awhyzip

Heading to NYC this weekend. Whee! Nervous, but looking forward to big walking plans (& joining the Barnarders).

After a conversation with Joanthon re kisses, looked up old LJ posts & reflected on what's the same/different since then.  It's been a long time!
Am encouraging aforementioned jweiss to grow his beard. It's looking good!

Brandeis reunion is coming up soon. I am looking forward to it, but starting to worry a little if I will enjoy the weekend.

Somervaudeville was tons of fun! (And Justin is astoundingly multi-talented)

Recently received a pair of touchingly whole-hearted compliments --- one "earned", when I was hospitable to a friend's friend, and "unearned", when a friend at Somervaudeville randomly told me that "everyone thinks you're wonderful".
("everyone thinks I'm wonderful"??? when I hear this, I can't take it seriously --- it sounds like a character description in a poorly-written short story. But... YAY -- making good impressions! I want to!              Eventually she convinced me she's not bullshitting me. "When I have to mention you to someone: 'you know her, she's blah blah blah', 'Oh, her! She's wonderful.'")

It is BEDTIME.

My new upstairs neighbors so far have been pretty good. Good feelings between us.  I think they do laundry EVERY NIGHT, though. I really need to figure out if the drier is on my electric bill or not.  Also need to get a key to the back door.  I'm adapting to the packed-full driveway (once again), but it's more annoying than I expected having to bring my bike in & out via the other-side lawn.

 

Tonight was a monthly socialize & network thingy at a bar in downtown Boston. One of my ex-coworkers had mentioned it, and I ran into him Monday and asked about it. Timing: it was the next night!
I was intending most likely to go, but not quite sure (since I wasn't sure how well I'd fit in if it's mostly a crowd of MBAs). In the end, printing up a sheet of business cards (a task I thought would be quick and good to do beforehand) ended up taking forever. I got caught up in figuring out why the spacing was messing up, and before I knew it, it was too late to get there more than a half-hour before the end. So I punted.

There was a free sneak preview/premiere of A Scanner Darkly Sunday at Brandeis. I meant to go, but oops.
I heard about it from an email list of a student club I'm still on. I probably ought to de-subscribe since they generally do me no good... but every so often there's something cool like this! Or like this would have been had I not forgotten what day of the week it was.

Also didn't do any dishes. I might just go do some now, before bed though. I have a spiffy new dish drying rack -- "extra large"!
The worst part about doing dishes here (no dishwasher) is having to stop because the drying rack fills up. This happened frustratingly rapidly, so I could never get a good rhythym going. Hence, extra large.
The best part has been when brass_rat does some for me. :-D

Oh yeah, and seriously, what is up with the stingy trays under dish driers? In most designs, your cups are supposed to extend beyond the edges of the drier proper, but the tray is never ample enough to catch their drips!
I would love to buy a tray, just the tray, that is large enough to cover my whole sink-side counter area. Does anyone have a suggestion of where to find this? I want it to have a slant in it and a small rim on all but one side, like a normal drying tray, but be about 22 inches wide (along the draining edge). Length could be anywhere from 22 to 30 inches.

chairs, chairs, chairs-chairs chairs! (actually only 4, but they are the nice wooden kind I was looking for, and now I can give back your folding chairs, navraze and enochs_fable)

I spent the weekend in Northampton, raided my folks' furniture, collected my electric kettle, celebrated Rebecca W's birthday, and cleaned my old bedroom.

There was a box of dorm-room junk I'd been wanting to get rid of for a long time. But it was so big (and my honestly spacious room so crowded with this and other unused piles & boxes) that I had not felt able to tackle in in any of my always-too-brief overnights home -- it would be worse to leave the task mid-process than not to start.    
Well, this time Hebrew School was cancelled for OMG-SNOW*, and I didn't feel like I had to rush for Monday eithier. So I started -- and rapidly finished -- the Box. Reduced it into a tiny clutter of still-good things to give away, a big pile of clothes for my dad to donate (I'd entirely forgotten there were even any clothes in there in the first place!), and one small bag's worth of things to keep. I feel accomplished! This is one major step towards my goal of making the room useful to my parents again.


Now I am in the old apartment (the middle apartment), where I still have internet. I dropped of the car load from Noho into the new, downstairs, place. I want to collect my last loads of stuff out of here this afternoon, but it's hard for me to figure out where to start... Will just have to start somewhere

Birthday party to be on weekend after my birthday.

*and the snow amount... about 3 inches in northampton, at the most. rather disappointing. I hear it was more, in Boston?

I have keys now! To the front door as well as the basement (which the landlord didn't realize I still have the key to from when he didn't collect them as we moved out upstairs).

Lease is still not signed :-( -- I'm practically shaking with want-to-get-it-doneness everytime I think of it. But I have an appointment (another one -- and this time with a pre-set time) with him to do this tomorrow 8:30am.

I really want to get the papers signed, because until I do, I'm not going to start collecting help to pack and or move stuff. And I want to do this!

Now that I have keys, I'm not worried about him changing his mind or something on me. I trust it'll play out as I want. But I'm not willing to jump the gun with organized moving. Which is inconvenient because if it had been signed Monday as I'd first been thinking, tomorrow was the day for which I was going to ask for moving help.


I went into the apartment today, with the keys and verbal permission, and spent an hour or two measuring all the walls and crowing mine! mine!.

I'm doing stuff. Don't much feel the need to report it, but I suppose I'll like to look back on history later. And maybe a friend or two will be interested.

I went to Arisia convention last weekend. There were lots of things I didn't do, but despite that I had a good time.

