A Couple Weeks

[unforth]

Somehow, it's gone from being right after the closing to being a week in to November. I'm not quite sure how that happened; I do know that I felt like I lived about a month's worth in the last week of October. Either way, I'm finally getting around to the update I've been telling myself I'll write every day for the past week+.


I left Bloomington on Friday with ozziel and arrived happily at buzzermccain's much later that night. I was in Chicago only for the weekend - I left Sunday night, and ozziel left on Saturday afternoon, but I'm so glad that I went. Much time was spent talking, two cultural institutions were visited (the Shedd and the U of C Oriental Institute), a LARP was attended, and dim sum was eaten (for the first time). It was great to spend time with buzzermccain and her boy - I feel like I hadn't seen either of them in forever, which was sort of true - I hadn't seen J since July of 2008, and other than the May wedding - which afforded far less time with her than I'd hoped - I hadn't really spoken to buzzermccain since then either. I'm especially glad to see that they are still both happy and doing well.

I drove out sadly, and ended up arriving in Columbus very late (like, 11 pm-ish), crashing, and then leaving very early the next morning, with dog but sans dog bowls. It was very important for to get back because...

...because that night (Monday, the 26th) I had to do the final walk through of 3N. I hadn't been to the apartment I was supposed to buy since the very first time I had viewed it, way back in July, so I was a little worried. What would I think? How accurate was my memory? Meanwhile, I was also freaking because I knew I needed at least one bank certified check but no one had ever bothered to tell me how much it was for, and I still didn't know where the closing was. I managed to psyche myself out a bit, but in the end the worry was for nothing. My attorney called while I was walking to the walk through and answered my questions, and when I walked in to the apartment, I found it actually better than I remembered in every respect.

The kitchen was still small, but it had an awesome huge fridge and a nice new stove, and a broad counter area. The closets were bigger than I remembered. The entrance area ("dining foyer") was less useless than I'd recalled. Ditto the "dressing area." And the view was less parking lot than I'd thought, too (still a lot of parking lot, but also a lot of green, and when I'm farther back in the room all I see are trees). The only bad things I discovered were that the apartment was in no way wired for cable or telephone, and I'd managed to forget that there was no light in two thirds of it. Oh, and that no AC was actually installed, though there is a place to put one - but I don't care about that one way or the other, I may not even bother getting one.

Everything seemed to be in working order except one light bulb, and Linda (the apartment broker) gave me some hints, most of which I've no forgotten, and I finally got home at like 9 after leaving Columbus that morning at 7:30 AM.

The next day was my closing, and I wasn't good for much of anything. I spent the morning being ansty and making sure I had everything set, and then I headed out very early. In the end, it took longer than I expected, and I wasn't at all surprised to discover that I needed all kinds of random checks (and therefore more money) for all kinds of things I didn't know about, but I'd been careful enough with my money in the days and months leading up to it that it ended up okay. The seller proved very understanding of all the delays, and the only moments of concern I felt were in the time after we'd finished reviewing and signing all the paperwork but before the final confirmation from the bank - apparently they needed to see actual (faxed) signatures before they could give the approval.

Once that was done, I headed back in to the city, went to Bed Bath and Beyond (where I met up with ultimabaka prior to a celebratory dinner), bought a bunch of stuff I needed so that I could move as soon as humanly possible (ie, a shower curtain, an air mattress, sheets and towels, etc.), the two of us carried it all to the new place - I got a set of keys at the closing - and then grabbed a meal.

Wednesday was a really shitty day. I woke planning to do lots of moving type stuff, and found that it was cold and raining. I spent the whole morning doing various change of address type things, setting up internet/cable/TV, all that jazz. Despite the rain, I made three round trips to the new place, including a trip during rush hour in the car, which was when I moved the dog. I had an unpleasant encounter with one of the building staff members (the only neg experience so far at the building) who gave me a really hard time about moving things, putting my car somewhere, and didn't help me in any way. I thought maybe he was just being by-the-book, but one of the things he told me was that he couldn't give me the key to the side door - that it would be made for me and brought the next day - yet the next morning, they easily handed me a key from an envelop containing a zillion of them stored in a lock box under the desk, which convinced me that this doorman was actually purposefully a pain in my ass - god knows why. Oh, and I bought a couch after mom let me know that Raymour and Flanigan were having a one-day sale which saved me 12%.

