Oh ho, I am so clever. But then again, you'll see this before you see my bus rant. Oh well.
Heard the buzz for Ratatouille yet? Perfect timing with all the Food Network addicts around.
Here's a 9-minute clip, in case you missed it.
Here's my warning: This is a bloated post full of tiny things that don't matter. Perhaps you should go read a book instead. Now on we go.
Today I was cranky when I got on the bus, because my feet are tired of shitty shoes and I can't seem to find a pair to replace them with. And I spent most of my time today walking door to door in the building, trying to give out emergency handbooks and no one was there. And most of those floors were stuffy, warm and smelled (like paint or just musty old building).
So I get on the bus, and I have to sit next to this girl who coughed with her mouth open and constantly wiped her nose with her fingers. No sniffing, just constant wiping. Wipe wipe wipe, right next to me. And, because she was homely, that irritated me even more. She had a mopey face that suggested professional doormat. Some skewed logic tells me that it's okay to belittle pretty people with bad habits, but not mousey people. (Later, I found she had a loud valley girl voice because she had a buoyant conversation with her friend about whether or not they would go for a walk when she got home.) She was reading a book called "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." Great. An unhygienic, homely hippie. I moved as soon as a full seat opened up.
I tried to distract myself by watching other people. Cute young Asian family gets on. Young-ish parents, adorable little boy. Most likely Japanese, considering dad and son both wore Ichiro jerseys. Awww.
A woman talks on her cell with someone (hopefully one of her offspring, and not a friend or husband, judging from the tone) about not overexerting themselves while running and the beef jerky multipack she bought from Trader Joe's. Do they want one? Because she can get them still. Etc. etc. Doting is cute, but not when I can't block you out. I don't know why I didn't plug in my ipod. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood.
There's a chubby dude with a face that's painfully ducklike. Thinking back to all the kids I didn't like in elementary, junior, or high school, I can't think of one that was as odd-looking as Duck Dude. I begin to wonder if this bus passes a special school like my 'cho bus did. Seriously. Duck dude, homely hippie...there's a scruffy looking white woman wearing a JANM t-shirt (Japanese American National Museum), which is odd, considering JANM is in LA, but she could just be one of the usual bus crazies.
Anyway, duck dude pulls the bus signal (does it have a real name?), and the bus driver roars past his stop, because this is the express bus (shaves my commute from 40 to 30 minutes). Still cranky, I decide that if I was a bus driver, I would do what this bus driver does: speed up as he passes the stop someone requests. True, the bus driver has an accent, doesn't enunciate, and doesn't use his microphone, but...oh there's no but. He deserves to be slightly passive-aggressive if he drives a bus all day. Not slowing down for people running for the bus is lame, but following your route with a touch of attitude is okay in my book.
Poor duck dude goes to chat with the bus driver. He has to get off at a stop that is mostly residential, and the other people that got off the bus are already scattering home. The bus stop he wants isn't very obvious. He gets off the bus with a terribly out-of-scale tourist map. Not even a bus route map. As the bus pulls away, he's asking the Japanese family something, and the dad shrugs. I'm almost tempted to get off the bus to help him out, but my feet hurt, and I don't want to risk him being a total mouth breather. I think about how he might enjoy seeing the troll (which is actually almost right under him), and how he looked completely lost, and I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that when he gets home, he'll be proud that he made it. I also tried to block out the thought that suggested duck dude was the type to go home so traumatized, that he won't ride the bus again for months.
Poor duck dude. I hope someone took care of him.
The white walls are driving me crazy. Today I think I decided what I want to do with my little un-hallway. My dad hung the lanterns for me, and even rigged all the light cords. All I have to do is find light bulbs that will fit. Did you know that those little candle shaped bulbs aren't supposed to be hung upside down? Dammmmit. I need to visit Home Depot and just look at every damn bulb they sell.
Look! The vacuum cleaner that I haven't tried out yet!
Turquoise first, red in the closet. I wish you could meet my sister. Sure we're similar--we're sisters--but she's got this snide, cruel wit that I lost after living in Japan (although sometimes I wonder if I ever had the same burning rage she has sometimes). And she blogs. Migrated to myspace awhile back if you didn't notice. I don't link to her because she likes to use my comment section for catharsis, but I do encourage you to check out her writing. For example, here's a gem from today's entry:
Seriously, someday she's going to figure it all out and write something that will dazzle the world. It's only a matter of time. Read more...For some reason, I feel like I'm not living up to my potential. Don't get me wrong. I love my boss and would jump in front of a train to save her, and I love my job, because I have lots of perks/freedom… but I'm not happy-go-lucky about working. On the slow days, I find myself wasting away at an office job, counting down the hours until 5:00pm. Waiting for work to be over, only to go home and recuperate for the next work day. It's the endless cycle of work. Apparently, there are supposed to be enough "good things" in life to balance this all out. With the exception of my "once-a-week," I have yet to find them.
