the world is your acorn

Since my next big thing for school is not until Tuesday, I’ve spent much of my time today futzing around. Part of that futzing included stalking individuals on my lj flist, including fairouz, who is a member of the bentolunch community. Anyway, that discovery led me to JBox.com, which led me to realize that I desperately need this pencil case and this bento box.

It has been 2+ days now since Lady E got on a plane to return to Boston, but we are still finding little traces of her visit around the house. Not in that bad guest crumpled-up-balls-of-garbage-under-the-couch kind of way, but things that she did just to leave her mark, probably chuckling all the while. Like adding random items to the grocery list- “darling,” “sugar dumpling,” and “baby cakes” in response to the first item on the list, “honey.” And things that she wanted to give us, like “Juiced,” which I discovered tucked in among the rest of the PS2 games and DVDs, without fanfare or commentary. The most interesting thing that I discovered was a small Pottery Barn box with Lady E’s name writted across it in big black letters (possibly my handwriting circa 2002-2003), which once contained a cute little single-serving martini shaker, part of The Little Red Haired Girl’s first ever present to me.

Rewind to Easter 2002. I was working at a small independent school in Waltham, MA, and good friends with a practicing Catholic coworker. Knowing that I don’t celebrate Christian holidays, but wanting to include me anyway, she presented me with a small plastic carrot which opened up to reveal pastel jelly beans. Don’t get me wrong, I love jelly beans, and I appreciated the gesture. However, because of my maturity and inability to resist teasing friends, I decided to concentrate on the fallic properties of the carrot and the symbolism of jelly beans, eggs, and fertility during the Easter season. I carried this focus all the way home, where I presented the carrot to Lady E. Never one to turn down a good drama (no matter how contrived), she played along and participated in a good old “toss the carrot” fight.

That game soon ended (probably in deference to the “go to the neighborhood bar” game), but The Carrot had just begun. I forget who was the first to do it (my guess would be Lady E, but she can help me out here), but the carrot began turning up in strange places. In my slipper. In Lady E’s underwear drawer. In my jacket pocket. In Lady E’s purse. Under someone’s pillow. Behind a book.

That summer we moved to our hot new bachelors’ pad in Watertown, and The Carrot came along. I’m not even sure who brought The Carrot. This is because The Carrot was never spoken of. When one of us would find it, the other was never given the satisfaction of hearing about the surprise and anger upon discovering it. I think that at some point the original carrot was lost, but a replacement stuffed carrot was found and commandeered at my parents’ house. It didn’t really matter.

As Lady E’s birthday neared, she began dropping hints (i.e. sending out her birthday wish list) about what she might like. One thing she always wanted was for flowers to be delivered to her office. This is how I acquired her office snail mail address, as well as a great idea for The Carrot. Of course, once I dropped The Carrot (in a small Pottery Barn box which once contained a single-serving martini shaker) off at the post office, I knew that I had knocked the bar up a notch. To my dismay, I never saw The Carrot again. It was never mentioned, I never discovered it among my belongings, and I began to suspect that The Carrot had been lost in the mail. One drunken night long after Lady E and I had parted ways I finally had the courage to bring it up again, and had the satisfaction of learning that The Carrot had, indeed, arrived at the office, and Lady E had spent many an email conferring with friends on her revenge. She had never followed through on anything though, and eventually The Carrot was forgotten.

Until now. I can’t tell if Lady E left the box in plain view in the trash on purpose. Nor can I tell if it contained The Carrot when she brought it. Maybe it’s all a rouse to get me paranoid. I toyed with the idea of ransacking the house after I found that box in the trash, but I finally decided that I should just let nature take its course. At the very least when we move in July it will probably turn up. At which point, GAME ON, LADY E!

Last time, we learned how to fold a t-shirt perfectly. Today we will learn to keep bandaids from falling off our fingers. They are just so damn clever over there in Japan!

Last post, I mentioned that The Little Red Haired Girl and I were ready to put an offer down on a house. Well, we went to check it out one last time, thinking about whether all our stuff would fit in the house or not. It’ll take some creativity, but we love the neighborhood and the location and the layout and the yard and all that. So it was a go. We went with the realtor to the local coffee shop to work out the contract, only to run into the owner of the house there. Doh, awkward. We scuttled our little selves to a table outside, and wrote up an offer. Our realtor was fabulous and explained everything to us really clearly and made us feel comfortable about the process. We had the offer expire at 10am the next morning, since they were planning on having an open house the next day and we didn’t want them shopping our offer.

Our realtor called back the next day with their counter-offer, which we decided to sit on. We didn’t think that many people would check out the house on Easter Sunday, and plus we know that their asking price is pretty high. On Monday we went to look at a couple more houses. I couldn’t help but compare them to the things we knew about “our” house, and I decided that I liked “our” house better. Last night our realtor called to say that they would come down a few more thousand dollars, and we went for it. She came by (during our Passover Seder, which I’ll talk about later), we initialed the changes on the contract, and poof! We are on our way to being first time homeowners! There are lots more hoops to get through, but I feel like this is a big one. The best part was that it was finalized when our good friends were in the house (including Lady Ebony), and we celebrated the rest of the night (until 10, anyway, at which point it was all of our bedtimes).

