neotoma

I have assembled a new desk for my new apartment -- my old desk will be operating as a tv stand, for at least a little while. The apartment is still in the process of being unpacked and organized, but it's working for now. I am going to get a professional organizer in, to help me figure out how to maximize the use of my space.

I also received the Kindle I ordered today. It's the basic model, under $100 and with absolutely no frills. However, reading books on my phone has recently become an exercise in eyestrain -- I will be making an appointment with my eye doctor this week -- so I figured a bare-bones e-reader would be a good thing to have. I do want to get something nicer, but e-readers can get surprisingly expensive quickly, especially if you want to have one that you can read AND take notes on.

I'm hoping to have more get-togethers soon, both in person and online. There's a lot of media out now that would be fun to watch in a group -- for instance, Sandman, Our Flag Means Death, and Marvel What If? -- and some that are coming soon -- the Jedi Tales shorts, the Andor series.

Last week I put in a maintenance request because my dishwasher would turn on and run, but not actually get anything clean. I got a call asking to confirm that the maintenance staff could come in, but nothing improved.

Today, I got home and there was a brand new dishwasher installed. Which is nice, but they could have told me?

Anyway, it's far quieter to run than the old dishwasher, but it seems smaller on the inside because of a very different configuration. I don't think I can put my smaller stockpot in it because of where the silverware basket is.

Woke this morning to water all over the floor of the bathroom. Mopped it up with a towel, and investigated.

It looks like there is a leak between the water pipe from the wall and the toilet tank. I've closed the stopcock as far as it will go, and contacted the housing office. Hopefully they'll send a maintenance person ASAP.

Someone threw half my mint pants, my primrose, all of my smaller strawberries, and my smaller shadbush into the trash and recycling bins today. I managed to rescue a bunch of them, but I'm pretty pissed off.

I'm really afraid it was the groundskeeping staff at my apartment, who have been around pruning (badly) and I generally haven't trusted since they planted rows of boxwoods all over.

So now I have to decide whether it is worth complaining to the housing office, or whether they'll say it's my fault for leaving my outside plants outside over winter.

lavenderliz and her husband moved into a new place recently, and were nice enough to give me one of their old cabinents/entertainment-centers. This means that I finally have my tv and DVD set-up, andhave managed to clear a good bit of floorspace thereby. The cabinent is deep enough to fold up my comforter and wool blanket to store on the bottom shelf, leaving the top and second shelf for the DVD player and DVD storage.

Also the surface is big enough to put my tv on and stack some Ikea Sortera bins beside it. I have one tall bin and one small bin, and I'm going to use them for yarn and fiber storage -- they're just around the corner from my loom, so the weaving yarns will go into the tall bin and various knitting kits will go in the small bin. I might want to get a tall Billy to put at the end for more book storage. It seems like that might be a good use of the space.

Oddly, I think I might need more furniture to get this place really organized. That's a bit weird, and will probably involve more trips to Ikea, used furniture stores, the Big Flea, and maybe Community Forklift -- I definitely need an armoire, considering how small the closets are in my apartment, a set of hooks from my hats and spindles, and probably a few more bookcases and/or storage cabinets.

The A/C stopped working last night -- and while I called this morning, I only got the machine.

When I got home, there was a box fan at my door, but no evidence that the A/C was actually repaired.

I'll call again in the morning. If I don't get an actual person this time, I'll leave a message asking them to leave a message.

I saw four red-backed salamanders yesterday while cleaning the leaves out of my patio. I left a litle pile of leaves in one corner for them -- hopefully they can hide there and I won't feel so bad for clearing away the rest of their habitat.

Waking up, going into the bathroom, and hearing a drip from leaky tap, that's not to bad.

Realizing that the drip is coming from the ceiling, that's bad.

I'm calling the housing office -- hopefully this won't mean my bathroom is ripped apart for days to deal with this, but given that it's my ceiling, who knows...

I'm suffering a partial power outage at my building.

What this means is that my living room and hall and kitchen are dark, but I've got power in the bath and bedroom, and the fridge is still running.

It does look like my heat might be out, which thankfully isn't as worrisome as it would have been this time last month.

I'm borrowing a netbook from a neighbor (geeky college boys for the win, apparently) to type this, but hopefully the power will be back in the morning. This thing's keyboard is very cramped -- it's an Asus EeePC, and while it might only cost $250, the size of the keyboard would drive me mad in short order if I actually owned one. Also, the touchpad just makes my go 'argh!'

Maybe I should do some window shopping, since I did get a bonus this year... I already put $200 of it into my savings. I was thinking about getting a Wii, but a netbook might be more useful in the long run, if they've come down that much in price...

Oh well, maybe I can some more work done on the Story That Ate Lawrence, Kansas.

I spent my breaks at work calling apartments to set up appointments to view them.

The results:

-- two appointments tomorrow in Silver Spring for maybes (first is a bit expensive, second is a roommate situation)
-- one appointment for Monday evening (the first choice, if the apartment is okay. Good location, good price, little small, no weekend hours at the management office).
-- one call to a fax number
-- one place with no current vacancies to view and a disinterested phone person. Not going there unless everything else falls through).

So... I'm down to Silver Spring tomorrow at noon, and will probably be over with everything by three.

I'm thinking about going to the movies again. Should I hit the AFI (hey, BREAKFAST ON PLUTO is playing at 7:45?!) or go see something at the Majestic 20? Anyone want to meet up for a meal and a movie?