sizzling

this ain't our radiator. ours are covered in someone else's cat hair and peeling lead paint. in order to move in, trevor actually had to swear to our landlord that we wouldn't eat paint chips and sue them later.


so. yesterday i burnt my ass on the radiator in the bathroom. the fucking thing is located across from the toilet, so when stepping out of the tub, you have to dry off in a tiny little area between the searing hot radiator or the toilet (ewwww), so of course, being me the girl genius, i choose to stay closer to the radiator. i've bumped into it dozens of times before, and may i just say in my own defense that it's never been that hot before. i look like i sat on a george foreman grill. seriously. kudos to trevor for keeping straight face when i burst out of the bathroom shouting a string of curses and pointing accusingly at my own right glute.

i can't be mad at the radiator, though, no matter how hard i try. i've never lived with such a device before. they are hard-working and they keep my ass toasty! (bing! sorry, couldn't resist.) yesterday's temperature high was FIVE fucking degrees, and you could wear shorts in our apartment, despite its old-as-dirt windows that are basically sieves. i can't stay mad at the radiator. it keeps us warm despite the myriad obstacles threatening to freeze us.

californians don't know shit about radiators. we have really dumb heating systems like central forced air, or those lame electric wall units that basically just roast the wall around it. my first suspicions that non-california areas had it good were when my sister, who went to law school in boston, got fed up one day with our freezing-ass cold apartment in san francisco and started shouting, "what the fuck?! why the fuck is it so cold in here? i had an apartment in boston and i was never cold! it's 60 degrees outside and 40 degrees inside! what the fuck?!"

i remember when she called me at the start of winter her first year in boston, and she was like, "dude. cw. there's ice on the ground here, and the sun shines on it all day long, and it doesn't melt." i was impressed. that was indeed some cold-ass shit she was living in. but at least her apartment was warm!

because i appreciate being warm indoors (having been deprived of it most of my life), and because i am so thoroughly impressed with how effective these damn radiators are, i am willing to overlook such shortcomings as the drum solo / boiling kettle whistle noises that are apparently required for steam radiators to work. trevor occasionally gets annoyed when the radiators kick on in the middle of the night (there's one near the foot of the bed), but if i wake up to the sweet noise of heat coming on, i consider it a lullaby and continue to snore. so what if it looks like i grilled my ass on a weber. my eyes have been opened.

our apartment

let's get down to business. despite the fact that i am not yet employed and trevor is in school, it continues to deeply bother me that we still have our tv / vcr / dvd craps on the floor, and that we are sitting on a red futon that is actually broken besides being very ugly.

yesterday i took the second step towards civilization by ordering this:





from west elm. yes, i used to work for the company that owns this brand. anyway.

i bought the one in the front - as it was the one on sale - with the idea that we will put our old 25" tube tv on it, with components to the side. it is not a media stand in any way, mostly because it is a shade too tall for the idea tv height, about which i don't give a shit. i care that it will give our electronics a home, plus i can put the cable modem and wireless router and all that other crap a place to live that is NOT a stack of old new yorkers on the floor. and have some cubbies to spare for some of my own shit, since trevor has DOMINATED the shelves in the living room with such worthless titles as, if it pleases the court, civil procedure, and administrative law. i had to bully him into a 18" space for my cookbooks and a framed photo of a japanese horse. don't ask.

i dragged trevor to the brick and mortar store yesterday to see if the 'rolling storage' is strong enough to support a heavy-ass tv, and we think it is. unfortunately, this version on sale is not available at the store, so i had to blow an additional $54 on shipping surcharges and the shipping itself. i try not to be bitter because i know for a fact that companies - concerning furniture - do not make money on shipping. they usually lose money. but shipping sure is damn expensive when you don't have a 40% discount on everything any more.

i digress.

