You're filthy, and I'm gorgeous

Yesterday evening, I was almost completely moved in to my sublet, and Sita was waiting for me in the car as I set the last box down in my room. As I was doing so, my kitty scampered out the door of my room, and then out the door of the apartment, and then up two flights of stairs, and then right into the open door of an apartment on the top floor. Meanwhile I was chasing him and trying to reason with him ("Apollo, please don't do this. Please come back. Come on") but he didn't listen because he's a cat and thus doesn't understand English, and also because I think he's mad at me for sticking him on a plane two days ago and then making him ride the scary subway for an hour.

So ANYWAY, I barged right into the apartment, past the shirtless guy holding a beer at the door, before remembering my manners and asking, "Please, may I come in?" I only had a chance to glance around once and absorb the four people sitting around on the couch, including an Asian kid holding a bong, before I dashed into the sunroom in hot pursuit of my animal, but as I did I heard an unmistakable voice say, "Hey Danielle!"

It was my friend Scary Eric!

I won't go into why Scary Eric is so scary, except to say that once he told me he has no serotonin, and we're friends partly because I make fun of him a lot, but I'm always a little bit afraid that he's going to kill me. Anyway, Eric got up and helped me look for my cat, and we got to talking. Eric always has a story! This one went as follows:

Me: So did you graduate?
Eric: No. Did you?
Me: No.
Eric: Haha. So now that we have that out of the way...
Me: Yeah, I'm hoping to finish in December.
Eric: Yeah, I have like six incompletes from when I was in the hospital after I got stabbed.

So anyway, now I live downstairs from Scary Eric and his bong. Also, my cat was hiding behind a gross toilet and I had to move a suspiciously damp plunger out of the way to access him. Sigh...

Sometimes, you will be astounded to learn, I do things without much forethought. For example, yesterday I decided to take the CTA from O'Hare airport to Hyde Park while transporting a fifty-pound suitcase, a forty-pound backpack, and a cat. For non-Chicagoans, that's about a 90-minute commute involving two el lines and a bus, and at least three staircases. I'm an idiot. But it's good to know that there are always strange guys willing to haul suitcases up stairs for weak-looking girls, even when you're wearing baggy pajamas and probably smell weird, and your T-zone hates you, and the chest strap on your backpack makes your breasts look like a nutsack (thanks for the FYI, Kirsten!).

Anyway, I'm back in Chicago, zooming my words to you from my friend Sita's phatass Dell Inspiron. We went to Clarke's at one am (I love knowing somebody with a car!) and decided to celebrate our last night eating cheese (no, seriously) with nachos and, of course, baked potato skins, my Clarke's staple. But I only ate two - they just didn't taste the same with my baked potato skin partner Burcu so very far away from me.

But it'll be easy for me to give up cheese (for real) because as I gazed and prodded at the glistening, congealed orange blobs on the plate in front of me, I had an epiphany: cheese is actually really gross. Good thing I won't be eating it anymore (shut up, I mean it).

Finally, I'm getting ready to move into the room I'll be subletting till December. I visited today, and, well, I used to say that if I had a queen-sized mattress and a laptop, I'd never ever leave my bed. Now I have both. So, in a few months, perhaps you may want to drop by and wheel my pale and withered body outside for some vitamin D, but until then, it's indefinite Snood and sloth.

I have a mandolin.
I play it all night long.
It makes me want to kill myself.

In one sense, the six weeks I spent in California were seriously uneventful. I spent a lot of time playing Snood and Grim Fandango, writing e-mails, listening to music, and chasing my cat through the backyard. I watched movies, walked the dog to Trader Joe's, tinkered with this here weblog, and bemoaned my complete lack of ambition and pointless waste of a life.

In another sense, heaps happened. My sister and her boyfriend graduated from college. I finally finished the piles of overdue papers I had hanging over my head. I got back in touch with people I hadn't spoken to in years ("forever days!!!" as one of them put it). And here I am, typing in the same old oppressive white rectangle, hoping that this go-round, Blogger and I will make sweet music together. Or if not sweet, then at least less jarring and cacophonous than my version of "Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover" by Sophie B. Hawkins, which I rehearsed on long two-a.m. drives through the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego. There is nothing, I tell you, NOTHING so satisfying as passionately yowling your little heart out when it's so dark that nobody can see you. I love singing in the car, and I LOVE SOPHIE B HAWKINS!!!!!!

Contemplation

I once remarked that Mount Everest is a really cool name for the world's tallest mountain. Sadly, I recently learned that the name Everest came not from a moment of poetic inspiration; rather, the mountain was christened in 1852 after the previous surveyor general of India. I guess it's fortunate that his name was Sir George Everest and not, say, Sir George...Snagglepuss.