The Goldfish's Logbook

I've been meaning to do a year-in-review post for a couple weeks now and if I don't do it already, it' ain't gonna get done. So better late than never. I liked the format that opheliasavalon used, so that's what I'll be using. I've gotta say, thank goodness for LiveJournal; I would've forgotten 99% of this year without these cliff notes to refer to.

( 2009, for what it's worth )
It was a tough year.

Moving has been going rather well. I think part of the reason it’s going so easily is since I didn’t do hardly any cosplay this year, all of my gear and cosplay crap is still packed up from the last move. (And I no longer have the titanic Catbus to lug around; he needed his own damn moving van.) Even though I need to be careful with money this month I scrimped together enough to buy a couple rugs (and a cinnamon bun) from Ikea. The house is mostly tiled and could use a few strategic areas of carpet. I also bought one of those latex mesh . . . under-rug things that you use to keep rugs from sliding around. Anyone who’s worked with latex knows that it reeks of ammonia and as soon as I opened that bag, whoa. It was strong. I decided to let it air out for a while and continued with unpacking stuff. I’d often forget about it and find myself wondering, "It smells like formaldehyde in here, what the hell were those last renters into? High school biology? Cooking meth? Necrophilia? Oh wait, it’s the Ikea stuff. Duh."
Even though the spare bedroom is kinda small I think it’ll make for a good cosplay workshop. With my mad Jenga skillz I was able to tetris most of my cosplay bins into the closet, leaving the floorspace mostly uncluttered. Except for that huge burrito of tarps, catbus fur, and foam that I hadn’t bothered with since TRF. That needed to be put away too so I unrolled it and BAM! I was hit in the face with a smokehouse, ribs and all. The fabric was clean and dry, but smelled strongly of woodsmoke, woodsmoke, woodsmoke. I had a sudden craving for turkey legs. I didn’t actually get around to putting away the fur and foam. Okay, I didn’t get anything done because I stretched out and fell asleep on top of the fur pallet. So soft . . .
My neighbor’s bass guitar woke me up a little while later. Thanks, I didn’t need a nap anyways. I got back to organizing crap into the closet and opened up the fabric bin that I’d taken to TRF. The fabric smelled dirty, but looked clean. I mean, it smelled EARTHY. That was odd, but the material looked clean so I put it away in the closet drawers anyways. As I got deeper into the bin, I realized that there was a 5th grade science project going on in there. MILDEW! It was all damp and furry in there. Blech. That’s what that “earthy” smell had been. I threw away the pieces of material that had already started to evolve and hung up the other pieces to dry. Thankfully, none of the good pieces had turned into a biohazard, but they still stunk. As soon as I move over my washer and dryer, they’re first in line for a wash.
Not counting the plethora of aromas now in the house, I’m making good progress getting settled in. Now that it’s starting to look like someone lives there, it’s getting harder to resist the urge to go shopping for the stuff I need/want for the house. TV, couch, shelves, lawn-mower, microwave, etc. And it wasn’t until last night that I noticed, "There’s no dishwasher. . . Huh." Ha ha ha. I guess that just shows how much importance I place on kitchen-y stuff.
So yeah, that’s about all that’s going on with me right now.

P.S. New Weezer makes me bouncy.

