Category: Awesome

Categories
Awesome Books Friends Home improvements Love

Shelve all the things

Last night Erin came over to the new place to help me go through this:

 

After about an hour and a half, we took a break to get some water (and seconds of pizza) and admire how far we’d come:

 

And when she left an hour after that, we had filled all the shelves. Most of them were pretty themed. I tend to like to take all the books that

a) I like the most,
b) I’m proudest of, and
c) have the highest reread potential

and put them on the eye-level shelves. I don’t think Erin likes that very much. I think she wanted them more thematically arranged, and she didn’t seem to be a fan of Marian Keyes next to Ira Levin. But that’s okay. After it’s all done, I can always switch everything around. (JUST KIDDING ERIN.)

Anyway, here’s everything filled:

 

And all that remains is assorted fiction, which will hopefully fit on this one last shelf I have.

 

Oh, who am I kidding? I need to buy a new bookshelf!

(I promise, after this, I’ll stop talking about books for awhile. I know it’s been a lot lately.)

Categories
Awesome Memoir Writing

A Celebration!

This happened on Thursday, and by some fortunate coincidence, I happened to be there to catch it at the precise moment:

So thanks to everyone who reads! As always, I renew my promise to try to stay interesting, optimistic, and as non-Dear Diary as possible.

Categories
Awesome Books Love Writing

The King of the Bookshelf

I pretty much adore Stephen King. I think I’ve made that evident. This is his author photo from his latest novel, 11/22/63. I think he looks remarkably like an older, fuller-cheeked version of my dad.

Author photo by Shane Leonard

Stephen King, if you read this, I think you’re awesome.

So awesome in fact, that I have collected nearly all of your work. Here is a comprehensive list of Stephen King books (novels, short stories and collections, and nonfiction). I have italicized all the books I own, and bolded the NINE that I have yet to get my hands on.

novels:
11/22/63
Bag of Bones
Black House
Blockade Billy
Carrie
Cell
Christine
The Colorado Kid
Cujo
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Dark Half
The Dark Tower Series 1-3
The Dark Tower Series 4-8
The Dead Zone
Desperation
Dolores Claiborne
Dreamcatcher
Duma Key
The Eyes of the Dragon
Firestarter
From a Buick 8
Gerald’s Game
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Green Mile
Insomnia
IT
Lisey’s Story
Misery
Needful Things
Pet Sematary
The Plant: Zenith Rising (this one is actually an unfinished eBook that I thought would be impossible to find. Then I looked on his website and saw it’s just available to download as a pdf. BOOM)
Rose Madder
‘Salem’s Lot (I don’t have this as a single book, but in one of the collections)
The Shining
The Stand
The Talisman
The Tommyknockers
Under the Dome

nonfiction:
Danse Macabre
On Writing
Secret Windows

short story/novella collections:
Different Seasons
Everything’s Eventual
Four Past Midnight
Full Dark, No Stars
Hearts in Atlantis
Just After Sunset
Night Shift
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Skeleton Crew

as Richard Bachman:
The Bachman Books
Blaze
The Regulators
Thinner

There it is. My gleeful collection. Once I have completed it, I can set about replacing some of the ancient, falling-apart copies with newer, still-bound-together copies. Oh, I should also finally read all of them…because yes, there are some that I have only read once, years ago, and a couple that I’m sorry to say I haven’t yet read.

Categories
Awesome Being a girl Home improvements Memoir Writing

Airing My Previously Dirty Laundry

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to submit a newspaper column once a month. I slacked off in February (hey, there was a lot going on) and while this one didn’t run until today, I submitted it back on Feb 28th, so I’m cutting myself a break on that. I will do better this month.

I also resolved to write one short story per month, which I neglected to do, so TWO stories in March!