On Thursday, I moved the car uptown, and started to grapple with the sad possibility that I wouldn't have a Halloween costume. Time was fast running out, and I wasn't at all sure how I'd manage. I did a bunch more moving stuff - including my computer, so that when the internet guy came the next day I could set it up. I also made a run to the Target on 225th street, which is pretty much identical to a Target anywhere else (which doesn't sound remarkable, except that in my mind such things simply don't exist within NYC. Clearly, my mind is wrong...). I got a lot of stuff set up, went to Staples and ordered a desk and a chair, and various other similar things. After some internal debate, I also realized that I'd be a pitifully sad wreck if I didn't get to make my costume, so I resolved to do so.

I spent 16 hours on Friday sewing. I started the morning with a mostly finished shirt, a half-finished mock up of the pants, and nothing else. When I went to sleep after midnight, I still had a mostly finished shirt (needed buttons and button holes), but I also had mostly finished pants (just needed buttons) (resized from the mock ups, which I also had more or less finished), and a mostly finished uniform coat (though I only pinned together the mock up).

The coat was a huge, unbelievable pain in the butt, was probably one of the most difficult items I've made - including the Victorian gown - and turned out more awesome than anything I've ever sewn. Really. I'm so incredibly super proud of it. There were some tough points - no means of telling which arm was which was included, for example, so I spent a bunch of time just making sure I was right; more than once the pattern assumed that the sewer was very experienced so glossed or skipped steps. Also, right near the end, I nearly ran out of navy blue thread and I started having to be very frugal with it. Over all, though, not as much went wrong as might of. I had worried I'd bought the wrong size for the coat, but other than resizing the shoulders the rest fit almost perfectly, and in terms of mistakes the biggest problem as that the two sides of the front seam (separated by the middle opening where you put it on) don't line up for any obvious reason.

The next morning, I spent four hours doing finishing touches - almost all of which were sewing on buttons and doing button holes by hand. I used the middle finger of my right hand to push in the end of the needle so many times that it broke through the skin and I had to use a bandaid as a thimble, and I spent a lot of time thinking that my buttons were tragically non-lined up, and wishing I had more navy blue thread. I also had to finish the coat lining. All of the Saturday morning work was hand sewing...

Halloween itself was fun. I had to do some running around - my boots were in Washington Heights, and my hat was at moms, and then I had to go all the way back home to walk the dog before proceeding to festivities. Mom gave me some critique, and lent me a wash cloth to pad the hat enough that it came close to fitting (it was way too big). Then there was an epic fail. I had planned to go downtown to the parade, and then attend at least one of the two parties I had been invited to, but then my cell phone died (along with any ability on my part to figure out how to get to either of said parties) and I hadn't taken any notes, so I couldn't even contact folks to apologize that I was bailing. Instead, I watched a lot of the parade, even when it started to rain very hard, and I got to have another of those authentic Civil War experiences that I enjoyed so much last April - the experience of wearing sodden wool for hours on end, walking in it, dealing with the chill of the evening, all that. In truth, it wasn't nearly as bad as it might have been. Indeed, it was actually LESS unpleasant than earlier in the day, when it was warm enough that I felt like I was suffocating in the coat. :) So I gained a new respect for why one wears wool coats.

Of course, the rain drove in a lot of the other revelers, but then it thankfully abated, so I managed to salvage some pictures. Our vantage point was also MUCH better than last year - we were on 11th street off to one side but right against the barricade (I was with ultimabaka, who was dressed as Spock). I got some pictures, though I haven't finished going through them yet. Just four for now (every picture there is of me in my costume, plus one of the baka):


I hate this picture of me, but it shows more of the outfit than any other pick I have (mom took some full lengths, but I don't have those).


