Things that might be decidedly odd…

Rent Increase

Looks like my landlord is raising my rent effective June 1st. While it’s only a modest increase ($30/mo), I’m convinced I’m already paying over market, so it does annoy me somewhat. Still, the staff do take care of the place and have always been responsive to any problems I’ve had. I can’t say I didn’t expect it either. Rents have been flat for years in Seattle. With all the condo conversions going on and a good economy it was only a matter of time.

I’ve been thinking more over the past couple months about moving into a shared housing situation to save money. This only gives me more of a reason to do that I think.

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…

Burning Smell

For the past 20 hours or so, it’s smelled like something is burning in my apartment. The smell has been the strongest in the living and dining room, which leads me to believe the source is there. Last night I went to bed, assuming it was just somebody smoking on a balcony next to or below my unit. It was still there this morning and still there when I got home from work today.

I’ve looked high and low, but I can’t find the source of the smell and certainly no flames or any other sign of something hot smoldering. Moreover, neither of my smoke detectors (both of which work) or the CO detector have gone off, which is also surprising given that using my oven pretty much always sets one of them off.

For now, I have all the windows open letting the place air out. I’ve also unplugged unnecessary appliances. It could be the furnace, but strangely it doesn’t really have the said burning smell if I sniff close to it. I’m not sure what else to do, which means I’ll probably have to call the building manager and have her investigate if things don’t improve by tomorrow.

Flowers

As I was walking up the stairs of my apartment building today while I was coming home from work, I noticed that there were some flowers in front of the door of the neighbor underneath me. I know she’s a woman, so I figured she must have some boyfriend (I know, I have such heteronormative thought processes) who sent her flowers for some occasion. Then when I made it to my floor, I noticed that there were also flowers in front of my door and the the door across the hall.

It turns out that they’re from the landlord. Now, I’ve lived in a lot of apartments over the years and I’ve never gotten anything like this from the landlord (maybe a card once, but that’s hazy). It doesn’t surprise me since the staff and landlord all seem to generally care about the building and the satisfaction of its tenants. It’s a very nice gesture!

Yikes

I was just thinking I haven’t written an entry in a while when I realized it’s now been nearly a week. Yikes!

It’s official–summer is over. A finally relit the pilot on my furnace because it’s finally getting cold enough (supposed to be 40F tonight). With the end of summer, I’d expected my life to magically get less busy but so far that doesn’t seem to be happening.

The past weekend has been fairly busy. And by weekend I mean Wednesday through Sunday because of how early my social schedule tends to start up.

On Wednesday, my friend Don came over to give me tips on decorating my apartment. We made a list of the stuff I still need, which adds up to about $700 more to spend. It’s nice to see that I’m almost there. A few more shopping trips to Costco Home, Dania and Ikea and I should be set. Afterwards, we watched Lost on my TV. Don was impressed by how clear the picture on my TV is despite the fact that I only receive broadcast over rabbit ears (I don’t do cable these days). I’d been impressed with it before, but it was nice to hear a second opinion that the picture is truly outstanding. As for Lost, I was really confused about what was going on. I haven’t seen the show since the first few episodes of the first season. Perhaps I’ll go find a plot summary of the rest of the first and second seasons or something.

Thursday was the standard TV watching night. I jokingly refer to it as the night formerly known as Will and Grace night since the show’s been cancelled for a while now. There appears to be a movement to start calling it Ugly Betty night in honor of a new show with many camp elements that gay men everywhere must also be finding delightful. Afterwards, several of us headed over to Madison Pub and stuck around talking until close. Needless to say, I didn’t get to bed until fairly late after that.

Lately I’ve been swimming on Friday nights and the last one was no exception. The pool has been getting more crowded over the past month or so as people return from the lake and outdoor pools which are more popular in the summer. I grabbed dinner with several people from the team and then headed home before going out with some friends to the Cuff. I had a few drinks there, but unfortunately didn’t get to dance. It had been a really long time since I last went dancing which is unfortunate since I generally find it more fun than standing around drinking. I ended up sticking around longer than most because I often enjoy just sitting around people watching the dance floor. After a while though, it starts to get sad because there’s hardly anybody left.

Saturday morning, I got up early to go boating on Lake Union with some CAMP friends (Chris, Jack and Perry).

