I've had quite a few issues with my current apartment (free fungi is a good example), so in about twelve days, I will be moving yet again to another apartment - same state, city and community - just on a different street.

Reasons this is good:
1.) Hardwood floors, which I greatly prefer.
2.) Better light.
3.) Apartment is not partially set into a berm, therefore, I will see fewer bugs.
3a.) Apartment is farther away from the dumpsters, therefore, I will have fewer encounters with mice and their ... evidence.
4.) Apartment has a secure mailbox in the expected place (mine does not), therefore, I will actually receive my mail regularly.
5.) My rent will go down by about $90.
6.) This section of the community is not slated to be torn down, so I won't have to move again in a year's time. I can just renew my lease and relax.
7.) The building is set far enough away from the highway and the train tracks, so I can't really hear either.

Reasons this is bad:
1.) Oh my GOD, the closets in this apartment are amazing. AMAZING I TELL YOU. I will simply have to relearn how to creatively pack things.

I think the incentive to move is obvious.

I will have three days to transfer my stuff across a couple of divided highways (three lanes in each direction). I am still trying to figure out how, exactly, I plan on doing this. I have no problem with making thousands of trips for the small things, but getting the furniture over puzzles me exceedingly. I may be calling a few of you up and hoping for a scheduling miracle.

As if to underscore why I am moving, I captured my first mouse tonight.

_rosiel_ and I had noticed evidence of mice when I first moved in, back in August. I called up the main office. They sent a fellow out, who blocked up holes behind the stove. I also received a large number of sticky traps from him, which I placed in various corners of the apartment. (It looks tacky, but they help.) Up until today, I had only succeeded in stopping fat crickets, spiders and other minute buggies (oddly enough, not the centipedes ... they seemed to be smarter). As I was putzing around after dinner, I decided to thin out my books a little so I'd have fewer to move (again). I stepped towards a pile kept on a shelf in the dining area. It took me a second to realize that the sticky trap wasn't where I put it. In fact, there was something on it, something ... large. I turned on the light, and lo, there was Jerry, completely and utterly stuck.

Now, many of you know I have a fondness for some of the little dudes in this world (the ones who do not bite, harass, or otherwise gross me out). I save any earthworms I find on the sidewalk or pavement, for example (as a small child I once took on a construction company for their sake). My mother has spent years attempting to convince me that I bear no personal responsibility for saving the world, that one less earthworm or drop of water in the drain is not going to be the End of All Things. Her efforts haven't worked so far.

It moved. I shrieked. I wasn't expecting to actually see a rodent, much less see it attempt to free itself. The "OMG SAVE THE POOR SMALL THINGS" reflex immediately kicked in, and I had to phone home before I was able to take the sticky trap and its occupant out to the dumpster. I still wanted to find a way to pry it loose, but I knew I would probably kill the mouse with such efforts, and it might bite me for my troubles anyway. I tossed it in. I hope that it is dead by now.

Perhaps this is karma paying back for some group of mice building a nest in my car's air filter.

Mice: 1
Anne: 1

I never experienced mice making a home out of my vehicle's innards before, even though it has been parked outside for years. My theory is this: in Pittsburgh, I lived relatively close to a neighborhood that lost its money in the race to the suburbs, and it hasn't recovered since. The location is known to have a large population of feral cats ...

2009 feels like I'm being forced to swim in vomit.





I can't figure out how so much shit is happening. Am I inviting it? This is the kind of stuff that happens whether you are thinking positive or not.

I was going to write an entry, but I think I'll gorge myself on spaghetti instead.

Gotta get up tomorrow.

I haven't seen anyone buy this yet.

( two more under the cut )

The mushrooms on the ceiling are back.

Anne's locally grown, organic mushroom farm: it's toxically tasty!

I think I have vastly underestimated the amount of stuff that I have accumulated.



By popular request, this is what happens when you try to box stuff up ... in a studio apartment. Sadly, I'm not done yet.

