I’m leaving Feministe, and will be joining Shakesville as a contributor.
This place will remain in business. Where else can I examine the contents of my navel?
Less
More
Archive for the 'Vanity' Category
What does it say about me that when I loaded up all my CDs onto iTunes, I noticed that the two artists I had more of than anyone else were Concrete Blonde and Esquivel?
I just got word that my buyer was approved on Tuesday, and the closing will be scheduled within the next few weeks.
Whee!
Of course, I have no idea where I’m going to live next. I can’t do any serious apartment-hunting until I have the proceeds in hand, and of course I won’t have those until the actual closing. I’ll have seven days to move out after the closing, but that’s cutting it close. I’m hoping to either get something last-minute, or put my stuff in storage and get into a sublet for a month or two while I figure out where to go next.
The pets will be an issue, of course. I definitely have a place to stash the dog, but the cats might be a problem. OTOH, it’ll be easier to get a sublet with just them while I look for a dog-friendly building.
Apartments around here are pretty cheap, especially on the other side of Coney Island Avenue closer to Flatbush (which is also closer to a much more convenient subway line). And there’s Astoria, which is very close to where I work, and also fairly cheap.
I’m kicking myself a little for getting the computer now, but it’s not like I could move in anywhere with $1300, even in Flatbush.
Eh. It’ll all work out in the end.
Purchased a new MacBook last night. Along with an Airport and a wee green iPod Shuffle, which is the tiniest piece of electronica I’ve ever seen. I had earrings bigger than that in the ’80s.
There were a few moments of frustration last night while attempting to get online wirelessly (and Apple could be a little more clear which device they’re telling you to restart when you’re trying to do setup). But once I got signed in and set up, it was a breeze.
I’m still getting used to the change in user interface from PCs, and especially from Firefox (can a Mac run Firefox? Because I’m not digging Safari so far). But ancient synapses are coming back to life — after all, I learned how to use computers on the teeny-tiny first-generation Macs at my campus newspaper, and I used them (with the exception of a few years of using mainframe-based pieces of crap at the professional newspaper I worked for between college and law school) all the way up through law school, until I arrived in a law firm that was still using MS-DOS and WordPerfect. So I had to retrain myself in WordPerfect and then, eventually, Word (when law firms finally decided to use the same programs their clients did).
My first computer,* purchased third-hand in law school, was one of the ’80s-era Macs. 1 MB of RAM. One. (My new iPod has 2GB.) 4-inch black and white screen. It was slow, and because it had no memory I couldn’t load any software onto it or use it to get online, but I was able to do my outlines and my exams on it, and print them at the law school’s computer center.
But now I have a sleek, fast, compact little MacBook. With a working disk drive! I’ll finally be able to upload my CDs.
_______
*Of my own — my family had a Commodore 64, not that we did much of anything with it but play games.
I’m going to fire my dogwalker tomorrow. For the past six months-year, she’s been coming very late; so late that she often gets there after I get home. And even on nights when I’ve gone out after work.
It’s always something; car broke down, locked out of car, ill relative, weather, running late. I’ve spoken to her several times about this, but last night was the final straw. She called me at 8:30 (I’ve asked her to call if she’ll be later than 7) and left a message that she probably wouldn’t be there before 9:15 because she’d locked her keys in the car. By the time I got the message, it was already 9:30, so I assumed she’d just gone ahead and walked Junebug anyhow.
She hadn’t. When I got home at 10, the lights were out, the leash was where I had left it that morning, and the poor dog was practically knocking down the door to get out.
Junebug loves her. But what am I paying her for, if she walks my dog only moments before I arrive home anyhow?
I’ve made an appointment for Saturday to start transitioning to gray.
I admit, I hold out fantastic hopes of looking like Emmylou Harris, though I have neither as much gray in my hair nor did I start out with hair as dark as she had.
What with the four months or so of non-dyeing, it looks like I’ve got some cool streaks going on, and not of the Paulie Walnuts variety.
I’ve been searching for a term that describes my position on the primary at present. Despite accusations to the contrary, I’m not a “Clinton supporter” or terribly “pro-Hillary.” Though I do like her, and certainly want her to keep fighting until the end (I also thought her Rocky reference was quite apt, because even though Rocky ultimately lost, he lost with dignity, and he lost after taking the fight to Apollo Creed on his own terms, instead of being a joke who was supposed to take a dive for the benefit of Creed’s show). I guess when you decide to counter the dominant narrative, you’re seen as pro-Clinton these days.