The boat we had was electric with windows that could be unzipped according to the weather. We went up to the Ballard Locks and then back, stopping briefly to visit with one of Jack’s friends who lives on a house boat in Eastlake. It was pretty fun drifting around and chatting with those guys. I got back home some time in the early afternoon and promptly took a nap. Originally I had planned to meet up with some guys for bowling but by the time I woke up from the nap it was too late. I did meet up with Robert and after walking all over the hill had dinner at Jamjuree (a Thai place) on 15th Ave East. I enjoyed the food there especially since it’s been a while since I’ve had Thai. After finishing up dinner, we meandered down to Pike/Pine to hit the bars.

We started over at Purr where we ran into some other friends. We went to the upstairs part in the back, which I’d never been to before. It was pretty neat back there–more chill and quiet compared to the rest of the bar. Because it was the first Saturday of the month, a few of us headed over to Bacon Strip at the Re-bar. It was a bit nostalgic because the first time I went out in Seattle was to Bacon Strip back in February and I hadn’t been back since. Unfortunately, the show seemed shorter than usual but it was still pretty enjoyable. As expected, we ate some of the complimentary bacon carried around on a tray by some “bacon slave boy”. Eventually, Ken, Robert and I decided to hike back up the hill to the Cuff. Everybody seemed to be there including the usual crew I go out with plus lots of other people. In fact, I ran into Chris (from the boating earlier that day) and ended up hanging out with him and his friends. We all danced a bit too which was fun. Afterwards, I wandered with them over to the QFC on Broadway since they were hungry. In typical drunk fashion, nobody could really figure out what they wanted but it didn’t really matter since we were all at least a little intoxicated. In the end, I seem to recall a few items being bought: some sort of veggie imitation chicken nuggets, a packet of ham lunch meat, some vitamin water and a loaf of bread. I didn’t get anything, although I did make a quesadilla for myself when I got home. Anyhow, it was fun hanging out with those guys even when we were wandering through QFC.

Because I’d gotten home so late, I ended up sleeping late this morning and skipping out on brunch. I lazed around most of the day actually reading (which I haven’t done in a while) and doing laundry. Still, I did get my act together and get out of the house to go swimming by 5. On Saturday Jack and I did some recruiting on Chris to join Orcas. He showed up today though which was really cool. He’s definitely somebody I’d like to get to know better. It was probably the busiest I’ve ever seen it though. I don’t usually go on Sundays because I’ve just been gone most of the weekends since I started getting more serious about going to Orcas. It was enjoyable though. There was a different coach than usual, who I’d actually met at Frontrunners several months ago (I think he’s actually a triathlete). His routine was pretty good even if it was a bit unorthodox at points (we had to do some push-ups between sets). I’m really going to try to go on Sundays regularly in the future. I’ve been regularly disappointed with Wednesdays (low turnout, hands-off coaching), so I’m going to do Sunday, Monday and Friday instead for now I think. I may even try to start doing the Wednesday night Frontrunner’s instead since I keep missing Saturday morning with my travel and social schedule.

After swimming, I went over to Billy and Robert’s place for dinner and to watch Desperate Housewives among other TV shows. Desperate Housewives was entertaining as usual, but we watched this horrible show called Brothers and Sisters. I almost got up and left because it was just so melodramatic and boring! Ugh, what a terrible program about rich people with overly dramatic problems! We did watch part of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO though. I haven’t seen him since his show on broadcast TV got cancelled years and years ago. On HBO, I think it’s even more entertaining than it was before because Bill seems to cut loose a bit more being on cable and all.

Whew, what a weekend! Next weekend, I’m going down to Oregon to help my parents move into their new house. It should be cool to see them and their new place.

Couch

After living here more than 8 months, I finally have a couch!

Now, I really need to get a stand for my TV since it’s still sitting on the ground.

The delivery company said it would come between 3 and 6 today. My doorbell rang at 3pm exactly. I wasn’t even completely ready for the couch yet. The guys who delivered it are clearly pros at getting large objects through small doorways. I tried to watch how they maneuvered it so that I can get it out of the unit when I leave. It looked fairly tricky though.

Cleaning

Well, I finally did get around to completing my cleaning blitz of my apartment. The fact is that I’m a lazy person who only cleans when I’m going to have guests over. Perhaps I should have guests over every 2 weeks and my place would actually be decent. I’ve seriously considered hiring a maid, but alas a certain base level of cleanliness is necessary before they can start.

