Category: General

OK, ignore my previous post. I thought of something to write about.

My current apartment is in a good neighborhood and I’ve been there for years so even though the rent has increased some it’s still pretty cheap. Certainly cheaper than I could find a 1 bedroom/1 bath apartment in Sellwood for if I was looking right now. I’m right on a bus line (important when you’re economically opposed to automobile ownership) and close to a couple of other bus lines. I’ve got a washer/dryer hookup in my apartment (bonus!) and I can walk to the grocery store. Lots of plusses.

But… I hate my neighbors. I’ve got this guy living next to me who has been a nuisance for years. When he moved in, the building was operated by a very bad manager, and my neighbor would always try to get me to contact the manager to complain; the old “let’s you and him fight” technique.

My neighbor is chronically unemployed and so finds he has lots of time to sit around drinking beer and trying to strike up conversations with passers-by. My apartment is on the second story, and to get to it there is only one stair that leads to the walkway all three apartments share. I consider the stairway to be a common area, but my neighbor considers it his living room. He’ll sit there at the end of the day, smoking, drinking, cussing, laughing… and because of the layout this is directly underneath my living room window. Not to mention the fact that I have to step around him and his cronies on the stairs to get to my front door. I dread going home and finding him there, which happens a lot. When I’m home I tend to leave the curtains drawn and windows closed to keep out his obnoxious laugh and the cigarrette smoke.

But that’s not the worst part. Because of all his drinking, my neighbor often ends up sick and hungover in the morning. He seems, though, to make it to the bathroom before becoming violently ill. I know this because his bathroom is right next to my bedroom. Several times a week I am awakened by the sound of my neighbor tossing his cookies into the porcelain throne. Thin walls do not mute this much at all. Joy. The mornings he’s not sick, he’s coughing and hacking due to his smoking habit…

I find all this oppressive. But I’ve not done much about it. I know, I know, I should be less passive. I’ve mainly used this as an excuse not to be home much, which does seem to help my social life.

But I have an opportunity. There are two, 2 bedroom apartments downstairs from me, and the one on the other side of the building from me is open. I would no longer have to step around him to get to my home. I would no longer have to be awakened by the sound of chunky liquid splashing into a bowl, or his hacking cough. And I would still live in the same neighborhood and still have the W/D hookup and all the other things I like about my current apartment. My rent would only go up $100/month, which, if I look at what I would gain (a less oppressive living space) seems very much worth it. I mentioned the possibility of moving to my landlord and now he’s waiting for me to give him a yea or a nay.

However… once again my mind refuses to stay in context. Instead of evaluating the two tangible choices, a voice in my head whispers of other, fictional choices. I’ve started browsing the classifieds, and for around $600 I could move to any number of other places in several cool neighborhoods: downtown, close-in SE, Hawthorne, or the Lloyd Center area. I could move somewhere that had DSL (I’m currently on cable modem, which, for technical reasons involving me wanting to share my bandwidth is less than useful (there’s probably a whole ‘nother post in that topic alone.)) I could gain hardwood floors or bay windows or a great view or sexy next-door neighbors… the mind boggles.

I talked to my sister, and she suggested that for the same money I’m talking about in rent, I could be making a payment on a condo. Be an “owner” not a “renter”. Get some equity. However, my sister thinks of money much differently than me, and I suspect that even though what she says is technically true (“your mortgage payment wouldn’t be more than $600/month, including taxes”), there would still be lots of hidden costs and fees that would make that choice more expensive, both short-term and in the long run. Also, the places I would have to live are not really my favorite neighborhoods: Tigard, Clackamas… basically the ‘burbs. Bleh. I’m a downtown kind of guy. I need to be in SE or downtown. Gotta stick with what I know and love.

So, in the end, those “other” choices are all mythical. I should really decide based on just the two current choices and not introduce extraneous possibilities…

I’m going to move downstairs for now, and keep my eyes open for something better.

