Yesterday, the armoire I'd ordered arrived.

It is huge.

It looks much bigger than it did when I went furniture shopping. But then, it was in a furniture store, filled with other furniture items that were of, apparently, a similar scale. So it didn't look like the hulking wooden behemoth that it is. I'm not exactly sure what to do about it -- I suppose there isn't much to do about it, really, I can't return the thing and I do need the storage but... Well, it's just so big.

I think the thing to do might be to paint the thing. It at least will need some kind of varnish or woodstain or whathaveyou, it being just plain, sanded wood at the moment. (This is the kind of thing the multitudinous furniture stores on Steinway seem to specialize in -- affordable furniture made out of unfinished wood that they'll give to you at an even better price if you can pay for them in cash.)

When I bought my dresser from a similar place two years ago, I selected a "pecan" finish, which turned out a bit orange-y. I don't particularly like it, nor do I know what I was thinking when I bought that can of Minwax, but whatever. Now, I am faced with a bit of a dilemma: I can't really restain the dresser to a lighter color that might look, um, nicer (can I? Maybe if I sanded it all down, but that seems like a lot of work, doesn't it?) but I don't want to paint the GIANT armoire in the matching shade. It would be a lot of orange wood. I could go ahead and stain both of them a darker color, but I'm not really into painting my furniture mahogany when it's actually made out of maple. Just seems weird to me. Also, painting it a dark color doesn't seem like a good way to make the furniture seem less imposing. So, I am thinking I might go for something like a white color? Except our walls are a sort of warm off-white with a bit of a yellowish tint, so a true white paint would look weird, no?

I don't know. But I'm planning on making a trip to the hardware store this afternoon (although, NOT Home Depot. After The Great Air Conditioner Delivery Debacle of '05, I am NEVER SHOPPING AT THE HOME DEPOT AGAIN) to find out some good options for this dilemma. Stay posted. Maybe I'll even take pictures for you all.

Apologies for the recent silence (although compared to my previous multi-month hiatii (hiatuses?) this is not so bad.) but moving is never fun and I still haven't gotten around to hooking my computer up to the Internet (although, interestingly, I did spend a few minutes hooking up J's computer to the router. But since it's not a wireless router, nor do I have wireless Internet on my laptop, I still need to buy myself an ethernet cable so to I can be connected. And I haven't done that yet.

But I'm totally out of the old place and mostly unpacked in the new (although the guy at the furniture store still hasn't delivered my shelf and armoire yet. grr.), which is good. And I'm gradually settling into a pattern.

On Sunday, I went back to the old apartment to clean up and bring over the last few items. (Items left behind include:

one (1) crappy tv/vcr, remote control not included, vcr not in working condition*
three (3) tea cups
two (2) matching plates
one (1) package of Boca Burgers (in the freezer)
one (1) package of Dannon Lite n' Fit (in the fridge; I was totally gonna bring it with me but forgot about it)
one (1) incomplete silverware set, various forks and knives not included

I do hope these things go to good use some day. If you're looking for a nice 2BR in Astoria, let me know -- I'll pass on my landlord's number.)

Having lived in that apartment for almost two years and having vacuumed my room aproximately four times (and none of those times having been in the last six months) there was a lot of dust. Dust bunnies, actually, with their big dust bunny families, which appeared to be breeding at the rate of, well, bunnies. Kind of gross. And not actually that easy to vacuum up when your piddly vacuum cleaner gets clogged at the site of a dusty clump.

But now I'm gone.

*I wasn't going to leave this in the apartment, but the landlord was nervous he'd get a ticket if we left too much crap on the sidewalk. Fair enough. I do kind of feel bad leaving that stuff on the curb, since electronics should really be specially recycled.

Amazingly enough, all of my stuff has been packed, loaded up into a van, driven a few blocks, unloaded from the van, and, for the most part, unpacked in my new apartment. Our new apartment. Very exciting. (And a bit weird, too.) Still some work to do, but I am, nonetheless, relieved that the majority of the hassle of moving is behind us.