I've been without internet for the past 6 days. Liz's laptop seems to be circling the drain and I haven't hooked up cable at the new apartment yet, so that meant no internet for us. It took me a few days to slowly understand what it meant to have no computer. At first I thought, "No computer? Well, I'll just play video games. Ah crap, can't play it on the computer. Okay, well then I'll work on cosplay. Ah damn, all my reference pictures are on the computer. Okay, I'll write fanfic then. Crap, it's on the computer too! Fine, I'll just listen to music then! What, my Ipod needs to be charged? Dammit! Okay, how about porn then? Aw $*#&$@!"
So not only did it feel like I was living in a cave with no knowledge of the outside world, without my internet, but it was weird just figuring out how to occupy myself without a PC to wipe my butt. This evening the laptop is working, but that could change at any time. We need to get it into a repair shop ASAP.
In other news, I continue to settle into the new apartment bit by bit. Mostly that consists of organizing and finding places to store all my cosplay stuff. Even though we designated one bedroom as the "cosplay room", it filled up frighteningly fast. Now I'm trimming the fat and throwing away all the odds and ends and material that I can. It hurts a little, admitting that I'm never going to do this project or such-and-such, but EVERYTHING MUST GO! Still, I could use a 4th dimension to cram all of this stuff into.
Meanwhile, we've got just two weeks to move all of Liz's stuff to the new apartment. It doesn't seem like enough time but we'll get it done, one way or another.

I didn't have internet access yesterday, so it's not my fault for falling behind. So here's two entries. This task is harder than I thought.

Happy thing #3:
I'm happy that the move is going as well as it is. I've been taking a load of stuff to the apartment every evening. It's not much, but it's added up and my old apartment is roughly halfway emptied. Oh! One thing that definitely makes me happy is now I can say I have a "cosplay room". A room dedicated to cosplay. Where does this box go? "Oh, put it in the cosplay room." *GRIN*

Happy thing #4:
Scottish Fold cats. I may be willing to own a cat, if it were a Scottish Fold. Just don't tell anyone I said that; I'll deny it emphatically.

I don't wanna talk about money concerns, even though that's the 800-lb pink gorilla that's been lumbering in my head today.
This past weekend Liz and I reserved our wedding date at the Plantation House. I think we did good; I was half expecting that we'd get hitched in a VFW hall or something, so this is a slam dunk by comparison. We also put in our application for an apartment uptown and got a positive response back. There's still a whole bunch of little things to handle in the next couple months, but it's reassuring to have these two big things taken care of.
In unrelated news, I'm pleasantly surprised with this Pandora application, which I heard of through reebear. I put in a couple of bands that I'm a diehard fan (read, "borderline fanatic") of and it starts generating a playlist in the same vein/genre. It's like a conveyor-belt sushi place, but instead of sushi it's music. I wanna sample everything that comes down the line and end up pigging out. I haven't heard anything OMGLURVE! yet, but alot of "Hmmm, this has potential," stuff. The possibility of finding new music has got all my tingly bits tingling.

This weekend was a weekend of firsts. It’s been over two months since Star got her new apartment, but only now has it become unpacked enough for humans to live there. Friday we spent the night there for the first time. I’m curious to meet the elephants living upstairs, but afraid at the same time too. So far it’s been a juggling act and a learning experience, figuring out how much of my stuff to bring over, what cosplay crap I can smuggle in and ditch at her place, etc. It’ll take some planning to get used to living in separate apartments, but it should be okay.
Saturday morning I took off to go steam-clean (another first) my place and I was flabbergasted to see how much dirt came out of that "white" carpet. I had to clear out my living room and dining room so that I could steam-clean and now that that area is clear, I think I’m going to reorganize my cosplay area. Make it more efficient and sexy and shit. That way when my pad is on MTV Cribs I’ll be all, "Here’s my cosplay zone. . . . Jealous much?"
( anime tangent )
Late Sunday afternoon we went to La Madeline (sp?) for dinner. That place is a little on the pricey side but you pay for the fanciness, I guess. I’m a sucker for baked goods so I won’t stop going there any time soon.
We took our desserts to go and walked down to the pond below the Arboretum. There were ducks and turtles and families walking around and couples strolling together. We sat down at a picnic table to munch on our desserts and to watch the scenery go by. It was rather picturesque and a bit romantic too. The only thing that kept me from totally making out with Star was the picnicking lesbian couple about twenty feet to our left. They were a small distraction. And then there was the hyperactive 6-year old boy who I think was trying some sort of mating dance to entice the ducks out of the pond. Or something. It was fun to watch, whatever it was.