More walking



Now that the weather is finally warming back up, I think it's time to rededicate myself to the resolution to start walking whenever possible rather than jumping in the car. I can't bear the cold, so I drove everywhere to shield myself from having to spend time outside. But God knows I need the exercise, though I did manage to work out four times last week. Let's see if I can do at least that well this week, even though when I'm really in a groove I can do it six. But also quite pressing is the rising prices of gas, which haven't been this high around here for ages. I could really do without spending that chunk of change on so regular a basis. The only trouble is time-- I certainly don't mind the effort, I actually actively enjoy walking places, but it can be so much more time-efficient to drive instead. Often my life is so tightly scheduled (as yesterday was, yowza) that I just can't spare the minutes in my already packed day plan. The solution is probably just to not overschedule myself, but knowing me that is easier said than done. I do better, especially with the emotional hole I've had such a hard time digging myself out of these last few months, when I have more going on, more things to do, more projects to work on, more things to think about.

Today when I got out of work Jared and I walked the mile to the grocery store and back, so that's something already. :-)

I HATE SNOW AND HATE YOU FOR LIKING SNOW

Furious. Have been shoveling snow all goddamn morning, and I am sick of it, and because I was an idiot that parked in the parkling lot behind Shakespeare Street, there is so much snow I have no hope of moving my car. I had assumed that the lot would get plowed and save me some work, but nope, it's surrounded by a foot and a half of snow that I can't drive through. Mercifully didn't have work today, but I don't know how the hell I'm going to get to work tomorrow. Also I want to murder my parents, who are pissed at me for getting the car stuck in the first place, and have not made a single helpful suggestion this entire process. Fucking sorry I called them at all.

I hate snow. And I hate all of you who like snow. Clearly you don't have a goddamn car to dig out or icy roads to slide on. You all can fucking deal with all this bullshit if you like snow so much.

I meant to spend today writing, but I am too upset right now.

No more driving

And all too soon, Jared is gone again. I am a bit low due to it, but trying to focus on what a lovely week we had together. And saying my prayers that soon enough he will be back for good. At the moment, I'm eating kiwis, a fruit I've never tasted before meeting him, in the way he taught me how to eat them.

This weekend has the last two performances of Love's Labor's Lost. We're in a tiny theater in Walpole call Footlighters instead of the gazebo in Medfield. It's a neat little space, but I do not relish the drive to get there. I have been driving constantly this week, and I am very tired of it. I even scraped the side of a pole in a parking garage, leaving streaks across Constantine's driver's side. :-P There goes another chunk out of the ol' savings account. Therefore I am not feeling very friendly towards cars at the moment. I think all next week, while I do want to do social things with the friends I feel like I haven't seen in forever, but I desire to do it without driving. With bribes of food, fun, and my own charming company, I will make the people come to me.

Furniture accomplished

Gah, long day yesterday. Yesterday was my day of "get kitchen furniture in order come hell or highwater, God damn it," and God damn it, I got it done. On Monday night my kitchen cart came in, and Jared and Charlotte so graciously put it together for me while I was cooking dinner. Monday was a really good day; Charlotte and Frances came over to Elsinore to have a little body-painting party, followed by dinner. Charlotte did a beautiful design on my lower back and on Frances's arm and shoulder. And to make things even better, beforehand she gave me one of the nicest massages I have ever had. I'll have to ask her in more detail exactly what she did, because it was fantastic. And while Frances and I made a dinner of pesto pasta and ratatouille, she and Jared undertook the surprisingly complex task of putting together the cart. How lucky I am to have such helpful, capable friends. :-) I really like the cart, too; it rolls smoothly, has a good-sized cabinet for storage, and is a perfect height to use as extra counterspace.

As for yesterday, I managed to make agreements with two sellers on Craigslist to pick up a replacement for the kitchen table and a replacement for the pantry shelf. Mission accomplished, but not easily. It involved lots of driving, more than I'd expected because on the first run neither of my two GPS devices could find the address. So that involved lots of fighting back and forth around one-way streets in Cambridge and lots of awkward calling of the seller trying to get to an address that neither my phone device or my car device recognized the existence of. But I managed to secure an item known as a chef's or baker's rack. I started looking for one as a replacement for the shelf-as-pantry we've got going on right now after seeing one in Matt and Lise's kitchen on Sunday, and very quickly I found one. I like it because it combines shelf space with a metal mesh backsplash you can use to hang things on. I've always kind of disliked the old pantry shelf; as Jared once put it, "It's a lot less kitchen than it is garage." I'll be glad to have a nicer, more versatile piece as a replacement. Though it occurs to me I'll need to buy some hooks if I want to start hanging stuff.

