(In reality, this production is starring two actors I have a crush on - Chris O'Dowd and James Franco - and that's why I made us go.)
Showing posts with label being a grownup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label being a grownup. Show all posts
Monday, July 21, 2014
Of Mice and Men
Yesterday Ben and I went to NYC to see Of Mice and Men - that's right, we are so cool that we go to NYC for a day to see a play.
(In reality, this production is starring two actors I have a crush on - Chris O'Dowd and James Franco - and that's why I made us go.)
Unsurprisingly, the play was very well done. However, we were surprised at the number of folks in the audience - mostly teenage girls presumably there for James Franco - who didn't seem to know the story. There was a weird amount of laughter at Lennie's lines - which are kind of funny in the way that a kid sometimes says funny stuff, but aren't really that funny because they're coming from an adult man in a desperate situation - and when Lennie killed Curley's wife there were genuine gasps and cries of horror. Then in the final scene when George pulls the trigger, many of the girls were sobbing hysterically and didn't seem able to believe what had just happened or that the play ended there. I guess they got their 10th grade English lesson for the day!
(In reality, this production is starring two actors I have a crush on - Chris O'Dowd and James Franco - and that's why I made us go.)
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Goodbye, dress!
I always said I would donate my wedding dress after I was done using it, since I'll never wear it again so it might as well make someone else happy. After a year of it sitting in the back of our closet, I finally got around to actually donating it!
There are actually a number of places that accept wedding dress donations; I ended up going with Brides Against Breast Cancer - mostly because they were having an event in Baltimore this weekend, and I was going to Baltimore anyway to hang out with my sister. I have to admit to feeling a twinge when I handed the dress over, but now that it's gone I can't say I miss it, or even notice its absence. Here's hoping someone else loves wearing it as much as I did!
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| Me with my dress for the last time, right before dropping it off. |
Sunday, November 6, 2011
No such thing as a free bed
My parents came up to visit a few weekends ago, and offered to bring us their old bed frame. Our mattress has just been on a cheap platform since we got it, so we were excited about getting a real, adult-looking, and free bed. We hauled the pieces of the bed frame into our building, assembled them, and triumphantly lowered our mattress into place, only to find:
It didn't fit.
Apparently all these years we have had a full mattress, and for some reason I have mistakenly believed it was a queen. I always thought our sheets seemed kind of baggy, but assumed the sheet companies must just give you extra room, you know, to be nice or something. I am very good at rationalizing.
Anyway, after a few days of precariously climbing in and out of the too-large bed frame to get to our mattress, we finally caved and bought a new, correctly-sized one.
So now we have a nice new free bed, and it only cost us one mattress.
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| Sadness. |
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| You aren't supposed to be able to see that part. |
Anyway, after a few days of precariously climbing in and out of the too-large bed frame to get to our mattress, we finally caved and bought a new, correctly-sized one.
So now we have a nice new free bed, and it only cost us one mattress.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
First Condo Meeting
Tonight was the annual condo association meeting, and for some reason I was oddly excited to go. I thought it would be fun to meet other people and learn a little bit about how the building runs, but it turns out groups of people meeting to decide things is never fun.
First danger sign: I was the only person there under 60 - apparently all the young, working people in the building know not to bother showing up at these things. As a result all the attendees are the retired people, who aren't exactly in a hurry to get stuff done.
Second danger sign: There were three candidates running for three spots on the board, and we still had to vote on them. Oy.
Third problem: The budget for next year is slightly (3.5%) higher than this year, but because there was a bunch of money saved up in the reserves, the monthly fee we pay will actually be lowered. What's not to like about paying less money? Plenty, apparently. People were so confused about paying less for a higher budget, and upset that we didn't get copies of the line item budget, that they made the building manager go back to his office and print them out.
Next problem: The big building project for next year is to redo the hallways, since they have been the same since the building was built in the 1970s, and are kind of dark and dingy. Tonight they introduced the architect from the firm that will be designing the new hallways, and the goal was just to tell people that by next summer he'll have drawn up sketches we can vote on. Instead, there was a full 30 minutes of people getting up and sharing their opinions about hallways - ranging from, "I was in a building once and they had really lovely red hallways" to "why can't each floor have its own theme?" to one gentleman's impassioned speech against the "disturbing homogenization" of hallways across America. I felt really bad for that architect.