Update: email is now working. Mostly. I am still pretty sure that I haven't gotten all my email from yesterday and the 'test' email I sent myself about 20 minutes ago has yet to go through. But at least it's letting me log in...

Grrrrmail

My stupid email hasn't be letting me log in for almost 24 hours. Apparently, gmail is just having issues. This is giving me issues. How can I survive not knowing if people are trying to get in touch? What if their emails NEVER reach me and my friendships DWINDLE and DIE?

Augh. This is all to say: if you have emailed me in the last day or so and haven't heard back, you should probably try calling me instead. Or email my work address, if you know that.

Stupid gmail.

Update: have made modest progress at sorting out the clothes in my closet. They are now divided into five piles: clothes for the trash, clothes for Goodwill, clothes to drop of at the dry cleaners, clothes to drop off at the laundromat that I need back by Wednesday, clothes to drop off at the laundromat that I won't actually unpack anytime soon. Yes, I am going to be lazy and just do the drop-off laundry thing. I try not to do it all the time, since I know I can save a lot of money by doing it myself but it's so easy. And for less than $30, I can drop off all the dirty clothes in my closet tomorrow morning and by the time I get home from work, they'll hae been turned into clean, neatly folded and nicey packed up for me. This seems like a pretty decent deal to me.

I also shredded a few years' worth of bank statements, credit card statements and phone bills. A few more to go, but I decided that the chidren living downstairs might not necessarily think that 11 pm as the ideal time to make the shredder go vroom vroom. Alas. More identity-shredding tomorrow! And this weekend: moving!

So, as I've mentioned, I'm moving. This weekend, supposedly. But you'd seriously never guess that by the looks of my apartment. Aside from thinking a little bit about what I'd like to keep (my dresser, mostly clothes) and what I'll be throwing away (my bed, my desk, the sad excuse for a bookshelf that my crappy TV rests on, my crappy TV) I haven't actually made much progress towards actually being prepared to move.

Which might be a problem.

The problem is, I don't really have a very hard deadline coming up. In the past when I've moved, someone was driving a few hundred miles to pick me up and couldn't just wait around while I finished taping up some boxes and scrubbing out the tub. Or, our lease was up and someone from the management company would be coming by to inspect. Or, I had a flight to catch. Whatever. But this time around, I'm only going a few blocks. I don't actually have a lease per se, just a general understanding with my landlord. And the "understanding" part of that might be a bit questionable, since I don't always understand everything he says and I'm not sure he understands everything we say, and it's actually quite unclear to me exactly when he thinks we're moving out. So. I feel like I have a bit of wiggle room there.

But despite being "only a few blocks", the distance is considerable enough that I really ought to get around to renting a U-Haul and packing up my stuff. Because there is, actually, a limited amount of time I'll have assistance with the moving and I should probably do my best to make the most of that assistance. But...

I don't know, I've always been like this. I know it's silly because what I'm living in at the moment is so messy and disheveled it's a lot like living in squalor, but it's still not the same empty, sad feeling I get from coming home to a place with no pictures on the wall, no books on the shelves, no random do-dahs cluttering the dresser. Living in a half-packed world just feels weird. Like standing half on a platform, half on a train, it's awkward and not advisable for any length of time. And so, I haven't really made any effort to pack. But I really should.

Tonight, my mission is to weed out the clothing collection and actually cart some of the stuff off to Goodwill. In the past year, a decent portion of my closet has become far too big for me (or, more accurately, I've become too small for the clothes) so there's a lot to toss. Which is good -- it'll mean lighter moving. And it's a freeing feeling, getting rid of things that weigh you down (especially if they are your "fat jeans" that are now too huge). But ugh, it's also a pain.

Somebody want to snap their fingers and finish this for me?

