jinian | Entries tagged with housing

(Note: there are no actual stairs.)

In only one aspect, my dorm life is starting to remind me strongly of William Sleator's creepy YA novel House of Stairs. We have motion-controlled lights, and we are being classically conditioned.

Bedrooms have normal light switches. Three-position switches allow you to turn the lights all the way on or all the way off in the public rooms, which is a fine thing to do in the toilet stalls during the day or when you're trying not to wake up all the way, respectively. (Not so good when people turn them on and then wander away assuming they'll turn themselves off.) In the hallways, though, motion detection is the only option I've found, which means when you're hanging out in the hallway talking to people and not actually pacing or anything, the lights will frequently shut off.

And then we all start waving our arms. The electronic eyes (which I would actually like to be more all-seeing, they've got these annoying blind spots) flash red and give us our lights back.

For a while, until we have to perform again.

The other deeply unsettling thing about the dorm is actually a thing about Japan as a whole: there is no oven in the kitchen. Two microwaves, two refrigerators, two induction-heating and one radiant-heating burners... and a little "grill" drawer that you can put, say, grocery-store tempura into to heat it up.

[I had just assumed there was an oven here]

[I had just assumed there was an oven here]

[And I was worried about not having a cookie sheet]

Is there any place in the English-speaking world that you would possibly have a real stovetop range but no OVEN? This is truly shocking and upsetting to me, as I am a stress-baker deprived of nearly all outlet. I guess I could make and eat cookie dough, which is what I mostly do at home anyway, but not having the option for baking is like wearing a chastity belt or something, it takes the joy out of the stages prior to completion.

You may have noticed I made pie recently. This is because the lab office has an oven, the total capacity of which I estimate at about 15L. My colleagues are shocked at the energy inefficiency of giant, electric American ovens. Actually, I'm not sure they believe me that such ovens exist, though I think they acknowledge the existence of giant, culturally necessary turkeys. Our Russian student has also corroborated my assertion. (The ovens. Well, turkeys too, actually.) When I had lunch with my co-TA and some students today, we discussed this important matter, which distresses her as well. At least I have oven-deprivation commiseration.

Crossposts: http://jinian.livejournal.com/539697.html

Wim is gone and so are the upstairs neighbors, so it's just me in a house that normally holds four humans. As the upstairs cats do not appear to have gone mental yet like last time their people were away, this is awesome. It's been all chilly and rainy here for days now, though. My wrists hurt, stupid weather. It is meant to be August.

Progress:

Bed pieces are all 100% painted.

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo: Pretty cool. A documentary without much narration or overt interviewing, mostly just looking at insect fans in Japan, from commercial collectors to little kids keeping stag beetles as pets, with a few voice-over segments trying to tie love of insects to mono no aware and similar declared elements of the Japanese character. I am happy to know what the "konchu saishu" from the Shonen Knife song means.

Glee s1: Too many of these people are stupid, but there's singing (even if it's heavy on the Autotune). Cannot stop watching.

Helvetica: Many people are bigger type geeks than I am, and I just bought a zip sweatshirt that says KERN across the gap and think it's hilarious. Good movie. Thrilled to see Hermann Zapf himself! He made Optima and Palatino! And some of the other interviewees were awesome; I think is was Michael Bierut who killed us dead every time he came on.

The Invincible Pole Fighter and The Mystery of Chess Boxing: Tremendous fun. Both pretty serious for kung fu movies (though Ghostface Killer was clearly high at all times), both quite well done. I think it's the only time I've seen the Grand Illusion completely sell out; there were chairs in the aisles, and normal occupancy is 70. (The Stranger Suggests listed it, so we knew to get there early.) As usual for the Illusion's special features, there were stories about where the movies came from -- stashed under a stage in a dedicated Shaw Brothers theater in Vancouver Chinatown, and dumpster-dived, in these cases.

Electronic ARC of Cryoburn: No in-person Ekaterin, alas. I think it's a little better than Diplomatic Immunity. Worth the money!

Currently have picked all the ripe evilberries from the yard, where they are trying to overrun the plum trees, and am stewing them up with last year's blueberries for something that might be pie filling or just go on ice cream, we'll have to see.

Cat pee state is improved. We don't think they're doing it actively any more -- a couple days' surveillance (the Urinary Panopticon) showed nothing worse than sock theft from the hamper in progress (burning with cuteness). But good lord the smell just keeps coming up from under. Am seriously considering replacing the carpet-padding.