of all of the unexplainable forces in nature, denver does not have an ikea. the entire fucking state of colorado doesn't have one .utah has a goddamned ikea and colorado does not. i really don't know where to begin on that one so i won't, but suffice to say it's an incredible bitch. say what you will about ikea, but it really is the place to go for people on an incredibly tight budget. anyway, so i have to be creative and open-minded about things. we went to this horrific store called american furniture shithole warehouse for a cheap couch and ended up fleeing in horror. trevor couldn't identify what exactly he found wrong about the place, just that it was filled with ugly and scary things: "why is that leather couch two-toned?" "wow, they make couches in turquoise pleather?" "are those CUP HOLDERS built into a couch?" and etc. you COULD purchase a sofa for around $300, but, as i pointed out, you would then want to shoot yourself in the head every time you came home and saw it. so, we ruled out daily suicide and continue to sit on the red futon monster. it does make your ass fall asleep after an hour, but it was free and from a reliable source - thanks, fagas! - and, what's more, it was already sitting in the living room when i arrived.

on a random note, when i first arrived here in d-town and started shopping around for home decor ideas - as i will do even though i have no job - i discovered that west elm has knocked off the niche modern lights that i (and the rest of the world) love:





each of these babies costs about $1000, so i guess i see why, but i won't do it. i will wait until i can afford the real deal. those and one of the george nelson bubble lamps... one day.

cold snap

oops. i guess my last post seemed pretty bummed and i may have mildly alarmed some folks out there. compounded by my jokingly sulky pics on facebook. not to worry, i'm doing just fine. one day of boredom and loneliness (a couple of hours, really) is bound to happen when moving to a brand-new city, no?

my sister called yesterday to check in and was sad to learn that i am living without cable, even. that's right, we have rabbit ears on top of a vcr that sits on the floor next to our tv. i've been spending my days on the internet (countless hours), emailing and reading celebrity trash blogs and the ny times. i'm three days and two classes into my free week of yoga at a great studio nearby, which has made me feel immensely better about things. trev and i are looking into bikes for me before the weather gets too cold. i test rode a couple of treks last week and although i should afford this one, i really want to afford this other one. of course i test rode both and why test drive the bmw when you can only afford a pinata? don't ask. i just had to know how it felt.

i've also been cooking a lot. doing quite well considering the lack of affordable produce compared to california. stuffed yellow zucchini? check. roast chicken with garlic and lemon and thyme? check. vegetable soup and baked butternut squash? check and check. tonight i'm enjoying the pedestrian delight known as a baked potato stuffed with broccoli and pecorino tuscano. it's yummy and simultaneously giving me lsd flashbacks. (long story.) trev and i had a huge vietnamese feast for lunch, which i topped off with a 5:30 tea time of jamon serrano and havarti on crackers. yes, i am not suffering for eats here.

anyway, talk soon. blogger has a scheduled outage in 2.

dark room

never mind the beetlejuice reference, but my whole life is a dark room. ok not really, but i do spend an awful lot of time butt-down on our ugly red hand-me-down futon in the living room, which is damned dark as rooms go. it's a rainy saturday afternoon and i'm taking stock of my sitch. not nearly as melodramatic as it sounds, fortunately. trevor just left for the bars to meet with one of his friends who has called at least 5 times since i arrived to hang out, and whom he has turned down each time. we agreed that it was time to show his face. ideally i would have been sunshine cheerleader and cried out, 'YES! that's exactly what i want to do, babe! let me go put on my face and grease up my hair so i can sit on my can in some rank-smelling dive spending $4 per beer to pour into my inert listless body!'

predictably, i instead opted to give him the silent treatment until he tried that tres annoying tactic of cheerfully suggesting wholesome activities i could engage in while he was racking up a bar tab. oh no. i told him not to bring up yoga in all of its sacredness just to assuage his guilt. if i felt like sulking, bored out of my mind, in a dark room, listening to gen y suicide-inducing grunge tracks while cruising dog-rescue sites, i will do just that. if i want to drive myself to cherry creek mall to inhale the smell of commerce (no, not in the morning, but you already knew i was heading towards that mallrats reference), then i will do that. if i felt like going and twisting myself into a pretzel, i would do that, as well, but i sure as hell don't need captain america to suggest that shit to me. i'm alone in a strange city where i know no one but the eternally reliant person i am directing my insults towards. i will be sulky if i fucking feel like it.

