Apartment Therapy

So, after what seems like forever, I finally write to you from my yellow living room, which looks over my pink kitchen.

That's right, my kitchen is pink. We finally got around to painting, and we chose a palette that is evocative of the films of the French New Wave, specifically "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." Here are some stills from the film so you can see what I mean:

So the living room is a bright sunshine yellow, the kitchen is pink and the bedroom is going to be a bright olive (a color which is, incongrously, called "Punk Rock.") It looks awesome, I can't wait to get my pink Kitchen-Aid blender to match the kitchen (they make a pink stand mixer too, but I'd feel dumb replacing the white one I got for free with a pink one, just so they match-- those things cost almost $300). We still have some shelving to purchase so that all our media is properly displayed, and we took down the ugly blinds that were in the living room to replace them with curtains. 

Also, Mr. Puerco and I have been going to the gym and eating well pretty diligently so hopefully by his birthday party (which is mid-October) we'll be a little less chubby in a little bit nicer apartment.

note: I wrote a longer, more detailed, much more entertaining post. Then my computer turned off. I spent 45 minutes on that post. This was all I could muster in its place. I am peeved.

*puerco*

Hair Quandary

My hair is very blah. In fact, the most blah it's been since I was maybe 15, pre-dye jobs. The mohawk is pretty much entirely grown out and it's all to my shoulders in a rough bob. I haven't colored it since April so the brown color is faded and I have inch and a half blondish roots. But here's the real difficulty: I want to change the color, but I have over $400 of beautiful brunette extensions. Do I rock the brunette for a few more months with extensions (I would also have to find someone to put them in for me), or lighten my hair (which I can't imagine as short as it is)?

Either way, I have to find a stylist.

You've seen me with long brown hair, and if I lighten it I want it to be like
Gisele-Sarah Jesssica Parker-Portia De Rossi-blonde, what do you think?


*pidge*

What I am up to. . .

. . .is not a whole lot.

I'm at home being a total bum. As I think I mentioned, I scored all 5 seasons of Six Feet Under for $16.99 each at Costco, so on the days when I'm off and Mr. Puerco is working, I'm going back through them from the beginning. I'm in the middle of Season 1 which, at one point, I had VHS tapes of that Elliott made for me, so I've seen all these episodes about a hundred times, but I still enjoy them. I'm looking forward to getting on to Season 3 though, because I think that's where it really gets good. 

Also at Costco, we picked up Seasons 1 and 2 of Carnivale for the deal-of-a-lifetime price of $16.99 each, which, if you'll recall, I was vehemently against watching when you were into it. I don't really know why that was. Anyway, we've been watching it, and we're so engrossed that we have to limit ourselves to 2 episodes per viewing session so that we don't blow through it too quickly. As it is, we already midway through the second season and I have a terrible feeling that it's going to end and there are going to be all these unanswered questions and things I want to know about that I will never ever  know. That show was cancelled at the last minute because, apparently, it cost something like $2 million an episode to make, so HBO told the producers that they'd keep making it if they could cut down the budget. The producers said no, so there was no more Carnivale so what we're going to be left with is a bunch of loose ends. It hasn't even happened yet and I'm already all worked up about it. The point is, I finally understand your fascination with it. What an awesome show!

I haven't been using public transportation to read the way I used to in New York. Reading on the bus makes me carsick, so I mostly listen to old episodes of This American Life, which I just started listening to in the past year. They've been on the radio for 12 years though, so I've been working my way up through their archives. I haven't read any Henry Miller, so you're a better man than I for trying twice. I'm still stuck trying to finish all the Don Delillo books. 

This is the first month that I've had a regular schedule all 4 weeks, so I've actually had money and have bought stuff. One of the things I bought was this Crayola telescoping marker tower. It's 3 rings of 50 different colored markers, the fat kind with the fine tips, and they're a little shorter than the traditional marker. They're called "Pip-Squeaks." It called to me from the shelf and I couldn't resist them. Now I wish I had some art project to do with them. 

I'm glad you finally got a bed. Just don't try to take it apart by destroying the legs with a drill like we did the last time. 

*Puerco*

I Forgot...

Read the post below first...

So, back to Henry Miller and bus reading. So, on the first day of reading this book I was riding the bus home from work, it was the afternoon, maybe 4:00 ish, the beginnings of rush hour. I was sitting near the back, over the rear tire humps two seats on each side face backwards, similar to my favorite subway car layouts. I was sitting in a rear-facing seat by the window. Half way home a rather large-scruffed-I-don't-want-to-say-homeless-but-for-sake-of-the-story-homeless man sits across from me. I don't look up because I definitely don't want to make eye contact, I just try to keep reading. This book is very profane, and I don't have anything against cursing really, especially in writing, in fact, I admire when someone and throw a couple of fucks and shits around seamlessly. But, "Tropic of Cancer" is seriously obscene, and with cunt especially. So, I'm reading all the curses and trying to understand their purpose in the story when the man across from me pulls out a loaf of bread, mayonnaise, and bologna from his plastic bag. He then proceeds to begin making himself some bologna sandwiches, using his finger as a mayonnaise spreading utensil. I was appalled but amused, and I certainly did not look up then. He prepared and ate two sandwiches.
We got off at the same stop.

*pidge*

I Suck/ Partially Accomplished.

Almost everyday I have ideas for blog posts, I might even start writing them in my head, but then, come the end of the day, I don't sit down and actually type my stories. I'm very sorry, blog buddy.