Unrelated to my life, there have been some really good anti-rape campaigns lately:
http://bitterbuffalo.tumblr.com/post/910431591/whats-this-an-anti-rape-campaign-that-focuses-on
http://thecurvature.com/2010/06/29/scotland-anti-rape-ad-tackles-she-was-asking-for-it-myth/

Whereas I have taken

lakmiseiru to the train this morning so she can be a mad backpacker for a couple of weeks, and

whereas

hattifattener is also going to be taking off for a few days to build a yurt soon, and

whereas my bed is almost done being painted so will occupy less of my evening time soon, and

whereas I need to get the fuck out of my cat-doomed house quite often, but

actually I still need to stay off my healing foot, so many summery activities are unwise,

here is a partial list of stuff for me to do in the near future.

Today or tomorrow: Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, a documentary about the Japanese love for beetles. Come on, Wim, you ordered radio-controlled Mushiking toys from Singapore, we have to go!

Before Sunday: Finish watching Glee s1 and watch Helvetica, which I coincidentally rented on the Swiss National Holiday.

Maybe: Open the Darth Vader door. Its sign says "Experiment in Progress. Do not open this door!" and then it has a picture of Darth Vader's head underneath it. I have so far escaped opening it, but this may not last. I think the experiment in question must be "see how long Kylee can resist the shiny, candy-like button."

Maybe: Buy and read the electronic ARC of Cryoburn. I'm sure there are plenty more fun details to find out by reading it myself, but I am overinformed at present and it sounds like there's no Ekaterin to speak of. But that's just me being cranky, really; there's no way I'm not reading this soon.

Probably: Get trackpad (now routinely doubling my clicks) fixed or replaced. Bonus if the entire cover can be replaced; some slivers are missing and it's awfully grubby.

Soon: Blog the Herbarium Foray before it fades into the mists of time. I have photos and paper journal, just need to spend the time.

Saturday August 7: Old School Kung Fu Double Feature at the Grand Illusion! The movies are The Invincible Pole Fighter and The Mystery of Chess Boxing. (Ooh, awesome, http://www.grandillusioncinema.org/ has trailers!)

Friday August 13: OMG SCOTT PILGRIM. Very tragic story, I actually had a pass to an early screening and forgot about it. *facepalm* Totally going opening day! Even if it were bad, which it won't be, I think I may owe the movie for causing the artist to finally finish the series before it opened. (Also, want video game now. Recursive referentiality FTW! Time to buy a PS3, I guess.)

Wednesday August 18: Mary Roach at Kane Hall in re: her book about travel to Mars. The talk for Bonk would have been more fun without reading the book, so I will not read the book before then.

Other notes:

Shonen Jump came like a week and a half ago. I still haven't opened the package.

It's IBARW again! In addition to collecting links for Wednesday posts, I plan to post some reviews of books by POC as suggested by

rachelmanija. (See also

ibarw,

50books_poc.)

Trip to San Juan:

++ As You Like It in the rain
++++ As You Like It in the amazingly dramatic sunset thunderstorm with rainbow
++ As You Like It in the costume shed

- Dansko glorified-zori in unstable walking/scrambling contexts
+ walking up the fire trail
+++ startling many vultures in Hidden Cove! as they were eating a dead deer!

++ trade-in book credit at Serendipity! (good idea, Wim!)
+ praise from proprietress for having all but one book usable
+++ The Root Cellar! I remember this book! and Blanche Passes Go

. confirmed that the only bookstore I hadn't been to doesn't exist, despite having a sign

-- when you reserve at the last minute, you get the stupidly expensive hotel room

--- bad sunburn that hurts scratchily all the time, especially when trying to sleep
(I'm applying scads of aloe, drinking fluids, and even taking aspirin)

A hectic week has been survived. I got my research proposal draft in to my co-workshoppers on time, and my lab meeting went very well (except that I forgot one thing I shouldn't have). Teaching is going well so far -- one student got really snippy about taking her own sample of some limited material, but I had enough else to do that I was able to just leave her alone the rest of the section.

The U Bookstore finally called me to say Half a Crown was in last night. Acquired at 6pm, finished by 11, made of awesome. I've also now read McKinley's new Chalice, perhaps even more wonderful, and I have the new Gaiman and Cecil Castellucci's Beige as well as the 2008 Best American Science and Nature Writing. Orgy of reading, your time is here!

There's stuff I need to do in the lab this weekend, but I don't feel terribly compelled to do it right this minute. Time emough to sit around with cats and heating pad, and enjoy the high winds sweeping by outside. It's true that our curtains ought not to move when the winds are on the other side of the glass, but I've got blankets.

Recommended reading: "Hey There, Joe Six-Pack" by

copperwise.

It's amazing how productive and domestic one can become when faced with an unrelated deadline, especially when writing this particular grant last year produced vast amounts of frustration. I even post to LJ and answer email!

So are we all just fucking appalled at the terrorism in Ohio, or have people not heard about it? I haven't seen much comment, and I know I am just fucking appalled. How do we get through to these people?