===

AIRING MY PREVIOUSLY DIRTY LAUNDRY

I am not a particularly domestic person. When it comes to cleaning, I’d say I’m more of a planner than an actual doer. Right now, as I’m typing this, I’m noticing how dusty my computer screen is, but I have no immediate plans to wipe it off. Let me try blowing on it and see if that works…nope, not really.

I do have general good intentions, and I make lists of things to do, like “fold all laundry” and “clean all dishes” and “vacuum all floors,” but when the weekend rolls around I cross off maybe one and half things and then applaud myself.

Drew and I are halfheartedly looking for a new apartment. Halfheartedly because we don’t really want to move anywhere until the end of April, and everything we look at now is available for new tenants on Monday. So it’s hard to look seriously at anything just now.

One of the amenities we’ve agreed that we want is a washer/dryer in the unit. Having a washer/dryer in your own place is amazing, no doubt. But I think I have discovered the downside to having such readily available appliances: there’s never an excuse to not do laundry.

When I have to walk it outside (or down four flights of steps) (okay, onto the elevator), I can always fall back on an excuse for not doing it today. I’ll do it tomorrow, I just put on pajamas. Or I’ll do it this weekend, I’m kind of sick today and don’t want to expose the rest of the building to my germs. Etc.

But when the washing machine is just behind a door (and not even a sturdy exterior door – just a flimsy interior door!), then I have no excuse. Oh look, there’s one full basket of dirty laundry. Why am I not washing it right now? There’s no reason to wait. In fact, there’s all the reason to do it right now. I’m not doing anything. If I wash it right now I can wear my favorite sweater again tomorrow. (Not that I will.) (But maybe.)

Heaven help me if I had to actually wash things by hand…like, beat them against rocks in a stream, and then wring them out and hang them up.

And let me be honest: of all the chores, laundry is one of my favorites. (Doing dishes is the other.) Because you start with a pile of something dirty, and then, a short time later, you have a pile of something clean. That’s progress. You know what I hate more than anything? Sweeping. Because after you sweep a floor, all you’ve really done is discovered that you need to mop it.

Tonight I’m on a weird little cleaning kick, and I finally tackled that immense, intimidating basket/pile of clean clothes. I folded like a machine, and I stacked and then I placed on shelves. There were nigh on six towels in that basket-pile. When I was done, I fetched the clean clothes from the dryer from yesterday, and I folded all those. You want to know how long it took me? Seventeen minutes. That’s the equivalent of four and a half songs playing in the background. My commute is longer than that. I’ve taken showers longer than that. And now that intimidating pile is gone. And I feel invincible. I even looked around for more things to fold, but no dice – I got ‘em all.

So what’s next? Will I clean the bathroom? Wash dishes? Vacuum out my car? Grab a Swiffer and wipe down my computer screen? Who can say? Today, domesticity… tomorrow, the world.

Categories
Awesome Drew Love Sleep talking

A Very Special Sleep Talking 17

So I’m fast asleep last night when all of a sudden Drew stands up.

At first I figure he’s just going to the bathroom, but he turns around and starts messing with the blankets, specifically the quilt on top. He appears to be trying to rotate it.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“How do I get these two? To stick together?” he says. He still looks like he wants to rotate the top one, so I find him a corner and hand it to him, and then he starts pulling it off the bed.

“Hey hey! What are you doing?” I say.

Then he pauses for a minute, says, “What am I doing?” and laughs and lies back down. At this point I figure he’s awake and knows how silly he was being.

Then he says, “I think I have too many suits of armor.”

“…What?”

“Too many…suits of armor…you know.”

“Where?”

“…Never mind.”

Categories
"Other people" Awesome Celebrities Memoir Nonfiction Theatre

An Expert at Life

Almost a year ago, I had this great experience with a wacky usher at the theatre. She inspired such quotes as “The carny life is a rough life,” and yes, Drew and I still say that to each other on occasion.

