Much to our surprise, this turned out to be a really wonderful and productive weekend. At first Will and I both felt a little disappointed that we hadn’t been able to accomplish anywhere near everything we wanted to, but when we looked back on what we *had* done, we felt quite satisfied. Since it’s been awhile since I wrote, I’ll start with the major events of the past week.
On Wednesday I waited all day long for my packages to arrive, and after much teasing from the UPS truck, they finally came by at 5:30 PM. Excitedly, I unpacked the canvas frames and the roll of canvas, spilling packing peanuts all over the living room carpet. It took me nearly a half hour to clean it all up afterwards. I stretched two canvases that evening, which was a good start. I didn’t really want to do anymore since it was already getting late and the staple gun and hammer were making quite a bit of racket. (I’m still considerate to my neighbors.) At that point Will asked if I wanted to go with him to the Japanese bookstore so he could get a study booklet for the Japanese language proficiency test. Of course I went along, as it’s always exciting to look around at that place. Interestingly, the travel section was right next to the test materials so I looked at an Australian tourist book and was delighted to find locations that I’d actually been to in Perth and even found Dunsborough on one of the maps! :D After Will had chosen a book, we went into the attached Asian grocery store and bought a bunch of instant noodles (udon, yakisoba, ramen, etc) which I’ve already eaten all of (damn it’s good.)
I spent most of Thursday evening working on the pattern for my Katamari Damacy blanket (image in previous entry) while Will played Sakura Taisen 5. I actually find myself really getting into that game and I’m picking up bits of Japanese (well, at least recognizing phrases that get used often enough) so that’s been quite entertaining.
Friday I worked on my resume a little, got most of it up to date. I still have a bunch of tweaking to do with the wording and then I have to choose a way of formatting it…I think I’ll have it printed on really nice paper using only one color (black) to keep the cost down. I’m not sure what sort of theme I want to use yet but I’m sure something will come to me. After some frustration with that and subsequent feelings of self-pity, I walked down to the crafts store a few blocks away and bought $50 worth of yarn for my new blanket. I worked on the blanket until Will got home. He was planning on talking to Hiroko so he didn’t have enough time to meet up with Chad and Rayme for dinner (we had planned on going out for curry) so he and I just walked down to Ann’s Teriyaki and had generic Asian food served by a perpetually sour-demeanored woman. We both had bubble tea, but mine wasn’t mixed very well so I was rather disappointed. :( I’ve successfully cut back on the amount of bubble tea I’ve been drinking since I don’t want to ruin it for myself by getting sick of it. Once a week or every two is sufficient for my cravings. After dinner Will went to talk to Roko and ended up leaving the apartment rather abruptly (not sure why) so there I was by myself again. I ended up watching Ten Things I Hate About You since it’s set in Seattle and I was interested in seeing if I recognized any of the places in the film (and I did!) Sticking with the Seattle theme, I put in Sleepless in Seattle and got about halfway through it before Will got home. He sat down and watched the second half of the movie with me while we enjoyed some wine together, then we chatted for quite awhile about random things while he pieced together a video of the gathering of people that took place here over the past month. It turned out beautifully. :D I talked to Jules until sometime after 4AM, then got a little bit of sleep.
We had planned on getting up at a reasonable hour on Saturday so we could get a bunch of stuff done, but it didn’t end up happening that way. Jules called me back at sometime after 8AM because he said his mum wanted to talk to me a bit. Of course I couldn’t resist a chat with Dr. Mumcaster (as Will affectionately calls her.) I love listening to her speak excitedly about how her book is going and answering her questions about life in Seattle, but most of all I love hearing her tell me how much she loves me and misses me. She is the sweetest woman on earth, so kind and generous to me. She really did a great deal to make me feel at home in the Lancaster family when I was staying there, for which I am eternally grateful. I was so worried about getting in her good graces before I took the trip, but it really didn’t take much for her to warm up to me. It really is an honor to be able to know her in this way, and I really, really look forward to getting to know her better. She gives good hugs too. :3
After a bit of a chat, I went back to bed for awhile, then showered. At 1:30 I went and knocked on Will’s door (he was still asleep!) and by the time he’d gotten ready it was too late to do a few of the things we’d intended (ie, getting Washington driver’s licenses) but we made do anyhow. We went and deposited Will’s half of the rent money in my bank account, then walked down to the library and signed up for library cards. The branch near our house is brand new (built within the last year) but the books in it seem to be sort of leftovers from the main library. They told us that everything can be taken out for three weeks (including DVDs!) and things can be renewed *twice* and you can have up to one hundred items out at any given time. O_O Talk about awesome. After that we drove into the city and ended up having lunch at a Japanese place in Capitol Hill. I had yakisoba, which was good, but I really wished I’d gotten sushi as I watched some of the other patrons enjoying it. Oh well. After lunch we picked up Rayme and Chad and went to this place called Re-PC so Will could get some RAM for his PowerMac 9600 (so he could put OSX on it) as well as a power adaptor for the router Chris had given us. We went back to the guys’ apartment and watched some Battlestar Galactica and since it was an episode I’d already seen I browsed through a Monty Python autobiography sitting on the coffee table. We went out for curry after that, which I was astounded to be able to finish since it had only been a few hours since lunch, and then Will and I headed home since he was planning on talking to Hiroko again. I crocheted until my arm started aching, but it was okay because I made some excellent progress.
