supercheesegirl

yeah, so i'm feeling better about prety much everything now than i was on wednesday. first of all i feel better--i haven't kicked the cold yet but hopefully i will soon. it's to the point now where i don't really feel too sick except for the cough. which, yes, is fairly horrid, especially late at night or first thing in the morning, but at least i'm not "feeling sick" all day.

last night i made chicken caesar wraps again, this time enough for dylan and dann too. i would've made for jorn, but i took the three-chicken-breast packet out of the freezer rather than the four-breast packet, thinking i would only be making one for myself, but then all the guys were like, hey i'll have one too! and i didn't have enough to make one for jorn. he had an elio's pizza instead. the chicken was pretty good but i think i cooked it a bit too long--for next time, i should remember that it only needs to be lightly browned.

i finished Stephen Dobyns' "The Church of Dead Girls" last night. hella good. i'm doing pretty well at my plan to read all the books i have that i haven't read yet. probably the plan is working because i haven't gone anywhere and bought any new fantasy novels. i only had one new one last week because jorn found it at work and was told to keep it ("Fortress in the Eye of Time", by C. Cherryh - it was pretty good, good enough for me to be all sucked in to it and now to want the sequel, which is now on my amazon wish list). i picked out several good books from the To Read shelf that i'm taking with me on my trip this weekend to read at the airport and on the plane.

speaking of. i got most of the clothes together that i want to bring with me, and wrote a note on the marker board to remind myself of some other things to pack. i'm really looking forward to it now. i just can't forget to pack my motion sickness pills. i hope i've got some Vomex left.

and susanna's party tonight should be really fun.

finally, i should mention that i have the best boyfriend in the whole world. he's been so sweet and so good to me lately with me being all stressed & depressed, and since he's not working right now he offered to take my car to get inspected. he'll be doing that today, and it's definitely one of the nicest things anyone's done for me. a major weight off my mind. love you, baby.

so the people at work are really sweet. marlene gave me a graduation card today, signed by like everyone in our department (even some people i haven't met yet). i totally didn't see her sneaking around with it, and she must've been doing the sneaking for a while--people signed the card that have been on vacation for several days. how thoughtful. i was very touched. it really isn't a bad job. and i feel like it's getting better, the better i get at knowing my way around the company systems.

in other news, the grey sky totally opened up at 4:02 pm today just as jorn was getting into my car. and it kept raining until around 7pm, when it was too late to move the rest of his stuff to the storage unit. this really blows. now instead of going in to work for the morning and making some actual money, we both have to take the morning off to finish the moving. we were taking the afternoon for my graduation anyway, so now that makes a whole day we're each missing. between us, that's a potential $164.70 before taxes. not that i'm complaining about taking off for graduation; there's some things that are more important than money. though why uncg holds its graduation on a *friday* is totally beyond me. besides which, the actual cap-n-gown graduation ceremony (which i'm skipping) is friday *morning*--how lame is that? i've been to graduations, even graduations at state schools, on friday nights, saturday mornings, saturday afternoons, and sunday afternoons, but who ever heard of a friday morning? it's another "wdp, greensboro?" moment.

i hope there's no tornadoes in tennessee tomorrow.

here's a question. you're cleaning. your partner is not; s/he is checking email or reading or something. do you a) finish the task on your own, b) finish the task on your own, then go on to another task and then another while waiting for your partner to notice and help, or c) just ask your partner to stop what they're doing and help you?

i bet y'all can guess what my answer is. i was thinking about this tonight as i read the paper and clipped the coupons and did the dishes and gathered up the recycling and took it outside, and i can see that i'm totally turning into my mother. it's just like her to do all this cleaning/cooking/whatever and *expect* you to help and not actually ask you to help or even tell you she was doing the work, and then get grumpy at you for not helping while professing to really not mind. this has driven me crazy for years; how was i supposed to know that it was my job to peel the potatoes when she never told me the potatoes needed to be peeled, even when i shouted from my comfy position on the couch to see if she needed help? and i can totally see myself doing this to jorn in the future. but it feels like it would be nagging to actually ask for help. the obvious solution is for jorn to become more observant. not for me to be less of a psycho. oh, no, not at all.