Then I start panicking. If I don't like where I am, why not find somewhere else? No, I like where I am, I'm just afraid of what other people think of where I am. It's all really shitty. Am I wasting my life away? Fuck. I'm chaotically running around in terror. The end is near! What am I doing with my life? Is this all there is to life? Simply wash, rinse, and repeat? Why am I not out saving the world?
Ding!
It's 5:00pm.
I spend a lot of time looking at design blogs, trying to figure out how to decorate my apartment. And I see these great color schemes, with the base colors with the pretty accessories in some unimaginably perfect accent color. So do people go out and buy all those little vases and trinkets all at once? Or do they accumulate them one by one? Doing it the first way seems like a big waste of money to me. On top of that, I like my trinkets to have meaning...or at least be really awesome. As for the other way, building the perfect collection of Blue Things piece by piece seems too slow to me. Especially since I take forever to make decisions.
I'm just getting so tired of these white walls.
Today I didn't change out of my pajamas until 8pm. It was a pretty great day. I washed more dishes (still working through the boxes), played on the internet, cleaned a little. It was gray and a little chilly, so I didn't feel like being out and about. Then suddenly, the sun broke through the clouds and everything was golden and I felt guilty for being inside all day. That was at 7:45pm.
I sat in my sunny spot and soaked in the sun until the guilt forced me outside. It's supposed to be raining tomorrow. No clue what kind of rain (tolerable drizzle or irksome steady patters), but 70% means rain. So I got dressed and went for a walk. Just wandered down streets. I stopped in a few parks (it's really lame using the swings by yourself when there's other people around), and rewarded myself with a drive-in burger on the way home.
I tried my very best to *stroll*, but I kept speeding up. Too damn efficient. Or impatient. Or insecure, even. Strolling by myself makes me feel alone.
I also realized how bored I am these days. I play less solitaire, sure, but I find myself getting caught up in small things. Explaining everything (to myself or whoever I con into calling me ::cough:: G), thinking about everything. Today I remembered what Shodoshima N's watch looks like. Cracked face with a moon dial. My brain remembered that! I don't remember a single calculus equation, but I can remember my friend's watch. Sheesh.
Man, speaking of G, he doesn't have a ticket home yet! He almost did, but there was a miscommunication with his supervisor. Surprise surprise. L, I'm sure you've already heard the stupid story so I'll stop there, but man. For awhile I concerned that I didn't have enough time to make my apartment presentable, and now I'm--well...relieved that I might have a few more days, but I still want to know when he's coming home!
I'm very lucky that I snagged a temp job in a friendly office in a unique building, with a supervisor that keeps extending my contract. My supervisor has been with the building for seven years, and two of the engineers have been there even longer. And the chief engineer has only been there a few years, but he's the type of guy who would remember everything anyway.
So here are the cool things I've learned:
They still have the original mail box. There's a chute that stretches all the way up to the 18th floor. I'm totally going to mail a few postcards from there, just to drop them down the chute. So, if you get a postcard with severely dinged corners, that's because it was dropped 10 stories down to the first floor.
There's an abstract painting in the lobby, with math equations and some abstract shapes that look like butterflies according to the engineer's kids. Uh huh. It's got good colors--not something I'd hang in my apartment--but the funny story is that originally, someone proposed that it should be a painting of a giant clam in that space. Like a still life. Of a giant clam.
When the building first went up, they didn't have enough money and only built half of it. Seriously. 18 floors on one half, two floors on the other. I can't remember when...the 20s? The 30s? I haven't read the history boards close enough. Anyway, in the 50s, they decided to finish it, in that sleek modern lameness on the left. Such a bummer. I think it's cute that the people I work with all take it a little personally that the building turned out half lame.
I got to see a floor that was being demolished. That was cool. All open space with pipes and poles and shattered brick. They do this every time a new tenant moves in and wants to rearrange the layout of their space.
Oh right, I'm temping. It's good enough, but it makes me miss teaching. This is a good thing: for once I actually have an opinion about how I want to make my money. I'll be here for 3 or 4 weeks. If I'm here for a full month, that'll cover rent and basic expenses through August. So, hooray for temping!
