned off the little shelf between the windows and put spices, oils, and hot sauces on it. Around 1:30 pm I decided to make breakfast for myself... I made a ham and cheese omlette on my brand new electric griddle, and I slowly cooked a pound of bacon in my cast iron pan on the stove (I didn't eat it all of course - I'll have a nice BLT or two for lunch this week). The round table against the windows is now a little breakfast nook - coffee machine, hot pot, toaster, sandwich press, and the big griddle when I want to set it up.

On the opposite side of the kitchen, I have my Kitchenaid mixer, the microwave, and the nice stainless steel scale I got for my housewarming. I can also set up the bread machine on that table if I don't need it for prep area.

The pantry is about halfway ready. All the open shelves are clean, but I have to finish cleaning up the cabinets. Once I finish washing more pots and pans, I can put those away on the shelves...

I'm really starting to like living in my apartment now. I'm at the point where I can just kind of sit around and feel good about the way things look. I'm getting comfy. It feels very, very nice.

Oh, and since I completely digressed... the other portion of my day was the Gweepnet tenth anniversary party. From 6pm to 2am, I hung out with 80 of the folks on gweep.net and had a great, great time. Lots of people I haven't seen in person in a long while. I was so damn tired when I got home though... just slept for eleven freaking hours.

And I hear tomorrow is supposed to be another foot of snow. Freaking a... at least there won't be any drought this year.

Since I moved to Worcester, I've been remembering my dreams again. This is an amazingly rare thing. It may have something to do with the noise of the radiators... they do a lot of hissing and popping and clanking, so they may be raising my awareness level at the ends of my sleep cycle.

Anyways - this dream. It was totally anime style. Earth was going to be attacked by this gargantuan space demon octupus thing. It hurtled through space towards the planet, a juggernaut of terror. But Earth was not entirely unprepared... a trio of bio-engineered, blonde super-women were shot into space to meet the thing head on. They all had incredible physically oriented super powers: strength, energy beams, and so on.

The only problem was, their powers had limits. Once they ran out of energy, their hair turned from blonde to black and they were totally vulnerable. All of their powers could not stop the creature, and they died horribly in the vacuum of space.

The octopus demon beast landed on the planet with a terrible impact. And then, the second wave of female super-heroines was launched... a trio of overweight, mentally enhanced psionic blonde women. They tried to assault the only minimally damaged monster on a psychic level; but that attack began to fail as well, as the telepathic woman reached into the unfathomable, abyssal depths of whatever served as the thing's mind. She screamed in horror and pain as her hair bled black...

and then I woke up.

Today I spent a few hours at the new place with Tom. He was all bundled up, and after a bit we both realized it was far too cold... turned out that we had run out of oil again. I had to call the oil company and then go down there in person to fill out my credit application in order to get them to come out today - but come out they did! Our oil tank is full, the apartment is toasty, and the new digital / programmable thermostat is installed and running! Huzzah!!

Tom and I also played with our cable box and TiVo set up today - we weren't getting all the channels, so I had to redo the guided setup again. Unfortunately I was a klutz and hit the switch on the power strip by accident (oops) in the middle of it. It screwed up the cable box, so I had to fiddle with it all and repeat setup again to get it working right. We still weren't getting a couple of channels - but then Tom tweaked something on the cable box to tell it to find all of its channels itself, and then everything fixed itself. Yay! Now I don't have to worry about missing any TV shows. I do still have to move my TV and speakers though... before Wednesday actually, because that's when Jim and Christina's new TV comes in. At some point I have to get a receiver so I can actually use my speakers... and I'll also need to get an entertainment center to house all of this stuff and our various game consoles (lots of stuff to buy).

So far we've been able to run the fridge, a laptop, a few lights, and the TiVo, TV, VCR, and cable box without blowing fuses or having other electrical problems. This bodes well, but I'm still worried about our power supply. The landlord promised that the wiring would be the first thing he would fix, but it remains to be seen whether or not he'll come through for us. He's spending a lot of money fixing pipes... water and gas plumbing. I think he plans to do some of the wiring himself, but I'm worried about whether or not he'll have the dough to pay for it all.