Getting the table didn't turn out to be too bad, and the seller was extremely helpful in getting it loaded into my car and making sure everything was set. The table is pretty similar to the one that was there, except it has a little drawer in one end. We removed the legs and it slid into the back of my car just fine. Though the table was all I really wanted, he said it came with four chairs at no extra charge. The chairs are not excessively nice, they are a bit worn and the white paint is flaking off, but I took them anyway just in case I can fix them up. They would probably be perfectly fine if they had a new coat of paint. Maybe I could sand them down and stain them. That will be a project for this summer, I think. And so I accomplished two fairly significant furniture pieces, all without spending a ton of money. Not bad.

After all of that, I was pretty exhausted, especially since I hadn't eaten all day and my back was stiff from so much time in the car. But still, I managed to get them unloaded at the house. They're not really set up yet, as the table needs to be reassembled and their predessors are still taking up their intended space, but I'm proud of getting it done. As I said, I will feel really good about everything when the place is finally all set up and ready to be used.

Parents for the weekend

My parents are supposed to be in town this weekend to help my brother move out of his dorm, so that means that pretty much all my time must be set aside to be available. That kind of bugs me, but it's true that I don't get to see them that often, so I should make an effort to be able to spend as much time as possible with them. We're all going out to an early Mother's Day dinner Saturday night at Bricco's, this fantastic Italian restaurant in the North End that my mom's always wanted us to take her to, so that will be nice.

Now that the weather's finally warming up, I am resolved to walk as many places as possible instead of driving. My getting of exercise recently has been very spotty, so I want to overhaul my schedule to make sure I make time for it. And not using my car for everything will help, I think. In the cold times I use Constantine just to avoid freezing my tail off. And to be honest, since getting a job my free time has been a lot scarcer, so I find myself not wanting to waste it in extended transit if possible, so I drive just to get from one thing to another more quickly. But that's not good for my health or my wallet. I am resolved to get back in shape this summer, and this seems like an excellent place to start.

Back from Christmas vacation

And now I have returned from my Christmas vacation at home. Yesterday's trip was the first time I ever made the long drive from Allentown, Pennsylvania back up to Boston; usually my brother handles the driving, but he wasn't coming back yet and so couldn't come with me. I'm kind of proud of myself, given I've never driven anywhere that far and I kind of, you know, despise driving. :-) But Constantine and I have made it safely back. I probably drove a little faster than I should have, but the trip was five and a half hours as it was, to say nothing of what it might have been if I'd gone slower.

The trip was made immensely more pleasant by the Sherlock Holmes audiobook I listened to on the way. All stories I was already very familiar with, but I always enjoy them. My interest has been reawakened by the new movie that has just come out, and tonight I will be seeing the film with bronzite*. It will be lovely to spend time with him again. I am a longtime Sherlock Holmes fan, but I must take care to remind myself that one must not be too married to one's perception of the literature when seeing it transferred to film.

Hate the snow

I am a ball of nerves right now thanks to the snow I just drove to work in. I was so nervous about being late today due to having to dig my car out that I woke up ridiculously early AGAIN, then tried to go back to sleep, only to have the slightly-earlier-than-normal alarm I set not go off. So I rushed out to unbury Constantine, which fortunately wasn't too difficult since the snow was still fluffy, and drove over terrifyingly slippery roads that sometimes I would slide over even when I braked. I really hope it quits by the time I'm supposed to go home, but it's still coming down like crazy and doesn't seem to be turning into rain like the weather report said it would. :-( I'm kind of afraid to drive in it again.

I really just want to go home, curl up under a blanket, and not come out until the snow stops. I want to eat that lovely brined and pan-fried pork chop in the fridge, and a cup of hot apple cider to go with it. This being out in the snow stuff is for chumps.

ETA: I just realized I got snow in my purse. Now all my stuff is wet-- thank God my phone wasn't in there --and the outside of the bag has a huge watermark. Oh, God, I hope the leather isn't ruined. I'm so pissed.