Also, I am apparently reverting back to childhood habits. Some of you may know that when I was a little kid, I had a soap collection, mostly because the stuff smelled good, it looked nice, it felt awesome and was easy to store. The grocery store closest to me is full of "organic" and "environmentally friendly" items, most of which I ignore, because corn + chemicals are cheaper. They had a table set up on which they were displaying at least ten types of organic, vegan handmade soaps. Normally I would ignore this, too. But ... it was soap. It was pretty. It smelled nice. Not only did they have it cut up in thick slices, they had the full, uncut round gigantic molds of soap. It was so viscerally appealing, I had to touch it. I was doomed. By the time I left, not only had I found the environmentally disastrous plastic bowls I sought, I had spent six dollars on two chunks of organic, vegan handmade soap. What just happened? It was like a soap trance state ...

... I move in four days. I think this calls for an OMG!

One of the things that has made me deeply passionate about Pittsburgh, no matter what anybody else seems to think of the place, is its peculiar housing stock - it has an astonishing number of structures and homes that predate the first World War. The city reached its zenith with World War 2 and its subsequent housing boom, but when steel began its legendary decline and collapsed, so too did the metropolitan population. There was no want or need to bulldoze houses for reconstruction (an exception being made for the monstrous high rises created to house the urban poor in East Liberty and the city's now major vehicle arteries), and in many cases, I suspect, no money. Though Pittsburgh has since gotten up off its knees (President Obama is holding the G20 conference here this year, can you believe it?), its economic outlook has remained relatively stable. It experienced very little of the large housing boom/bust that the nation is still feeling. It has gotten worse with the economy, but not that much worse - and certainly nothing worse than it has been through before. The need to demolish and rebuild structures seems to remain fairly low here, and most old houses are gotten rid of demolition-by-neglect style.

Pittsburgh's Uptown/Soho/Bluff and Hill District neighborhoods, which border the city on the east (the only direction not cut by a river), are a prime example. Though similar in style to Philadelphia's Center City rowhouses, they will have a hard time finding a matching revival. The rowhouses are showing the signs of decades of neglect. Much has been flat out leveled for the building of the Mellon Arena in 1961 (reportedly displacing approximately 1k + people, but probably more, since the neighborhood wealth moved out long ago), and now the new hockey stadium/center/monstrosity has taken out still additional sections, because we certainly can't ask the Champions and Oldest of the NHL to play elsewhere for a couple of years. There is a part of me that knows that the Penguins are a fantastic money-making franchise right about now, and the city needs the money and the tourists badly (why else did they put in a damn casino next to the Science Center?). Their popularity in Pittsburgh and elsewhere certainly helps the new stadium ride out the local resentment. There is another, darker part of me that thinks officials are, decade by decade, slowly demolishing the neighborhood just because they can't figure out why it never seems to get better. (Here's an entry I wrote in 2007 with images about a disappearing street, which looks worse now, by the way.)

In terms of land use and buildings, I think Pittsburgh is still dealing with the loss of over half its population and the sudden availability of riverfront property due to the collapse of steel and related works. The 1960s notions of suburban "growth" and "car accessibility" have only gotten it further confused, resulting in the county jail being located on prime property with a water view, and the striking highways lining downtown. (Some soar and obstruct the view, some are in the way on average level and some are placed deep into the ground, so they flood on occasion.) These prevent human access to the scenic bluffs or the river on much of the city's border, and also give downtown something of a "boxed in" feeling. At least one of these roadways passes uncomfortably close to residences ... a sidewalk, a barricade, then four lanes of automobile traffic. (Image from Google Streetview). Is it no wonder that no one really wants to live there and will pay good money to do it? Folks seem to be there simply because they've always been there, the family has a history there, there are social connections there, or they just can't afford to go elsewhere.

With all this, and with the fact that much of the city's past center rehabilitation policies have been "build office buildings downtown," it is no wonder that downtown Pittsburgh is dead after people leave work. There are few folks in what remains of the physically connected neighborhoods to walk there. Aside from the Cultural District and a handful of restaurants, there is not much to do but work. It probably does not help that many policies (see: Fifth Avenue corridor) are consistently of a one track mind, harping on one notion rather than embracing a multitude of uses. People seem to have realized that there is now a glut of office space, so that era is over. They now see that the popularity of "green living" and walkability is growing, so the new miracle cure is building condos and expensive apartments.