Before that I'd been visiting apartments and stressing about how much I could pay and also how I was going to let my housemate know. This week I am not stressing. Also, I now prefer the downstairs East Arlington apartment to the lovely West Medford place. It's good to have options. Either one would be great, and I believe I have a good chance of at least one working out.

Have been fairly bored at work, lots of waiting for releases. I don't enjoy this. Also it makes me nervous, when I think about it, in terms of job security. Should probably do something proactive about this, but not sure what. Maybe I'll talk to my manager (she's moved a few extra projects to my queue, but they are all quickie 1-day things), maybe I'll call back that recruiter who phoned me in December... add some adrenaline. Coworker D- suggested making my own list of ongoing enrichment projects for my spare time. This is a good idea, but I have none that interest me right now. Have already spent several days on investigating load testing tools, which would be on that list, but I'm sick of that. Maybe I'm not focusing enough. I wish I'd simply been on vacation all month.

If I'd've been on vacation, I would certainly have taken advantage of the astoundingly mild & warm weather we had before & after that 20-degree (9 with wind-chill!) day Sunday. As it is, I went out and had a walk in the park behind the office one afternoon in place of my gym class. I really do like going for walks -- I forget that! I tried to make it a brisk walk, but kept getting distracted by how gorgeous things in the woods with snow are.

Also this week I went to Israeli Dancing per Danielle F's invite. I mostly had to stand by the sidelines because of not knowing the dances, but I think I could get better. I need lots of review & practice of basic footwork fundamentals. (Reminds me of fencing class.) In any case, any evening of listening to new Hebrew music is a good one, in my book.

Other events include first leyning class at the shul (TBS), two apartment visits, and a date. I feel very socially Jewish. I'm even thinking about the upcoming WZO elections, because a) my dad sent me an invite to register and b) my shul (ECh) included in its update an entry about this that made me want to write back a letter. Actually, I did write back: a letter-to-the-editor kind of thing, my first. (The article consisted entirely of a letter from a Reform Movement (ARZA) campaign manager, and I was really turned off by his presumptuous and combative tone. It was a rallying-the-troops sort of letter, absolutely against Klal Ysrael, and not also appropriate for a shul newsletter.)

It's almost time for me to start planning my birthday. Feb 21 will be sooner than I think.

Ok, be well. Bye!

saw last apartment. don't really want to scour craigslist to see what's been added in the days since, because i like this place w. medford place so much. basically, i now will only be searching more if this place fails for some reason (eg final numbers don't crunch right, or she --- has-v-hallila --- turns down my application, which i don't have reason to expect, but of course could happen).

so, last apartment was more expensive than the w. medford one. not affordable. also, not significantly nicer! so, ha.

after that saw extra apt, located on the 3rd floor of friends' home. renovations are being done, and judging by their apt, i believe that the place could be made nice despite how seriously trashed it looks now. price is undefined, but likely to be much more comfortably affordable. however, the layout just cannot give me what i want in a home, which is the ability to host friends at nice parties. (... and to shower standing up ;-) )

i might call up old landlord Sean, just to see how much they are looking to rent the now-vacant first-floor apartment of Arlapt for, for completeness sake, but basically i have transitioned to apartment-hunt phase 2: attempting to secure the desired apt. (phase 1 was locating it!) (and, i guess you could say phase 0 is deciding to move)

i have the application, i'll be calling her tomorrow. co-workers & friends especially navraze gave some wonderful help in clarifying what questions I want to ask (and how to ask them!). I can also ask my folks a bit when i most-likely see them tomorrow night

i feel prepared with months n months of past expenses recorded in my pretty "book o' spending".

it will be reaaly good to go live there :-) (change that to "would", so's not to presume)

any other advices people want to add here are cool, k?

Visited the Watertown place. It was, I learned, an "efficiency" -- big kitchen, big bedroom, nothing else. (Ok, a bathroom too). And despite the kitchen room being really wide and fairly long, there's next to no counter space in it. Exactly the same amount as in the tucked-in little un-modern one in the 3.5-room attic apartment.

What the heck is it with people who design a kitchen as if counters are just an annoying side-effect of installing cabinets?

Anyway, it has no laundry, not even in the building, so I won't live there. Am spoilt -- don't care.

Looking for a place in a house (not an apartment block)
Off-street parking
1 bedroom, 2 would be great
Nice, useable kitchen (has counter-space)
Hookup for washer & electric dryer

Easy access to quick roads outta there
No more than 30 minutes driving from western Waltham
Also about 30 min (w/o traffic) driving from Central Square.
Preferably near T/bus, one that runs into night

East Arlington
West Medford
Watertown
West Cambridge?
bits of Somerville?
Arlington Center?

Hoping to find this within $700-$1,000/mo rent.

I've switched over to making the new apartment my primary sleeping location. Exciting -- this is the most significant step. As of Friday I consider myself "moved", just with some stuff still to bring over.

Speaking of the stuff to bring over: I'm getting tired of it :-(
I don't want to collect and move it all :-(
And the rainy weather doesn't help -- rain, stop raining! Be nice and dry and lightly-breezy in the evenings!

New apartment does not have internet yet, so I am online for personal use much less. I hoped to get it set up by the end of the month, but I am very much going to miss that deadline. End of June maybe?

Two defrosting fridge emergencies this week in my old house. It annoys me.
One was my fault.

(Am already late for work, because I stopped at Arlapt to pick up some stuff and discovered the 2nd fridge emergency. Might as well be later and do some LJ, right? Not keeping up on LJ reading.)

At work, I am midway thru writing my first test plan for the project I'm on. I'm feeling good about it :-)

Oh, right: --- and if you want my new address, please give me a call or email