I finally gave up and left over an hour into the meeting, since by that point I was starving and the conversation had moved on to an argument about hallway temperature between the residents of the top floors ("they're far too hot!") and those on the bottom floors ("they are freezing!").
As far as I know, the meeting is still going on. I think this will be my first and last experience with attending.
First danger sign: I was the only person there under 60 - apparently all the young, working people in the building know not to bother showing up at these things. As a result all the attendees are the retired people, who aren't exactly in a hurry to get stuff done.
Second danger sign: There were three candidates running for three spots on the board, and we still had to vote on them. Oy.
Third problem: The budget for next year is slightly (3.5%) higher than this year, but because there was a bunch of money saved up in the reserves, the monthly fee we pay will actually be lowered. What's not to like about paying less money? Plenty, apparently. People were so confused about paying less for a higher budget, and upset that we didn't get copies of the line item budget, that they made the building manager go back to his office and print them out.
Next problem: The big building project for next year is to redo the hallways, since they have been the same since the building was built in the 1970s, and are kind of dark and dingy. Tonight they introduced the architect from the firm that will be designing the new hallways, and the goal was just to tell people that by next summer he'll have drawn up sketches we can vote on. Instead, there was a full 30 minutes of people getting up and sharing their opinions about hallways - ranging from, "I was in a building once and they had really lovely red hallways" to "why can't each floor have its own theme?" to one gentleman's impassioned speech against the "disturbing homogenization" of hallways across America. I felt really bad for that architect.
I finally gave up and left over an hour into the meeting, since by that point I was starving and the conversation had moved on to an argument about hallway temperature between the residents of the top floors ("they're far too hot!") and those on the bottom floors ("they are freezing!").
As far as I know, the meeting is still going on. I think this will be my first and last experience with attending.
Friday, October 8, 2010
New Standards of Excitement
Remember when I wrote about getting really excited over new overhead transparencies, and then sort of depressed that I was at a point in life where overhead transparencies were exciting? Well, being a new homeowner is like that times a million. Things I have actually been super-excited, and then retroactively somewhat embarrassed about in the past week include:
Don't judge me.
- Getting an appointment with a good plumber
- Installing new light switch plates
- Finding a coupon for blindstogo.com
- Looking at various closet doors online (who knew there were so many varieties?)
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| Excuse the exposed sockets, I forgot to get those plates at the hardware store. |
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Overdrive
I just realized I haven't posted something in four whole days, which I think is a record for me (excluding the summer vacation between my two years of teaching). Our life has been really crazy lately with the new condo and our upcoming move (which is tomorrow morning!), so here's a brief summary:
We knew we wanted to rip up and replace the old carpet in the condo, since it was thirty years old and full of all sorts of mysterious stains and sticky spots and holes and other reminders of everyone who had lived on it for the past three decades. We also knew that we wanted to do this before moving all our furniture and possessions in, both to make our lives easier and also because the floor-installing people charge you an extra furniture-moving fee that we wanted to avoid. Unfortunately, we had to wait until this past week to start the whole re-flooring process, because for the week and a half prior the condo was being abated (did you know they used to make popcorn ceilings out of asbestos??) so obviously no one could go in then.
Long story short, in order for all our complicated reflooring plans to be possible, we had to drive to the floor store first thing Friday morning to sign a contract, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to get it done before we moved. I also had a Very Important Meeting at work Friday morning at 9:30, but since the floor store opened at 8:00 and is only 20 minutes away I thought we would be fine. Anyways, it was my first time driving in Philadelphia, which combined with my notoriously bad sense of direction and really intense fog that prevented our GPS from working resulted in us somehow ending up in Camden, NJ - surprise! We spent 45 increasingly frantic minutes trying to figure out how to get back to Philadelphia and the floor store, and when we finally made it there (at 9:10) I sat in the parking lot and cried from the combination of all my least favorite things: driving, being late, and general uncertainty. Ben very helpfully yelled at me to calm down and stop crying, which I eventually managed to do despite his efforts. Of course, the flooring situation is fine and I'm not fired, so all my catastrophizing was completely unnecessary, as usual.