Mom took this picture of me using my cell phone, and I uploaded it to Facebook. I think of all the shots it does the most justice to my conviction that I could probably pass as a boy if I worked at it - a boy of about 15, not a man, but still...


I thought baka did a pretty good job on his Spock costume. He got his hair styled and everything, and though he was worried about the fake ears I convinced him that they worked as well as could have been hoped...maybe better.


The only picture of me from the evening that I like. :) And it shows my hat. ;)

That last week of October - 6 days, actually - felt like it took about two months. Since then, life has been a bit simpler, though there are some things worth mentioning.

First, on Friday the 29th (so, not November), one of the only breaks I took from sewing involved the receipt of some very sad news. Growing up, there were a handful of adults who played a formative role in my life - my parents, obviously, and my grandfather - and the circle of their adult friends. Most of those friends are still around (well, not my grand father's - most died in the 90's, including his siblings - my great aunts and uncles - and his oldest friend, Arthur, died in December, 2007. And though others - from my mom's generation - have passed, I didn't know any of them very well.

Gil died. He's pretty much the first death since Mr. Lugo's of someone I really, truly cared about. Gil was one of my mother's coworkers when she taught at Brandeis HS. He was a portly, cheerful, smiling black man. He was always smiling, and he had one of those laughs that carried like a foghorn, and when you heard it - often from across the room - you couldn't help but smile too. He loved working with youth and helping them, it was his passion, and he grew sincerely attached to many of them - including me, for all that I wasn't a student of his. More than any of that, though, I feel truly terrible because I know that Gil would have loved to have reconnected with me - he outreached a few times - and I wasn't opposed to it, I just never got around to it...and now it's too late. The combination of knowing he was gone, and that I'd blown it, has left me feeling sad enough about this I get teary eyed whenever I think about it.

To break up my chronological sequence some more, though, I feel like yesterday I got a chance at redemption. ultimabaka and I met to go to dinner, and while we were walking to the place we were eating, we approached a building I know well, because another of my mother's friends from Brandeis lives there. I'd lost touch with Cynthia, too, but every time I walked by the building I would look around...and last night she was just getting home. She didn't even recognize me with my hair short, but she was very clearly very happy to see me. She hadn't been in contact with mom in 3 years (they had a falling out) and so the only thing she knew about me from recent times was that I had been engaged, which happened before they stopped talking, and that I was back in NYC, which she had learned from Regina - another of the Brandeis group. We spent about 15 minutes standing in the cold doing a super-speedy catching up. Of all of the folks from mom's generation, Cynthia is the one with whom I was closest (followed by Gil) - when I was a little girl she was my "Aunt" - and I've literally looked for her every time I went by her place for two years now. So now I have a chance to fix what I blew with Gil - maybe that'll dull my regrets, but as it is, I'm still pretty upset when I think that he's gone forever.

Anyway, November has been spent thus far doing house stuff and trying to get my life back to where I want it to be. I've started taking long walks with the dog again, for one. I'd stopped in Washington Heights primarily because it's a real pain to do long walks with her when there's not much grass around, and that neighborhood just had so much street walking (not prostitution!) necessary as part of the process that I didn't bother - also the park was far enough to almost (but not quite) counter balance. Here, though, letting her use the bathroom is a very short walk, and I didn't want to lose that dose of daily exercise, and anyway it's a nice area to walk around (though some neighborhoods don't have side walks, which means I can't really walk in them, Jonie just goes dashing in to the street cause she's an idiot). The only disappointment on these has come with Van Cortlandt Park, which is absolutely gorgeous, but it's northern parts are pretty much wild (forest) without trails (at least not ones I trust), and I can't get to the southern parts during an hour-long walk, so no walking in the park for me. I've been using these walks as a way to explore. I've made two incursions up in to Yonkers and found that there's little there to make it worth the trouble of going, and today I found a previously-undiscovered street with business on it that's pretty close.