I mopped my bedroom floor with Murphy's oil soap - my room looks so wonderful now! I still have to clean off the floor molding with some formula 409, and I have to pick up some nice heavy curtains for the windows to keep the heat in. I need to get a little table lamp too (more to buy!).

The next major project is cleaning the bathroom... I've scraped all the flaking paint off of the ceiling in there; now I have to use some 409 on the walls to make them less dingy. After that comes the cleansing of the tub, sink, and toilet... and then, finally, the floor. Although it's such a nasty mess that I doubt it's going to come out very clean; I'll probably end up getting a nice long set of bath mats to cover up most of the floor (so many things to buy, will it never end??). The only other updating I plan to do around the apartment is to scrape the rest of the flaking paint off the ceilings and wash the floors.

About another week, I think. It'll be completely liveable by then, and I will take that first luxurious bath with lavender bath salts in that glorious claw foot tub. Mmm.

Happy shiny new DELL PC arrived yesterday. It came with Windows XP Professional... after 10 minutes of futzing, I managed to make it look like it should instead of looking like "OS for motards". And once again, I realized that Microsoft hasn't changed a damn thing with any of their operating systems except the cosmetics.

Anyhow, I am currently transferring huge amounts of data from multiple systems to this new one. And this one has a CD-RW, so I'll be able to conveniently archive my data for a change. Though I still haven't received my package of CD-RW discs from DELL yet, I guess because it had to ship separately. No matter. There's still plenty to do just moving files around and installing software and such.

In other news, the weather is shit outside. It's eight in the morning, and it's completely flat, rainy, and dreary outside, almost greyscale. Perfect climate for staying inside and playing with the new computer.

On the apartment front - Tom and I figured out the cable system last night and hooked up his TV to it. At some point I'll need to discern how TiVo will hook into this beast of a system. Digital cable officially has Too Many Channels (tm). I'm sure it'll be too much for my poor little TiVo, so I'll have to save up for a big old eighty hour Series II. This will be after I get a receiver to power my speakers though. And neither of these is going to happen until I have steady income... sigh.

I'm also looking at being in my first Shakespearean production come the end of March. It'll be "Love's Labours Lost" and it'll be taking place in Higgins House at WPI. I'm trying to convince Tom to join in the production with me. Round-table casting is going to take place this Saturday - I've never read the play before; are there any fans of the playwright out there willing to recommend a role for me?

Hot water is coming on Monday. Running water should be coming tomorrow. Parents might be coming on Sunday. New computer is coming some time next week. A new year is coming. I should be making my final moving arrangements for Monday, as long as there is hot water and a working toilet.

Things seem to be doing the opposite of falling apart. For a change.

I would like to announce that there will be a housewarming in January. More details on this later, but it will be a combination housewarming / super bowl party, so it will be taking place on the day of January 26th, 2003. Save the date if you want to come!

There is still no water. I specifically asked on Sunday for him to just turn on the cold water just so I can clean. And he didn't. I also specifically asked him to call me about trying to find a plumber, so I'm assuming he found one who will test the gas pipes... if he didn't, I will be grievously upset.

I'm about 80% moved in. I have either three or four more car trips to make, and I'll have carted over everything that I can cart over in my car - then I need to truck the mattress, bookcase, drawing table, and TV and speakers. The walls in the bedroom are clean, so now I just have to prime and paint them.

SO CLOSE!! Damn it all, I just want to move in already!!

My apartment has heat! Hooray!! Now all I need is water - and that should follow shortly.

The place has been emptied, and the rooms I am not using have been closed. I've moved about 60% of my stuff there, and I spent the day today scraping wallpaper off the walls in my bedroom with the help of two excellent friends (noah, kim, you guys rule). Tomorrow I'm going to finish cleaning the walls and proceed to paint primer over them, the walls in the closet, and the ceiling. After that, I'll put real paint on the walls (on Monday I guess)... and then I will have a BEDROOM! Rock.

So it looks like my current target move date is Wednesday of next week. I may end up having to rent a U-haul to make the final move and carry a bunch of stuff all at once.