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.