Well, she’s been at the theatre again the last couple times I’ve been there, and she’s been the most helpful usher in the entire world. That is sincere. She’s also been slightly less talkative, partly because she’s gone in and watched the show both times and so we’ve only had pre-show and intermission to chat, and it tends to get busy then.

But I did hear some stories last night, among them “Situational Comedy” and “My Time in Taxco.”

So, I wasn’t sure of the definition of situational comedy, so I Googled it. Then I got onto the wiki page for sitcoms. Sitcoms are popular in the US and the UK, but fare poorly in Australia and Canada. Some successful Australian sitcoms are My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours? and Our Man in Canberra. Canadian sitcoms include Snow Job, Check It Out!, Mosquito Lake, and Not My Department.

I found this interlude amusing, and I still don’t know whether that counts as situation comedy. But I also don’t really care anymore.

She’s right, you know. This is not meant to be a swipe at Bay Area theatre, but you cannot see 7 shows in 5 days all over the Bay and not have them blend together. There needs to be more spacing out. For me, two per weekend is kind of my limit.

Everyone knows the exception is when you go to New York and have to cram a season’s worth of shows into a week. But really, that’s not ideal either. That was maybe the best thing about living there – seeing everything at a more leisurely pace, and waiting for discounts and free tickets to appear.

Anyway, those are your lessons for today. Canada and Australia aren’t as good at sitcoms as the US and the UK; and if you try to see too much in too little time, it all blends together. You’re welcome!

Categories
"Other people" Awesome Nonfiction

Pacific BioScis Laughs

Here’s something kind of crazy. In January I posted a picture (among other pictures) of a cardboard box with a weird “code” on it. Because I think I’m funny, I tagged that blog post with the “code” in the picture. I never thought about it again.

A couple days ago I was obsessively looking at my stats (hard to stop, even when it’s been a few days since writing something) and I noticed that someone had Googled that phrase and gotten here. I suddenly realized I should have Googled it (didn’t I enjoy finding out what a Gerchanovsky was?). So I did.

The first link listed was the LinkedIn page of this particular person. Oh, how I hate LinkedIn – does anyone else get nothing but notifications from them, with zero ways to turn them off?? – but I guess it’s good for something. Like discovering Gerchanovsky. Or this other guy. Whose name I’m deliberately not typing out.

Anyway, he’s an Executive Asst at the company that occupies the office building right next to ours. So I guess at some point, in all my stealing boxes from work to pack up the apartment, I managed to get a couple that belonged to them, in particular to him. And then I brought those boxes home, and then I made fun of his name.

But you know? I really really like when mysterious things become suddenly explained. Especially things you’ve forgotten about, that never really mattered that much anyway.

Categories
Awesome Being a girl Dreams Drew Family Love Memoir Self improvement Sentiment

Seven Years

There’s an old wives’ tale that every seven years all the cells in your body have regenerated and replaced themselves, so every seven years you’re like a brand new person.

There’s another saying that relationships suffer from the “seven year itch,” and that you need to be careful at that point because that’s when many people re-evaluate their relationships, and break-ups or divorces happen.

(There’s also research to suggest that the “seven year itch” has become the “three year itch,” and that’s the year you really need to watch out for. Yikes. Three years? Apprently attention spans are shrinking…)

Internet rumors and Yahoo answers aside…this is on my mind because today is Drew’s and my seven year anniversary. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been seven years. I feel like it’s been forever. I couldn’t even buy alcohol when we first got together, and since then we’ve been through college graduations (a certain classmate graduating with each of us, in two different years!), two cross-country moves, pets, no pets, jobs, no jobs, tough times and easier times.

There were times for each of us that we weren’t sure it was going to work out. But that was early days, when we were both still figuring out the intricacies of relationships. By now we’ve learned how to weather storms and that most arguments are momentary and inconsequential. We’ve hit our stride. I could do this forever.

I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I’ve changed a lot in seven years, and it’s due to this relationship. Am I a whole new person? Possibly. Am I better person? Definitely. I’m more patient, quicker to be grateful, and less moody. And if I’m a little cattier…well, it’s all in good spirits. I like me now. I hope other people like me now too.

