Under intense pressure from Blogger, I upgraded to New Blogger, and in doing so, I lost all of the fun tweaks I had done to my template. And now I don't remember how I did them. Does anyone have any hints for learning HTML so I can again have the coolest background ever?
The final step has been taken, and Frenchy is now a full-fledged American. No green card yet, but he's got something even more fundamental: the cowboy boots.
He posed for this picture, forgetting that the flag poster was in the background. As it were, it was the perfect setting! Now he just has to perfect the "yawl!"
We discovered "three-dollar token Fridays" at the Brooklyn Brewery, which is just down the street from us. Of course, they don't have a beer license, so you can exchange your token for a free beer, or you can keep the commemorative token. Obviously, no one chose the second option.
Our roommates are really bizarre. I guess with the wheat of the awesome loft comes the chaff of the two wackjobs that inhabit it. Here is a partial list of the obnoxious things they have done since I moved in. Hopefully this will let off steam so I don't blow up at them one day and lose my wonderful place to live.
1. When I create a wet laundry jungle in my room to avoid using the dryer (and by extension the weird cardboard thingamajig that they fashioned to hold the dryer hose out the window, which incidentally lets in gales of cold outside air), ask me why I didn't simply use the dryer.
(1.5. Cardboard? Stuffed in the window next to the gas stove? Which you have to stand on to insert? Are you kidding?)
2. When I use the dryer, pull a long face at me and complain that there's a cold draft and that I shouldn't use the dryer. Hmm, I didn't see you so upset about the cold when it was our room that had no heat. Which brings me to...
3. Realize around mid-October that there is no heater in our room. Our room with the twelve-foot-high factory windows. Order a heater from Japan that will come next week, I promise. Meanwhile, an Arctic front moves in.
4. Receive heater a month later. Realize that a key piece is missing. Order piece from Japan, that will come within a few days, I promise. Don't offer any extra blankets. Finally receive piece in mid-December, after I have reinforced my stock of wool sweaters and have become resigned to wearing double layers of socks to bed.
5. Quit job in August. Piss around all day on the computer, downloading porn. (I have proof.) Complain about money. Sleep till four pm. Buy a new laptop. Transfer porn to laptop. Arrange a "study" area upstairs and pretend to study, but download more porn. (Okay, no proof on that one, but really, wouldn't you feel justified in suspecting?) Talk about rehabbing upstairs, but only move a bunch of junk around.
6. Regularly ask us for rent a day before it's due, and before you calculate utilities. Get mad when we don't produce check on the spot.
7. Work four days a week at two crap jobs, and complain that it's "simply too exhausting to work on Fridays." Complain again about money.
8. Pry into our personal lives.
9. The only time I answer the house phone, during which I take a message and relay the message accurately, coldly tell me, "Don't ever answer the phone again."
10. The day I move in (bringing my MO apartment furniture with me, fully expecting to get a place of our own relatively soon and not wanting to move cross country twice), tell me, "Um, didn't you know that this place was furnished?" Simultaneously, hide piles of broken junk in the massive storage space upstairs. Make me feel like consumerist crap for having a complete set of nice furniture.
11. Make me put all my things in storage upstairs, then rearrange storage so I can't get to them.
12. When we throw out a lamp with broken wiring, chase us down the hall and retrieve it, saying, "Well, maybe I can fix this," and relegate it to the storage pile. See item 10.
13. Talk to Frenchy while he's watching football. Really, even I learned this one years ago.
14. Completely fill freezer so I can't store any food larger than a single fish fillet.
15. Taunt me as materialistic for putting my name on my food, then eat my ice cream.
16. When I go to the massive storage space upstairs (now turned into a putative "bar exam study area") to get a sweater from a box that is still up there, follow me and insinuate that I am not allowed upstairs.
I'm sure I will add more as they happen, and as I un-represss memories. When it gets too bad, I just have to remind myself of the view. It's nearly the same from our bedroom window. Life isn't all that bad, is it?
Well, I've passed yet another "adult" milestone. I quit my first job, and for reasons other than "the school year ended" or "it's after Labor Day, no one wants to come to the pool."
I'm glad to report that I got another job in my field, located in New York (for those keeping score, this is where Frenchy lives!) and am moving in less than a week. I totally should be packing right now, but can't be arsed. It reminds me spookily of the evenings when I was supposed to be researching.
