Category: Home Improvement

Everything’s Rusting

So I think I’ve managed to keep the updates so few and far between that I’ve lost all my (2) readers.  Sorry, you guys.

It’s been pretty fucking humid lately, and I’ve noticed a new problem with the house.  RUST.  rust? Yeah, my apartment is rusting. I noticed it on my toothbrush holder first, like 2 months ago.  These little blackish spots had been appearing in the well that the bottom of the brush rests in, and I thought it was mildew or mold or something equally disgusting  I would scrub it off, but it would come back a few days later… long story short it’s rust.  There’s rust on most of my “stainless steel” appliances, too.  Even the faux steel veneer on my frigidaire junk.  Of course, in the course of trying to scrub it all off I realized there’s some caked on gunk on the handles of everything.  I don’t think I’ll ever get it off.  Until maybe i sell the place.

Another victim of the humidity: my orchids.  I have three orchids here, and I’m not sure how many of you know what the deal with these things is, but orchids are fucking hard to take care of… apparently.  You get them with these beautiful flowers in bloom and some vague “don’t water too much” instructions.  And they do fine for maybe a few weeks.  And then the flowers shrivel up and fall off one by one. If your home is incredibly humid, that is.  The one I have at work in the AC and the dry air is doing fine… even though I accidentally burnt it in direct sunlight.

Lastly, I went out with some friends to celebrate this guy’s 30th birthday this weekend… the old lady and I were expecting to be like one of maybe 10 guests and the least close/connected to them.  But other than the guy’s roommate and wife, there was only one other person.  Interesting.  I’m not sure what I think about that.  I like to think I don’t have any friends and that it’s because of my specific situation/personality.  But man.  30.  I may have actually had more people at my 30th… although I can’t remember at all what I did.  I remember what I didn’t do, though.

Technowhosie?

I’ve got several things to touch on with this post, but I doubt I remember them for more than the next 4 minutes, so here goes a list:

Maintenance payments:
These are the thing that keeps home ownership from being the unequivocal “good thing” that we all believe it should be.  For all my rent paying readers (hahahahahaha: readers! with an “S”! HAHA. ok.) who may not know, it’s a monthly fee that pays for shit like the super (who charges to fix stuff in your apartment, btw) and heat and water and gardening.  And it is ALWAYS going up.  We just got another increase.  I can’t handle it.  My monthly maintenance is more than my car payments used to be (I sold the car to be able to get this place).  And we’re getting hit with–now follow this one closely–two one-time assessments of 200 bucks.  Assessments are how the building gets more money from you without raising the maintenance fee.  It just gets collected in one lump sum.  Twice.  Assholes.

Karaoke:
Went to a friend’s birthday thing this weekend.  What do you call it when people meet up at a bar for a person’s birthday?  It’s not exactly a party, is it? Anyway, we started at this place called the Dove Parlour, which was overblown and maybe not all that great.  But then the party relocated to Planet Rose.  And here’s the thing; it’s a karaoke bar.  In fact it has no other reason to exist or be frequented.  It’s almost like people blow in off the street solely to belt out a song and then they flitter off again.  The people in the place are all there waiting for their selections to come up, and along the way they get rowdy for crowd pleasers, singing along to the hits.  Anyway, I popped my karaoke cherry.  It was magical.  It was definitely like the first time you try sushi and realize there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.

Let me pause here to get a little philosophical.  Or at least introspective.  I was hanging out with a different style of person from the usual that night.  There were absolutely no hipsters per se along for the ride.  Everyone was in general characterized by a pointed lack of guile, very little irony, and possibly (i’m inferring here) musical taste that could be classified as unsophisticated.  This is part of my project to shift the type of person I spend my time with away from the ultra image conscious hipster stock I’m used to.  And it was incredibly awesome.  I wouldn’t have sung in a group of my old friends.  Never ever in a million years.  Too much judgement happening.  This group at Planet Rose was incredibly positive and it was a good feeling.  I heartily recommend it.