Sunday I talked to Jules for a bit in the morning (Skype was messed up to the point where I wasn’t getting any sound so he had to call my cell phone to wake me up!) but he went to bed relatively early since he had work the next morning and he wasn’t feeling too great. He thinks he may have glandular fever, which I had never heard of before that. It sounds like a really nasty thing to have, and I genuinely hope that’s not the case. He was going in to get tested for that this morning, so we’ll see how that goes. Poor guy. ;_; We had a discussion about my job situation which ended up really upsetting him but after awhile he seemed to understand why I was feeling the way I was. I *hate* doing or saying anything that makes him feel sad but I know that me not being honest would upset him even more so I try to be as candid as I can.
I went back to sleep once he decided to go to bed and got up a couple hours later, had some food, and watched some Mythbusters. In the afternoon Will and I went shopping as I needed a cart to hold my paints and palette. We ended up taking a look inside this shop called Ross “Dress for Less” and I found some “irregular” pants really cheap (they looked perfectly fine to me, so big deal) but I saved like $50 off the retail price. I love buying clothing cheaply and rarely ever get anything unless it’s on a clearance rack. Cheap pants make me very excited. :D And some of you may be amused to note I bought womens’ jeans for the first time in about 10 years. Hah. (I was a bit surprised to learn I was a smaller size than I’d thought, but that just goes to show how little I know.) It had begun to rain just as we left that shop and the sun was shining brightly so there was a *gorgeous* double rainbow arcing across the sky. The air smelled so clean and fresh…it was absolutely divine. I’m so glad that both Will and I can truly appreciate how extraordinary something like that is…we both remarked on its beauty. After we both took some lovely photos, we went into the mall and ate at Red Robin, which was delicious. We had a genuinely nice and quite skilled waiter, which was lovely…it’s so impressive to me to see someone who can juggle so many things in their mind simultaneously and still maintain a friendly and professional air…that’s certainly a job I’d be terrible at myself.
In the evening Will played a bunch of Sakura Taisen 5 and I watched while I crocheted. As usual, we enjoyed some wine together and I ended up getting pretty sleepy around 3AM so I headed to bed and he continued playing.
This morning I talked to Jules very briefly as he had to get up early the next morning to get that blood test done, then got up a few hours later, had some lunch, and watched more Mythbusters. More crocheting of course. Since it’s Labor Day, everyone had off of work so the group of us had all planned on getting together. After showering, Will and I headed over to get Rayme and Chad and we went to Cold Stone Creamery for some yummy ice cream. As usual I got more than I could handle, but it was this thing with heaps of chocolate and fudge and more chocolate so I managed. (I think it was called “Chocolate Devotion”) I started shivering after that, heh. :3
We went back to their apartment afterwards and watched a bunch of episodes of Battlestar Galactica, pausing for a bit to go get some pizza for supper. The breadsticks at this place had so much pesto and cheese on them they looked like they were moldy and decomposing, but DAYAM they tasted good. The pizza was terrific as well. Mmm. I crocheted a bunch more (until my arm was in tons of pain again) and I started getting a bit sleepy since the apartment was so warm and we were surrounded by the constant hum of fans. Before we left we remembered to bring our vacuum cleaner with us (let’s hope it works as Rayme had gotten a shirt caught in it earlier today and the apartment was filled with the scent of burnt rubber!) Will and I came home and he’s been playing ST5 ever since. We rearranged the livingroom so I could have all my painting stuff in one corner (it’s much nicer having all those canvases out of the way.) I organized my paints in my new storage cart (yay!) and excitedly remembered that I’d ordered more paint at some point this last week. I should be getting 16 tubes of new paints later on in the week, whee. :D
Oh yeah, I also ended up ordering the scanner I wanted from buy.com since none of the local office supply stores had it. That should be arriving on Thursday…I had it sent to Will’s work so I don’t have to sit here and wait for the truck to arrive. (Thank you so much Will.) I’m looking forward to scanning a bunch of stuff, as is Will. Getting this new scanner is making me really want to get other new peripherals like a nice tablet (since the one I have now is serial and doesn’t work on Mac) but I’m really pining for a larger monitor as doing any graphics work on a 12″ laptop screen is torturous. (GAH!) I have my eye on this 20.1″ widescreen Dell LCD display which is rather expensive but also delicious. It seems to just be the Apple Cinema Display in a Dell housing. :O~~ I don’t know if I’ll get that now though, even though I really really want it and it’d be really useful for working on my graphics stuff as I’m preparing for a job…since I only have a limited supply of money. *sigh* I did get a credit increase on my Sony card this week, though, so I *could* charge it, but I really don’t want to get myself into credit card debt if I can help it. I don’t know. It might be a good investment though, since I will most definitely get some good use out of it (both on this Mac and my PC once I finally build it.) Not sure though.
