Okies — I’m in the apartment! Rented a U-Haul van today to get all my stuff over from Casey’s place and into the apartment. So…while I’m in the apartment…I’m currently without a way to get my computers up and running (my monitors are still in Alaska, coming down with Rick in a month or two, I can’t get DSL until I get my first phone bill, and I don’t have a modem built into any of my machines). In the near future, then, my online activities will pretty much be limited to stopping by Casey’s place to check e-mail when I can, hopefully once a day or so. Hopefully I won’t have to do this for long — if I pick up a cheap monitor and modem, I’ll at least be able to get dialup access at the apartment — but for the foreseeable future, I won’t be online much at all. So it goes.
Personal
The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.
A shoebox, a dragon’s kiss, and Kate
First off — and most important — I’ve got my apartment! I called Melvin (the landord) at about 5pm today, and he told me that I could come on down and get the keys. Immediately I headed out the door, swung through Radio Shack to grab a telephone, and rode the buses out to Capitol Hill. Talked for a few moments with Melvin, then took my first steps into my first apartment in Seattle. Woohoo!
I’ve got pics up here to share of the apartment and the building. It’s pretty sparse at the moment — everything I own is still in Casey’s garage — but hopefully I’ll be able to rectify that fairly quickly. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get everything over there just yet…but I’ll find a way. I’m still at Casey’s for the moment, as I didn’t get anything over to the apartment tonight, but things will start moving that direction soon enough, I’m sure.
In order from top to bottom, here’s the pics I’ve got — as always, you can click on the thumbnails for full-size versions. First off is the building itself — the Shannon Apartments, with my outside door circled in red. Next is just a closer view of the doorway — you can’t see them in this photo, but on the left and right of the entrance are doors into two other apartments — the only other two with street entrances. The next shot is standing in the inside doorway looking out towards the street, and the last shot is of the inside of the apartment (affectionately deemed “The Shoebox”) from the outside doorway. Fun fun fun!
I caught Kiss of the Dragon tonight. In brief — it’ll be an entertaining rental, but not much more.
Had one interesting little tweak to the night on my way home, though. I was crouched down at the bus stop at 1st and Pine waiting for the 18 to Ballard to come by, when a guy comes jogging down the sidewalk. As he passes me, he flashes his hand in front of my face and yells “Boo!” It startled me and I jumped a bit, but he just kept running by, so I didn’t figure it was much more than that — was even a little amused, so I laughed a little. Apparently that was the wrong response, however, as when he heard that he stopped, turned around, and stood right in front of me.
“Yo, loco, what’d’you say?”
I didn’t bother standing up — I figured if I stayed crouched down and let him loom over me, it’d keep him in psychologically in a position of ‘power’, where if I stood up, I’d have been taller than him, and more of a threat.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, man, what’d’you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
At this, he turned to the man sitting on the bench next to us. “Hey, what’d he say to me?”
“He didn’t say anything.”
The guy paused for a moment. “Oh.”
Then he patted my shoulder, shrugged, and started running down the street again.
Wierd…but still kind of entertaining, and at least I didn’t get thumped.
Then, just a few minutes later, who should I see at the other end of the bus stop but Kate and her boyfriend Duncan! Rock on — Kate’s been one of my favorite people for years, and I’d been wanting to track her down for a bit. So I wandered over and got her attention, swept her up in a big hug, and spent the rest of the time waiting for the bus (which was late, by the way, something about some big all-star baseball game that I’d probably know more about if I cared at all about sports) and about half of the ride home talking with her. Was very cool.
Incidentally, she and Duncan had both just watched The Score, the new Ed Norton/Robert DeNiro flick, and said it wasn’t that impressive. A bummer, as they’re both good actors, but got a rental recommendation from them on that one. Ah, well.
So that’s my excitment for the day. Now — let the moving commence!
Buses are fun
Just got back in from catching Cats and Dogs out at the Cineplex Odeon downtown here. Quick blurb: quite entertaining, and well worth a matinee showing.
