Whatchou talkin about, Willis?

Ohmigod do I love my condo. It terrifies me, and overwhelms me, and causes the occasionally nearly-crippling self-doubt (but what doesn’t, in my life?), but I LOVE MY CONDO. You know, I was looking at places on and off for about a year, and I had started with a much wider range of possibilities than I ended up with, in the sense that when I began, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. Sure, maybe a one-bedroom would work, I thought. Sure, maybe it made financial sense to look in Tarzana/Encino/Reseda/VanNuys/StudioCity/NorthHollywood and not just Sherman Oaks. Sure, maybe blahblahblah. I definitely knew I’d would *like* a two-bedroom in Sherman Oaks, but in April of 2008, that seemed pretty out of reach for me because the prices were just too high. But I continued looking in fits and bursts, prices continued to drop, and I narrowed down a few of the parameters: had to have at least two bedrooms and two bathrooms and space for two cars to park. Van Nuys addresses no longer acceptable. Farther west of the 405 than a couple of miles no longer acceptable, and farther north of Ventura Boulevard than a few blocks also no longer acceptable. I stopped looking for a while; I started looking again. Prices continued to drop. I stopped again and started again. I considered my friend’s proposal that I should be looking at small houses, not condominiums. I let my realtor know how much I really, really liked my current neighborhood, even though it was kind of expensive. And a year later, I ended up getting a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom nearly 1400 sq ft condo with a huge patio exactly one block from where my apartment was!! And at a price that was $60,000-$100,000 less than similar condos had been selling for only one year earlier. AND it’s 2009 so I’ll get the first-time home buyer’s tax credit thing (actually, I’m claiming it in 2008 so I get the money sooner – even better, and now you understand part of the reason for the belowandaforementioned accountant). Yay Me!

Arrrgh.

Today was not a good day.

FIRST: I got a letter from the IRS saying I owed $600 more for 2008 taxes. I took this letter to my accountant, because what is the point of having an accountant if he can't look at letters like that and say, "They're wrong, they actually owe *you* $600 more," right?

He said: "They're right, you owe them $600 more."

Arrgh. (For the record, he didn't incorrectly prepare my 2008 taxes resulting in this error. TurboTax and I did, apparently. He became my accountant *after* April 15.)

SECOND: See, I need this thing from a doctor, only I don't even know my doctor because my company changed health care plans and the doctor I used to have and liked isn't on the new plan and so I don't even know this new doctor and it turns out this new doctor doesn't do the thing I need anyway so the office gave me three numbers of other doctors who do, only I don't want to see any of those doctors for other reasons and yet I called them anyway because I need this thing and all of their goddamn phones were busy YES REALLY ALL THREE OF THEM and the whole thing just totally sucked and so I spent a LOT of time and money today getting someone else to take care of this thing that I needed anyway and ARRRGH. None of it is at all a big deal but it just SUCKS when healthcare stuff doesn't go the way you want it to because then you feel all icky, no?

I'm fine, don't worry about it. It's nothing, just too girly to blog the details.

THIRD: SOME ASSHOLE HIT AND RUNNED MY CAR TODAY WHILE I WAS IN BED BATH AND BEYOND. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrr.

So I've had a shitty, shitty day. But hey, it's 11:30pm, I got nothing done all evening except to be grumpy, get my period, eat too much, and watch a couple episodes of "House" on my computer, because if I watch them on my TV I can't pause or fast forward or back or anything, and I have to be up at 6am. I love my life.

No, really, I do. Just not these particular 24 hours of it.

Happy, upbeat posts to come about the wonders of MY NEW CONDO WHICH IS WONDERFUL soon.

okloveyoubye. and don't you dare start with me about zeroeth, not today. Grrr. :)

I give in: Pandora rules. (aka Music To Pack By)

That's it. Especially using Erin McKeown to build a station. I got Regina Spektor and Tracy Chapman and Ani DiFranco immediately. Hells yeah.

Oooh, and then I added Dan Bern to my channel, so they started giving me Bob Dylan and Loudon Wainwright III and Sondre Lerche. Goddamn.

Losing Weight

So, I am packing and moving and therefore I am trying to Throw Shit Out. To this end, my wonderful friend Leah came over the other day and watched me try on clothes I bought many years and many miles ago and made the perfect "I love you but THROW THAT SHIT OUT" face at all the appropriate moments and then yesterday I brought nine bags of clothes to Goodwill. I mean, Trader Joe's paper shopping bags, so not huge, but still. Nine bags.