Today's walk also afforded me an unusual opportunity - I have supplanted a life-long dream! Since I was a kid, I've dreamed of having a brownstone on the Upper West Side. I mean, if you're going to dream, dream big, right? (homes like this run between 5 and 6 million dollars). Today, though, I explored Fieldston for the first time. Fieldston is a neighborhood in the Bronx tucked in between the Henry Hudson Parkway and Broadway, bissected by 246th street. All of the buildings there are one family homes, and most have land, and most are unbelievably awesomely beautiful. Preliminary investigation suggests that this neighborhood doubles the cost of the dream (homes there appear to run about 10 million dollars) ...but hey, that's why they're dreams. My favorite part - aside from the house on the bluff with the turret, many I love houses with turrets - was the homeowner standing outside his multi-million dollar home chopping fire wood. I'm certain he was the resident. It was awesome. Anyway, I'm looking forward to exploring Fieldston more, even if it's only a dream - at least there are side walks, and Jonie doesn't care where we walk. ;)

I also have started working again, which is good cause it's looking like I'm going have a pretty busy time of it soon; one of our RFPs is coming out within the next week or so, and will be due right before Christmas (don't know the exact dates, unfortunately), and the client is hoping to write between 4 and 6 of them. I'm not looking forward to this, but I'm taking the preliminary steps of making sure that I'm back in the habit of working, and I'm trying to get a little ahead on the other things that have been sitting on my plate - I have to final evaluation reports due this month...I'm still slacking, sadly, but I'm at least working on it, and that's what counts in my book.

My neighbors, as much as I've met them, seem nice. I've done some more moving, though I've been going slow, and getting progressively more lazy about it - I'm going to have to step it up, or else have a few not good days at the end of the month - I'd rather keep it gradual, it'll make life easier over all.

I was shocked to discover that I've somehow kept my weight down - I weighed myself on, er, Wednesday? Thursday? and found that I was 156 pounds, which is downright shocking to me, but not at all unwelcome - and that was breakfast and lunch! I've been trying to eat well, but there have been a few too many snacks...still, I made yesterday a pig out day to celebrate.

Along those lines, I've started cooking again. As usual, when I cook it means I end up eating the same stuff for days on end, so I'm still on the first two recipes (plus a "dessert" recipe) - steak, mashed potatoes, and cinnamon-raisin bread. All three have turned out tasty; I feel like I've discovered one of the secrets of the universe now that I know what balsamic vinegar does to steak, super yum. If anyone reading this actually wants recipes, I'll happily share - all three are low fat and cal and quite good.

I'm not sure there's loads more to say. Tomorrow I'm planning to start going to the gym again, and once I've integrated that in to my schedule, I'll be mostly where I want to be in terms of day-to-day life - only really missing working on my story, which has fallen by the side - which I'm noticing a pattern now, seems to happen every fall. As odd as it sounds, I think it's because I'm not watching baseball - I do almost all of my editing and writing these days with a game on.

Speaking of baseball...fuck the Yankees. No really. Damn I hate them. Ah well.