The story of how I was delayed on the way home from my (current work-sponsored) trip to England, extended my layover in Newark, fought with the damn Transit Authority ticket machines, got myself into the city and interviewed for the new job, barely made it back to the airport, and then flew through tornadoes to arrive home doesn't need to be repeated. Oh wait, I just did. Be thankful that you were spared the details of how the St. Louis airport was completely without power when we landed, including lights to see where you were going, electricity for the baggage carousel ("We're taking everyone's baggage to the Burger King," because every good St. Louisan knows where the BK is in the airport) and the sensors on the automatic-flush toilets weren't working. Fortunately my mom got to find that one out, not me.
The actual quitting process wasn't nearly the drama I was afraid it would be. I did hear one under-the-breath "well, we could see that coming," but really, they could see it coming from a thousand miles away. 1,024, if you believe MapQuest. Do they really think I'm going to be able to drive that myself in seventeen hours? In a strange U-Haul? And why, for the love of Weezer, don't they put a CD player in those trucks? Or at least a tape player. Everyone loves them some old skool mixed tapes. Anything to avoid the endless country music channels on the AM dial, which must be the only radio stations in Indiana. When you New Yorkers see a greasy, squinting girl with chocolate smeared on her face, hyped up on the sweet, sweet Dr. Pepper, narrating every billboard she passes, you'll know I've arrived.
Reasons why this is a life-changing event:
1. I'm throwing out armfuls of clothing. Me. The one who saves something if I've worn it in the past five years. Or if I might wear it before 2015.
2. And shoes. I dumped seven pairs of shoes, all at once.
3. (I'm moving in with a boy!)
4. I bought a cell phone. This is probably the one that will shock the most people. More so if I tell them that I actually have owned a cell phone before, when I was teaching English in Dijon. But that was France, and we all know that what happens in France stays in France.
5. I actually agreed to reduced the Eiffel-Tower-themed decorations in my apartment. This is love, y'all.
I barely recognize myself anymore. Brooklyn, here I come!
So I'm off soon for my trip to England and Scotland. Ostensibly I'm going to attend a professional conference in Durham and to visit two of our university partners there, in Lancaster and Manchester. I'm also planning to spend four or five days backpacking around Scotland.
By now, I would think I have all the international travel preparations down. This is my sixth trip abroad, for Pete's sake. I know where my passport is, don't need a visa, have made sure my bills are paid, have bought proper squishable clothes, have told the credit card people that it is actually me who will be suddenly purchasing random items in a foreign country and please don't shut down my account, bought exactly the size of shampoo etc so I won't run out but won't be carrying extra weight, loaded the MP3 player with my best music, packed a ziploc bag of laundry detergent so I can do daily laundry in the sink and torn out the "England and Scotland" pages of an old guidebook. And yet the feeling remains that I have forgotten something.
Perhaps it's because I'm relying on ATMs in England to provide me with money. I have always gotten at least some cash before I left, but not this time. Am I pushing my luck? I do feel like a hypocrite, since I tell all my students to get some local currency before they go, so they can get used to what the bills look like.
What have I forgotten?
It's official: my Frenchy has had too large an influence on me. I never was interested in sports before. Baseball? I'd glance at the Cardinals' score if the sports page happened to be lying around. Basketball? Had enough in high school and college when I had to sit through every home game and pretend I was interested. Football? Gimme a break.
But now I find myself at the head of the office cheering section for the World Cup. I'm actually reading the sports page--on purpose! I'm learning the names and stats of players. I'm drawing brackets and putting money on my choices. Good grief, I barely recognize myself.
The final realization came yesterday when France was playing Switzerland. For some reason, our office has a TV with cable* which is kept in our conference room. Every so often (about every three minutes) I'll pop my head in and check the score (or stay for half an hour, ignoring my boss's dirty looks). But precisely at 1:54 Central Time, someone decided to have an unnanounced CONFERENCE in the conference room! I went ballistic. They're keeping me from my game on purpose!
I'm ashamed to say, I hovered. I kept it up for the entire first half. I made a piteous phone call to Frenchy, hoping that he would commiserate. Then I gave up and ran across campus to a pizza place and made them change the channel on their large-screen TV.
*How is it that my office has a TV, cable service and a DVD player locked up in our conference room, when I can't even afford to buy a TV in color larger than my hand span? I would like to know this.
So it's true, I have joined the rest of the world and become a football fan. I feel so un-American.
