Moving = annoyed

Yesterday and today I spent some time doing apartment research online for a possible hypothetical move. Our lease is up in August, and I've been feeling like maybe it's time for a change. Maybe it's time to live in a nicer place, maybe it's time to actually live by myself, etc. I'm kind of ready for the next phase here. Buying is always in the back of my mind, but that's definitely not happening within the next two months. So apartment hunting it is. However, I've hit a couple of snags.

First of all, most places available for the amount of money I want to spend, in the areas I want to live, are boring. They look more or less the same, they're smallish (though definitely adequate for one person), etc. I look at the pictures and floorplans and it's like, "Wow! You're just like every other apartment I've looked at! Except your bathroom is off the bedroom instead of off the kitchen." And so on, and so forth. They're a little nicer than the current place, sure, but I wouldn't even consider them if they weren't. Then the few places that have looked promising and kind of unique, I looked up on apartmentratings.com. "Ghetto neighborhood! Bad management! Don't move here!"

I keep coming back to the fact that if I had a roommate who wanted to spend about the same amount, we could get a pretty sweet place. We pay amusingly little in rent right now. I could take over our entire current rent and still be within my desired price range. But either of those options kind of defeats my original purpose. If I have a roommate, then I ... have a roommate. If I stay where I am, then I wouldn't be changing scenery, and the little things that bug me about our mostly-good apartment would still bug me.

Basically, I've come to the conclusion that I need a wealthy benefactor.

SPAM - it tastes like people!

As you may or may not know, SPAM (the canned meat product, not the virulent email) is bizarrely popular in Hawaii and island nations like Micronesia. In fact, Hawaii is the leading per-capita consumer of SPAM in the U.S. Why is this? I'm reading a book by Oliver Sacks called The Island of the Colorblind, and he mentions a certain theory. This is taken from Paul Theroux's book The Happy Isles of Oceania:

It was a theory of mine that former cannibals of Oceania now feasted on SPAM because SPAM came the nearest to approximating the porky taste of human flesh. "Long pig" as they called a cooked human being in much of Melanesia. It was a fact that the peaple-eaters of the Pacific had all evolved, or perhaps degenerated, into SPAM-eaters. And in the absence of SPAM they settled for corned beef, which also had a corpsy flavor.

Um. EWWWWWW. Personally I doubt many of the current residents of Hawaii grew up on "long pig." But did they have to ruin corned beef for me? Sweet Jesus!**

**This statement is in no way meant to imply any taste sensation associated with Jesus. Anyway, I do happen to know what Jesus tastes like, and it's not SPAM. More of a bland wafery flavor.

Excerpts

From my May 1995 diary, age 15.

"Niki had the kid. Her name is Bailey, and she's really cute."

"Well, I can die happy now. I've seen the boy in his pajamas."

"Gabe is such a smooth talker he can get girls to do almost anything."

"I held many animals while at Timber-Lee, including an opossum, a tarantula, a baby rabbit, a python, and a ring-necked dove."

"If you're wondering, Madison was fun. I liked the capitol building, and I want to live in the governor's mansion."

"Gabe and Nick and I got together Period 2 to work on the reflection. The rest of the class went to the computer lab, but we stayed in the room. We had fun going through Mrs. Leischow's stuff."

"I went to the Jam 4 Peace with Jaki. It rocked. There were a ton of performers, such as Blackstreet, Brownstone, Da Brat, Naughty By Nature, Montell Jordan, Subway, H-Town, Soul 4 Real, Mary J. Blige, and 69 Boys."

"I had to play first base twice while we were on defense, and I caught the ball and made an excellent pass the first time. My second spiral was kind of weak."***

Finally, this picture is at the center of the color montage in our ninth grade yearbook. Classy.





***No, I really wasn't hopelessly confused about sports. We played a game that combined football and baseball in that magical way only junior high gym class can.

B is for Bookie

Leah gave me a letter in the letter meme game a little while ago, and that letter was B. So here are ten things that start with the letter B, and what they mean to me:

Brianne - that's my name, don't wear it out

Buryatia - the region of Siberia where I spent some time as part of a medical missions trip in 2000. An unforgettable experience. If you haven't been whipped with birch sticks in a banya by a Russian man wearing only a towel, you're missing out.

Bespaq - maker of the best miniature furniture ever. Back in my dollhouse heyday, Bespaq furniture was the most coveted of items.

Bumbleberry Pie - specialty of the Bumbleberry Inn in Springdale, Utah. According to the Bumbleberry Inn, "bumbleberries are burple and binkel berries that grow on giggle bushes, so named because they giggle when the berries ripen and the bush begins to quake, and at the precise moment that they ripen, they giggle." I tried not to hold that against them.

B., The Maggie - I'm definitely cheating here, but The Maggie B. is probably my favorite children's book. I loved it immeasurably as a child. It's partly the illustrations, and partly the story itself. And partly the fact that it mentions the "poop deck."

Bradley Cooper - he played Will on Alias, and was also in Wet Hot American Summer. He's done other things, of course, but those are the main two reasons that I love him.

Blarney Castle - we rushed a whole day's drive from the Ring of Kerry to Cork so that we could visit Blarney Castle (a friend was hell-bent on kissing the Blarney Stone) ... only to arrive minutes too late for the last tour.

braces - the bane of my existence between the ages of nine and ... twelve? I've blocked out the specifics. But I had them twice. Twice!

beans and spaetzle - one of my top three favorite foods as far back as I can remember. Specifically the kind that comes frozen, in a package, from Birds Eye.

