Things that might be decidedly odd…

Cleaning

The past few days I’ve been involved in a substantial project of cleaning my apartment. I’m still not done, but I’m entering the home stretch. The piles of crap and clutter have been banished to the closets and recycling bin. Strangely, my apartment feels really empty.

I went from stuff like this,

to stuff like this,

Now to get back to work finishing the kitchen and bathroom…

Furniture Update

After about two hours of manual labor, my desk is pretty much put together:

I still need to add some more nails to the backing behind the drawers, but I didn’t want to do any more hammering than absolutely necessary this late in the evening.

This afternoon, I also stopped by the Futon Factory in Redmond to check out futon frames. I ended up buying a pretty nice hardwood one for about as much as I payed for my couch (I think). So now I’ll effectively have two decent sized couches. Best of all they’re delivering it on Wednesday, just in time for a little get together I’m having Thursday (email me if you want to join in–it’s just a weekly thing where some friends get together to watch TV). I do need to reorganize the furniture in my living room to make everything fit though.

Only 30 Steps

I bought a desk at Ikea the other day. I took the pieces out of the box this evening in anticipation of putting it together. However, there were too many steps for me to be doing all that at 9:30 at night. Plus, I don’t have a hammer for pounding in the nails right now. I’m not sure my neighbors would appreciate that anyways (: Anyhow, I have tons to do on this as evidenced by all these pieces:

This will clearly be the most complicated furniture assembly I’ve personally undertaken.

On Fashion

This afternoon, I had planned to go shopping for a futon frame before going to swimming at 5pm. I was going to go the Futon Factory, which is the place I bought my futon mattress. I’d noticed when I was there before that they had some nice frames. However, this time I went to their Seattle store up on Aurora and 100th instead of their store in Redmond. The store looked super sketchy, closed and had no parking (despite signage to the contrary). So I decided I’d just pass and check out the store in Redmond tomorrow instead.

I considered driving out to Ballard to kill some time since it was only 4pm (not enough time to go home, but too much to head straight to swimming). On 85th Ave heading west, I noticed a Fred Meyer in Greenwood and pulled in there. Fred Meyer is one of my favorite stores to wander around because they have all kinds of random stuff there. I ended up buying a pair of shoes that were on sale.

I haven’t bought a pair of Chucks in probably about two years. I’d just worn them for so many years, that I was ready for a change. Still, I miss them so I bought a new pair. Not to wear every day–they’ll mess my feet up if I do that, but for occasional wearing. While at Fred Meyer, I also looked at some shirts that were on clearance (cowboyish plaid shirts with snaps that seem to be in right now) for $10. Unfortunately, one was totally sized wrong (said small but it had to be a large at least) and the other looked good but one of the snaps was already tearing out of the fabric.

Lately, I’ve been seeing cute hipster guys wearing these sorts of shoes and clothes, which seems to also be encouraging me. The last few years I was living in Berkeley, I’d gotten fairly hipster in my dress I suppose (the shoes, my enjoyment of plaid shirts and black plastic rimmed glasses). By the time I got to Chapel Hill, that all seemed to be changing with me retreating to my earlier standard geeky dress consisting mostly of baggy t-shirts and jeans. In Seattle, I tend to mix t-shirt and jeans with the occasional preppy item. Sheesh, in the past few months I bought a v-neck sweater from Nordstrom, a nice winter sweater from Banana Republic and a pricey North Face jacket. Meh, I guess I just want to mix things up again and venture out of t-shirt and jeans land a bit more when possible without getting too fancy or dressy.

I dunno, I just don’t think fancy or dressy clothes work for me. Sure, they’re nice, but I’ve never been comfortable with the image they project, which is to say I feel too self-conscious wearing such clothes. At heart, I’m just more of a Target and Fred Meyer type. I’ve learned that I don’t mind spending more money for quality or something I like though. For example, it doesn’t bother me to shop at REI at all, even though a lot of the name brand stuff there is still pricey. It’s mostly that it’s just not fancy or dressy I’m guessing.

This whole bizarre fashion crisis seems to be brought on by shifting groups of friends. Here, most of my friends like to buy those kinds of clothes (Robert in particular), which is fine–those clothes work for them because they like them and feel comfortable in them. In the past, I had different friends that wore different kinds of clothes. For a lot of the years I was in college, it was all about finding deals at Ross or thrift stores for me or many of my music scene friends. I’m still more comfortable pursuing that route, but I don’t have anybody around here to encourage me to do it anymore. Instead, I find myself shopping with friends here at the outlets, being mocked (in a friendly banter sort of a way) for my apathy for the stores we visit and leaving with nothing or only a few specific items.

In the end, I need to start buying what I like and reforming my wardrobe. I have so many old clothes that don’t fit or I just hate. I need to get rid of those and I need to buy new ones to cultivate a broader image than just t-shirt and jeans with the occasional sweater.

Taxes

This afternoon, I sat down to start on my taxes. I’m still waiting for my W-2 from UNC though, so I can’t file until I have final numbers for that. It turns out that because my last paycheck from there came so late, it was counted as income for this year instead of last year.

Interesting things I learned:

• I didn’t owe nearly as much over how much was withheld from my check as I expected (yeah!). With a new job and all sorts of funky financial dealings going on this year, I was really worried and bracing myself for the worst.
• My income is high enough now that I can’t get many of the non-itemized deductions anymore. No more student loan interest, nothing for traditional IRA contributions, etc. (bummer) At the same time I don’t have enough of other deductions to itemize. So all you people with low incomes and student loan payments, you people with kids, you people with home mortgage interest can thank me for paying a larger share.

