Random ramblings

On Wednesday I decided to be an honest citizen and called Comcast to have my internet reinstated and transferred to my new apartment. While it's great that my karma is being restored and blah, blah, blah I still have to wait until March 5 before the next repair tech can come out. Fucking Comcast. Friday, my neighbor must have gotten fed up with me stealing their internet and put password protection on the network. So right now I'm sitting at Nina's Coffee Cafe catching up on email and whatnot.

I had an interesting opportunity present itself this past week. I was contacted by a woman who is creating a pilot program through the Hope Lodge in Minneapolis where I would be providing Reiki therapy to the residents undergoing cancer treatment. I think this is such a great opportunity for these people to receive a bit of nurturing and comfort in an otherwise sterile medical environment. Cancer treatments are so emotionally and physically draining that I can't imagine having to undergo the treatments away from home. So regardless of your thoughts and opinions on the efficacy of Reiki, everyone feels better after they get a hug or a massage, right? Same thing. She's still trying to figure out the schedule for the treatments so it might be a while before I start but I am really looking forward to working with them. I hope the program is successful.

That's pretty much it with me. Sorry I've been so boring lately. Hopefully I'll have some more wit to add soon.

2007 wrap up

This was one hell of a week. On Wednesday, I returned home from Christmas in Chicago to my cats wigging out from the smoke alarm beeping and shorting out in my bedroom. I opened the bedroom door to find brown water leaking from the ceiling. What I had originally believed to be a minor leak from the upstairs unit ended up being a nightmare of a roof malfunction. At this moment every single item from my bedroom has been crammed into my living room, the ceiling in my bedroom has been completely removed, and the carpet has been torn up and is being blown dry by two giant fans and a dehumidifier. I have plastic tubes running from my bedroom into my bathroom sink to provide an outlet for all of the water that gets sucked out by the dehumidifier. This is day 3 of my living room slumber party and I have been told it will continue like this until they figure out who is liable for the roof damage. That determines what repair crew they bring in to fix everything up. They anticipate it will get repaired in the next week. Cross your fingers. I feel horrible for the occupant of the unit above mine. The water damage to his unit was so extensive they had to tear down his entire ceiling and all of his walls. His king sized bed is destroyed. What's even worse is that he is still on vacation. I wonder if I'll be able to hear him scream when he gets back....

In other partially unrelated news, I'm moving to St. Paul! Originally, I was planning to move to a new place in April but having to deal with this shit sparked my curiosity and I poked around the listings on Craigslist. I ended up finding my newly renovated dream apartment for the exact same rent as what I'm paying now complete with brick walls, hardwood floors, french doors, beveled glass, a garden, and garage parking. Granted, it's located on top of an adult bookstore and it's smaller than the place I'm currently in but I'm totally excited. Never would I have expected that I would be moving to St. Paul but February first can't come soon enough.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get back to cleaning the dry wall dust from my belongings to the melodious droning of the giant fans in my bedroom.

Happy New Years, everyone!

'Tis the season

We all have that family member who is just a bit off and it always seems to be the most noticeable around the holidays.

I received a package today from my dad's sister Mick. Upon opening this Christmas/birthday gift (she did not include a card) I discovered that I was given a collection of objects from around her house. I curiously opened each newspaper-wrapped item and laid them all out on my table: a pink vinyl coin purse, a ball point pen, a calculator, and a sculpture made out of sea shells. I had a flashback to the scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Aunt Bethany wraps up her cat and gives it away as a Christmas gift.


Given that I have yet to buy a single Christmas gift, I'm torn-- do I stoop so low as to regift or should I take the high road and wrap up one of my cats?

Anyone want a sea shell sculpture?

Haunted House 2007

Forest creatures

This picture was taken in the dark right after a group went through.

Getting in character can be so hard sometimes.

The haunted house this year was a success. Over the course of the three nights, we had about 1000 people go through. I continually forgot to wear my contacts so I never got to really take in the reactions of the people but the blobs were all screaming (with some tears!) when they went through our room. We all confessed at the end that we weren't looking forward to our theme this year, thinking that a haunted forest wouldn't be scary enough, but we upheld our title from each past season of being the room that's "freakin' nuts".

...And it was created by a bunch of chicks.

New license, new plates, and a sucker stuck to my ass

It's official. I am a Minnesota resident. I made a trip to the DMV today to take the driver's test and get my Minnesota plates. I was actually surprised at how much nicer the DMV at Chicago and Lake is than the DMV that I went to in Illinois. Well done, Minnesota. The DMV I went to in Illinois was truly hellish. It was in a seedy strip mall and it smelled like cheap plastic chairs and body odor.

Unlike in Illinois, the DMV attendant let me approve my picture before she submitted it although I wasn't picky. I've been told that my Illinois license photo makes me look like an asian man with a black eye. Anything is an improvement over that.
I accepted the first one she took.

I stopped at a mechanic on the way home from my adventure at the DMV to get a long-overdue oil change and get my new plates put on the car. The mechanic put his hand on my shoulder as he was giving me the keys back and politely told me, "Umm....you have a sucker stuck to your ass". We all had a good laugh and they comped me a few bucks off the bill. I love Minneapolis.

Looks like I'm sticking it out here for the long haul.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

So it's set. The theme this year for our haunted house room is "Haunted Forest". It may not be as conventionally scary as our vampire room last year or the zombie room the year before, but I'm super excited. Each year we do it, we try to break the record set the previous year for the number of people we make cry going through our room. Now it's time for me to think of how I'm going to interpret the theme for my character....should I be a haunted tree? A witch? I was also thinking of being someone who was hanged...now THAT would be pretty scary, if I could pull it off without actually hanging myself.

Decisions, decisions.

If any of you are interested in participating this year, let me know and I'll give you the details.

It's really fun...and this is coming from someone who personally hates getting scared.

Plant euthanasia

About two years ago, my grandma dug out an offshoot of one of her many aloe plants when I went down to Florida to surprise her for her 90th birthday. She insisted I take it home with me because she found out that I didn't have any plants in my apartment. She wrapped it up in a piece of newspaper and told me to hide it in my suitcase. The aloe plant survived for four days wrapped up in a piece of newspaper and smashed in the bottom of my suitcase.

At it's peak, my aloe plant reproduced and made four more aloe seedlings in the pot but lately it has been looking pretty sad. The original aloe that my grandma gave me mysteriously became dislodged from it's root base and died. Then the babies began to slowly but surely lose steam. I didn't want to throw out the plant because it was a gift from my grandma so I kept trying to care for it hoping it would one day spring back.

Today, I came home from work to find that my cats had moved their scratching post over right next to the pot and ate each and every remaining seedling. At least the poor plant is out of its misery now.

I'm actually pretty surprised it lasted this long to begin with. The lighting in my apartment sucks.