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I am on my Ubuntu Mini, with the laptop speakers hooked up, playing music that makes Baby dance inside Mama (The Doves, Frente!, The Smiths). Mama is on the couch, knitting me a sleeve for my Moleskine/planner/pen. Very swell evening.
I’m dehydrated enough that my fingertips are like sharkskin. So I’m having tea instead of coffee. I am eyeing the nice Guinness pub cans in my fridge, though, and the pint glasses I keep in the freezer. Hmm.
Being stuck inside from last weekend’s blizzard and staring down another one, it’s nice to have netbooks. Mine has been a source of WORK that has kept me busy. I took off Dell’s customised Ubuntu and installed the (much better, faster and prettier) Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Not to mention transferring tons of music via my 4GB mp3 player. And, tonight, just when I thought I had done a good job putting an excellent selection of music on here from our desktop, I remember some bands I forgot but really feel like listening to. Doh.
While the snow is falling like crazy, and my belly is full.
When we moved this summer, we spent the day at Ikea. We measured the rooms before we left since last time we shopped for an apartment, we bought two desks we didn’t have space for. We used pages torn from a Moleskine Cahier, squared. We stayed long enough for two meals (lunch and dinner) and were still loading my dad’s pick-up truck when the store closed. It was very nice to get it all finished though.
My new apartment has a lot of big windows. Nine. Most I’ve ever had in an apartment. Even with the ACs in, there are lots of windows left for catching a breeze. One in the kitchen and two in the living room face my street, with a nice view of cyclists and traffic. The other two in the living room, the one in the spare bedroom, the one in the bathroom and the two in the bedroom all face the pretty roof of the building next-door and lots of enormous trees. When you look over the roof, you can see the lights of the big apartment buildings further down University Parkway, near JHU. It’s like a quiet little spot in the city.
Yes, they all stick like crazy because the building is old and because they are wooden. But I’m at peace with it. It’s worth it. The rents here are pretty reasonable, and it’s close to everything without needing a car. Indeed, to talk to my neighbors, parking here is, to be sure, a real bitch. I don’t care at all.
First take-out tonight at new apartment. First shower. Soon, first sleep. We moved nextdoor. But, you know. Moving is tiring, and my limbs are still not fully functional. We’ve only hung curtains in the potty so far. Only put together one thing from Ikea. Got a new couch that is the color of poo. Poo. It’s very heavy, too, and our elevator was out all weekend.
You can move the apartment number literally up one integer in your address book if you have it.
So. Saw Mr. Foot doctor today. Rather, first another doctor (not PA or RN, a Doctor) came in and mistook me for someone else who had just had leg surgery. Then he told me about my toe after he looked at my “film”. Fragmented bone. Too small to screw in like they would normally do. Should heal Okay. But if not, they’d cut out the bone fragment. That if that didn’t work, they’d “fuse” my joint. Forever. Best they could do. What?
Then I went to X-ray and had time to think about what he said. I have to admit that I was freaking out a little over the prospect of a permanent procedure on my foot, when I get around the world almost entirely with my feet — and double angry that it’s all because of one single person.
Then my real foot doctor came in, looked at the new X-rays. Turns out that I don’t have one broken bone, but two. And there are, apparently, several fragments of bone from them. He examined my foot, too, and he said I could get off the crutches now. Don’t really have to go back unless I have problems. That it’s too small to do anything, and we just have to let it heal the best it can. Okay.
That would feel like good news, I guess, after the scary shit the other guy was talking about. I was told I should expect my foot to be swollen for a year. Could be worse, right? But still. I’m probably going to get arthritis in this toe. And I already have a trick toe. My baby toe on my other foot has a split bone in it (funny story), and it hurts fairly often. On a rainy night like tonight or in the cold, I can literally feel that shit in my bones. The best I can hope for with my big toe now is chronic pain and/or surgery because some lady couldn’t watch where she was driving her fucking car? And she paid so little attention that she was on my foot for a while?
On top of it, her insurance company won’t return our calls. So we’re hiring a lawyer, something I really hoped to avoid. This is turning into a very unpleasant situation.
But tonight we got to see our new apartment, and it’s lovely. And baby-trying time is coming fast. My heart is light after spending my entire day being furious, frustrated and forlorn over my inability to deal with things I can’t control (like that, despite the shitty way it happened, my toe’s already smashed). It has a cute little bathroom that you enter from either bedroom, and a little kitchen window like downstairs used to have.
[Click here for larger image.]
I can’t place this little devil in its location from far out because you’d never see it. Excuse the bad close up and dirty floor of a hidden recess in my bathroom.
My wife is rather terrified of mice. But in a kinda cute and funny way, not in a heart-attack way. From time to time, mouse jokes and pranks pop up. I recently got a bug in my crawl to tell her there was a mouse in the living room of our apartment. I made a scene of chasing it to the bedroom, watching it, reporting its movements and then telling her it hid under her dresser, which is next to the bathroom door. All night she asked if I made up the story, and I said I didn’t and offered more tiny pieces of information and details to make my story more believable.
I have used small rocks I’ve collected over the years to act as bugs and mice and rats on folks when they would walk into poorly-lit rooms with these critters in their minds, put into their minds by me or by the critters themselves walking around Baltimore. This time, I took one such rock from Rockport, Massachusetts and placed it in a dim spot in the bathroom. Then I put a twisted q-tip under it for a tail. I thought to cut the ends off to make ears. This is the result.
If I thought I would not give away the joke with my camera, I wouuld have gotten pictures of Mrs. P’s reaction. She went into the bathroom as I crept up to watch. She turned on the light, took a step and saw my little creature in the shadows and jumping up and down, one leg at a time, a sort of cute little running in place at high speed, accompanied by giggly squealing. She ran from the room and found me nearly pooping my pants in laughter.
But lest you think me cruel, she was laughing as she was jumping and screaming.
For Photo Friday: Sharp, because, dang, my Mini Mouse Rock was sharp!
And you should see my office.
Geez, there’s a lot going on. Sorry for the absence. There’s a lot to tell, from the Ecofestival, to teaching cycling to job hunting adventures and family visits. More to come. But here is what I rode to teach cycling with. The blue box is full of bike tools. This load [larger] was heavy enough that I almost dropped my bike down some stairs and did drop my cool new frame pump. We had a little group ride across The Avenue Friday night. If you heard bike bells going nuts and saw a line of bikes, I was second from the end, with two red lights and a big butt.
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