Believe it or not, there is public interest (especially in the Cultural District area) in living downtown. The idea of a center that is more than that in physical position is a deep desire in many people. I continue to feel, however, that the high starting income levels (I could not afford to live there with my Pittsburgh paycheck), the lack of a grocery store and other necessities, and a struggling, depopulated area on the one side of the city not bordered by water pose great barriers to this effort. (Re: high starting income levels, I realize that there are many causes that play into the total, including but not limited to the cost of construction/rehabilitation, taxes, so on and so forth ... ... yet the consistent advertisements depicting young, fantastically attractive, upper-crust twenty-somethings seem to indicate that the sellers are quite all right with the fact that not just anybody can live there. Given that it seems many other previously converted buildings downtown are Section 8 apartments, and ne'er the two shall meet, it seems that economic segregation is alive and well, and people who are neither just have to go elsewhere. Don't get me started on cheap, but amazingly decrepit, student housing.)

Housing, of course, is deeply influenced by the society which creates it. When much of immigration came from the nations of Europe, the type of buildings they chose reflected the way they were used to living. Before steel, when walls were limited by the practical width and limited height in buildings, "making the most" of the land did not mean up, it meant denser. Over the years, as the "culture" congealed into something more "American" and bound together by American English, becoming less grouped by nation of origin, the yards seem to grow bigger. The expansive, confident urban planning of the 1960s created a yard with a separation of "public" and "private" space and the suburban sprawl we are now so familiar with. We once competed to build the tallest skyscrapers around, and now that they are so prevalent in cities, is it surprising at all that "making the most" of the land is now done by building up? It is no wonder why many of D.C.'s residents are housed in high rise buildings while average Pittsburgh clocks in at 10 stories or less.

It's probably apparent by now that I am fascinated with the gradual change over time that cities experience, and am absorbed by the shift in cultural values that our homes depict. Pittsburgh is fantastic for this kind of observation. One reason (out of many) suburbs depress the bejeesus out of me is because their history has, relatively speaking, only just begun (very literally, in many cases), and thus I have less of a time span to take interest in. There is only the "built" and the "now," and I'm not so fond of the car-adapted "now."

p.s., I finally found out about the dinosaurs on the 10th Street Bridge. Apparently, the artist considers them to be geese.

p.p.s., I haven't fact-checked myself here, just wrote as it came along. There are probably affordable apartments downtown. Somewhere. Maybe. Do we have high rise apartment buildings and I just missed 'em?

p.p.s.s., if anyone actually reads all this jumble and responds, I will be amazed, I tell you.

I don't know if you remember, but I sure do: about a year ago, I swore that the next costume I made, I would be proud of from head to toe, front to back.

THIS IS NOT THAT COSTUME.

This costume is about a step up from duct tape. Everything was quite nearly a disaster (and some things were beyond so), but ngmaster managed to make the pictures come out pretty freaking awesome anyway.

The day pretty much went as such:

Me: OMG WTF NO
ngmaster: It's okay.
Me: OMG WTF I KNOW THAT BUT IT'S NOT BECAUSE I CAN'T GET THIS ON MY GIGANTIC HEAD
ngmaster: Don't worry about it.
Me: OMG WTF. THIS IS TERRIBLE.
Both: We'll do a shoot as Robin with her hair down. BRILLIANT.
- the shoot occurs -
ngmaster: I told you not to worry.
Me: OMG WTF I KNOW BUT ... POST PICTURES SOON DAMMIT I SUSPECT THEY MAY BE COOL.



( more rockin' robin photos )

p.s. the wig and extensions I bought are still not here.

I'm not exactly thrilled with these, but I'm not horrified either.

( out of eighty, few )

Summary: I visited kurthy133. I shocked her by getting cityfolk to actually say hello. I love food. I'm only half as lost as I think I am. The cake was only four inches tall this time, but it was still good.

People often think I am more than a little crazy to move in a direction where the cost of living is so much higher than the Midwest, but the East Coast has something in it that draws me near; it is an attraction that exists only once in the Midwest for me, as Lake Michigan. It is a little strange that I find myself attached to the earthiness of a place. I am not a "nature person" by any means. I generally prefer exposure in controlled doses, minus mosquitoes, where I can find some place comfy and with food afterward.

( one more )

I love the folded, layered rocks of this state. There is nothing like this in the Midwest, though we once had some icicles hanging off our house eaves that came close. I have been eying the area where this formation occurs for two winters now. I took these shots in color, but I barely made it there while the sun was still up, and so the photos felt like nothing special. I switched them to black and white, which improved them somewhat.

