May 31

These past couple of days, Stephanie and I scrubbed our apartment with all sorts of solvents and scrubs and even toothbrushes. For those of you who have seen (no longer) my kitchen, it positively gleams now.



My hands really hurt. We put on rubber gloves and wore dust masks, but the fumes, dust, and chemicals still get to you. We were totally loopy. We cleaned the floor with Pledge, and afterwards "skated" with paper towels over our feet, all the while singing showtunes.

I'm really going to miss her.

May 30

After returning my rented graduation gown one day under the wire, I went outside to see that someone had filled Ludwig's Fountain (look it up, it's named after a dog) with soap bubbles. I don't know if that's some kind of end-of-year tradition or something, but it was kind of interesting.


Here some Russian tourists are tossing the suds around. They were so excited, all screaming and laughing about it.


It was an overcast day, so the suds were soooo reflective that I had to underexpose this shot by TWO WHOLE STOPS and it still barely registers any detail. There's also a ton of vignetting in the corners, which is terrible. This is a bad picture. But it's worth having captured the jets of the fountain poking through the suds.


This photo weirded me out because the girl leaning on the edge of the fountain looks exactly like me if you don't look closely. That's my color scheme, and my hair color. But it's not me. I don't wear white (gray)-soled shoes.

May 29

Remember these?



Last year, Stephanie and I threw a Halloween party, and we put up those candles with the cheesecloth to look like spiderwebs. For those who follow my life with any regularity, that caught fire and burned into my heater. It left char marks on the wall, on the heater itself, and on my printer, which was below it. Why bring this up?

Because today I spent upwards of an hour scrubbing that heater with a toothbrush dipped in bleach. And it didn't all come off. It looks better now, though. So job well done.


That is what comes from hours of cleaning with corrosive solvents, including bleach and CLR, and washing a million dishes and peeling paint off of plates that your roommate was using when making your birthday present. Whee!

May 28

I've been packing. The other night, I ran around Emeryville and Berkeley with Stephanie trying to find boxes to put stuff into, and we ended up with quite the motherlode:


This stack is taller than I am. These are all empty except the two in the foreground.

After a few hours of packing, this is my pile of boxes full of my stuff:


Actually, that GoLEAN! box is full of comestibles that I plan on donating because I don't and never used. There's another bag behind too. I feel accomplished. Now Stephanie and I are "finishing off the alcohol." It's fun. I also made a giant amount of linguine which I am eating with giant amounts of sauce. This is also fun. Whee moving!!

May 27

All of my grades came in. I feel that I did well, and maybe my time in college was not entirely wasted. I sure improved, that's for darn sure.

Sorry, I didn't really do anything today.

May 26

Place holder photo since I'm not quite ready to post the daily photo, but I might not get to it until the next technical calendar day:


I think Melissa, Bryan and I can agree that these fried artichokes were the best thing (to eat) at the artichoke festival. I concur with Melissa's artichoke thumb up.

THE REAL PHOTO OF THE DAY:


Look how this dog is sitting! So cute! (It was outside of a restaurant in San Francisco. It looked bored.)

May 25

I wasn't at home all day on this calendar day. All I did was eat, play Guitar Hero, watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and EAT MORE. As a birthday present, Stephanie made me a painting of me as a drag queen. I love it. So today's photo, in honor of frivolous pursuits, drag queens and other people's creations, I have a few film stills from my favorite movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

May 24

I'm not good at shoe shopping because I always like to look at the funniest/most ridiculous shoes that they have on display. Which, at Sheikh on Telegraph, were these:


As Stephanie pointed out, these are what the cocktail waitresses at Caesar's Palace should wear. Do you see that stilletto? METAL ROD. I can't think of anything more uncomfortable. I didn't try it on, but I did hold it and examine it for a whopping 10 minutes.


The green faux-skin pattern is pretty amusing, as well as the sheer giganticness of the heel. You might be able to see my reflection in the gold of the base. It doesn't quite bling like the previous shoe, but it's reminiscent of something a Las Vegas gold-digger would opt for.

May 23

I went to the Bone Room with Beth on this day, thinking that it would be a romp at the very least, and that I'd find some nifty stuff. It was pretty bizarre, in that there were lots of bones of interesting animals, but also strange gifts MADE of animals that were very macabre. Anyway, you'll see.


That is my favorite skull, and if it were affordable, I'd buy it. It is a cranial surgery skull, with metal patches. So cool. And unfortunately 200 dollars.


That is by far the weirdest thing they had, which is a coin purse made of a real cane toad. That's the real thing, folks. It was cute but somehow actually owning that is too disturbing.


These smelled like crap. The whole shop smelled like these. If I ever wanted to work there, the thought left my mind after being around those nasties for a while. Yuck.


This is just a pretty amusing sign.

May 22, 2007

It seems reasonable to start this year-long chronicle blog with a photo of myself at 24.



Contrast this with myself on my 23rd birthday, and you can see that I am very, very different.



I've definitely mellowed out and matured, can't you tell?

Okay, so that's actually the only photo I could find of myself on my 23rd birthday where you can see my face at all. But this is my birthday. Happy birthday to me.