Sunday, October 07, 2007

A few things...

There are only a few things I don't like about my new place so far:

1. Phyllis can't go outside, so she's always amped up when I get home, requiring quite a bit of Phyllis play time. Her favorite toy is a rattling mouse that I tied a shoelace to the end of, so I throw it around and drag it back and she chases it. Works much better than the string-less version, which I throw, she chases, I retrieve, and throw again. At least she can get up on most windowsills, so she can keep herself entertained by being taunted by fat squirrels all day.

2. The lady that lives above me is way serious about her cleaning. 8:30 may seem like a logical time to vacuum on a Saturday, but some of us like to sleep a little beyond that. And when I say she's "way serious" about her cleaning, I mean "drag every piece of furniture to a new room" serious. Sometimes there's also sounds of kids running around up there, usually early in the morning. She also has to get up and 6:00 on the weekdays and slam ever dresser drawer that she has and walk around in heels.

3. There's some dad who needs to play with his 5-year-old daughter at 9:30 a.m. on Sundays directly outside my window. Now this is a (relatively) more acceptable time, except when I had a terrible night's sleep and woke up at 4:00 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep for another hour. Which was last night. The remedy: classic MN-style passive-aggressiveness. I mean, I'm totally an asshole if I go out there and tell them to play elsewhere, right? Well, I'm a pretty big music fan, so if I'm going to wake up and do morning stuff like make breakfast and coffee, I'm gonna have some tunes bumping. I even gradually ramped up the tunes - started with some generic indie rock (Pretty Girls Make Graves), moved on to some techno (Chemical Brothers), then stepped up to what I really wanted to listen to (the new Common album, which is quite good). Common proved to be up to the challenge.

4. I love cooking in my crock pot, but I'm discovering it's too small. I like to make breakfast, and at the same time, throw random veggies and potatoes and meat and spices into the crock pot. This is typically ready by lunchtime, and I'll eat it for lunch and dinner. But after that? Only about one more serving left...and my most favorite part of using the crock pot is being able to make massive amount of food that I can store and re-heat. Anyway, I'm buying a new crock pot soon.

Other random notes: bought my first-ever Vikings jersey at Tatters (#11 - Culpepper), just to spite the Packers fans I occasionally roll with. Wouldn't have bought it, but the awesome Robyn hooked me up with a coupon book which gave me 25 percent off one item! Here's a link to the coupon book - it's Choose to Reuse month, so there are tons of deals from places like Tatters, the Reuse Center, Savers (50 percent off, which is awesome because word on the street is that place has become more expensive recently), and other places that sell used goods. Yee

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