Interesting music videos from

rushthatspeaks may distract you somewhat from previous item.

Slow progress is being made on civilizing the home, with some help from Tom Swift and His Custom Book-Shelves. This is good because soon it will be cold. I'm not at all sure how winter is going to go in this house, considering how cold it's been in here when outside hasn't been that bad.

So far, the raised-bed kit from Lee Valley has been a hell of a lot of trouble, and I still don't have any raised beds to put my vegetable starts into. Sheesh. Anyone know a good place to get 12" x {something reasonable} pavers not exceeding 2" thick?

Biking to school is fun and fast, but there are many benefits of walking. I swear I saw morels in someone's front yard a few weeks ago (none today when I checked back), and yesterday I saw not only an apparent bud-sport of black clover on a green plant (collected some for attempted rooting, as it was in a sidewalk crack anyway) but an actual swarm of honeybees. No queen was visible from a prudent distance, but there were at least 500 honeybees within about 25 cubic feet, moving along the sidewalk very slowly.

Still nowhere near unpacked, but we do have a guardian of the not-unpacked state around.

Super-busy, whee. (Of course now is the time to become obsessed with how I'm doing on my

50books_poc count. No I am not going to count up all my reading lists from the last year! Not until I'm done grading exams, which comes AFTER the presentation Thursday and AFTER teaching two lab sections and AFTER my actual research. Bad brain, quit bugging me.)

We are so doomed. How can we have been working on moving for a whole month and STILL BE DOOMED?

Anybody who could come over to inject sanity into the proceedings would be much appreciated. If you can't make it, please consider instead coming over on Sunday for what I am still attempting to believe will be cleanup.

(Hi, people who live nowhere nearby. Tales of moving woe that turned out all right are very welcome, or whatever you think would be helpful.)

Moving over an entire month sucks, too; it wasn't just because we were up for days straight last time.

People on Freecycle are fucking flakes.

I get sick of eating out all the time in less than a week.

If you leave your new, beautiful armoire (obtained on an adventure to suburbia in the SNOW) out overnight with its door closed, the cats will think they can fit through the decorative ironwork. They cannot, and their hind claws will make nasty scratches on the front of the expensive furniture as they try.

Our friends are nice people and I should be letting them help us move!

[ETA: Sea-Thai S11 is the most delicious thing on the planet.]

PCR still bitched to hell. Possibly more so, since things that worked before failed today.

Landlords complete assholes now. No idea what happened. No way to make them suffer without yoking ourselves to the same fate; no way to escape in a hurry without giving them something they want. HATE HATE HATE. Should practice detachment or something. I don't fucking know.

Finally met with last quarter's advisor to go over data. (Accordingly, finished graphs.) Found an odd difference in one tissue between genotypes otherwise identical. Hmm. Got asked yet again if I didn't want to come work on THIS tangential project; refused yet again to commit. Received a silly little bout of applause from advisor alone. Hee.

Got keys to new house, and started finding things they need to fix. It was a little too dark to do the move-in checklist in full, and one lock is stiff to the point of failure. But soon, new house! It still doesn't feel real. We have abundant volunteers for moving help, and may yet have a need for them, so stay alert!

Found a Taiwanese restaurant near the new house! Oyce, what do I eat? Wound up going to Kozue for good and interesting Japanese food tonight: ginger pork with mixed stir-fried veggies and roasted sweet-potato cubes, plus obligatory unagi nigiri and ume-shiso rolls.

May have found the problem with recent PCRs, which would be good. Almost certainly found a workaround for one of my persistent trouble spots, which would be excellent (though doing it depends on solving the first problem.)

And! I got into my summer course! Hurrah! I didn't get quite as much financial aid as I'd hoped, but it's workable. Five weeks of living and breathing the evolution of metazoan development; three quarters' worth of graded credits. Sweet!

No interest in the upstairs apartment yet, possibly because we're having to charge an arm and a freakin' leg for it. Definitely need to add photos. It doesn't look like a day for photographing the views, though. (On the bright side: More time to do homework. But it's pretty stressful too.)

( Tiny Scrabble from grad-school celebration dinner )

Star Trek does Monty Python's Camelot

Ongoing woe: filled with hate, stressed out, doom of housing and relationships.

At least I am almost caught up on my schoolwork after today -- microscopy and sketching, though, really need to be done for less than four hours in a given day, especially when the rushed part comes last. Lab stuff is going mostly fine with islets of annoyance (not Langerhans).

I was going to see the neurologist to change my prescription, but ha ha! I am all migrainish from the stress anyway, so reducing the amount of medication is a stupid idea right now.

Won't know about grad school for probably another month. (I need a smiley that is pulling out its hair.)