RPI next weekend

So hard on the heels of SLAW comes the larp weekend at RPI. I'm a little bit apprehensive about it, to be honest. I'm only playing in things, so I have significantly less prep work, thank God, but I still have to put two costumes together for To Kill a Vampire and Mystery at Hart Manor. I think I'm good for TKAV, though I seem to be missing my black shawl, but I'm not sure about MaHM. I should probably be wearing a red cocktail-type dress but I don't have one, nor do I really have time to look. I don't suppose anyone has anything like that in a size 0 that I could borrow? Probably not, huh? I guess I could just wear my black one, but I've been using that one in larps a lot lately. Ah, well, I guess as long as I look right it doesn't matter.

The circumstances of the journey itself trouble me most. It's a three-hour drive to get up there. My poor car Constantine is going to have a hell of a lot of miles put on him. I will be traveling, fortunately, with rigel and look forward to her company and the chance to chat with her. The length of the drive up to Troy, New York makes me wince, though. I have been advised to take a break, or multiple breaks if necessary, but if the driving to WPI this past Saturday took a toll on me physically, I'm sure going all the way to Troy will be even worse. I'll just have to be very careful. I also tend not to sleep very well anywhere besides my own bed; I vastly prefer my own space to crashing in someone else's. I know I'll just have to put up with that, but I'm a little concerned I'll have so many things to put up with that I won't enjoy things enough to have made it worth going.

Mini pie excursion

Today Constantine goes into the shop to get serviced. It's just a routine thing, so he's okay, but he needs his tires rotated, I think. It occurs to me that I actually don't know how long he'll have to stay there, but I hope it's just for a couple of hours and then I can take him home again.

While my car is being worked on, I will be making my monthly Target run. I'm thinking of taking a look around there for any possible vessel options for making my mini-pies. Target has lots of interesting crockery pieces for relatively cheap, but I'm concerned that to get as many as I'd like will come to a little more than I'm interested in paying. So I will probably prefer to go with the disposable aluminum stuff. Still, it will be fun to look. I do love crockery so, even the junky stuff. :-) I looked up a couple of recipes for mini pies, just for the baking time; I plan on using my own recipe for the actual pie, but I didn't know how the size would affect the temperature and time in the oven. It looks like for four-inch tins, bake for twenty minutes at 375 degrees. That is a lot quicker than a full-sized pie. It also suggested serving with a melon baller scoop's worth of ice cream on top; I like the idea of using a melon baller to make tiny garnish for a tiny pie.

I also want to get my suede jacket dry cleaned. It's a really nice jacket, but it's looking pretty grungy right now. Maybe I can get that done as well. I should make a to do list, to keep all my chores and assignments in order.

Intercon request

Just got through reading my All's Well That Ends character sheet, and I think I'm really going to enjoy this game. It's a character with a complicated plot, and I think I'm going to need to do some planning as to how to operate before I go into this game. I love scheming and strategizing in larps, so I'm very much looking forward to the challenges ahead of me. I very much want to go into this game with a strategy already in mind. I should reread the character sheet and do some thinking. I really need to schedule time to go take a look at the Hold Thy Peace costumes and borrow my old Dromio stuff; that should suit this character nicely. If I can get a hold of it, then my costuming for the con should be completely finished.

Also, it has come to my attention that my brother will be going home for his random Boston-area-school break the weekend of Intercon. Therefore he will be taking my car to go home on Friday. This is troublesome because it means our intrepid band of Brandeis congoers has one less ride option for those of us who, like me, will not be able to go up on Thursday. I had been hoping to just be able to drive myself and anyone else in our group who would be coming early Friday afternoon, but that's not an option. Anyone able to rideshare for that time? Any information and/or offers would be much appreciated.

Sometimes a drag

Tomorrow I'm going to need to find a way to go get my prescription. My parents don't know I'm on it and my car is in the shop at the moment, so I need to come up with a decent reason to borrow a car. When I want to go somewhere, especially in one of their cars, my parents aren't big on the answer to the question "Where are you going?" being "Out." Being home can be a drag sometimes-- I want to show respect for my parents, their rules, their feelings, but a lot of the time doing that makes me feel like a teenager.