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Saturday
25 Sept. 99

 

12 10 am edt
I've bought Matthew plane tickets for a visit from October 7-10.   I am so excited, and we are going to get a hotel room and, for the first time, take a real vacation.   I am so excited and have been trying to come up will some good plans for things to do.   I am also trying to make plans regarding going home to California for Thanksgiving.   One of my films from last semester was selected for a screening (my first public screening!!!) which will occur on 8 December (two days after my birthday) in Berkeley at the PFA.   So I am planning a rather extended stay, encompassing both Los Angeles and Berkeley.   I am even considering staying through Christmas, but I'm not sure about that one yet.

1 01 pm edt
Matthew says that I live in the most bizarre apartment, so I will take the time to enumerate some of its more peculiar features, with emphasis on the kitchen, only because we are going to the deparmtent store later on today to better stock the place.

* There is a lazy light in the bathroom which I use.   When you flip on the light switch, you have to wait for the light to come on from ten seconds to five minutes.   There have been a few times when I have left the bathroom before it came on.   The fact that the light does not immediately go on is disconcerting in itself.   We expect technology to work, and I find it a little startling when it doesn't.   But now I am used to it not going on, but sometimes it takes so long I forgot that I flipped, so it sometimes shocks me when it finally flicks on.   Late at night I often wait for it to come on, but during the day I just ignore it.   I keep my clothes in a thin dresser in this bathroom.

* The other bathroom has a broken door handle, so you can lock yourself in with that door, but there is always the second door which opens to the bedroom that cam be used to get out.   The shower in this bathroom leaks, and the super came to fix it, but he only made it worse because he used the wrong kind of caulking material.

* The oven doesn't work.   The super and a repair guy came to look at it, and neither could figure out what was wrong.   The stove works perfectly, but the oven won't do a thing.   It doesn't even have a gas smell when you turn it on (so I guess the pilot light is out and its not getting gas).

* As I have peviously mentioned, there is a single knife in the apartment, and it is not very sharp.   It is also not serated, so there is nothing to cut bread.

* There is no blender, no food processor, no additional electrical equipment beyond the ancient microwave.  

* My grandfather washes all of the dishes by hand, and then puts them in the dishwasher to dry.   The dishwasher works perfectly.   [Granted, this is a bizarre feature of my grandfather, and not his apartment.]

* There are very few bowls or glasses, so I have taken to eating my morning cereal out of a mug.

* The toilet in "my bathroom" always runs.   I do mean always.

* Orpheus is my resident mouse.   He scared the bejesus out of me the other night while I was on the phone with Matthew.   I saw him run by out of the corner of my eye, and I thought he was a cockroach.   From the size, that would mean the cockroach was very close (namely, on my bed), but then I realized that it was a mouse, and I felt less scared.   Orpheus won't come on the bed; he told me so.

 

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