Unfortunately, I can think of no way to get either detailed photos or one of the entire ice area. It is located on a narrow, twisted road and it forms one side of a blind curve. I cannot take more than five steps to either side of where I stood, for the "driveway" was actually a bridge crossing a small creek that runs through the valley, and there is no shoulder on either side to speak of. The risk of getting smashed flat is just too great.

Reading knowledge of one foreign language upon entry.

Errr, I need to be able to read Japanese by January 15th. Any suggestions?

I worked at Michael's last night (permanent part time, check! Pass evaluation with flying colors, check! Get 25 cent raise, check!). I noticed a young man repeatedly looking at me from the door, which is a fair distance. Being nearsighted, I couldn't tell who he was, but I didn't spend much time pondering it. Now, when I moved here from the Hoosier Homeland, I fully expected to leave most of high school behind me. So it is no surprise that I was absolutely floored when said person came over to the register and turned out to be someone I went to high school with, and still more amazed that he lives - you guessed it - here. In fact, he lives a stone's throw from my neighborhood. We exchanged emails.

The problem ...? I can't remember his name!

...

Lately I've been on a D. Gray-Man kick. Volume 12 of the Viz release was supposed to be out in January, so I hopped on over to the bookstore on the 3rd or so, only to find that it wasn't there at the beginning of the month like it usually is. It didn't show up until around the 30th. I guess "January 2009" does mean the whole month ...

I was horrified to discover that the next installment is due in April. How ... how could I wait that long? There was no way! Unable to accept such a delay, I found a scanlation and spent most of today ignoring the Superbowl catching up. I gotta say, I'm fangirling hard for Kanda right now (if he dies ... ack! Can't think about it!). I didn't like him at first (standard cranky samurai guy?), but he grew on me ... I have a soft spot for characters who always come through. And my oh my, he just gets hotter with every passing page, which doesn't hurt!

There are two downsides to D.Gray-Man, as far as I'm concerned. The quality of the art varies greatly at times, but what's worse is that the dang series is on hiatus!

Surprisingly, changing medication has helped a good deal for general day to day living (I hope this lasts). I don't feel continually bone tired and fall over exhausted (I really hope this lasts). My mother also says I sound better and more confident, although I'll have to take her word on that one, as I seem to be utterly incapable of hearing the tone of my own voice. I feel "okay" now, except for when I think about what I want to do/upcoming months/job searching. Then I get the feeling that I am totally, utterly and completely screwed, and I have no idea how to make it any better. Oh God, oh God, not enough money, oh God, stupid bleeping economy, oh God, I can't wait, I can't wait. There may be a shut window ahead of me, but I have to keep on flying to somewhere.

Sometimes I wonder if it's normal that I'm actually happy to see it snow.

And now, doodles!



I'm glad I know the little demented things in the world.

( a couple of outfit doodles as well )

Were you waiting? Room through room, breathing, never speaking. We play with glances, with pace, the sound of your steps, my movement in the next room. We slowly dance through old Italian art, golden through age. I was waiting.

She asked me about goals I had, those vague constructs or hopes known as "long term." Did I want to be married? No. Have kids? No. Then ... what?

Beyond taking care of immediate tasks, I've never really had anything specific planned out for myself. For many years, I never thought that I would make it "this far," though the reasons for that varied. Sixteen once seemed so far away! I never thought I would manage to live this long. When did I make it here? At times, all I wanted was just to get to the "next step" ... get to college. Get out of college. Get out of the Midwest.

In the end, about all I really want in life is a historic home, a cat, a job that doesn't mentally hurt and money enough to keep this small sanctuary stable. Beyond that, I go into extremely vague things, like "being alive is nice," or "I'd like to travel more," or things that aren't really goals, such as "I want to have lots of books."

In terms of occupation, I have been long confused.

I was raised as one of the best and the brightest. It was not uncommon for my classmates and I to hear that we were the best students that had come along in years. Now, nobody cares whether I'm brilliant or not, and I have had to adjust my expectations of how the world should treat me. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I am average in many ways. Sometimes I still feel guilty that I am somehow not/no longer a "young leader," or the hopeful embodiment of the "future," instead, I am just another human being with small aims. It took me longer still to accept that my degree, which was supposed to open so many doors to me, accomplished nothing. Yet I am still touchy about it, as a truth my supervisor delivered ("I'm better educated than you") struck deeper than it should.