Was an interesting ride in, though. There are various repairs still being done around town from the earthquake last February, and they’re currently closing down the Ballard bridge (the most direct route between Ballard and downtown Seattle, and the route the #18 bus usually takes) each night, forcing the bus to take a longer route. Not normally a big deal, except that it gave me that much longer to listen to some woman who had this amazingly stereotypical ‘New York Jewish’ accent rattle on and on. Another reason to actually like the fact that I grew up in Alaska — I don’t sound like that!
My stuff, Hank, and my apartment
My stuff is here!
I got woken up this morning to the ring of the doorbell as my shipment of almost everything I own at the moment got delivered. I ended up with one pallette to be shipped — a grand total of 1,075 lbs. — and when I stood next to it, it looked like it was about 7 ft. high. Lots of crap, basically, but it’s my crap, and it’s the crap I wanted to keep.
Looks like I won’t be into my apartment until tomorrow evening, rather than tonight. A bit of a bummer, but nothing too huge. When I talked to my landlord the carpet people were in the midst of getting the new carpets down, but the new locks hadn’t been installed yet. So, I call tomorrow afternoon to see if everything’s good, and hopefully will actually get a ‘yes’ this time.
And lastly — Hank! I put in my first online order for a DVD the other day, so that I could get ahold of the Heny Rollins DVD I babbled about a while ago. It showed up in the mail today, and so I’m now the quite happy owner of Henry Rollins: Talking From the Box/Rollins Goes to London. Talking From the Box I’ve actually seen before on videotape with friends back in Anchorage, but Rollins Goes to London has apparently not been released before, so that’ll be a completely new thing for me. Very cool…hrm…guess what I’m watching tonight?
It works!
Woohoo! Finally got it all figured out!
You’ll notice the new(est) look to the site — finally found a layout I liked, and was flexible enough to work sitewide. Spent most of the day in front of the computer working on it, and now the majority of the pages are converted over to the new design — all that’s left are the pages of the quotebook, and the various pages showing off my artwork.
In the process of mangling things today, I did manage to completely hose my old messageboard/guestbook, unfortunately. However, I decided as long as I had to change things around to find something else, so now I’ve got some new, much more full-featured software running that side of things. Not sure where (if anywhere) I’m going to take that in the future…we’ll see how things go, as always.
That’s been my day, however, so not much more to babble about. Was thinking about seeing AI again tonight, but then got caught up in pfutzing around here and completely lost track of what time it was, and now it’s too late. Ah, well.
Tomorrow should mark my moving day, if all goes well. This may mean I’m not online quite as often until I get things more set up in the new place — I’m currently a bit short on monitors, so may be leaving my ‘puter over here at Casey’s for a bit — but I’ll at least stop in to check e-mail and the like as often as I can. But hey, I’ll have my own place. Yay!
Back again!
Woohoo! We’ve reconfigured a few areas of the network here at Casey’s house, and it seems that things are back up and fully functional for me again. So, as things go here, I’ll do my best to return to updating my pages on a regular basis. I know, I know, something of a shock after about a month of near-nonexistent updates…but I’ll try.
Things for me are still in something of a holding pattern at the moment. I got word from the landlord of my apartment complex that the carpets are scheduled to be installed this Monday, so I should finally be able to get into my place Monday afternoon/evening sometime. I’ve made the requisite calls to the telephone and electric companies and am all set up there, so should be good to go as soon as I get the word from the landlord on Monday. I’ll be sending out the mailing address and phone number to those who need it in the near future.
Internet access options for me are still being investigated. I’m hoping to get set with a DSL line, I just need to get in contact with the local ISP‘s to see if my apartment has that as an option. I’m assuming it does — I’m going to be living right on Capitol Hill, just about 20 blocks or so uphill from downtown Seattle — but I’m not entirely sure yet. In any case, Casey has graciously allowed me to keep my webserver at his place until I have things up and running at my apartment, so the server shouldn’t be going down again at all, however there may be a couple weeks where my online abilities are severely limited until I get my own connection up and running. It’ll all get straightened out eventually — I’m just glad to have friends down here who are able and willing to assist me in all of this
In other news, I’ve been playing a lot with my digital camera since I got it. I took some time recently to stitch together some panoramas I’d taken. The first three were all taken before I left Alaska — from top to bottom, the Inlet as seen from Earthquake Park in Anchorage, a view of the Palmer hayflats where I hit a bonfire with some friends, and Jewel Lake, a popular destination in South Anchorage.