thankfully, trevor is acres more cool than i am - i just make up for it by being articulate and clever, and he overlooks the bitchy part, what a good deal - and feels guilty and bad for ditching me for a bar, which fulfills my goal of making him feel shitty for abandoning my ass on a rainy saturday, while i secretly distract him from my outrageous childishness by stating all of the above out loud. cleverly, of course. (it's really funny and somewhat sad and terrible how well this tactic works to detract from your less-than-perfect personality.) anyway, i send him on his way amidst promises of text messages from bar stools while hanging out with people who wear patagonia fleece and crocs. ok, ok, the patagonia fleece is just a guess, i've never met these people, but i know about the crocs for sure, and that's worse than the fleece. they sound very nice, but i'm just not in the mood to hide the horror in my eyes when i see their outfits.

i need some friends. i need them so badly that i am too emotionally immobilized to contact the friends that i do have. what a conundrum. anyway, all my lazy bitches over there spread across a couple of continents do is read my blog for updates, anyway. it's a one-way valve, this blogisphere. alright, i guess that's not fair. i do get comments now and then. those are nice. i'll stop feeling cynical and somewhat sorry for myself. i knew what i was getting myself into.

on another note, isn't it a BITCH that knowing what kind of shit you're headed towards does absolutely nothing to temper the shittiness level? shouldn't recognition count for something? all it really does is make me look out at the pine tree next to my window and think, 'for fuck's sake! this really does suck as much as i thought it would!' i wish i could be a habitual drinker or dope smoker to sort of complete the pathetic-ness of the picture, but i never really took to either very well. free-flow at launch parties is another thing altogether. drinks go down so much more nicely when you're in heels.

trevor and i mention every once in a while (translation: daily) what we miss about china. trevor, being the fob that he is, misses not only his friends, but china itself, its language and surroundings. (i know what you're thinking - what surroundings are those?) i don't miss stupid china at all, but i miss my friends. i miss having a group of people around me full of ideas and energy who always have something interesting up their sleeves. maybe new york is different, but where i'm from and where i currently am don't have that same dynamic. there is something about being a transplant and needing to get something out of being in a foreign place. the fuel of temporariness, i suppose.

otherwise, things are going well as expected. i actually am not being as much of a brat as i was today. i've been making some damn saucy dinners, too. and yet, i don't feel like the brat description is accurate, really. it's not horrible to me that i don't feel obligated to go out and be in some stank bar in the middle of the day for the sake of getting out of the house. i really don't begrudge trevor ditching my ass (i just like the ring of the phrase) to sit in a bar with croc-wearing friends. it's just that the reality of it is that i am essentially in a city with no friends and no family. the one person i do know is great and supportive and fair and sunshiney to the point of needing a xanax, but i require more than one person on earth to keep me stimulated and happy, and more than one location, and more than one task. it's just how shit be.

halftime

kimchi ramen in an unfamiliar place restores faith in mankind. makes the scary and new a little less threatening. granted, colfax avenue's got nothing on the haight - or downtown oakland, for that matter - in terms of sketchiness, so i shouldn't be weirded. safe and benign is supposed to be good, right? is it wrong to feel reassured to see a crack ho wandering down the street? and double points if she's not white?

the apartment is working out - it's a building that was constructed in the 1920s, and some things are still original. like the kitchen sink. and the tile in the bathroom, which i actually like. i'm managed to cram my clothes into the bedroom closet plus half the hand-me-down wardobe, plus outerwear and sporting equipment in the front closet where trevor has his more modest accumulation of clothes. i bought shoe racks and a hamper at the container store. a mattress pad at bed bath + beyond. i am adjusting to being in the states, i think. slowly.

the co-habitation thing i am taking a day at a time. i think it's going well, never mind the nearly-lost house keys yesterday, and the door left open and unlocked while we were out. i have to get used to the fact that not everyone - ahem - is as obsessed with checking that the housekeys are still on their person as i am. and that the door is indeed not only closed, but locked. right? erm... right...

anyway, i've been watching more football than i've ever watched in my life, and beer has become a food group. sigh. i've only been here a week.

my mind is elsewhere