Well, I didn’t think that it would happen this soon, but The Little Red Haired Girl and I are about ready to put in an offer on a house. We have been checking out open houses every week for a couple of months now, and just met with a realtor (recommended by Mischief Man and The Kindergarten Teacher) last monday. The Little Red Haired Girl looked at houses this past Monday with her, then I went with them to see the ones they liked on Thursday. There was this one house that we really liked, although it is a little smaller than we had hoped. It’s a stone’s throw from Everything Guy and The Thespian’s house, super cute from the inside and out, great yard space, huge spacious kitchen, two bedrooms, one bath, little patio area right outside the kitchen that we could screen in, and appliances, plumbing, wiring, hvac, roof, and stuff like that is all less than 5 years old. The current owners need to sell it before they can buy their new house, which is sort of coming to a head this weekend, so they are willing to bargain with us. Hopefully we will look at it one more time today, then decide for sure. Wish us luck!

I think I have a Frank Grimes. Not in the sense that My Grimey is jealous of me in any way. Only in the “this person hates me and I don’t know why” kind of way. It may be all in my head, but I swear everytime I do or say anything near My Grimey she finds something negative or argumentative to say about it. It only started in the past couple of weeks, although I can’t quite pinpoint when it started. Before that our relationship was just normal, friendly-acquaintance like. Now I always feel like I’m pissing her off, but I have no idea why. I try to stay out of her way and just be the same old non-overtly-hated me, but I’m not sure that it’s working.

I don’t know if I can’t let it go because I don’t want to be disliked, or because I don’t know what I did to become disliked, or what. But I just can’t forget about it. After I have an encounter with My Grimey my mind constantly wanders to it, replaying it in my head to try and figure out if I’m imagining it or if I deserve to be disliked. I suppose the mature thing to do would be to just ask her what the deal is, but I don’t like confrontation and have no idea how to go about it.

So, I’m back. I dipped to the AERA annual conference in San Francisco last Friday, and got back last night. It was a really great time in a lot of ways. I got to meet some pretty amazing people in my field. I got to hang out in San Francisco with my brother, Everything Guy, The Thespian, Mischief Man, and other fun folk from school. I got to hear about some interesting research. I got to eat some good food. It would have been nice if The Little Red Haired Girl could come along, but she is in the middle of changing shows at the museum, so she could not make it.

I am glad to be home though. There is lots to do here. In addition, Lady Ebony arrived from Boston this morning for a visit, which is pretty fun. I am excited to chill with her and do the stupid shit that only she enjoys doing with me. Tomorrow we have a full schedule, including some shopping, doing my hair (it’ll look pretty), and looking at houses with the realtor. I also have a talk to go to at school and maybe some reading to do. It’s a good kind of busy though, and I’m lucky to have this kind of busy.

That’s how I’ve been feeling the last couple weeks. Menh. Not really great, not terribly depressed, just menh. I don’t really know why, except that maybe I don’t feel particularly useful or good at anything lately. Classes have been fine, except we don’t really get much feedback on whether or not we are doing a good job. I’ve been working hard, but I could probably work harder. I had a pretty bad showing playing rugby two weekends ago, and practice hasn’t been feeling much better. I’ve had some decent social time but not much, and not even much quality time with The Little Red Haired Girl because we’ve both been so busy with work.

I’ve just got to figure out how to get out of this funk. It’s pointless and vain, I think. Like I need more positive feedback to be happy or something. In two days I head out to San Francisco for AERA, which might snap me out of it. Lady Ebony comes down to visit right after that, which will certainly make me feel more myself. The semester ends two weeks after she leaves, which is stressful and exciting at the same time. Who knows what will happen after that.

Well, one thing that is happening this summer is The Little Red Haired Girl and I are buying a house. We met with a realtor on Monday, talked about what we are looking for and what we can afford. So, the process has begun! In theory I’m really excited about it, but I know I have a lot to learn.

Now that I’m talking about all these things happening maybe I’m feeling menh because all these things are happening and I’m stressed out about the end of the semester and the uncertainty of homeownership and finding a source of income for the summer. I should probably just get a good night’s sleep and take it as it comes.

Any Firefox users want to be a beta tester of AllPeers with me? I get to bring 3 people along so I can do stuff like share multimedia through Firefox. If you don’t use Firefox, you should start. Either way, test out AllPeers with me! Comment or email.

This has become quite an exciting basketball game. For those of you not following, it is Maryland v Duke in the NCAA finals. Duke was up for most of the game by as many as 14 or so points. Now, with 6:30 left, Maryland has brought it within 1. Well, I’m on a 15 minute Tivo delay. Anyhow, I’m glad I’m done with my work for the evening. There’s nothing like a nice chocolatey glass of milk* and a good ball game to watch.

*Chocolate milk for dessert. It’s the new hotness.