easy like Sunday morning

yawntastic.

The weekend as a whole has been pretty good. Friday night my friend Bill came down from PA and we had a Harold and Kumar type adventure trying to find him some rum. Apparently nowhere within 1 mile of my house sells booze after 10, any day of the week. I only know this because we walked store to damn store to damn store trying to find it. I also found out that the Safeway on Charles is not open until midnight, even though that's what the sign and the website say.

We did the only thing we could think to do, which is to venture into the 'hood - the part where they have the police eye in the sky cameras - because the hood never sleeps. We were right, we found an open store. There are certain parts of Baltimore where you go into a store and have no access to either the goods or the clerk. Everything is behind a 1" thick layer of plexiglass and you tell them what you want, then put your money in a contained lazy susan and they spin back your goods and your change. You can not rob them, and the only people in danger of getting robbed if someone comes in are the other customers, not being behind bullet proof glass and all. This was one of those places. It really makes decisions easier, because I for one practice no hemming and hawing in places like that. I pick the first thing I see that I might want, buy it and run. and we did.

Then we proceeded to head home and have a War tournament while sucking down gratuitous amounts of rum (Bill) and Vodka (me). Haven't done that in a while, and first thing yesterday morning I remembered why, lol. All I can say is thank god I got distracted while going to get the Absinthe. That could have gotten ugly. We capped the night off with an ATHF marathon, and called it a day.

We spent yesterday bumming around not doing much. I was really tired, from being sick this week, from work being so crazy and from overdoing it Friday night so we were total lazy piles of shit and did nothing. Nothing is much more fun to do when you have someone to do it with. It was nice out though, so we did take a quick walk but every step was labor so it didn't last too long. (I had run outside on Friday and it's apparently way harder on your body than a treadmill as I was f'ing sore !!)

We wasted the day watching movies, cartoons, bad tv shows. I cooked all sorts of weird food based on the components available in my cabinets (like twinkie shaped nutmeg muffins because my muffin tin is gone) and Bill ate it. All good times. Not as productive a weekend as I like to look back on, but after my coffee (and possibly one more coffee) I'm going to remedy that today.

The one thing I did get done that was productive was to begin the process of getting rid of more of the crap around here that I don't want. Last week I had a little crisis and I couldn't figure out what was bothering me around here. I thought I'd gotten rid of everything extraneous, but I was still feeling claustrophobic and couldn't really figure it out until the other day when I realized that my living had seating for 5. Now the living room is 12 ft wide, 15 ft deep and had a couch, 2 armchairs, a giant ottoman, my bookcase and 2 end tables in it. Factor in that 1 entire wall is a door, and half of 2 other walls are doors and that I live alone and while I may at some point entertain, it's not likely to be 4 people. I did the math and realized I had too much crap and that was at least part of what was making me nuts- having to step around shit to get anywhere. It just had never occurred to me to get rid of furniture when I began the great purge of 07. So once I was able to wrap my head around the notion that I had too much furniture, and that I don't even really like it that much and don't want much of a future with it, I posted an ad on CL asking someone to please come take it away. Camille came and removed the armchair and ottoman from Adam's furniture set and the relief was immediate. haha, I can't honestly tell how much of the relief is due to the fact that it's more of Adam saying good bye and how much was space but either way I could breathe better as soon as it was gone.

and Camille herself was a trip, as was her teenage daughter. I got to see what I used to be like and what I will probably be like when I'm older, it was kind of weird and cool. My insurance company, and friends and family might not think it's as cool though, as it does appear that aging does not necessarily mean getting wiser with respect to "bad ideas" and "limitations".