You ever have one of those days where you feel like your brain has been replaced by cobwebs and cotton balls, your eyelids have been lined with cement and a thick stream of sludge is running through your blood?

This iced coffee isn't doing the trick. I may need to start mainlining the caffeine.

I'll be spending the better part of my late afternoon and all of my evening helping out with a fundraiser we're doing at work. And even though I just finished my lunch, I'm already worrying about when I'll get an opportunity to eat during all of this.

Ok, yes, this probably signifies some deep-seated issues I have with food, but I must confess that despite not living on a deserted island, in utter wildnerness or dire poverty, I sometimes get extremely nervous about where my next meal will come from. I know, it's silly. I'm in Manhattan. There are hundreds, nay, thousands of food establishments within walking distance. Many of which are open 24 hours. It's probably pretty rare that at any given time, I'm more than five minutes' walk (at worst) from a business that would be able to serve me some sort of sustenance at a moment's notice, day or night. And yet, I worry.

I don't like going more than a few hours without food. From experience, I know it doesn't go well: First, I get cranky, then I get weak and trembly-feeling, then I'm so hungry I can't even feel my hunger except in an endless pit, ravenous wild animal sort of way. Trust me, it's not a good scene.

So, as pretty much all books on the subject of eating right suggest, I try and eat several small meals each day. Which is a healthy and balanced thing to do. What I don't think is quite as healthy and balanced is the urge I sometimes get to stuff everything in my face before it goes away, for fear I won't have the opportunity to eat EVER AGAIN.

Case in point: Last weekend, J and I attended the Apple BBQ in Madison Square Park. It was fun and I enjoyed a good deal of meat. But what I was most excited for was the pie. While we were getting in line for some pulled pork shoulder, I suggested to J that maybe it would be a good idea to hit up the super-short dessert line first. Conversation went like this:

"It'll only take a second, we could eat pie while we wait!" I suggested cheerily.

"Eh," he said. "Why don't we get this first and save that for later?"

"But I want pie!"

"We'll get pie after," he reassured me.

"But what if they run out?" I said, a note of fear rising in my voice. I hadn't really considered the possibility until that moment, but there were a lot of people there. And how could I be sure they had enough pie?

"They won't run out," he said.

"BUT WHAT IF THEY DO? I am CRAVING PIE now. I. NEED. PIE."

I'd like to say I was kidding about this, but actually, I was truly more than a little concerned about the availability of the pie. I quietly started formulating a list of bakeries that might have good pie within walking distance, just in case it was necessary to hunt some down.

For the record, after we finished our pulled pork and cole slaw, there was still plenty of pie to be had. So I survived.

The printer in my office has issues. The printers in all the offices I've ever worked in have issues, but this printer's are especially annoying because they are audible. The printer has taken to making loud squeaking noises every time it has a job to do. "Squeak, squeak, squeak," it whimpers. It's like the printer is begging to be put down, but we keep on forcing it to work. It's such a pathetic sound, I'd feel bad for the printer if I didn't want to kill it so badly.

Five years ago, I started posting my thoughts to the web on a semi-regular basis. Back then, I was a bit more verbose and (perhaps) had a bit more time on my hand. And I liked to ramble.

I still like to ramble, but I've come to terms with the fact that the "long-winded" format was no longer working for me, as they say. So I've decided to become a bit more "pithy" perhaps. Fear not, fans of the long-winded-ness — I'll still try and do that from time to time. (C'mon, it's not like you were gettin' it from me on a regular basis anyway.) In fact, with this introductory post, I sense some long-winded-nes coming on...

Back in 2000, I was a fresh high school grad riddled with pre-college anxiety and post-break-up anger. Starting an online journal was my way of enacting revenge on a cheating ex-boyfriend. I contemplated launching an all-out "Don't Date This Man" internet campaign, but lacked the follow-through and preferred the more passive aggressive form of lamenting the betrayal: public whining. Oh, yes, there were other reasons for starting the journal: it was an easy way to update friends on my new life in college, it was a good forum to vent my fears about college, it gave my geeky psuedo-web-designing talents a place to exhibit themselves and it kept me writing. Regularly. So I decided it was a good thing and kept on with it.