I worked with the school paper and creative magazine in high school, and from that developed my original career goal: to get into publications. The newspaper industry was already crumbling, and it never quite seemed to stabilize, so over time, I began to hope for finding work with a printing company instead. From the beginning, I was well aware that I lacked the temperament necessary for freelance work, and since then, I have become increasingly pressured by a need for health insurance. I was good at graphic design and layout, or at least, I was better than my peers. I was, as I learned later, a "big fish" in a very small pond. Now, I continually question the value of my decision. There were other dreams in my heart by the end of college, so why did I stick with this one?

First and foremost, I was, and am, terrified of my lack of money.

I was not ready to continue immediately into graduate school. I was painfully depressed and probably emotionally stunted, although I had matured somewhat.

I was continually incensed by people saying to me, "when you get to the real world ...", as if the breath I had drawn up to then was merely play.

Though I could not articulate it at the time, I had no sense of identity other than as a student, and was desperate to prove to myself that I could do something other than "school," somehow showing that it did not define me.

So I made the choice because I wasn't ready for the next step, and without that resolve, I had no strength to face money, scholarships, and debt.

Lately, I've come to think that I am capable of doing many things. I have certainly survived Cave Inc. much longer than I thought I could. It just happens that for better or for worse, I function very well in an academic environment. The schedule suits, the people are more like me in both habit and mind, I am usually interested in what I am doing, and the results of my work are usually top-notch (unless I am depressed and contrary, i.e., first college research paper, which tanked spectacularly, especially because I had to present the damn thing). Having finally created a self that does not require a good grade for value, having finally begun to face my depression ... I am stronger now. Why should I be ashamed of going back to what I am good at? If it is my world, then it is real enough, for I am alive just as anyone else is.

I've heard a lot of hints (and flat out statements) over the years that I'm in the wrong line of work. Back in college, anyone who wanted to get a B.F.A. over a B.A. needed to pass an "examination" before the faculty. I mostly wanted the B.F.A. for the extra letter because I had ideas it would make me more competitive later on. The faculty, however, told me straight out that I should give up on it and go to school for art history, and write, for that was my true skill. I had recently written a paper on Hokusai, and the chair said something to the effect that after reading it, he was blown away. The B.F.A., he said, would only be a distraction.

And lately at work, where I have been training staff on the thinkpad computers, many people have told me that I should be a teacher. A customer at Michael's told me that I had the temperament for it. (This is, however, only true when I am not PMSing.) These comments are honest ones, not drawn out by me in any way.

While I think academia is probably in my future, I need to think further on where I'd like to take this. Would I like to teach, doing research/writing on the side? Or would I prefer to go through a program that allows me to indulge my love for art and yet gives me more practical skills, like preservation or something pertaining to museums?

I also do not know when this process may begin. Perhaps in the next couple of years? I should set some sort of timeline, for I have a feeling that I will always say to myself, "I need to earn more money first," since the costs of higher education are only going to increase. I must also admit I am mortally terrified of the GRE, and fret that I have been out of the system for so long, the system won't let me back into it. I don't want to do the "adult evening classes" route preferred by so many looking to achieve their Masters in Business Administration. I want to delve back in, all the way back in, if I can, and I want to stay lodged in there. The ironically illogical world of professors seems to be the only place my brain gets to work at full capacity. I used to want to be dumber, but now I see that I can only blunt the edge, not remove it entirely. It's better to find some place where I can use what I've got.

( ballpoint pen portrait )

Four days, done with a ballpoint pen taken from a hotel somewhere. Realization: I need a better table and lighting. Her hair got too dark too quickly, mostly because I was doodling while sitting on my bed. I was thus unable to support my arm properly, and wound up using heavier strokes rather than using light ones to build up layers of light and dark. Whoops. I debated going back and painting light in, but figured, if I'm going to take that sort of effort, I'm going to start a new, better doodle worthy of it! I do like her accidental throat tattoo, however, and might turn her into a repeat character of sorts. Perhaps.

...

In good news: my driver's side brake light works now!
In bad news: something they did while fixing the brake light messed up the Super Tomato's already temperamental hatch closure, and it now takes me about five minutes to get it to shut properly. Hrm ...
In amusing news: by gosh, my car really is held together with tape!

I went to Boston. I found a cake that was six inches tall. They called it "gigantic," but I called it "glorious."

( more Boston photos )