Accomplishing Escapism

I've been sleeping rather well, although I woke up this morning and my room felt like the Sahara.  All our radiators are on now, and leave a horrible whistling and dry heat in their wake.  The heat bothers me, and the noise upsets Dizzy like nothing else I've ever seen.  This morning he was making sad little distressed noises that were pretty much heartbreaking; I sat with him snuggled into my chest until I had to leave for work, which seemed to soothe him a bit.  He's currently hunkered down under my ear and into the crook of my neck.

I've been handed a project at work that is almost too big for me.  I'm calculating damages for an entire class, and the defense council demanded it today before they filed a motion to compel.  Suffice to say, I did not get it done; I had to take some of it home so I can hopefully get it done by the end of the week.  If they file today it won't go through until Friday, so hopefully it'll be done by then so my attorney can be like, "Here Judge, this is what they so doucheishly asked for, we have it right here."

I ate a caramel apple yesterday, and it tasted like autumn.  All the leaves are turning color and looking beautiful, and I can wear my awesome woolly slippers around the house.  I love fall.

Ikea was predictably awesome.  I procured a very nice glass shelving unit, to properly display my miniatures (and in doing so, hopefully get some more painting done on them), and also a duvet cover, pillow cases, and comforter for my bed.  I have always wanted one of the sets that stores have on display - the made bed with the eight hundred matching pillows and color-coordinated sheets - because they always look so PRETTY to me.  Well, now I have the beginnings of one, and if Ikea had had sheets with better thread counts I'd have matching sheets already as well.  But this is why God invented Target.

I'm playing in a War Machine tournament in two weeks, and my goal was to have all 500 points that I'm playing with painted by then.  I'm starting to doubt my ability to do this, because when it comes to painting figures I am SLOW.  I spent two hours or so on my caster and he's only up to about half done, and I'm not even sure I like how he's coming out.  If I really hate him when I finish I'll strip him after the tourney, but right now I've got enough to do.  I've got several pirates to finish, as well as one of my character solos and (I'm sure) there are bits of my jacks that need paint.  At least Billy is letting me borrow one unit, so I not only don't have to paint them but I didn't have to buy them yet.

/nerdery

Weirdly enough, the hanging-out dreams with ZQ continue.  Last night I think we were, like, sitting on a sofa reading with the t.v. on.  It's like my brain needs faux-relaxing time, and has decided it needs it with hot dudes.

(I'm totally ok with this)

The receptionist in my dad's office got fired yesterday, and the partners in his firm were apparently all "Is your daughter doing anything?  Because we like her.  She's friendly and stuff."  So all of a sudden I have a real job, in the real world, with a real salary and benefits and everything.  I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed about it, because even though this is exactly what I was looking for I sort of expected there to be an interview process and all of that, but I'm not looking this gift horse in the mouth.  I'm EXTREMELY lucky that this happened, and SO excited about actually having the money to do things like move out of my parents' house.

Which I'm fixing to do in the next month or so, I think.  My boyfriend lives in a three bedroom apartment, and two of his roommates are moving out, so I'm going to take one of the extra rooms (he has another friend who's taking the third room).  I think it will be a good arrangement.  It's something we've been talking about for a while, and I really like Anthony the other friend, and I think the three of us will co-habitate in a friendly fashion.  Plus his landlord is pet-friendly, so Dizzy can come too with no problems.

I'm keeping the job at Borders, at least for the short term.  I'll be working weekends until it taxes my sanity too much to continue - I didn't feel comfortable completely jumping ship, even though they haven't been the best about schedules and suchlike.  The extra money won't hurt, plus I like the work and the employee discount will always be awesome.

GenCon is this weekend, which I'm SUPER excited about - Privateer Press is releasing the new faction book for the new WarMachine army, and the rules for a battle team-based game called Malifluer will also be debuting, both of which I'm extremely interested in.  I am looking forward to being a complete and total nerd for a weekend.

Dizzy is doing wonderfully; my primary concern was that he wouldn't eat, and so far he's eaten everything I've put in his dish.  Favorites so far include blackberries, spinach, watermelon, and peaches.  Zucchini, carrots, and tomatoes, as well as the pellets he gets in the morning, are liked but not voraciously devoured like the fruit has been.  Today we're learning that the playgym (a little wooden structure with a ladder and a swing for him to play on while he's out of the cage) isn't nearly as scary as we thought on day one.

After some landlord tomfoolery, Irene and I have scheduled our apartment checkout for tomorrow, so I'll be in Iowa City for most of Friday.  If anyone wants to come help me move stuff, or say hi, they would be most welcome - haven't seen you guys in a while!

Not much else to report.  Dizzy is trying to hide in my ponytail right now, which is pretty cute - except for when he tugs on my hair.  That's less than cute.

I went to see two apartments yesterday with my supposed future roommates, and I learned two very valuable things: 

1. My budget concerns are Not The Same as theirs, and

2. They are both ready to move yesterday.

I'm frustrated, because I definitely talked to Rachel and made absolutely clear that the job I will be starting pays $8.25 an hour, and that my price range for rent was going to be between $300 and $400 a month.  One of the places we saw yesterday was $1900 and the other was $1800, neither of which included utilities - apparently Rachel never communicated my financial concerns to the third girl who's involved in all of this (a friend of Rachel's from work who I have met all of twice), and Natasha was looking for places starting at $1500 and moving way up from there.  When I mentioned my concerns Natasha got snippy, throwing out a "Wll, I didn't know we had such tight money restraints" etc.  Which pissed me off, because it's a valuable concern and even though I had thought Rachel and I were agreed on our price range, she obviously didn't tell Natasha.

The second concern I have is that I am simply not ready to move.  I've been home for just over a month, and the idea of rushing out of my parents' home is extremely stressful to me.  I don't intend to live here forever, but the timeline Rachel and I had discussed implied to me that we wouldn't actually be moving until sometime in the fall.  By then I would be ready - I'd have a bit of money saved up, I'd be acclimated to being in town, and so forth.  And now they're both ready to fork over the deposit for this place, and move in like next week, and I simply cannot do that.

I'm angry and a little hurt by the fact that I thought Rachel and I were on the same page, and we're obviously not.  The fact that I talked to her about my constraints and concerns, and the fact that they are being ignored, makes me feel like I'm a tagalong on this whole venture and that it's really about what THEY want (which is a little insulting because I was the one who first brought up the idea of living together with just Rachel, and Natasha is a last-minute addition). 

I'm not looking forward to the conversation I have to have with them today, because they were SO in love with the place we looked at.  But on top of the money and timeframe, it would land me with an hour commute to work, there aren't any grocery stores in the area and none of us has a car, and they don't allow pets, I have solid reasons why this is a bad choice for me.  I dropped the ball a bit when I didn't communicate this to them yesterday, but frankly I didn't want Natasha up in my face again after her shit-fit about my salary.  I'm going to tell Rachel that we're in vastly different places and that I think it would be better if the two of them looked for something to suit their needs, and I'll sit tight until October or November when I can do this without causing massive emotional and financial trouble for myself.  Which I think is frankly more than fair.