Dakota

This evening, Matt and I went upstairs to take photos and install the smoke detector in the apartment above ours. I had heard that it was larger than ours, but I had no idea.

The flow of it is far better... there is a lot more space; the bathroom is still small but no smaller than the one on the second floor, and there are these massive rooms. The reason we were taking photos and doing the smoke detector, though, is because the people that were there moved out. New tenants are arriving this weekend for a year lease.

I am quite envious of the apartment, considering. Anyway. Just wanted to say that, in case someone wanted to give me the several thousand dollars to make up for the rent and alterations (not done) in the current apartment, and allow us to have the one upstairs.

Asked anonymously.

14. What is something you are most proud of?
( Read more... )
You, too, have the power to ask.

Wrote today. Like at 8 AM, after I showered. I was listening to Version 2.0 by Garbage and got to "The Trick is To Keep Breathing." I has some ideas for The New Age (a project that I have been working on, off-and-off-and-sometimes-on). So I sat down and started writing. But after I got the initial few lines down, I realized that I really wanted to be typing. I got about two handwritten pages out, but then I started to lose motivation. My ideas were coming faster than my pen and I was getting bored and forgetting what I wanted to do.

Once we get an air conditioner upstairs, I am seriously going to need to get a computer as well. What that may mean is me moving Gaah upstairs and obviously keeping Iris downstairs ('cause it's technically not mine), but they share a monitor and Gaah is not exactly on it's best legs as it is. I have almost no room on it due to mp3's.

Also, I don't know where I would have space for it. It would have to be in the living room, that being the place where the air conditioner is tentatively planned on (hopefully the far wall, behind the couch, 'cause you can look right through that window from the street and see what we're watching on TV. Which may not generally matter, but the butt-fucking on Queer As Folk may be an issue at times. Plus, I had no idea how many people walk at night around here. And now that summer's coming, probably even more. But, I digress.

I'd say laptop, but I hate the keyboards on those things. I need it to be further from the screen. All the buttons are so low, and the keyboard I've got has these hinges that keep it slanted a bit, which is wonderful. Not so simple with a laptop; and I'd have to hook a mouse to it anyway, and I've been completely dependent on my Microsoft laser-mouse, which would require yet another cord to go on the almost non-existent laptop screen top.

But I can't keep coming down here whenever I want to go online, write something, or whatever... And sometimes, I will want to listen to mp3's. I have too many compact discs as it is-- I can't keep burning stuff that I will probably only listen to less than half of on a regular basis.

But, wrote today. Which is a huge step-up from the not-writing I've gotten far too uncomfortable doing. When I had dinner with Joyce (which was only frustrating for her asking questions, me getting partly through and her changing the topic, and me being completely unable to enter in a new topic without an immediate switch to one of her's), we talked about me writing. She started to talk about college, but I reminded her that I had politely asked her at Journey if the next time we talk about college, it's when I bring it up. She asked about my writing, and I basically only got as far as to say that I haven't been doing any. Not entirely true; I've written some songs for the Derek Kamen project and some fairly unamazing entries for his tour diary, too. I'm hoping New Age will help a bit. Lots to work with, and I think I am going to intentionally work around chronological order (which is what I have a lot of problems with-- working with things in order; I don't have Part A, B. C, D and E written in order ever, but I try to, get frustrated and then stop. Here I can write D or B first and it not matter. In fact, it can potentially benefit the story, to have it reveal in a sideways fashion.), and I am excited about it.

Red hasn't gotten much love because I haven't been in the space to work on it. Genevieve and I have to seriously sit down and talk about it, but when we see each other, it's usually once-a-week, and we want to talk like friends do as opposed to "work," even recreational types. Stuff has to stop happening in our personal lives so it doesn't suck up so much verbal time!

...Okay, I'm gonna go eat. Upstairs. In the sweltering. I wish it would just fucking rain already.

I miss Matt.

I moved the couch upstairs... put some bookshelves in their proper places... books in those shelves... Before all of that, I vacuumed the floor... I got sidetracked for a good 30 minutes staring at my yearbook. Lots has happened since 2002. I kept going page by page and thinking "Wow, they look familiar." With good reason... I saw them a few hundred times each for more than four years.

It wasn't even the expected "nostalgia." I was more curious about the people that I wasn't really friends with... Sorta-friends with... People I kept away from like they were wasps.