Big Love - the only HBO series that I'm watching as it airs. It's a good one.

Comment if you'd like a random letter from me. No charge!

1-900 New Kids on the Block

Oh my God. How did they sleep at night?

CONAN

On Friday, Kris and Sam and I waited outside in the crappy rainy windy Chicago weather for eight and a half hours. But that was okay, because we had ponchos. And at the end of it we were in the seventh row of the Chicago Theatre for Late Night with Conan O'Brien! It was so much fun. Andy Richter showed up, and they went desk driving, and Blue Moon was mentioned, and they blew up Mrs. O'Leary's cow (which we had seen riding by in a truck earlier in the day), and George Wendt made out with Chewbacca, and Wilco played a song, and I love Barack Obama and would consider moving to Illinois just so I could vote for him, and the Sears Tower dressed in Sears clothing made an appearance, and La Bamba was dressed as the Empire Carpet guy and we all sang the 588-2300 jingle, and Mucca Pazza closed out the show in exciting fashion.

Oh yeah, and around noon Conan came outside and called us his "babies" and gave us all free pizza! Because he is awesome. I've been watching his show for over twelve years now, and I can hardly believe I've finally seen a taping. In Chicago, no less!

Now that's how you spend a comp day.

Come, visit my nation state

Go ahead, pay a visit to The Republic of Breaphene, where the national currency is the vibe, the national animal is the ring-tailed lemur, and I am the ruler of all. Oh, and I stole Martinique's flag. Here's my dossier:


The Republic of Breaphene is a tiny, pleasant nation, renowned for its compulsory military service. Its compassionate, hard-working, intelligent population of 5 million have some civil rights, but not too many, enjoy the freedom to spend their money however they like, to a point, and take part in free and open elections, although not too often.

The medium-sized government juggles the competing demands of Social Welfare, Education, and Healthcare. The average income tax rate is 18%. A substantial private sector is led by the Basket Weaving industry, followed by Soda Sales and Arms Manufacturing.

Crime is moderate, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Breaphene's national animal is the ring-tailed lemur and its currency is the vibe.

I just signed up now, but it seems like fun. You get to join the UN, and I just passed a law to make voting mandatory. I can't wait to see what happens. If you feel moved to create your own nation, please let me know what it is so that we may engage in trade.

I love lakes

Any bodies of water, really, but lakes are right up there. On Saturday I spent the day in Lake Geneva, and although the shopping and dining are big draws, I really could have spent all day staring at the lake. And sticking my hand into the fountain, which I did approximately every thirty seconds while I sat next to it.

At a froofy boutique in Lake Geneva I bought gifts for my sister's baby shower. Two sets of ducky dinnerware (in the cutest boxes ever) and personalized rubber duckies. The shower was Sunday afternoon at the Marina Shores in Kenosha, and someone else gave personalized handmade blankets - so I guess there's no turning back on the name front now! Speaking of twin boy names ... with the exception of my other sister (who has Jackson and Miles), but counting the upcoming twins, I now know four sets of small boy twins with the following names: Silas and Nolan, Owen and Logan, Noah and Evan, and Noaah and Logan. Dang. Not to mention the further confusion caused by NHL player Owen Nolan. Feel free to guess which pair of names belongs to the twin fetuses. Speaking of whom, at her last ultrasound my sister found out that one twin is bigger than the other. So now she refers to him as "the fat one." Awesome.

It Has Finnaly Happened

Oh lord. This is so embarrassing, but Anya and I just spent too long laughing helplessly at it for me not to post. From ye olde diary, age 11:

Wednesday, May 1, 1991
It has finnaly happened. What, you ask? I don't like New Kids On The Block anymore. And it's their fault. It has been way too long since they've come out with anything new! Oh, they put out No More Games, sure. Big Deal. So they re-mixed a bunch of old songs. The "Magic" of thinking about them just isn't there anymore. Now my infatuation has turned to Gerardo. He is a babe. I have his first album, and I tape or stay up for every Friday Night Videos in hope that he will be on. Guess what time it is? 10:00 a.m.! I have a cold, and Mom let me stay home alone! I'm waiting for The Price is Right to come on. We won our first battle for battle of the books. That means two things - One: I will be busy two Saturdays in a row. The coming one is Young Authors conferance, and next one is the meet. Two: I'm gonna be on T.V.! The final meet is televised. And if we win ... Mrs. Johnson will take us out to lunch!!

Bye!

I can't really convey the glory of that "bye" online ... it was written in bubble letters, and each bubble letter (and the exclamation point) contained a different pattern. Besides the stellar musical taste, I apparently had an innovative system of capitalization.

Puffed sleeves

Well, it's about time for me to start making half-baked plans for a summer trip. Some of you may know this already, but it's been my dream ever since I read Anne of Green Gables (and subsequently the rest of L.M. Montgomery's output) to visit Prince Edward Island. I'm thinking that this summer may be the time to make that happen. Ideally combined with visits to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The only catch is that this would likely cancel out any plans I had to accompany Gina somewhere tropical in August. Barring a visit from the magical vacation days fairy, that is.

My stint in the ER this weekend was uneventful, by the way. Luckily two of us were working, and therefore able to keep ourselves entertained and awake. The freezer in the ambulance bay was stuffed full of dilly bars, too, so that was something.