Neighbwhores

Because I was in a sort of dancing mood and because I had so much with Chris last Thursday at Neighbors when he was in town, I decided I’d go again last night. The 80s music is fun to dance to and usually there are enough interesting guys to keep my eyes busy all night. At some point, I ended up dancing with some guy. It all happened somewhat randomly in that I was actually trying to dance near this other cute guy when suddenly I noticed this one was shaking his ass in my direction. My hand on his hip and a couple minutes later, we were dancing together like skanky gay men tend to do. Eventually, he said he needed to take a break and wandered off. I saw him again later, but he didn’t seem terribly interested anymore. Maybe he was playing hard to get or something because he really didn’t seem to mind me earlier. Meh, I don’t have time for too many games.

I resumed dancing with other people who I did and did not already know. A guy I know from CAMP was in town visiting (he moved away to San Francisco a few months ago) and I chatted and danced with him for a bit. At some point he asked me, “if I’d gotten that hickey tonight”? Hickey!?! Dammit. Then responded by saying, “well, it’s all about having fun” (or something like that). Heh.

Later on, I was dancing in this group of cute guys. During Duran Duran’s ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ one of the cuter ones (tall, skinny with that hipster beard thing going on) tells me something like “isn’t this a great song?”. I, of course, take this as a hint that he’s interested in me. So we dance a bit more, but he keeps leaving and coming back. At some point, we’re dancing fairly close together and I make my move by putting my hand on his side. He sort of turns around and runs away! I kind of wonder if he was just some straight boy who got in over his head!

Anyhow, definitely an entertaining evening.

Shoes

Sometimes I think these are the height of Seattle granola-gay fashion:

Anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of me starting my current job. Yesterday would be the anniversary of my official move to Seattle. Before that I was staying in a hotel while looking for an apartment then driving all my crap up from California. Reflecting back, I’m still very satisfied with my decision to move out here and take this job. I do miss my old friends, but I don’t miss the miserable grad student lifestyle I felt like I was leading.

Anyhow, just taking a moment to reflect I guess.

Weekend of Visitors

Both my friend Chris from San Francisco and my parents were in town this weekend, which made for a pretty busy couple of days.

Chris came in on Thursday night and Robert and I met him at the airport. Without Robert, who had to work early the next morning, the two of us headed over to Neighbors for 80s night. On Friday, my parents arrived at their hotel south of the city after work. We grabbed dinner over at Fish Club (which I hadn’t been to since Nico and I ate there in 2005 when I was interviewing at Microsoft) then I drove them back to their hotel before going out with my friends. I met up with Chris, Jeff & Drew and Ben & Jeff at Purr but only briefly. From there, most of us went over to the War Room, which was having its weekly gay night. I enjoyed the music and found the crowd fairly novel (lots of hipsters, gay hipsters and gays).

Saturday morning, I got up early in order to go with my parents to Monroe to look at a place that makes barn building kits. It was a relatively painless drive out there, so we took the extra time to grab breakfast. The barn place was interesting–I had no idea so much went into the design of barns. From there, we drove to Redmond to drive through the Microsoft campus so that my parents could see the general surroundings of where I work. We then continued on to Snoqualmie Falls for some brief sightseeing. After that, they dropped me off at my place in Seattle before getting back on the road home.

I spent most of Saturday afternoon kicking back after the past couple of late nights and early mornings. Later, I met up with Jeff & Drew and Chris for Ethiopian food. Queen Sheba on Capitol Hill was super busy so instead we went to a more hole in the wall type place on Jefferson and 14th called Masob. The food was tasty and very affordable for Ethiopian.

The four of us then returned to Purr for the whole stand-and-model thing. When the time was right, we went over to Neighbors for a bit. Unfortunately, it was sort of a weird night over there. This woman kept grabbing me to dance with her and this guy. I don’t know if she was his hag or girlfriend or what, but I wanted nothing to do with her. I had to physically remove her hands from me twice and then dance elsewhere! The other guys were getting sick of this sort of nonsense too, so we decided to go to the Cuff instead. The Cuff was like the Cuff always is, which in this case was a good thing (no drunk grabby women). However, while there I did have some guy’s hag pry my arms off her fag. I found this slightly tacky as the guy really didn’t seem to mind my arm being around him.

Sunday, the four of us met up again for brunch. First we tried the Five Spot on Queen Anne, but it was packed so he headed to another place in Ballard whose name I can’t remember right now. Drew drove us all back to the hill where I parted ways with them so they could rest up briefly before taking Chris to the airport.

Whew, what a busy but fun weekend!

More Snow

I woke up this morning and before I could even put my glasses on, I noticed it was very white outside. Sure enough, it snowed yet again last night. Not wanting to deal with the nastiness, I decided I’d wait a while before going into work. Even by the time I left to catch the bus, this is what my street (remember, it’s on a hill) looked like:

Unfortunately, my smugness of avoiding having to drive in that was thwarted by a bus that never came. This is particularly weird being that where I went to catch the bus downtown has WAY less snow and general road nastiness. I’d hoped to make a 1pm meeting, but upon arriving back home I found out it had been cancelled anyways (due to weather and others not being able to come in). Oh well. Looks like a comfy day of working from home and doing laundry.