Technorati:
I don’t really know what it is, other than a blogging ubersite that keeps a list of active blogs and makes them searchably accessible to a buuuunch of people.  So I got on it and listed HIE with them.  I also added he ability to leave comments, and an RSS feed for those of you who know how to use them.  It only has my recent posts, though, so it will take some time for it to flesh out.  There’s also a button to add it to your faves on technorati.  I have no idea what that means.
But please leave a comment if you read this to let me know you’re out there… that means you, my one reader.

Boring Real Life

Well so here’s the part where I jump into divulging mildly confidential info and am thus forced to keep this site anonymous forever and ever ever.  But first, the noise problem.

The part of the neighborhood I moved to is made up mostly of people waiting to die.  They are old.  They are great as far as old people go, though.  At least to someone who’s used to a certain stereotype of the elderly as quivering, barely mobile, mostly silent and lacking in the spunk department.  Where’d I come up with all that awful bigot-ey bullshit? Well the southwest, natch.  My point is, though, that here you get some real live wires.

Take my upstairs neighbors as an example.  They scream at each other all the time, move furniture in the middle of the night (2 AM), and have crazy topics as fall-back conversation.  When encountered in the laundry room, the old man from upstairs likes to wistfully declare that the “Indians” had it right.  “Huh?”
“The Indians had it right hundreds of years ago.”
Me: “H- how so?”
Upstair Old Guy: “They never washed their clothes.”
Me: “Oh, yeah?”
UOG: “Yeaaah, they had the right idea, this washing stuff’s for the boids.”
Me: “Is that right.  Well I think I prefer being clean.  It gets a little unpleasant after a few days–”
Uog: “Naah, they really had life down back then, those Indians. You have a nice day.”
Me: “You too”

Problem is they’re fucking loud sons of bitches.  Even when they are off to Florida until April, like the building manager (who’s sympathies lie firmly with the older residents) claims. In fact, as I write this I hear something large being dragged across the floor.  And I have to be the crazy psycho who forces the sweet old couple to buy carpets (which everyone is required to have).  And leave asshole notes tucked in between the doorknob and door jam.  Which bitch about loud humming machinery that turn out to be in the basement and NOT in the “empty” apartment upstairs.  So now I’m crazy.

Work
So two more people got fired last week.  I’m wrapping up the last episode of the show I cut, and would probably be the next in line.  And I bought an apartment.  This is a new type of stress.  And the messed up thing is I’m finding myself getting boxed into WANTING this job badly because of the mortgage and the inherent potential depression factor of being jobless in Siberian Brooklyn.  Nuts.

Want a fun link? Not safe for work

Dreams Different

I’ve been having a new version of the classic anxiety dream lately, and I’m not too pleased.  On the other hand, it’s at least an interesting phenomenon, so I’ll share it with the intergallery.

So here’s the most recent dream, analysis to follow (but it won’t be necessary): So, from what I can remember, I was house shopping at the beginning of the dream.  My goal was to get the biggest place with the most impressive layout for what i could afford.  So I find this place owned by a little old lady who’s moving south or something, and it’s pretty cool.  Old, a little undermaintained, but funky layout, two stories, big bathroom, lots of character.  Blah blah blah, I get it, have some friends over and it starts raining.  I’m giving them a tour of the place and we walk into a room at one end of the house (which is draftier and creakier than I remembered), and it’s leaking! I feel palpable dismay and a sense of failure.  I distinctly remember that in the dream i chastised myself for not checking for water damage or getting the place inspected before i bought it, and then I notice that half the ceiling in this room is missing.  The back end of my new house is completely open to the elements!

The rest of the dream is me scrambling to find a tarp, and trying to find the hidden value of my new home to somehow compensate for the gigantic hole and water damage.

So this is only the latest in my new series of anxiety dreams, most of which feature some sort of me forgetting to make a bill payment and suffering consequences.  The plus side, I THINK, is that I won’t be having anymore school-theme anxiety dreams.  No more forgetting my homework, or realizing I went a whole semester without attending chemistry class and there’s an exam tomorrow.  yay, adulthood.