The fourth shot was taken at Gasworks Park here in Seattle during the 4th of July celebrations, about an hour before the fireworks display. I wanted to try and capture the sheer mass of people — later reports placed it at around 6,000 people just at this park (and it was one of two major fireworks displays within Seattle). I think it came out pretty decently.
I’ve been out to see two movies since I came down here so far — since it’s been a bit since I’ve seen them, I’ll just give brief rundowns of each. First off was Atlantis, Disney’s latest animated flick — another fun one from Disney. Not one of their all-time classics, but very enjoyable, with some absolutely breathtaking animation at times. More recently was A.I., the Spielberg/Kubrick sci-fi collaboration. In brief — I believe it to be an astounding piece of work, quite possibly Spielberg’s best work yet, and a film that, while getting wildy mixed reviews, is very likely to stand the test of time like few other recent films. Very, very impressive filmmaking, and my hat is off to Spielberg, Kubrick, and the rest of the forces behind this film. I’ll most likely post more about it after I’ve had a chance to see it a second time.
That’s the majority of the big news so far. As mentioned earlier, now that things are up and running again, I’ll do my best to return to a more reliable update schedule here. It’s good to be back….
Made it to Seattle
Well, I’m in Seattle. It may be a while before I am able to put another update on my page, unfortunately. I’m currently staying with some friends who have been kind enough to put my webserver and main work machine on their network, however due to their firewall, I’m not able to update my page from my own machines! Bleah. Hopefully this will be resolved fairly soon — I’m currently posting this from a machine at Kinko’s in downtown Seattle.
The trip down was fairly uneventful — a redeye flight where I didn’t want to turn on the reading light and disturb my seatmates, so — as I can’t sleep on airplanes — I spent the entire 3 hour flight zoning out to music. Oh, well. Got picked up at the airport by Dez and Chad, and have been staying with them and Casey at their apartment in the Ballard area.
My days have been spent bouncing between exploring the city (mostly in a ‘V’ from Ballard to Downtown to Capitol Hill and back), learning some of the layout and bus routes, and apartment hunting. I’ve been holding off on the job hunting a bit until I know where I’m going to be living, to avoid landing a job that I then find out is near-impossible to get to reliably.
Hopefully, the apartment situation will be resolved soon, however — I’ve put down a holding fee and submitted an application for a tiny little studio apartment just six blocks away from where I’m staying now. Now I’m just in the ‘hurry up and wait’ stage while the landlords go through my credit history, rental history, yadda yadda yadda — my least favorite part. Ugh.
So that’s the reader’s digest condensed cliffs notes version of the past week or so…I’ll try to get more up here when I can, but it may very well be sometime in July before I have my own reliable, steady, non-glitchy connection to the ‘net from my own place. Until then….
God of Ecstasy!
My friend Aliena pointed me to Emode, a fun little site that has a ton of different personality-style tests on it. I took the “Are you a sex god?” test, and thought my results were hilarious — here’s how it rated me:
DIONYSUS, God of Ecstacy.
You are one sex-loving deity! And you sure know how to turn any bedroom into an unforgettable party for two. You are sensual and fun-loving, and you will do just about anything to get some play. You have an insatiable desire for sexual pleasure. You have a young, playful spirit that makes the bedroom your personal playground. Because you are housing a god within you who used orgies as a method of worship, you have no limits to your exploration. Your experimentation and lack of inhibition make your sex life all the more interesting. Your open-mindedness and irrepressible energy allow your sexual energy to keep going and going and going. And when the day is through, you’ve left a trail of satisfied mortals in your wake.
Hmmm…not bad, eh? Woohoo!
