2001-10-15
Sister visit approaching, school, shopping,, posted at 7:48 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com So it was a good weekend. I finally spent a night out on the town here in B-more, after 44 days of not doing much at all except working and sitting around. Baltimore is definitely a fun city. I can't wait to explore it more.My sister, father, and sister's friend are coming up this weekend with a shitload of stuff for me. Because my sister is moving out of her apartment and back in with my parents (she basically moved out to live with her boyfriend, who promptly dumped her after just a month living together, the asshole. Now that her yearlong lease is over, she's moving back home. Heidi got to keep all the furniture that she and her beau bought together, though), she had no room for her furniture. Instead of putting it into storage, she is bringing it down to me. Thus, I will now have a bed, which will be nice after two months of sleeping on an air mattress. I'll also have a couch, loveseat, dining room table, a couple of end tables, and (what I'm most excited about) my pingpong table. That'll be nice. It means we'll have to change the configuration of our house a bit - I'm going to move all my books and shelves downstairs, and will no longer have a dining room/library but rather a dining room/lounge. We've kept one bedroom completely empty, with plans for a while for it to be the pingpong/sports room. I'm not sure how much room the pingpong table is going to take up, but hopefully I'll be able to fit a weight bench in there as well (yet another diss by the guy who has the weight room key this morning... so much for getting off to a good start this week now that my ankle is mostly healed).
Heidi's friend that is coming up annoys me, and I wish she was bringing someone I liked better. The girl has cancer (HEAR ME OUT! That's not the reason I don't like her), yet she still is a chain-smoking alcoholic. It just pisses me off to see someone laugh in the face of death, drinking and smoking like a fiend at the age of 20 in between radiation treatments. Heidi (who has never been known for the consistency of her decisions) has many times said things like, "I shouldn't hang out with her, because she just drinks too much and it really depresses me to see her like that," yet she'll continue to hang out with her. She's apparently on an "up" swing with her, as her trip down here indicates. I think it'll be fun, though, and maybe this girl has turned a new leaf since her clean bill of health two weeks ago.
With Heidi's furniture being here, it may precipitate her move down to Baltimore in June when Mike moves out to get married. I think it would be a good idea, even though I didn't before. I think a fresh start would do wonders for her, as would being in a place where people who are generally her age (she's three years my junior) have stable jobs and don't go out every night. Heidi is intelligent (despite what she thinks), hard-working, outgoing, and attractive, and is good at her chosen field of cosmetology. I think she thinks that because she didn't go to college, she lost her window of opportunity in making a success of her life. I know she believes that she exists in my shadow, which would be one reason why she wouldn't move down here (and I'm partially convinced that it is one reason why she didn't follow me to MSU... well, that and her asshole boyfriend). She has a tendency to hang out with the wrong sorts of people, to get too involved in the lives of her co-workers (our small hometown is littered with her former employment places, and she always quits because things "aren't fair" or because of some sexual harassment-type of situation that she always tends to find herself in), or just to party too much. But she's a good person. And maybe a change of location is the type of thing she needs to gel her life and career.
This will be a good week at school. My sophomores are going to finish up The Scarlet Letter, which I'll be happy to be done with. I'm sure they will be glad, too. Still, I much prefer The Scarlet Letter to Huck Finn, which we're reading next. Huck is just too episodic for me, and the point of its satire is made in the first couple of chapters and from that point on it seems a bit redundant to me. But maybe I'll like it better teaching it a second time. Meanwhile, my 9th graders continue to be enthralled with To Kill a Mockingbird, and I am too. It's certainly made its way to near the top of my "Favorite Books of All Time" list - I can't believe it's been eleven years since I read it. It's incredible - funny, moving, scary, sad. Harper Lee is amazing; I wonder why her solitude and escape from the public eye after just one novel isn't as celebrated as JD Salinger's.
Holden slept with me for the first time last night. Up until then, he had slept on the floor next to my air mattress, refusing to lay up on the mattress for more than a few minutes. He probably didn't like how it felt unsteady. But last night, it was like he just decided, "Well, I'm going to give it a try," because I didn't even call him up there and yet he came up and slept there all night. Because the basement is cold and without heat, he was welcome to curl up at my feet, which is what he did. He's such a good dog. He was a bit more restless than usual over the weekend, because with my twisted ankle and the rain, we didn't go for our usual runs. But I think I'm okay to go tonight.
I went out and spent a lot of money yesterday, mostly at Ikea, which is my new favorite store. I thought it was just furniture, but the place has everything. I bought a wall mirror, two framed prints (one for my sister for her Halloween b-day which I'll celebrate with her this weekend, and one for myself), a CD storage unit with a scratch on it that was just $20 (down from $60) in the "As Is" department, a toaster, some silverware and dishes, and some other miscellaneous things. I was there for almost an hour and a half. Afterwards, I checked out Wal-Mart, which is only about five minutes from us, but we just discovered it. Unfortunately, it wasn't a Super Walmart like I was hoping for - I really miss Meijer and a Super Walmart would work just as well. But it was just a regular old Walmart. I also went to Old Navy to buy my sister another b-day present, but ended up buying myself just as much as I bought her (our school colors are orange and black, and I have nothing that is orange and black. I do now).
First hour is beginning, and I've got a lot to do. Catch ya later.
(I overuse parentheses... I need to correct that.)