I want to post something every day.

Does this count?

This week’s resolution:

Less Thinking, More Doing

Tune in next week to see how successful I am…

The nimble mind can find ways to compete everywhere.

F’rinstance, I work in a 14-story building. My office is on the 8th floor. Since I’ve started running, I only take the elevator when I’m in a hurry and am going to be late. Or at the end of the day, when I want to get out of the building as quickly as possibe.

So, when I’m riding the elevator up and others get on the elevator with me, sometimes they want off on floors below the 8th, and sometimes above. More often below the 8th floor, though. Same principle (only in reverse) applies to riding down.

I’ve come to view stopping before the floor I want, to be “losing”, and any other outcome (in other words, the quickest possible ride when sharing the elevator) to be “winning”.

Today when I got to work, two other people got on the elevator with me, and I waited to hit my button until after they had selected their floors. It was almost like roulette or something, the anticipation as they reached for the panel… and pushed “9” and “11”.

Whoo-HOOO! I win again!

Had coffee with a friend today. During conversation, I said something (I forget what) that reminded her of something she had to do, at which point she called me her “Post-It Note”.

I have no idea how to take that… but I have to admit I laughed, at the time.

I got rid of cable because I had the realization that I never turn on my teevee unless I’m watching a DVD, and when I got my broadband they upsold me on a cable modem/digital teevee package that was costing me $120/month… and then Comcast wanted to raise the price. I declared “Last Straw” and called their CSRs, who were ready and waiting to assist me. They tried to tell me I was getting a $10/month discount on my broadband by having cable.

Hmmm… I can’t imagine being someone for whom that would be a tough choice: pay $55/month for broadband that I use all the time, or pay $135/month for broadband I use all the time and teevee I never use. I tried to imagine myself as that person. Couldn’t do it. They finally talked me into getting the absolute, bottom-dollar, basic Basic Cable: just the local stations and the public access channels, no converter box, no remote, for +$11.00/month, so I could still get the $10/month discount. I figure $1.00/month is worth it so I can watch The Simpsons (which is the only thing I watch, now that Buffy’s gone and Angel’s been cancelled).

Truth is, though, that after I disconnected the digital box, I haven’t even hooked the bare coax up to my ancient teevee, so there would be work involved if I ever wanted to actually watch something…

Haven’t been posting in a while. And there’s so much I could be posting:

• Full review of Coachella, including all the acts I saw, some funny stories about the trip…
• Intimate details of the women I’m dating/have dated (just kidding! Scared some of you out there, didn’t I?)
• Review of any of a number of CDs I’ve bought in the last couple of months (Just saving myself from listing them all, ’cause it’s a lot)
• Oh, damn, movie reviews, like “Kill Bill Vol. 2” or, um, that other one
• …
• I hate making lists. Why am I doing this?

Hang on, let me catch my breath… this list-making is exhausting. Feels like I’ve been doing this forever. How many is that? One… two… WTF? I’ve only done six freakin’ bullets? And one of them is blank, and another one is a complaint!

OK, this isn’t working for me. I’ve got to make an actual post. Stay tuned.

Wow, what a weird weekend. I managed to escape, though.

Remember back on 4/24 I posted an “awkward moment in dating?” About the girl who joked that she was stalking me? Go ahead, click the link, I’ll wait.

[Waiting]

We went out a couple of times, didn’t hit it off, and I thought that was that. Well, last week She showed up outside my work, which is weird, ’cause I move from building to building during the week at random. She asked me if I wanted to get some dinner, and as I started to answer, a van pulled up along the sidewalk right behind Her. The door opened, and She stepped back towards it, like she was expecting it, and I stepped forward out of curiosity, and, well, before I knew what hit me, I was falling forward into the van.

I must have blacked out for a bit. When I came to, I was in a windowless room (a basement, as it turns out, somewhere in the Coast Range). I was tied to a creaky old bed, and, well, naked… She was there, waiting for me to awaken… and… and…

…She did things to me that have never been done before.