18 Skeevy Things About Jorn's Apartment (a list by Roxanne)

18. His neighbors include a houseful of Mexicans who like to listen to extremely loud mariachi music, a bunch of possible drug dealers, a pothead (who does seem nice enough), and two guys who remodel their apartment at 9am on saturday mornings without warning the folks downstairs ahead of time.
17. Of the potential drug dealers, the ones cattycorner to Jorn's house sit on their porch all afternoon and evening and converse with women. Another sits on his porch and plays random loud notes on his electric guitar, which seems to be the signal that he's open for business.
16. I could have listed as a neighbor the handyman for the building, but he says he has a residence elsewhere. That doesn't stop him from spending most of his time (as far as I can tell) in the unfinished basement of the house. He also has been painting the vestibule of the house for almost as long as Jorn has lived there, and it's still not finished.
15. Often women of questionable virtue sit on Jorn's back steps waiting for the aforementioned handyman.
14. Another house in the neighborhood is home (or was last year) to people who bred pitbulls. Did you know a pitbull mother who has puppies becomes very protective of them, to the point of running into a street to attack helpless passersby?
13. The nieghborhood ice cream man is a middle eastern guy driving an unmarked *red* van. He dispenses the ice cream out of a cooler in the back. One gets the feeling that if you knew the proper code names, you could order something other than ice cream.
12. On Halloween, one small group of children (uncostumed, no less) took an entire bag of candy Jorn had purchased for trick or treaters when he kindly told them they didn't have to take just one.
11. When the power goes out, this is one of the last neighborhoods to get it turned back on. Jorn's lost the entire contents of his fridge and freezer twice since December.
10. Ladies of obvious ill repute are often dropped off or picked up on the street where Jorn lives, and sometimes they even knock on your door to ask the time.
9. The main door to the house does not lock (or even shut really well) so that anyone (crackheads and prostitutes included) can enter the vestibule.
8. For quite some time, Jorn had a problem with fleas living in his pet-free apartment and biting his legs.
7. speaking of critters, squirrels (and possibly other things) live inside the walls. we hear them running around all the time.
6. Jorn's apartment did not have a shower when he first moved in. There was a bathtub, but no shower.
5. The bathroom also has no heat. There's a heater in the living room and one in the bedroom, but the kitchen and bathroom are heat-free. You shouldn't have to squat over the pot except in a truck stop, but sitting on that freezing cold toilet in winter is like torture.
4. Every time it rains, the kitchen ceiling leaks. Though this has been going on for months and Jorn's landlord has promised to look into it, nothing has been done.
3. Large pieces of the underside of the porch roof and of the back roof (the part over the kitchen) have fallen or are in the process of falling down, perhaps due to rot.
2. Jorn's bike was stolen off his front porch last fall by someone who cut his bike lock with wire cutters.
1. And, as all of you know, some crackhead broke into Jorn's apartment and stole stuff. This took place a week ago, and the landlord (who seems to have the best intentions) still hasn't shown any sign of getting the broken door properly fixed or of having a lock installed on the main door. Jorn now enters and exits the apartment via the kitchen door, and this method forces him to dislodge the lovely ladies who often wait for the handyman there.

just thought you could use a list. start calling those storage places, baby.

can i just say that i really, really like fondue? like, a lot? jorn and i went to Teh Melting Pot for our anniversary last night, and it was a super-ymmuy experience. we're too cheap to get an actual main course, so we just had the cheese fondue for our dinner. our waiter was josh and he was really nice. we *loved* the cheese fondue. we dipped bread in it and apples in it, but not vegetables (although some were provided for our dipping pleasure). we had to request more bread and apples because we still had cheese left. i didn't like the apples in the fondue as much when we first started eating, but then it hit me how amazingly good it was--the warm gooey cheesiness of the fondue plus the crisp cool juicy tartness of the granny smith apple chunks. shit, i could write advertising copy for these people. anyway, it rocked.

and then we had dessert. we got the cookies & cream dream chocolate fondue. i was still pretty hungry at this point, but jorn professes to have been fairly filled up after the cheese course. so since i was still hungry, we got the size that supposedly serves 3-4 people, rather than the small which serves 1-2. we totally made the right choice. a big pot of simmering chocolate, and two platefuls of stuff to dip in it: strawberries, bananas, marshmellows, cheesecake, poundcake, and brownies. it was amazing. it was orgasmic. it was everything every dessert should be. oh. my. god. it was better than any food i ate on the cruise i took with my parents a few years back, and that's saying something. i love food. i love chocolate. it was great.

the rest of the night was really fun too. jorn surprised me by shaving off his beard (yay softness!), and then surprised me again at dinner by giving me a present--a necklace i had liked at a store we were at last weekend. i was mostly joking when i pointed it out to him (ie, i really liked it but totally wasn't expecting him to buy it), but he went back and got it! (as a point of reference, the last time jorn bought me jewelry was the worry ring amy and alyssa helped pick out--he gives me lots of other sweet and good and fun gifts, but rarely jewelry. so this was an unexpected event.) after dinner, we saw Daredevil, which i pretty much liked but jorn didn't think too much of (as he says in his post about our night out). after the movie, we went back to jorn's place and drank champagne, and after that's none of your beeswax.

it was a great night. we always have good anniversaries, but this one was really, really good. yay.