So now I am starting to pack up my books and I'm hearing Leah in my head saying, as she did on Saturday, "do you ever get rid of a book?" And I told her that I did, sometimes, yes, but not so often. And that is the truth; I do sometimes, and sometimes I send them off in the mail to a happy reader elsewhere in the world who wants some specific book I have but don't really want, all thanks to BookMooch.com, which I love. (It's awesome. To date I have sent off 22 books I did not want and received 23 books I did want. Most of the ones I sent cost about $3 to mail; most of the ones I received are ones I would have spent $7 or so for in a used bookstore or $15 for in a new bookstore. Fabulous.)

And so anyway, I'm starting to pack up my books and I just pulled off 10 books I am not going to keep! That is huge for me, trust me. Two of them are signed by the author and still I'm not keeping them - that is unbelievably out of character for me, the girl who has a separate shelf devoted to books signed by their authors. No really; that's one of the 26 shelves: Books Signed By Their Authors.

Ten books, two of which are signed by their authors. I rule.

Things you Need to Know

which is to say, nonsense you don't at *all* need to know:

0. I am twittering. Why? Why?
1. I have packed a box, hooray!
2. Yes, one. The contents of said box are the books of one shelf (lower left-hand corner), almost, meaning the shelf contained slightly more than would fit in the box.
3. I have 26 shelves of books.
4. TWENTY-SIX SHELVES? WOMAN, BUY A TV ALREADY.
5. Never mind the entire rest of my house. One box so far.
6. Ohmigod.
7. I currently own two refrigerators and only want one of them. Want one? Come and get it and it's yours. Side-by-side and big and working ('cept for the ice-maker thingy).
8. How did I get to the point in my life where I own even one fridge, let alone two? I have no idea.
9. Which is to say, I now also own two toilets. Holy shit.
10. Ha ha, that was unintentional.

Undeniable Proof That I Am (Still, Always) a New Yorker:

Things I Love:
Twizzlers

Things I Hate:
Red Vines


The End.

Can you find this for me?

The poem called "My God Father of the Gentiles". I want to read it.

Thank you.

Oh and by the way.....

I BOUGHT A CONDO. I CLOSED LAST TUESDAY. I OWN A CONDOMINIUM.

I need a couch. A dining room table. A bedroom set. Hell, a decorator (ha). Because I'm the sort of kid Anna Quindlen could love:
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

The Top Three Reasons I Have Not Yet Put This Book Back On My Shelf, Even Though I Read It A Year And A Half Ago

0. "America's greatest revelation was not the atom bomb, not Fundamentalism, not fat farms, not Elvis, not even the quite astute observation that gentlemen prefer blondes, but the great heights to which she has propelled ice cream."

1. "Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world. Haven't you read Hit and Run: Crisis in Singlehood America?"

2. " 'Onstage I make love to twenty-five thousand people and then I go home alone,' moaned Janis Joplin, bleary of eye and disheveled of hair."

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - not just for Bugs Bunny anymore!

"I know there is no Santa Claus."
"Yet you must teach the child that these things are so."
"Why? When I, myself, do not believe?"
"Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having this things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for."


Ok, so that's really the end of my post, only I just love this about this book, also, seeing as how it was published in 1943, that is just shows how the more things change, the more they stay the same or somesuch soundbite wisdom:
"Send Francie. The last time I asked for sauerkraut he chased me out of the store," complained Neeley.
"You've got to ask for Liberty Cabbage now, you dope," said Francie.
"Don't call each other names," chided Katie absentmindedly.
"Did you know they changed Hamburg Avenue to Wilson Avenue?" asked Francie.
"War makes people do funny things," sighed Katie.

Freedom fries, indeed.

When in Rome... get out before the earthquake hits.

So, I'm in Israel right now and apparently completely jetlagged, because it's... oh, 4:30am and I'm blogging instead of sleeping.

I'm having an AMAZING time, and enjoying every minute. I'm doing a much better than usual job of calling people up and making plans and doing stuff, and my Hebrew is holding up reasonably well - it's the first time that I'm here with any reasonable Hebrew to try out, so it's a pretty awesome experience to actually understand some shit.

I had a 7-hour layover in Rome on my way here, and I was extremely tired, having already stopped over in Paris. The next leg of my flight was on El Al Airlines, so I had no idea how much time I'd need to deal with security and transferring my luggage and stuff, so it was hard to resist the temptation to spend the hours eating, sleeping, and shopping in the huge airport... but I didn't! I asked a million people a million questions, changed some dollars to euros at a ridiculous loss, took a train and then a subway, and emerged from the Metro tunnel directly in front of the Colosseum. WOW. I spent about two hours walking around the area and taking pictures, ate an eggplant pizza at a cafe from which I could have hit the Colosseum itself with my crust if I'd thrown it hard enough (next time :) and went back to the airport. Amazing, perfect, fabulous. I was so freaking proud of myself!

And then, you know, a few hours later, 130 people died. Sharing that SoCal love? Oy.

I went dancing only one night out of three so far, but I have nine nights left and I intend to dance on seven of them. Yeee-haw!