Even though I was only there for about three days, the time seemed much longer than that. I’ll never be able to fully describe what happened to me in that time — words fail me when I try to remember. Images, sensations, all blur into each other. Colors have a scent and sounds taste like… like…

At some point, the combination of the oils and the flames must have loosened my bonds, but I had retained enough animal cunning not to reveal that fact to Her right away. My resistance must have been more than She expected, because it seemed to me that She had tired a bit too quickly after only three days, but this didn’t disappoint Her, no, it seemed to excite Her all the more… which chills me to my core thinking about it now. What more could She do to me that hadn’t already been done? I knew I had to make an escape.

It may have been moments later, it may have been hours, I’ll never be sure, but some time later I heard an electronic noise that cut through my delirium: an S.O.S. Her cell phone was getting a text message! I had heard that before on one of our dates. She seemed torn between continuing Her assault on me and responding to the text message, but though it was a close battle, in the end Her desire for attention was victorious over Her lust for taking me to my physical limits. I humbly believe that my resistance was also a factor; She was both ennervated by the struggle with me as well as feeling the need to, well, brag about me. I was the strongest victim She had yet encountered.

For some reason (vanity? embarassment?) She left the room to respond to the text message. The sound of Her high heels on the concrete steps filled my soul with mounting joy, quickly replaced by a rage and a cunning cold intellect that aided my escape. Once free of my bonds, I was able to locate another doorway out of the room that I was previously unable to see from my prone position. My strength returning, I scrambled up the stairs I found. The small vestibule I emerged in was filled with candles illuminating shelves of alien-shaped ceramic containers and glassware, all filled with horribly-colored substances, liquid, oils, powders. But I had no attention for the foul contents of the room, for on the other side of a pentagram on the floor came a freshening breeze from the door open to the night.
But She was there, between me and my freedom.

Her naked body shimmered in the night, dancing and chanting in a sacrificial rite. I bolted past her, nearly slipping on the ashes at my feet, shoving her aside in my haste to escape. She must have fallen against the shelves, stumbled into one of the candelabra, because the room behind me brightened as the flames ignited something flamable…

As my wounds and burns were salved by the night air, the house behind me was consumed by a cleansing fire.

Luckily, before I could succumb to exposure, the firefighters that arrived to douse the wicked flames found me, wrapped me in an itchy wool blanket, and began the process that eventually returned me to the comfort of my home in south east Portland. I am thankful to those heroic men and women for their aid, as I was not a civilized man after my ordeal. I am both haunted by and strengthened by the events of the past several days, perhaps a few more grey hairs on my head, but I retain a steely resolve in my eye as well.

Either that, or I’ve been busy all weekend and haven’t had a chance to update my blog. One or the other.

Short post today. Live with it.

Added a bunch of filigree to the site. Added a Picture of the Week and a “Powered by Blogger” button over there to the right, added a hit counter and stuff over to the left. That stuff hasn’t migrated to the other pages, other than the Archive pages, yet. Still workin’ on it.

Added some pictures from an old trip to the Portland Underground to the Picture Gallery. These are tunnels underneath Old Town in Portland, OR that were used 150 years ago to quietly shanghai able-bodied men to work on ships leaving port. A fascinating time of Portland’s history. Now they take groups down there on tours.

Didn’t run today. Bleh. Didn’t feel like it.

I mentioned The Long Winters last week, part of my post-Coachella CD-buying spree. Remember? Sure you do. I checked their website and they’re playing Portland this month (Thursday 27 May) at The Aladdin Theater, opening for The Decemberists, about whom I have heard nothing.

Oh, and They Might Be Giants will be playing later this summer at The Bite of Oregon. That’ll be fun. (I only mention TMBG because I first saw The Long Winters when they opened for TMBG. My mind connects things like that, for some reason.)