But, I have been able to successfully acquire several things from my wish list from a while back. The boy and I ordered, received and built our new Ikea loft bed. It makes me feel weird to sleep on that frame again, but at the same time it's pretty comfortable and very convenient, due to the "closet" it created for us.
I also bought a bike! I went for a relatively cheap but still reliable one. I love it, except for the handlebars, which I was assured could be changed easily. I think I may become a bike person. Especially when I don't live some place with so many hills. But it still definitely beats the bus.
The one thing about the bus I will miss though is the reading time. I took "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing", by Melissa Banks, from the lost and found at work and finished it in a mere three days of commuting on the bus. Now I'm reading "All the Names", by Jose Saramago, and I think it's going to take a month, due to the lack of turn-off-the-tv/computer-and-read time.
sidenote~ I also tried reading "Tropic of Cancer", by Henry Miller, and I just couldn't get through it. I barely made it past the first chapter. Have you read it or tried to? Should I try to go back to it?
Lastly, I did not purchase a Louis Vuitton bag, but I did purchase an agenda/planner. I thought this was a wise buy, since I couldn't live without one, and I can still feel classy but be able to hide it in another bag. But let me tell you about the customer service at the LV store... It was amazing. I was nervous to go in at first due to our style, but they loved it! I was getting complements not only on my tattoos, but also the forever 21 dress I was wearing that day. It made me want to go back and buy a bag. I'm saving now.

*pidge*

Quitting+Ham

So, I wanted to tell you about my new job, which I am quitting, but first, some other musings about the bus. 

Seriously, so much goes on on the bus that I almost feel like I should have a second bus-oriented blog. 

Anyway, the other afternoon I was coming home from work and this junkie was on the bus. He didn't look like a nutter though, I mean he wasn't muttering to himself or carrying on or nodding out, it was just obvious to me that he was a person who did a lot of drugs, but he was pretty lucid. He was sitting in the front in the old or handicapped people seats, and I was next to the back door, so I couldn't hear what he was saying, I could only see that he was talking to the girl sitting across with him and that she didn't seem too thrilled about that. He had a paper bag in his hand, like a lunch sack, and he kept shaking it around. 

A couple stops later, he made his way toward the back of the bus. I was really hoping he wasn't going to approach me, but of course he did. He sat in the seat ahead of me and turned around to face me and held the paper bag up, shaking it in my face.

"You wanna buy some ham for three dollars?" he asked?

"No," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders like, "oh well, I tried," and got off the bus at the next stop. So I wondered what was really in that bag. Was it really ham? Why the arbitrary amount of $3? Or is "ham" some kind of drug slang I'm not aware of, like the time that big tranny came up to me at Motor City and asked if I wanted to see Tina and I thought she was just referring to herself in the third person, but then later I realized she was asking me if I was interested in purchasing some crystal meth. But what kind of drugs could I get for $3? And the guy seemed intent on getting the $3 so that he could buy drugs, so why, if he already had some drugs would he be trying to sell them off? So maybe it really was ham in that bag. 

This and my many other tales of the bus make me concerned about one of my dad's new job ventures. He has applied to be a busdriver for the VTA and I just don't think it's the best idea in the world. I mean, my dad is no codger, but he does not need to be spending his days physically removing racists from and telling junkies not to sell ham on his bus. I just think that if he could find anything else to do, it would be better than being a busdriver. Maybe people on the bus are more civilized up north, I don't know. I just don't like it. 

Anyway, on to my job that I'm quitting. 

I've been working at this coffee shop for a couple weeks, and when I got hired, it was with the understanding that eventually, should my skills prove sufficient, I would be made assisstant manager. That sounded good to me and figured that then I could eventually phase out waitressing altogether. 

The problem is that they do all this stuff that I find appalling. They make cappuccinos with the big, frothy, Starbucksian foam, which, for some reason, I have a really hard time creating now that I'm used to texturizing rather than frothing. When I sent my resume, I said I made a good cappuccino, which, if you like your capp with bubbly, airy milk, turned out to be a lie, so that makes me look bad. Also, they only use nonfat milk for cappuccinos because "it's easier to foam." Also, their large sized espresso drinks have three shots in them. Do you know how they get the third shot? By pushing the single shot button on the espresso machine after the first two shots have been pulled through that same filter. If you order an iced espresso drink there, the shots will be measured out from a reserve of chilled espresso that has been brewed ahead of time, so it's almost always at least an hour old. They prep it at night so it's already chilled in the morning, so if you come in for your morning iced latte, the espresso in it will not even have been brewed that same day. When I come in in the morning, the machine is still covered with coffee splashes and grinds from the day before. I never work at night, so I don't know how the closing ritual goes, but the condition of the espresso machine in the morning leads me to believe that it is not cleaned at night, not even wiped down, much less taken apart and treated to an application of Puro-caf once in a while. I've been dying to tell you about this, because no one else I try to explain it to really understands the horrified feeling that it fills me with. 

Recently, it has come to my attention that there will be more shifts available at The Cafe where I am a waitress, so I think that what I'm going to do is just take 4 shifts there and quit the coffee shop. I mean, I can get up at 5:30 in the morning, but it just doesn't seem worth it to go to a place that has "expresso" written on the awning and make crap coffee on a dirty machine. The tips aren't very good, and the job also requires things like making deliveries to the various loft buildings downtown, cooking eggs in the microwave, and taking extensive phone orders from difficult people, all of which I hate. So I think, after Wednesday, I'll quit. 

If you're keeping track, this will be the third job I have quit in as many months. I am amazing. 

*Puerco*

Wasting Time?

My new favorite website of all time, it's not really a website but one that links you thousands upon thousands of sites and blogs and photos that involve your interests. I know, it doesn't sound real, does it? But really, you should check it out....

stumble upon!

(I will write a better post soon, I'm sorry...)

pidge