Best for last

I took a break from the albums project due to forgetfulness more than anything. Although the week before father's day, when I stayed up until 3am one weeknight creating a scrapbook to give to my dad, I plowed through plenty of albums. I am totally over Chris Isaak, I'll tell you that much. I know this will sound blasphemous to some, but I'm saying it anyway. I used to love him so, so, so much. And now, just not so much. Now he sounds whiny to me. It kind of makes me sad to have come to this realization because I remember how much I used to savor him. And it also makes me sad because I shelled out so much dough on his albums. Oh well. More room on my iPod for new stuff.

Here are some things that are delicious that I did not previously eat:

- 3 blueberries speared on a fork and swept through a little Cool Whip
- Laughing Cow cheese spread on Wasa crackers (okay, calling that delicious is going a little far, but it's not as bad as I would have thought, by any means)
- carrot sticks. Yes, I had eaten carrot sticks before, but not very often and I kept forgetting how good they are. I need to specify that baby carrots are gross. I'm talking about big carrots cut into smaller pieces or even just one big carrot, gnawed on, bunny-style. (That sounds dirty.)
- turkey pastrami

This is by no means the least important thing I have to tell you. I don't know why I saved it for last. This morning we discovered cat pee coming through our ceiling from the condo above us. How fun is that? Not very fun at all! Booie was howling and she tracked it around before we realized what was going on. Then we thought she had made the puddle we saw on the floor. And then Jeff spotted yellow droplets way up by the ceiling on the heating pipes. I am just thankful that a) Booie didn't do it and b) that Booie does not have another UTI and c) if repairs need to be made, we will not be responsible for paying for them. Otherwise, I am enjoying telling people about this and seeing their reaction. And I'm not going to worry at this time about what our apartment may smell like come winter if it is not properly cleaned up. There is very likely cat pee inside our walls.

Remembering with food

A sizable little crowd came over on Memorial Day, including four kids and a dog. The following items were grilled: hotdogs, veggie dogs of various flavors, Bratwursts, veggie patties of various flavors, turkey burger sliders and hamburger sliders, corn on the cob, onion slices, sauerkraut (on a piece of tin foil).

I decided to do sliders because the problem at BBQs is often that I want to try different things, but one burger fills me all the way up. My dad advised cooking them over a high flame (not that we are skilled enough in the grilling arts to control the flame or the height thereof), but I attempted to follow his advice.

My mom advised adding to the turkey burgers: mayo, finely chopped onion, and herbs. I added oregano and parsley flakes. She warned me that turkey burgers are bland, but I have to say that with her additions, they were delicious. Cheddar cheese and mustard help, too.

Our guests seemed impressed by the fact that I had made the burgers "by hand," ie, not bought the pre-formed disks. My dad makes the best burgers, hands down, and he makes them by hand, so I feel that is the only way to go if you're serious about burgers. To the hamburgers, he adds Worsestershire (or however you spell it), lemon juice, salt and pepper. I forgot the lemon juice this time, but it is a good thing to add.

We were a wee bit pressed for time before this party, as we often are before our parties, so some things got left by the wayside that we should have done, such as cutting up a pineapple and cutting the grass. I hope no one got any ticks or anything.

Know-nothing

We've had two bamboo shades for five years. I bought them early on in Hoboken, but they were not dark enough for our bedroom, said Jeff. So, under the bed they went. They transferred nicely to under the bed in our new place.

We've lived here 8 months now, so I figured it was high time I hung a shade or two. I located the electric drill and the box of drill bits. That was after locating another box of ratchety things. After examining them I determined that they were not drill bits nor were they for use with the drill. This was not readily apparent to me.

I could not figure out how to get a bit into the drill. I called my dad; no answer. So, I asked an upstairs neighbor. He wasn't sure either, but some sixth sense told him to twist and sure enough, that was the trick.

"I feel so handy now!" he said. Ha. The tenant between him and us has piles of tile in front of his apartment door. He moved in 3 months ago and he's already re-doing the tile. Show off. I'm glad I asked the top floor neighbor. Handy neighbor probably would have laughed at me.

I successfully hung one bamboo shade in the kitchen and then stood back to admire my work. I lowered and raised the shade.

Whew. That's enough work for today.

Honeymoon is over.

We lived here for 6 months before anyone moved in above us. We were spoiled. We were cushioned from noise of any kind. Our only neighbors were two floors up and no one was below us. It was incredibly quiet.

Now we have neighbors directly above us. They test the pocket doors constantly. Do they still open? Yep. Do they still close? Yep. They clomp around in boots. They talk. Oh my god, the talking. It's a constant hum. This is a problem because they aren't yelling, they're just talking.

When we do sell this place, we're going to have to ask them to be very, very quiet, or else no one is going to buy our apartment. I wouldn't, if I heard how thin the walls actually are. I thought they used to make walls so thick! Anyway, now I understand about the rule they have in apartment buildings about putting down rugs in 80% of the apartment or whatever.

Would it be out of bounds for us to say, "let's all agree to take off our shoes at home"? I think not. I'm not saying there needs to be a rug rule, because the hard wood is nice to look at. And we don't have any yet.

But the 4th floor peeps have a big rug in each room and they don't wear their shoes inside, so 3rd floor peeps probably don't realize how loud it could be.

Jeff is watching a concert on TV of a band called Metric. Their sound is okay. But I'm guessing that a lot of their appeal comes from the skinny lead singer wearing a short white dress and no bra.

Sinking into a hole of homeownership woes

The shady handy-man who has no license is in our basement. The plan was for him to install a thing to keep sewage from backing up into our basement. A $2100 job, split between the four units. No big deal.

Now there's a well dug in our basement floor. And the handy guy tells us that our sewage pipe is old and cracked. Okay fine, so another $2200 split 4 ways to put a liner inside that.

Now he has just informed us that there is a sinkhole underneath the tree in front of our building. And basically, our sewage has been draining into an underground cavern for god knows how long. Which would explain why our basement smells like shit every time it rains.

So, we wait to hear what the city will pay for. Living in the most corrupt city on the eastern seaboard is perhaps going to cause us some grief in the very near future.