My lovely mother drove up to help us paint over the weekend, and the three of us spent all day Saturday and Sunday painting at the new place and all night packing up the old one, which felt productive but is not a relaxing way to spend the weekend. Then yesterday and today was the annual staff retreat at work, which was awesome in that it was at the Adventure Aquarium (back in Camden, but this time on purpose) and we got to wander around and look at hippopotami during the breaks between sessions, but was also terrible timing in that it meant that for the two days of the year where I would have really liked to be able to leave early to take care of other things (letting in the floor people, talking to the movers, packing...) I couldn't. Oh well, at least I got to see a bunch of crazy-looking jellyfishes.
Anyway, the floor people allegedly finished today, but I won't see it until tomorrow when we move. For now it's back to packing, packing, packing, but this time tomorrow we should be officially all the way in our new home! Once I figure out where I packed the camera, I will take pictures to demonstrate how it is no longer a dark brown cave of ratty carpeting!
We knew we wanted to rip up and replace the old carpet in the condo, since it was thirty years old and full of all sorts of mysterious stains and sticky spots and holes and other reminders of everyone who had lived on it for the past three decades. We also knew that we wanted to do this before moving all our furniture and possessions in, both to make our lives easier and also because the floor-installing people charge you an extra furniture-moving fee that we wanted to avoid. Unfortunately, we had to wait until this past week to start the whole re-flooring process, because for the week and a half prior the condo was being abated (did you know they used to make popcorn ceilings out of asbestos??) so obviously no one could go in then.
Long story short, in order for all our complicated reflooring plans to be possible, we had to drive to the floor store first thing Friday morning to sign a contract, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to get it done before we moved. I also had a Very Important Meeting at work Friday morning at 9:30, but since the floor store opened at 8:00 and is only 20 minutes away I thought we would be fine. Anyways, it was my first time driving in Philadelphia, which combined with my notoriously bad sense of direction and really intense fog that prevented our GPS from working resulted in us somehow ending up in Camden, NJ - surprise! We spent 45 increasingly frantic minutes trying to figure out how to get back to Philadelphia and the floor store, and when we finally made it there (at 9:10) I sat in the parking lot and cried from the combination of all my least favorite things: driving, being late, and general uncertainty. Ben very helpfully yelled at me to calm down and stop crying, which I eventually managed to do despite his efforts. Of course, the flooring situation is fine and I'm not fired, so all my catastrophizing was completely unnecessary, as usual.
My lovely mother drove up to help us paint over the weekend, and the three of us spent all day Saturday and Sunday painting at the new place and all night packing up the old one, which felt productive but is not a relaxing way to spend the weekend. Then yesterday and today was the annual staff retreat at work, which was awesome in that it was at the Adventure Aquarium (back in Camden, but this time on purpose) and we got to wander around and look at hippopotami during the breaks between sessions, but was also terrible timing in that it meant that for the two days of the year where I would have really liked to be able to leave early to take care of other things (letting in the floor people, talking to the movers, packing...) I couldn't. Oh well, at least I got to see a bunch of crazy-looking jellyfishes.
Anyway, the floor people allegedly finished today, but I won't see it until tomorrow when we move. For now it's back to packing, packing, packing, but this time tomorrow we should be officially all the way in our new home! Once I figure out where I packed the camera, I will take pictures to demonstrate how it is no longer a dark brown cave of ratty carpeting!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
New School Year
Today was the first day of school for the School District of Philadelphia, and my usually serene morning commute was overrun by shrieking teenagers and their blasting iPods. All summer long I had been feeling like my new job was only a temporary gig and come fall I'd be back in my classroom as usual, but seeing all those kids going to school (and not even having realized in advance when school started) finally cemented that I am no longer a teacher. For the first time in nineteen years of being a student and then a teacher, I don't have a first day of school to look forward to and/or dread. For some reason, this makes me feel more adult than buying the condo did.
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