I am insanely curious about some of them. Who else is gay? Who got pregnant? Any STD's or drug possession charges? Got married, even? Hit the bottle right after graduation? Botched plastic surgery? Best friends who now hate each other? Has a really boring, uneventful life in retail? Most importantly: do they wonder what happened to me?

What I have learned for today:

-- Couches are heavy. Especially if it's one person moving them. And even if they're divided into different parts... still heavy.

-- "Truce" may very well be my favorite Dresden Dolls song. If not, then one of my favorite songs of all time.

-- While, yes, it is wonderful that I lost 5 pounds so far on Weight Watchers, I could still go for a huge gigantic pizza right now.

I am so incredibly tired. I didn't want to leave the bed. As it was, I kept hitting the alarm clock. The mattress makes a pretty good argument for never leaving it.

Yesterday, Matt and I went to Plainfield to get my dresser, my end table, and some of my books. A lot of stuff was accomplished and moved, and we also went to New Milford to get Larry's entertainment center from his mom's house.

Very tired today. Entirely unfocused, and quite disinterested in much of anything.

The bathroom smells like bleach now.

I think that means it's pretty clean.

...Yeah, that's all I got.

Matt and I spent our first night upstairs with the new bed. The bed is comfortable, wonderful, and entirely too difficult to resist. I am now working in a timed schedule, which is much better than before, because I actually have two days where I start work at noon. I almost didn't get out of bed from the 11 o'clock alarm.

Partially, this is due to 40, who was a spastic fuck the entire night. He arrived upstairs with us and promptly hid under the bed. After some food, and some more casual walking around the apartment by us, he decided to be curious. He managed to explore three of the four rooms, discovered the joy of windowsills, and that was that. He seemed actually pretty adapted by the time Matt and I were going to sleep.

I went through my CDs and determined which I really... just don't need in my collection... and putting the sheets on and putting most of the clothes in the downstairs closet to the upstairs ones.. Matt put together a bathroom cabinet, and put the shower curtain and stuff up. We brought up our bathroom things, and were ready for sleep sometime after 2 AM.

40 decided to go from contented kitty to freaked-out-hyena. It was long after 3 where I finally fell asleep because 40 kept jumping on the sills and falling off, and batting stuff around the kitchen floor. At least I think that's what that sound was.

But, yeah. I could live there.

The carpeters have come and gone. They actually showed up right after I posted my last entry, at 8.55 or so. They were here for about an hour. We now have purple and black fuzzy floors.

They look good. They will even better with furniture.

So. Matt and I just got a mattress. An expensive mattress, but a wonderful one. And mattresses tend to be expensive as it is, anyway. But this one is plush and wonderful. We could've gone with the $3000+ plus (well, actually we, uh, couldn't), but ours was $1330, split half-and-half between Matt and I.

I am at the moment keeping the job I am, for reasons up to and including, I simply have no choice. But the mattress is done! Yay!

Carpets Monday! Yay!

Technically a home! Yay!

(Oh, on a bad note, PNC said I couldn't close my account while I was in West Paterson. They don't have my signature on "web file" or something, and so they can't prove I'm me. So, I have to go to Plainfield, where somehow I'll be more convincing... how, I do not know. Although, I can still use the account for now. And I'm gonna have to. I have a $1330 bed to pay for.)

This day is the slowest moving train.

I want to go home.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that's the next room. And sometimes the one I'm in, too.

...I need to get out of here.

Oh, right... Should've said:

Didn't get to Sears. Got the carpets at Faber in... Totowa I think. Expensive, but they're carpets. And they will be ours in like 2 weeks.

But, that part's done.

The Empire struck out.

We got a housecall from an Empire carpets person. I felt bad; they're probably paid on commission, and we totally wasted his time. If it makes them feel any better, they wasted ours, too... He didn't show up until quarter to 5, which is barely in that 3-5 window they gave us, and then pulled out his incredibly limited supply of carpet samples.

See, their gimmick is they're quick-installation people... Not that they have a surplus of colors or types to choose from... That clearly isn't as important. $1200 for carpets that we'd be settling for if we accepted them is a bad plan. Still, it's hard to say no after two months of not living upstairs, and 6 weeks after we said we didn't want to wait five-six weeks for Home Depot's delivery of the colors and textures that we knew we liked.

We're going to Sears, now.