Then I got over the broken heart, got a bit of stage fright and lost the urge to post the intimate details of my personal life on the web. Because it wasn't just strangers reading it, it was friends and (God forbid) family reading it. And, eventually, I ran out of witty things to say and lost interest and the page fell into cobwebby neglected sections of the web.

If you're a loyal reader (and if you're reading this, chances are you must be pretty loyal) you'll recall I've recounted this all before. Sorry for the redundancy. I'm also going to try and work on that.

Anyway, welcome to the newly designed parenthetical.org. Now, with pithy comments!

At some point, I will get around to fixing this page so that it can at least vaguely reflect something functional and interesting to read. Right now, I realize, it does not so much do that. But at the moment, I don't really have time to do that, so I'm going to slap something together and call it done. This policy served me well through grade school and college, so it seems like a reasonable standby when the alternative is letting that entry from early February continue to fester and mold on the front page.

So briefly: I quit my job, started working for a non-profit, and am in the process of moving once again.

These are all, I think, good things. For different reasons.

First, the job quitting: Yes, I know I spent a lot of time and effort and a few thousand dollars at Columbia trying to land that job. So maybe it was foolish to go and quit after less than two years. But I'm pretty sure all my friends were getting tired of my, "Ohmigod you will NOT BELIEVE what she did today!" stories. Even though some of them were pretty entertaining. (Kind of like The Devil Wears Prada only about someone much less important.) Now that they can't fire me, I feel at liberty to write (a bit) about this. Not like it really would've mattered during my employment -- the woman couldn't figure out how to attach a word doc to an email, afterall, I'm sure finding my website would've taken a little effort. My tell-all book probably won't be forthcoming because, my friends, books are LAME. Ok, well, maybe books themselves aren't entirely lame, but publishing most certainly is, and if you corner me at a bar and ask me my thoughts on the subject, I'll probably rant for a while, but I feel it would be wise to not go into everything here because, well, it just wouldn't be. Anyway, I quit.

My new job is going well; I work in development for a non-profit. I have business cards, because my new employer is at least willing to pretend my job is not entirely meaningless and I am more than just a gate-keeping, phone-answering, photocopy-making, fax-sending, reservation-making, finish-your-expenses-for-the-last-six-months-and-still-have-time-to-write-ten-rejection-letters-for-proposals-you-never-even-bothered-to-read wizard. I now take my lunch break and leave the office at 5:00 instead of sticking around for hours. Oh, and they pay me significantly better. (Hear that, ex company? The non-profit might not offer a yoga studio or free granola in the pantry, but they came up with a better way to help me live my whole life: Paychecks! I imagine they're able to afford this sort of wildly unconventional benefit by not having a VP of Bathrooms and not putting people up in $600/night hotels on the beach in Santa Monica during "business trips" where no actual business that couldn't have been conducted on a conference call occurs.)

As for the moving: well, after two years, my roommate and I are going our separate ways. It was her decision, but an amicable split. She's getting a Jr. 1BR in Hell's Kitchen and I'm getting an armoire to make up for the lack of closet space in Jesse's apartment. After much deliberation and a few visits with crappy brokers, we decided to stay in Queens for the time being. I dunno -- Manhattan would've been nice, but not having to scrape every last penny out of my checking and savings account to live in a significantly smaller space is even nicer.

So that's it for now -- changes abound, but mostly in a good way. Changes should also be coming to this site soon... but you've probably heard that one before.

PS: Oh, oh! And I am going to be an aunt! My twin sister is due at the end of August. A little weird, yes, but happy and exciting nonetheless. Yay for Baby D.J.!