Look at these spiffy pictures of my apartment not being so clean in months:

Notice the futon laying on the ground in the living room. I have more furniture than I used to. I’m thinking about buying a frame for the futon and then I’ll actually have something resembling a couch. Or I might just store it in the closet for when I have guests over. Here’s the big bag it came in.

Amazingly, it fit perfectly in the back seat of my car and I carried it up 3 flights of stairs all by myself too!

Lazy Monday

By some sort of miracle I caught the 10:35am bus this morning and got myself to work well before lunch. I was even very productive at work too. However, all that productivity seems to have come at the price of not going swimming today. Around 7:30, I psyched myself up to walk over to the pool, swim and then catch the bus back at 9:50pm. Then I realized it was cold and raining outside, which pretty much sapped my motivation for said 20+ minute walk to the pool. Already having started my nightly build process, I decided instead to head home.Some new fancy dual-core computers have been arriving at work and I finally got mine today. It’s spiffy for sure and builds certain projects considerably faster (others less so though).

When I got home, I started cooking some dinner and browsing the web when I heard a knock on my door. It turned out to be the neighbor who lives below me who I’d never met before (never a good sign). Apparently, I walk too loudly in the evening. This all doesn’t surprise me since generally I haven’t been paying attention to such things. So, now I’m trying to be more careful about them. We talked for a bit about random stuff like work (she works at the ProClub) and North Carolina (she has a friend who’s thinking about moving there), so it wasn’t all bad. Certainly not as serious as Keenan and his neighbors.

More Furniture and Board Games

Not too long after my DSL got installed, my new kitchen table got delivered. Here’s a photo:

Now I have a place to sit and surf the net on my laptop as well as eat meals. Eventually, I’m planning to put a desk with my desktop computer in the room as well. The table has a leaf in it right now, but I can’t take it out by myself since you really need two people to pull it apart and push it back together. Still, if I push the table a bit more to one corner of the room, there should be enough space on the other side for a small computer table.

Right after the table was delivered, I walked over to Keenan’s to play board games with Mike (another guy on my team at work), his wife Tara (I’m so bad with names–I hope that’s her name), Keenan’s friend Ian (also at Microsoft, but in a different division) and of course Keenan. We played a game that Mike and Tara had received as a gift from this other guy on our team named Matthias. None of us had ever played it before. It was a Ravensburger game called Louis XIV (links in German or read an English review). Basically, you have to influence the court of Louis XIV to win the game.

Because it’s a Ravensburger game–one of the most German things ever–there are complicated rules, lots of cards, lots of cardboard tiles and a prescribed sequence of “phases” and “rounds” for doing everything. Once we got the hang of things, the game definitely picked up just like every other German boardgame I’ve played before. Mike ended up winning big time with a whopping 50 points. I came in second with 36 with Tara (35) and Keenan (34) following closely behind. All in all, it was a night of playing games, chatting and otherwise having a nice time. Ian brought a tasty potroast which provided dinner. A few days ago at Safeway I saw some key limes and consequently bought the ingridients to make a key lime pie. I got around to making it this morning and brought it along with me. It turned out to make a nice dessert, although there was no actual plan for dinner or dessert.

Mike gave me a ride back to my place from Keenan’s (it’s not that far, but they were basically going my way anyways). As we walked over to his car, we were talking about random stuff. Somehow in the conversation, we got on the topic of how I found out that Keenan’s gay. I recounted the story mentioned here before to which Mike told me Keenan actually came into his office right after that to express his happiness that I turned out to be gay. Which is funny, because I blogged about (and told a couple of my gay NC friends via IM) how I found it to be a good thing too. Being out at work is one thing, but to have a gay co-worker on your team that you get along with is a rare but positive thing. It’s certainly made my transition here a bit more bearable. It also helps reaffirm a lot of why I felt it was in my best professional and personal interest to leave North Carolina and take a job in Seattle.

Random Photos

Over the past week or so, I’ve taken a couple of interesting pictures that are probably worth blogging about.

A couple of days ago, it was really clear and I realized I actually have a view of the Olympics from my living room:

Here’s a photo of the DVD player I bought (and still have) when I tried to buy that TV that was too big:

And one of my new fancy bed all made up:

My proof that Mervyn’s may be catering to gay men:

A cookie wrapper from Nicaragua that I found in my backpack upon arriving in Seattle:

And of course the mess that still remains in my apartment, in a reduced size for you obsessive compulsive types (smaller picture means less perceived mess–I hope):