Catching up with old friends
Most of the day was spent on getting some more bits ready to go. I went out (on another gorgeous day) and got my car IM’d and registered so it’s all legal to sell, as it looks like I’ve got a buyer. Kinda funny — the first time in about a year and a half that my car will be legally registered, and I’m only going to have it for probably a few more days. Ah, well…so things go in the life of a procrastinator, right? Anyway, got that done, then came home and did some more work on the room, but then got stalled when I realized I’d run out of boxes to actually put stuff in.
A while after I’d stalled on the room, James and Marc came over with their usual war cry — “We’re bored!” As always, none of us could really come up with anything amazingly interesting to do (fairly typical for Anchorage), and ended up just kicking back here at the house for a while, chatting and killing time with Rick, and then later Erika, Deven, and Don when they stopped by. As usual, I got more than my fair share of age-related cracks…somehow, being the ‘old man’ of this group of friends isn’t really all that good of a deal. Remember when kids were taught to respect their elders?
Well, okay, so neither do I, but it sure seems like a good idea sometimes. :)
Since Marc has the misfortune of needing to be up and awake at 3:30am for his job, we eventually all parted ways for the evening. Still stuck in the throes of boredom, James and I decided to head out and find something to do, and started by heading over to James and Marc’s apartment to let Marc crash out and get a change of shirt for James. When we got out of the apartment, however, I was greeted by the sight of two pranksters sitting in my car going through everything they could find — the one time I don’t lock my doors….
Luckily, it happened to be Royce and Rod. They’d stopped by the same apartment building to talk to another friend, and had noticed my car on their way out. As I’d left the door unlocked, they decided to have some fun — until I walked out and caught them red-handed. They decided to join James and I in our quest for ‘something to do,’ and the four of us ended up heading out to ‘koots, having a few drinks, and babbling for a while. Was quite nice — having known Royce since 4th grade (and yes, the rumors are true — Royce’s dad is responsible for gracing me with the nickname of “Woody”), and Rod since high school, I’d wanted to get a chance to see them both before I left. We spent a couple hours catching up, then took off.
After dropping James off back at his place and talking for a while longer there, I finally decided it was time to take myself home and fall over. So, here I am again, doing my usual late-night post before crashing out. Funny how these keep getting later and later — I knew that as soon as I wasn’t working, I’d start slipping back into my nocturnal ways. Good or bad, I’m not sure, but I’m quite definitely a night owl….
Unemployed weekends
Well, it’s official. As of 5pm today, I am officially unemployed. Now I’ve got no solid pans for the next two weeks other than getting everything I own sorted, packed, and ready to ship to Seattle. Kinda cool — kinda scary. I haven’t been without a job in about ten years…this is a new thing for me.
Friday night I went out to the Last Frontier bar out in Muldoon and met up with some of the people I talk with online in the chatrooms. Aurorawhisper and her husband are being shipped off to Germany in about a month — and I’m incredibly jealous, by the way — so a few of us had gathered to have a small going away celebration. Was a fun night, with some very amusing moments. At one point I’d stepped outside for a smoke (as the bar was just way too hot for most of the night), when the DJ came out and we chatted for a few moments, and he complimented me both on my dancing, and the fact that I had no fear when it came to dancing — I’ll just head out into the middle of an empty floor and have fun. As I turned to head back in, though, one of the bouncers stopped me to ask how much I’d had to drink — apparently he wasn’t as convinced my dancing style was natural. Too funny…especially as all I’d had was one Smirnoff Ice, and was nowhere near even buzzed. All in all, a fun night.
Today I had my last day of work, and came home afterwards to a pleasant surprise — my friend Andrea had stopped by with Kyle, her brand new (one month old) son. She’d wanted to make sure to see me before I left, and came into town tonight to visit for a bit. We sat around and talked for a while, but eventually I started wearing down, and decided it was time for bed.
So, I’m updating the page, and then it’ll be bedtime for me. Tomorrow begins two projects — the quicker being the finalizing of the sale of my car (yuppers — looks like I’ve got a definite buyer), and the major one being the packing project. Wish me luck — I might need it!