The only downside is that now the weeks go by really fast. Especially this week. I get up, leave at 7:30, return around 5:45pm, unwind until 10, and then go to bed at 11. I don't know why I was never this disciplined in Japan. Well, I have a few guesses (didn't really interact in the staff room and thus didn't look forward to going to work, had more responsibilities, which meant more last minute prep at home, oh right, and all the partying, trips to and from Tak, actual social life...right. That's why.)
Meh. Sure beats sitting at home stagnating.
I need to learn that I need to be productive no matter what the weather is like. Gray tends to be an excuse to bundle up at home while bright blue weather is so rare that I just have to get outside.
America is pretty great: today I went to lunch with the chief engineer and two other engineers from the office I'm working in. That'd be like having lunch with kyoto-sensei, the grounds keeper, and some random other guy teacher. Even if I spoke flawless Japanese, I never could've pulled that off in the 'cho.
Stupid cream-colored carpet shows every single hair I've shed. At least I could sweep it aside when I had tatami.
...until I get a permanent job. Why? Yesterday I went for a five-ish mile walk and today I was hungry all day. I barely changed out of my work clothes before I ate my lunch leftovers (pastrami on rye!) and the lunch I was supposed to eat (pb&j). I know I'm not that poor, but I feel like I eat twice as much when I exercise and I'd rather not.
Now it's time for a slice of lasagna--one of my father's final gifts before he went home last week.
That would be 8pm sunlight, for the record.I guess I could post real articles that mean something. But Willywop, Spaid, and Gwyn keep us covered, so I'll just keep posting dumb stories that raise my blood pressure. For example:
A BBC article ("I love my new C cup breasts") about a new service that makes professional plastic surgery affordable to the unemployed.
At first I was a bit outraged--should people with low incomes be spending their money on boob jobs? But then I thought about it--plastic surgery can do good things: Project Smile, for one. No wait. Project Smile collects teddy bears for cops to give to kids they pull out of bad situations. I mean Operation Smile. You know, the one that fixes cleft palates.
Anyway, I went to the plastic surgery site to prevent myself from getting all righteous and ranty. And just ended up getting righteous and ranty: It really is just about boob jobs for poor people. The program was implemented to keep people from leaving the country for a risky cheap foreign operation. (Would these people be determined enough to save enough money for a trip abroad and an operation?) No talk of replacement breasts for cancer survivors, or even breast reductions, which could give them a bit of credit. But they do have full frontal before and after shots, along with the option of a natural look. (Now I'll bet you'll click the link.)
The woman in the article? Unemployed single mother of two. Of Two! And she just shelled out $8400 USD ($8970 Canadian) for bigger boobs. And she's not a cancer survivor either. Cute smile, 26, (Unemployed with Two Kids! It irks me.) spent her money on a boob job. Stunning. Part of me likes to hope that she'll become more confident, which will lead to a better interview, which will lead to a real job. But the rest of me just thinks she'll become a hit at the local pubs. Ugh.
Did I tell you I roasted (most of) a chicken? (It was already cut, not the whole bird.) Not only did I succeed without setting anything on fire, it tasted effin' awesome. I nearly passed out after I gorged on potatoes that had soaked in butter and chicken grease. I made plenty of mistakes, but I was pleased that I didn't freak out (especially since I learned how to roast chicken when I was 10).
Hello delicious. The skin was all crackly and buttery. So great.
My poor potatoes didn't turn out as pretty.
Too lazy to make a salad. The veggies are called "fiesta mix."Five years ago, I was posting on this blog. I've been (sporadically) blogging for over five years! Bake me a cake. All that's offline now, but here's an amusing entry. If you ever thought I was high-strung in the past couple years, imagine how I was during college (or even worse, high school):
Tuesday, June 11, 2002Read more...Deliciously Dente-de-lion.
Today i am positively daffodilian. It was a good day, where i got to read a good book and learn more photoshop, and now, as the weight of the work ahead is starting to cloud over my lovely day, I'm starting to wish for dandelion wine again. How I'd love to make it, or at least try a sip of it, and though a small part of me knows that it will taste terrible and my romantic notions will be shattered, curiosity and anticipation drive me on.
Imagine, spending a long day in the early summer gathering dandelions and bottling it up...silly silly literary fairy tales. But being the naive little bunny I am sometimes, I find myself desiring a cool slice of the midwest, or the south--Kentucky cooking like i researched in, was it fifth grade? Having a grandmother rattle off the foods of her hometown, and listening rapt, for she was painting exotic foods for me--grits and collard greens are, by experience, more exciting than sushi and egg rolls ever will be. Sure for every dusty gas station with the forlorn jalopy and high-grown grass there's a white hood and a staunch tradition of Life As It Should Be, but in my bubble, everything is rose-colored, and everything is to be savored.
