(no subject)

Oh, SO.

I managed to slyly weasel the story of Bland, the man who replaced me in R's flat, out of R yesterday.

Apparently the most interesting thing about him is his girlfriend. Which, by the way, I feel like I should start a consulting service because I know way too many guys with insane girlfriends, and I firmly agree with Cynthia Heimel that a man is allowed one crazy girlfriend while he's in his twenties and after that should either look at the women he's choosing to go out with or his own behaviour within the relationship.

THIS IS THE STORY OF BLAND AND THE GIRLFRIEND.

Bland is in marketing-slash-web-design, and actually didn't just move to Chicago. He's been living in Chicago for a while, which explains why he had WAY MORE SHIT THAN I DID when he moved into R's flat, hence the need for me to get my futon frame and table out of storage so that he could shove all his shit in there. Fair enough.

Bland has been dating the same girl since high school. She was a year behind him, but they went to the same university so after he graduated he moved to Cincinnati, very near to their school, so that he could still be close to her and she could move there with him when she graduated.

Unfortunately, when she graduated, she moved straight to Chicago instead. This would have been not this past June but June 2007. Apparently she "thought Cincinnati was ghetto". O-kay. So he found a job in Chicago and moved to Chicago in December, to be with her. She had a fairly nice flat, so she put him on the lease and they started setting up a life.

In May of this year she decided she wanted to go to law school, and the only possible place she could go to law school was in NYC, so she moved to NYC, leaving him holding the lease. He started realising that their very nice place was too expensive for him to handle alone, so he didn't renew the lease and moved in with R instead.

Last week, while he was moving in with R, she decided she didn't want to go to law school after all, and said she wanted to move back in with him, but of course he'd already signed the lease for R's place and she doesn't want to share a flat with anyone but her boyfriend, I guess. So she's moving back in with her parents in Oklahoma, and he's apparently going to fly down to see her on alternate weekends because she won't come to Chicago if she doesn't have a place of her own to stay.

Now, I can't sort if she's trying to escape Bland; if you guys remember Coworker K, he moved to Chicago to be with his girlfriend not realising that she had moved to Chicago as a way of ending the relationship without actually having to tell him she didn't like him, and then once he got to Chicago she dumped him. So there may be a bit of that going on. Or she may be confused about where she wants to go in her life and just hasn't realised that she shouldn't be jerking him around while she gets her head on straight. Either way, it should be awesome to watch the next few months unfold.

And the best part is that I don't live there anymore, so even if there are weeping women and frustrated men, I will never have to sit through another three hour free-verse breakup-poetry jam again.

(no subject)

Even though I cannot find my digital camera, it is time for a Saturday Photo Update!

I mean I know where the camera is, it's in a box. But that's not much help right now. So all these photos were taken with my iPhone, which is actually a higher pixel-count than the first digital camera I owned.

One of the first things I installed in the new flat was my Ganesh. He's in a tupperware tub because offerings of sweets are not wise to leave out when roaches abound, but I'm confident he understands. M&Ms and bay leaves; who could turn that down?

It's starting to look like home sweet home around here. I know the decor's a bit college chic right now, but eventually the futon will be up against a wall as a couch and the boxes will be gone.

The kitchen has been stocked -- so full in fact that one cupboard won't close. It'll be shifted around soon. You can also see my pride and joy, my Wusthof cutting board, which we got as a gift for spending $40 at Central Market the weekend before Thanksgiving a few years ago. Note, can of citrusy roach death still very much in evidence.

My incredibly advanced space-age saucepan storage system. I am very proud of my new shiny kettle that mum sent me, which is the first kettle I've ever actually owned. I'm kind of scared to use it.

My table is set up, as a sort of very hemmed-in workspace, and so is my TV-tray, which is proving more useful at the moment.

A closer look at my bookshelf, which was taken earlier than the other photos. ( What my books are. )

Do you guys remember those bugs that mummify stuff in webbing? We talked about it on the journal ages ago and there was one really striking image of a bicycle webbed into the tree it was locked to. Well, we've got them in a tree on my street, and it's freaky.

If you've never seen a weber kettle the size of a VW bug, you've never lived.

I may have posted this, but it's a view of the top of the Tribune Tower, which I actually took myself from the 34th floor of a nearby building during a work "field trip".

This looks like a ridiculous pile of yellow stuff in the river, but it is actually the RUBBER DUCKY DERBY! That yellow thing in the water is actually thousands of rubber ducks.

Outside the Lego Store downtown there is a Lego Skeleton and a Lego Spider.

Remember when I made cinnamon rolls? This is what they look like cooked. I know, not very impressive, but they ate well.

This is a piece of mail that got erroneously returned to us -- it wasn't even sent by us. I just love that someone actually wrote WTF on a piece of real snail mail.

Picked this up in a truck stop. I....yeah.

And I believe this is known as....cartography fail.

Finally, guys, I think you should know: CANADA WANTS YOU!

(no subject)

I'm becoming convinced there's no concept that can't be explained by the Comedic Compass. To wit, my icon, which neatly explains 99% of fandom (the other 1% is totally inexplicable). Here are some others:

( The Adulthood and Food Pyramid Compasses. )