stripethree

So I have survived five months without the usually deemed ‘essential’ appliance known as a microwave. Weird huh? The last place had one built in to the kitchen and I just never bought one when I moved into this place. There’s really only a few times where I really could have used it too, so why bother spending the money? Maybe the next place will have one built in again, who knows. What’s the point of this thought? Well, while there are numerous things I know I miss and am dying to see again from the remainder of my belongings that will get back to me next month, but I wonder about all the stuff I’ve forgotten about and totally wouldn’t have used anyway in the last 8 months. I can’t even picture half of the stuff that’s packed away, I just see boxes and a mental question mark of ‘what the hell is in there?’. Maybe when I get some of it back I’ll be throwing out a lot of Craigslist for sale ads, who knows.

I am definitely going to move again in November but just somewhere else in Tucson (sorry Maryland folks if I got your hopes up…). This place is nice, but I keep seeing 2 bedroom townhouses in the area for about the same rent. This equals a real ‘office’ for work, perhaps a car port with some room to get small car things done, and generally, a more comfortable place to live. Plus, I’m absolutely fed up with the construction across the street. Every weekday morning at around 6:00am, sometimes earlier, the ridiculous amount of noise starts. If it’s not the actual construction noise, it’s the music the workers are playing loud enough to hear across the street. Seriously. I want to go annoy the hell out of them at an inconvient hour everyday for a few months straight. Trucks are constantly parked or moving slowly across the stretch of road in spanning the two entrances to the complex and the road itself is just tore up. Knowing that this construction would continue through the entire time I’d be here through a year’s lease just doesn’t make me very fond of living here. So come November, a change of dwellings for the third time this year. This also leads to a tentative goal for ’08: no relocating, enough is enough!

Llama is in the midst of perfecting the habit of stealing bottle caps; Nantucket Nectars juice bottles, Powerades, whatever he can get his little paws on that I leave sitting unattended on an end table. He’s actually become quite good at it, grabbing them when I’m not looking and scurrying off to hide them somewhere. If I don’t notice and immediately give chase, he just parades around the place with his prize in his mouth, basking in the success of his thievery. Sometimes he even climbs onto the coffee table and stares at me, flaunting his conquest, until I appear to try and get the object back at which point he scampers off with it. It pretty entertaining, as long as he doesn’t get in the habit of stealing or destroying anything of any value, like, oh, say, a pair of iPod headphones (yeaaaaaaaaah… my own fault for leaving them out).

Myself, Summer, and what appeared to be half of Tucson went to the Beer Festival last weekend, which was fantastic. Pay your $40, get a 6oz plastic cup, and off you go. Roam from tent to tent filling said cup to your hearts content with beer and the occasional, quite delicious, twisted iced tea with lemonade. There was also tons of food that we sampled from the generic stadium hot dogs to various pies, appetizer samplers from BJ’s, pizza, surprisingly spicy seafood salsa, overly salted sirloin steak and… I honestly don’t remember what else. Definitely worth the price of admission, I know that Summer, myself, and each of the friends we went with downed enough beer to well surpass $40 at any nearby bar. Next weekend: Oktoberfest!

Lastly, is that the last quarter of this year is going to be filled with travel, travel, travel! My parents get into town this weekend and we will be going to Sedona and the Grand Canyon at the end of next week, it should be a lot of fun. It’s been fun just to gather recommendations up for things for them to see or do around here. Then next month I’m making the trip to California I alluded to earlier in this post, to pack up my stuff and get it back to Tucson. November and December I’ll be back in Maryland for the holidays, the 21-28 and 23-28 respectively. I’ve always been the one picking up people at the airports on horrible holiday travel days but this time, this time I get to see how bad it will be all for myself! It sucks that I am traveling the day before each holiday, but plane tickets aren’t cheap (especially three roundtrips) so the dates were dictated as much by cost as they were by convenience.