Happy Anniversary Drew! Here’s to seventy-seven more years! (Hope he reads this post. Otherwise this is kind of awkward.)

Bakers Square, Davis, Jan 2005
Categories
Awesome Children Drew Friends Nonfiction Sentiment Technology

A New Dominion

I’m a little competitive. In life, and in board games, and other types of games. Sometimes I get carried away.

I stopped playing Risk because of one terrible experience in the college dorms, when I formed an alliance with my friend Josh, and then in a few turns I broke it and invaded him. He gave me some kind of disappointed, “I can’t believe you did that,” look, and then he and the other two people we were playing went to dinner at the dining hall. But I was too upset about my treachery to eat, and I stayed in the dorms feeling bad about myself.

Later, I realized that was stupid, and it’s just a game. I had a late dinner. But I never forgot how swept up I got in that game of Risk.

Drew’s friends recently introduced him to the card game Dominion. One of his friends has this insane expansion pack, with like a million different types of cards. I’m not even going to try to explain the rules.

Drew taught it to me and Erin over the weekend, so we could play while we watched the 49ers game. (Could our lack of attention be what caused…? No, surely not.) The three of us played three rounds and each of us won once, which is nice and PC.

Last night, Drew and I played again and he won, but it was close. I think I like this game! I like the dimensions I’ve been introduced to so far, and I like the way there is some interaction between players but it’s not overly based on that. (Like Ticket to Ride, the other addictive board game brought to you by Drew’s friends.)

I guess what I want to say is…in this world of Words with Friends and Hanging with Friends and Scramble with Friends (Boggle! omg! so fun) and Tiny Wings and Qrank and Fruit Ninja and Temple Run and Harbor Master and Flight Control…it’s really nice to sit down in a single room with RL friends and play an actual board game.

Even if Drew mostly wins.

Categories
Awesome Beginnings Being a girl Drew Endings Home improvements Memoir Nonfiction Sentiment Work

The Devolution of an Apartment

Because I missed the boat on having a comprehensive wedding blog (one of my top 5 regrets ever), I have become slightly obsessive about documenting everything just in case it’s important. Most lately, the devolution of our apartment.

Here it is near the beginning of the breakdown. The hutch is (mostly) emptied out but everything is basically still there:

As the hutch and dining room set move out, everything else starts moving around:

The bedroom and my awesome red shelves, now emptied of books. Well, almost:

The living room only seemed to grow more crowded as we packed, despite my giving away 6 bags of clothes/shoes/etc, and 2 boxes of kitchen stuff, and us throwing away tons of trash:

Possibly making some progress? The desk is gone from the bedroom:

The couches, now freed from their restraining covers, move their waterprint patterns out the balcony and over the side (no room to get them out the front door).

Drew blinds me with the dresser mirror. Maybe he’s tired of me taking pictures while he and his dad move the heavy stuff.

So much room!

Yet still so much stuff!

While Drew and his dad drove the couches to the storage, I made it my job to clean off the bed.

I liked to put blinders on and pretend that this was all that was left. Ignorance is bliss.

The truck filled with boxes:

Our stored stuff, filling up the space:

My plan was to open every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen that still had stuff in it, and close them as I emptied them out.

I got some boxes from work with some strange codes on them…

Progress!

Then a break to take pictures. The masks were mostly because I was using Easy Off in the oven, and that stuff is toxic. But then it was fun to just keep them on.

I am really loving this afternoon spent with my head in an oven. So fun.

Actually, this is preferable.

The final day. Seriously, what is all this stuff.

FINALLY! What a giant bedroom.

What a sparkling bathroom.

What an empty living room!

And of course, to say goodbye, San Bruno had to dress up in its finest.

So long, first apartment in our married life! You were a good little apartment! I will think of you fondly!