Right...so I think that's all, though I'm sure 10 minutes after I hit submit I will in fact think of something else. Mostly I'm just glad to report that I'm feeling pretty good about life - it's great not having the apartment buying hanging over my head any more. My life feels like it's been happening in snap shots. My first mortgage bill arrived in the mail yesterday, and looking at it today made my eyes pop a bit, but I imagine I'll get used to it. I sent out my second payment for the Omar Rayyan painting, and I'm as excited as ever that it's truly going to be mine. Mom is talking about giving me a raise again, and it might actually happen this time, though I doubt it. I'm still waiting to hear from Stony Brook, but I'm feeling great about going back, which is rather a novelty. I haven't tried any of the local restaurants yet, but I found one today claiming to have Italian Comfort Food, and I think I need to go there imminently. It's bizarre to me that I have no TV yet am caught up on almost all of my shows. I loved that Fabio was on the last episode of Top Chef a bunch, and that my favorite model has a very high chance of winning America's Next Top Model. I need to catch up on Supernatural Season 5. I managed to go to both the Met and the New York Historical Society over the weekend, and I'm really starting to see how living up near the edge of the city doesn't really significantly impact my ability to do these things. I've been reading a lot. James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" has to be one of the best history books I've ever read, and actually got me very interested in the politics preceding the Civil War, a topic which previously has always made me want to skip to the good parts. Beyond that, his descriptions there of were an excellent reminder of how little politics actually has changed in the past 150 years. I had an incident yesterday that induced Feminist rage (impressive since I don't consider myself a feminist) and I'm still not sure what to do about it, but the short version is that girls in Civil War uniforms aren't allowed to play with the boys, apparently, which has led me to mostly jokingly propose to mom that I form a GLBT (and SS, since I'm none of those things) Civil War re-enactment group (to fulfill all those boyhood fantasies of dressing as Scarlet O'Hare). At the N-YHS yesterday, I really had it driven home how much I've learned about the Civil War in the last year, and that felt good. As a house warming gift to myself I bought a used copy of Gould's Ontogeny and Phylogeny, which I'd been looking for in bookstores for months, and though it's much more technical than many of his books (it's not aimed at lay people) I'm still getting enough out of it to enjoy it, even if I am now terminally lost in the difference between paedogenesis, paedomorphosis, heterochrony, cenogenesis, and a dozen or more other vocabulary words - fortunately, there's a glossary. It was as much a delight to have a package that I delivered arrive at the place where I actually live as anything. I've quit all my facebook apps except for Hatchlings (which I'm considering dropping only) and SuperPoke! Pets and find this doesn't bother me. I'm annoyed that Volume 22 of One Piece didn't resolve the damn plot, but at least 23 is coming out in December (after 2 months instead of 4...). And...well...this is sort of what my life is like right now. Kind of all over the place, yet holding together, and it all feels pretty good.

And ozziel is coming later in the month. :)
Well, I think that's more than enough for now, given that my wrist got stiff doing all this typing. :) Until next time...

Comments

[sapphohestia.livejournal.com]

So, are you officially moved into the new place now? I'd love to see pics of it! :)

[unforth.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly moved in. I've been deliberately holding off on responding to the comments on this post until I had pictures for you, but, being me, that managed to take a week. But I snapped a few - there's not much to snap pics of, really, it's not a very big apartment. :)

Kitchen:




Entrance Foyer ("Dining Area" - yeah, right!)


"Dressing Area" (really a hall w/ closet that leads to the bathroom)


Bathroom:




Living Area (remember, it's a studio :) ):





(the dog is clearly plotting something)



Are there any more shots of your place?

[footlingagain.livejournal.com]

So sorry to hear about the loss of your friend Gil. I'm sure he knew that you thought of him fondly and I hope your regrets don't colour your memories of him too much. Your description of him is so warm and loving, it's wonderful.

Good luck in your new home :) And your Hallowe'en costume is amazing!

[unforth.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the well wishes. I'm feeling better, but it'll always make me sad to think about it, I think. :(

[galiyah.livejournal.com]

Wow, have you ever been busy! It sounds like things are finally slowing down only to speed up again once work stuff kicks in. You could certainly use a little break. :)

I'm very sorry about your friend.

[unforth.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely getting back in to the swing of things, and it feels great. :)

[bakanekotoo.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, Gil... :-\ Good luck in your new home, I hope I can see it/see pics of it sometime :-) I'm sorry we didn't get to see each other for Halloween, but hopefully we can meet up sometime soon! Alan and I are actually thinking of visiting Prague next summer so I'd love some advice on where to stay and what to see :-)

[unforth.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure when you'll get to visit - it's rather a hike up here, especially from out in Queens - but I bet we can figure it out. We should get together for dinner soonish - how does the week after Thanksgiving work for you? I can definitely tell ya a bit about Prague. :)

[bakanekotoo.livejournal.com]

The week after Thanksgiving works for me. Any day in particular? Tuesday probably would be the best day for me, but I'm open to any other day during the week. Weekends are tricky :-P Yeah, I'm looking into vacation ideas, and Prague seems like the one winning so far. Both Alan and I want to go away, but would like to do a cheaper/shorter vacation from last year :-P