It's Tuesday, and my dad went home earlier today. It was fun having him around. He cooked me breakfast yesterday (eggs and potatoes!) and today (pancakes!). The perks of having a handyman, chauffeur, and personal chef aside, his presence made me realize how alone I've been. Not exactly lonely--I always found something to do on my own, even if it was just walking around the lake again--just solitary. I'd notice it when I'd chat with store clerks a little more than I needed to, but it's even more apparent now. It's funny, even though I keep saying how much I like living alone, I'm looking forward to G moving in.
I have lots of stories to share, but I'm really tired, and I'm just trying to keep myself awake long enough so I don't wake up at 3am or something frustrating like that. But here's your brief update: I now have a desk and desk chair, laundry hamper, full length mirror (unfortunately hung for my height, so that needs to be fixed...) beside table, sheets that fit my bed, place mats that fit the kitchen color scheme, and a frickin' drill. Man, I protested long and hard, but my dad bought one anyway. But I'll write more about that later.
Tomorrow I'm going to see West Side Story! This is where you can feel a touch superior, L. At least you spend your money that shouldn't be spent on tangible items. But seriously, look at this theater! I went to Les Mis' here, and I think I was more impressed by the theater.
G is coming home in 40 days! Somehow it went from being "about two months" to almost a month. I fluctuate between being absolutely elated and moderately petrified.
Also D, photos of the Lush factory in BC. (ahem, they're not mine)
5 hour Ikea trip. (oops.)
Ratcheting screwdriver. (I knew I wanted one, but didn't know what it was called.)
KRISPY KREME.
Thai dinner.
Two bookshelves built, three lamps set up.
Ah yes, and my dad is in town. I don't think I'd be able to pull off a 13-hour day without him. Details and pictures later, for sure.
Too beachy for kitchen colors? I like the way the white, blue gray and light green interact. Ignore the sand and the house colors. But I'm not sure how these colors will transfer to fabrics.
Don't look at the yellow. But I like how they didn't paint the walls to add color. Unfortunately, I don't like the idea of a white sofa. And I don't have that much natural light in my living room. So what about putting these colors in the bedroom, but with green?
And while I'm thinking about it, here's the current state of my apartment. Cleaner than my Japan apartment ever was, and still pretty empty.
My floor cushion is larger than the table.
Maybe put a lamp on top of the dresser?
Bedside table on the left side, with a lamp.(See post below on lamp choices.)
Target bench and adopted recliner.
I don't get them. I mean, they're pretty and sleek and probably the best futon-real bed hybrid, but the edge? Wouldn't you always smack your shin when you got into bed? Or would you leap into bed? Step up? (Hee hee.) And I would miss the storage space under the bed.
I've been picking out more Ikea furniture. Save for a few items (target bench, G's bed, hand-me-down recliner, kitchen table and chairs), my entire apartment will be furnished by Ikea. It's economical and saves me the time of combing through craigslist I suppose, but I'm also afraid that my apartment will look like a dorm because all the furniture matches. It's frustrating picking out stuff without knowing what colors I want to use (everything's currently a light beech so it doesn't make the room seem smaller). It helps that my dad is coming up this weekend with the rest of my stuff. More knick knacks and some stuff to put on the walls. Oh yeah, and my kitchen table, coffee table, stand mixer, and a ton of other stuff I don't want to think about cluttering up my precious space.
Ganked from virtual tourist, who wants a link if I use the photo. ehhh...
Read more...
I get it, but my brain still goes into overdrive when I glance at it. Add it to the list of things that I would covet if you owned, but I would never want to own myself. (designed by Max Longin)
Also? I just saw a pillow in the shape of a fried egg. I think it's kind of cute. If I had more space for cute pillows, I'd probably buy it...IF IT DIDN'T COST $66 FOR THE SMALL ONE, $99 FOR THE LARGER ONE. Stupid designer stupidness. I could definitely make my own fried egg pillow. I just might, to spite them. I'm not even going to link to them, because they're so stupid.
Seriously. Not worth $66. Even for the larger one.Article from the New Yorker. Good enough where I want to write my own version, because that's how my mind works. Too bad it's also kind of inappropriate these days. Ah well. Read it, I liked it.
Read more...Black Nissan (or was it a Honda?) with sunroof. Window open, sunroof not. (Good for you, it's cloudy and 7pm.) Song: U2 - One. Loud enough to catch my attention, not loud enough to rattle my floor. (Can you do that with a U2 song?) Didn't catch a face, but he was wearing regular jeans (not dark indigo, not hipster tight). I could talk to him in a bar, sure.
Not so much country music these days. But a little more bass-heavy hip hop. And more motorcycles. Hmph.
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