So the chair is about 3x3x3 ft. Sort of cubic, and really light but bulky. Camille shows up in a dodge neon and I asked her where she thought the chair would fit, because her roof didn't look ready for loading or anything. She said "I have a hatchback, it will be fine". For about 30 seconds I believed her, then I walked over to the car. I can see how one could confuse a hatchback with a regular trunk- they both have 2 hinges and go up, and are located at the rear of the vehicle- but the similarities end there. Not being one to back away from an idea because it might be traditionally considered "bad", I decided I was game and the chair and ottoman were in fact going to fit. She sealed the deal by saying "I totally think this can work" At the sound of those words my heart got all gooey and I knew we were kindred spirits. yay! getting older doesn't mean I'm going to lose my charm! (and by my charm I mean my propensity for bad ideas and my tendency to execute said bad ideas, which sometimes backfires, usually sort of works, infrequently results in injury but ALWAYS makes a good story. I love a good story!)

"This can totally work": That is the exact phrase I utter when I am about to do something that is NOT going to work the way I think, that some people would say doesn't even make sense, that I probably shouldn't try, but am totally going to do anyway. I was sold, and operation "Get this shit the fuck out of my living room NOW" commenced. First off we got the fat bastard chair - thankfully light, and that's the only nice thing I can say about it - out of the house and over to the car. Inside the car was her teenage daughter, totally mortified that her mother was picking up free furniture off the internet (the ghost of Kerry past) and it was good for a laugh because I know I would have felt the same way, and I almost wanted to tell her to chill out but I hate teenagers generally so I made do with just chuckling. So the chair. We were able to get roughly 25% of it in "the hatchback" and I did some rough mental math (self delusion) and decided that we had the center of gravity of the chair in the trunk, and that she wasn't going far so we could get by just tying the rest of it on. At this point Camille produced 1 six foot length of 3 ply weird string, which was internally anchored to something in the car. 6 feet was not long enough to get around the chair, not did it look particularly sturdy. We talked about it briefly and she said she's used it before to tie shit, which was not only good enough for me, it was great for me- some people might be rolling their eyes at this point, but I for one had to admire her optimism. A woman after my own heart that Camille, making do with what she has and seeing how far she can push the limits- yeah, I know you girl. I *am* you and of course I'll help! I made her promise she was not taking the highway home (I don't mind injuring myself but I draw the line at endangering others with my bad ideas) and I went and got 3 more feet of some weird twine I had tied inside *my* trunk, did a couple of double fisherman knots to join them (yay! I have skills!) and sent her on her way, secure in the knowledge that at the very least my knots would hold and she wasn't endangering anyone other than the chair, since she was taking backroads home.

I went back inside, gave a big "aaah" and parked my happy ass on the couch with Bill to watch more tv and do misc innernet stuff. Side note: I love having old school friends over, exactly because sitting next to them is enough. I don't feel like I have to be chained to them entertaining them and I can do my own thing which is my favorite thing to be able to do- in short I like having old friends over because I am a terrible hostess and they don't care. Plus the whole "showering daily" thing is really not an issue. ha!

I decided to continue purging shit I don't want, not even sure why I had lost my momentum on that in the first place, and I posted a list of random chemicals and household stuff I don't want on Craigslist again. there's just a plethora of stuff that was here when we moved in because the previous tenants couldn't use it and didn't take it. I can get rid of most of it in April at toxic waste disposal day, but I don't have the patience to house stuff I don't want for 3 mos, nor am I particularly keen to throw it away. I'd rather see it used. So supposedly today this guy is coming to get a bunch of it and I can't wait! I'm fantasizing about all the space about to open up downstairs, even though I'll have nothing new to put in it. Stuff will be gone! yay!

I'm also going to finish out a couple of projects around the house that the previous tenants started and left hanging, undo a couple of Adam's false starts on things I was never crazy about, and maybe even get crazy and go to Home Depot* and/or Bed Bath n Beyond.

Should be a good little Sunday!

*I'm psyched. My old drill has kicked it, which means I need a new drill. RIP old friend, you're totally being replaced by something more powerful and cordless, which I've want to do for ages but didn't feel right doing for sentimental reasons, because you were part of my sweet 16 present from my dad. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.