But I’m not really anti-Obama, either, though I don’t think much of a great deal of his supporters. Particularly when they’ve taken an easily-refutable position and react badly to the refutation (horrors! Obama’s actually a politician!).
I think the term I’ve been looking for is “Obama-skeptical.”
Because the mania with which his candidacy has been greeted since Edwards dropped out reminds me, a whole lot, of the U2 fandom which gripped my college roommate, Lisa.* I met Lisa in junior year, after we’d been assigned to the same room at room draw. It was 1988. The Joshua Tree had been out for a year, and that was their big breakthrough hit (personally, I was much more fond of The Unforgettable Fire and War, which I found less pretentious (yes, even “Sunday Bloody Sunday”), and I definitely remember seeing the posters for Boy and War in the DJ booth on WKRP, so it’s not like I didn’t know the band from way back).
Within the first few days of knowing Lisa, I was informed in great detail of her love for U2, how she had nearly been crushed to death during a concert in Philadelphia that summer after deciding to follow the band on tour without telling her parents because she and some friends had ambushed Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton outside the Hartford Civic Center after a show, and Larry had kissed her cheek and signed her Gumby keychain.
In early October, Rattle and Hum came out. The only theater it was playing at in the area was in East Hartford, but Lisa had a car, and one night at dinner shortly after the movie came out, she and Holly, who lived down the hall and was also a big U2 fan, were talking about going to see the movie. To be clear: they were talking, in front of me, about the two of them going to see the movie, without asking me. But I liked U2 well enough, and had for a while, so I suggested that I might come along as well if they were going to make the trip out to East Hartford — particularly since I knew that particular movie theater well, much better than either Lisa or Holly, who hailed from a different part of the state.
Lisa looked at me for a little bit, then she said, very tightly, “All right. But you have to understand, this is a total fan movie. And I don’t want you to say anything wrong that would be against the movie, because it’s a fan movie, and you just don’t understand.”
And I looked at her, and I looked at Holly. Holly had the decency to look embarrassed, but it wasn’t her car. So I just said no, thank you, and stayed home.
Because she was right: I just don’t understand that kind of fervent and uncritical belief, the kind that would lead you to pick up and travel to Philadelphia to nearly die in a rush to the stage. I’ve had my little obsessions, don’t get me wrong (there was even a small Monkees obsession in high school, when MTV started playing old episodes; I even went so far as to leave school in the middle of the day (my mom was a sub, and so I just took her car from the faculty lot during my free period) to watch the episodes and look up old issues of Rolling Stone on microfilm in the public library). But I never actually lost my head with them to the point where I bored and perplexed my friends with my devotion.
More often than not, the Obama true believers remind me very much of Lisa and her U2 obsession (and, later, of my friend Melissa and her Robert Plant/Led Zeppelin obsession, but I’m afraid I introduced her to Led Zep).
It’s a fan movie, and I just don’t understand.
_________
* And yet, oddly enough, looking back, I can’t actually recall her playing any music in the room, much less U2.
Is anyone else concerned that the economy may be tanking?
Might be a good idea to put the proceeds from the sale of my apartment into Euros. Any suggestions for Euro-based savings or investment accounts?
It looks like I will be in contract on my apartment soon, with an offer comfortably over the asking price. And it’s going to close in mid-to-late May.
Which got me thinking: my current assignment will probably have wrapped up, or will be wrapping up, by then. And yet I don’t have the kind of cash (or, frankly, credit rating) that will allow me to jump right into a new rental without asking my aunt for a short-term loan (or, god forbid, ask her to co-sign a lease), and I really don’t want to do that.
But I’m gonna need a place to live, which is complicated by the fact that I also need a place to park my pets.
And it hit me: why not get a summer sublet somewhere like Halifax or Montreal? Halifax is essentially a college town, which means there are plenty of sublets available, plus summer’s a great time of year to be there. And Montreal is, well, it’s Montreal. Both places have low housing costs, and Montreal has good public transit. Each is a relatively reasonable drive from New York, and I could probably Shanghai a friend into making the trip with a bribe of furniture or electronics.
I could sure use some planned time off, versus “Oh, shit, now I’m out of work; what the hell am I gonna do?” time off.
Thoughts?
It looks like I’m having another open house this weekend. I didn’t realize it was a weekly thing.
OTOH, the last one got me two offers, and we’re expecting more. I may get my bidding war after all.
Recent Comments