(no subject)

HOLY CRAP, busy morning was busy.

Have I mentioned that some fool made me Safety Captain for our floor, so that in case of fire, bombing, or other Emergency Event I am in charge? Yeah. I don't know either, maybe they just don't know me very well.

Anyway, the time has come to update the safety team roster and the floor directory, especially since a new company directory has just been issued, and I spent all morning rewriting the company directory so that it makes sense (about half the floor see Admin A send out a new directory via email and immediately email me to ask if I'm doing a new SUPER SEKRIT Quickguide version of it, because Admin A is very thorough but does not design her directories with efficiency in mind). Also there was an Issue with Keys, which Coworker J summed up expertly:

"I'm just gonna go ahead and say it, that was unnecessaily apocalyptic."

Meanwhile, Bulletproof Temp has been ordered to scrounge up every packing box he can find for some project or other, though he tells anyone who asks about the boxes he's carrying that he's building a fort. He is also telling everyone that Sarah Palin is a swinger, based on the Trib headline "Palin Comes Out Swinging".

J and Bulletproof make my day a little brighter sometimes.

As does BossBoss, who periodically asks me for Doctor Who casting/filming updates. He doesn't watch Torchwood, a fact which I am plotting to remedy as soon as I get my DVD burner up and running.

I watched "A Very English Genius" last night, about the translation of Linear B by Michael Ventriss in the mid-twentieth century. I have to say that I found it interesting on a scholarly level, as an amateur classics geek, but I found it much more interesting to watch all these interviews with a group of obviously batshit insane archaeologists and historians. Seriously, some of these guys I wouldn't like to meet in a dark alley at night. Others just look like muppets.

(no subject)

There's something to be said for living in old houses; I like the smell of them, and truth be told I like living in an apartment building despite the fact that I have seen a grand total of four souls since moving in. If you count Irish Super, who may or may not live here.

The basement, where the laundry is, smells like the basements of old houses in California -- my best friend's house in high school, and all kinds of old places in Berkeley and San Francisco where I found myself for one reason or another. It's wonderful; it smells like history and dust.

I'm slowly charting, too -- and this is one of my favourite pastimes -- the way time has changed the building. When I was at school in Oregon and working on my senior capstone, a history of the school and its relationship to the city, I used to stand at the top of the quad and be able to imagine it as it was -- where the water meadow used to be, where the earth was taken up here to fill in hollows there, where buildings that didn't exist anymore used to stand. I used to wish I had more concrete artistic ability so that I could sketch comparisons of things as they used to be and as they are.

Some of the walls and doors in my flat are newer than others, and the layout suggests that it's not the complete flat it once was. I suspect that when it was built it was a six-dwelling block, one flat on either side of the central staircase going up three floors; since then it's been converted so that each complete flat is now either three studios or a one-bedroom and a studio.

It's what they call a full-gut-rehab in Chicago; everything that possibly could have been torn out was, and the place was totally reconfigured. Without seeing the flat I share a landing-side with I can't precisely lay out how it used to be, but I suspect it was a two-bedroom, two bath with a dining room. The foyer where I have two doors and my neighbour has one was probably the start of a hallway; my living room was either the dining room or the master bedroom, given the elegant bay windows and view of the street. This suspicion on the whole is borne out by the fact that only the rear flats, which used to be part of the front flats, can access the rear of the building where the dumpster is. My trade off for living in the larger front flat, further from the El, is that I have to walk around the building next to me in order to get to the dumpster.

It's a bit creepy now that I think on it; it shows just how much the population boom has impacted local architecture, where really nobody can afford a two-bedroom two-bath with a dining room. I don't think I've been in a flat in Chicago yet that had a proper dining room. Even the luxury high-rises don't often have them -- R's condo doesn't either.

But then I'm influenced at the moment from reading Different Engines, which has a whole segment on overpopulation dystopias, so perhaps I'm reading a bit into it.

I also think that this was probably the first building standing in the general area. The buildings on either side are newer, less elegant, and far too close to the walls. They were built to fit the maximum occupancy for the square footage provided; my outer wall is literally two feet from the wall of the building next to me.

Anyway, it's been interesting. And hopefully my internet will be working when I get home tonight; I have to run over to R's place first, because Bland actually wants to store stuff in our storage space, which means I have to take my futon frame out. Hopefully I had the presence of mind to disassemble it before I stored it...

(no subject)

LO!

And indeed BEHOLD!

Sam has internet.

It took an hour on the phone with AT&T, but I've got a secure wireless network set up and also I went over to R's and brought back....half of my futon frame and a goodly portion of Lake Michigan. Because LO!

AND INDEED BEHOLD!

It is raining like a mother-goddamn-fucker out there.

Everybody into the ark!

*begins paddling*

(no subject)

Spam I received tonight:

Hey! I bet you feel surrounded by this capitalist world we live in.

Everybody always want more...more money, more clothes.

Did you know that in the end, it's all about looks?

DOWN WITH CAPITALISM! We should all be judged purely on subjective media-driven standards of beauty instead!