SarahAnnAlien's Journal: Friday night baking, new apartment

Well, it's Friday night, almost 11pm, still somewhat hotter than hell, and my air conditioning is still two weeks away, so I'm... baking.

A girl at work gave me two thingies of blueberries, so I'm making Blueberry Bread. Actually, the recipe is from allrecipes.com; I searched for "Blueberry Bread" and found a recipe called "Alienated Blueberry Muffins" and I decided that since the recipe had my name on it that it was A Sign. Unfortunately, the muffin tins were lost in one of my pre-move purges, so I'm making two long, rectangular muffins. They need another ten minutes or so in the oven; then I'll just have to get the apartment to cool down enough so that I can sleep.

Cleaning my current apartment is proceeding at an acceptable rate. Wednesday was "inside of sliding glass doors" day, and the frightening gunk came in a variety of colors: yellow, green, blue, grey, black. Guess someone should have cleaned those more than twice in eleven years. Thursday was "sweep the porch" day. Friday was "outside of sliding glass doors" day, and the gunk was mostly black dirt. Those doors/windows are now somewhat clean but will probably merit a second pass. I still don't think they'll be *clean*, but they will be less embarrassing, and perhaps acceptable after eleven years of wear and tear.

Still remaining: dining room window. Kitchen. And... moldy bathroom. Ugh. Fortunately I've attacked the mold a number of times in the past, so it's only yucky, not frightening.

I'm getting very excited about my new apartment. Today I found out that the complex has a web site. I downloaded the floor plan for my apartment, then flipped it around in a graphics program since mine is a mirror image of the one on the website. Then I discovered that the pictures on the website are the same layout as my apartment, and are oriented the same way, so I now have a better idea of what my particular apartment will look like. (I haven't actually seen it yet; there was someone living there when I applied to rent it. I'll probably get to see it before I sign the lease.)

I spent entirely too much time today daydreaming about decorating my apartment!

... the bread just beeped. Er, the timer on the microwave beeped, letting me know that the bread in the regular oven was ready. Except that it wasn't. Not surprising, given that my rectangular muffins are bigger than the ones in the recipe! I'll give it another six minutes.

From the apartment web page, I discovered that the kitchen in my new apartment doesn't have a built-in microwave. I was bummed until I realized that meant that I would get to buy a brand new microwave, and I can get anything I want, since I'm not stuck with the built-in one like I am here! What will I get? Well, let's just say that I derive entirely too much pleasure from watching my food spin around in circles. I hope they still make that kind. I'm actually not all that picky about "even heating" or the necessity or lack thereof for a turntable; I just like watching the food go round and round!

Sometimes it just doesn't take much to amuse me.

... bread beeped again. It turns out the loaves aren't the same size, which is fine. The small one is almost ready. The big one needs some more time. I put them both back in.

In case you missed the earlier entry about this... I got rid of almost all of my old furniture in preparation for the move. I'm currently sitting in the only remaining chair. I also have a wooden stool, a kitchen stool, and a compact folding bed for sleeping. The "big" computer table is a cardboard box with a large (18x24?) clipboard on top of it.

... beep. Small loaf is ready to come out. I'll give the big loaf another five minutes. Oops, it looks like I turned off the oven three minutes ago. That's ok, there's still heat in the oven.

So I'm going to need new furniture. I haven't figured out what I want to get. On the one hand, I want to keep everything small and super-lightweight to make my *next* move easier, on the assumption that that will come in less than another eleven years due to my rapidly changing alien self. On the other hand, I'd like to live in a *furnished* apartment and not live with a cardboard box as a computer table for the next decade.

A tentative list: a small dining room table with four chairs, some sort of lightweight sofa-like thing for sitting on in the living room, and maybe another chair, too, coffee table, something to put the tv on, some sort of video display for watching tv on, some small folding bookcases for the few books that aren't in storage, a bed or futon sort of thing for the bedroom, a dresser-ish thing with a large mirror I can sit down in front of, and a chair for that, and some folding work tables and a good chair for the computer/work room.

I'll wait and see what happens, though. I can survive with the furniture I have now, so I'll try to take my time and choose my furniture carefully.

... beep. Large loaf is out. They both look good. I'll let them cool for a bit before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Fortunately, the new apartment will be just down the street from a whole neighborhood worth of shopping, including furniture stores, both cheap and horribly expensive, I suspect. It will be fun to get to know my new environment.

I'll also need curtains, sheets, towels... gosh, I'm going to need a lot of stuff.

I'm going to get a new laundry basket. The current one is from college (1986). Maybe I'll just break down and buy an actual hamper!

This is going to be so weird. I've never done this before. The current apartment... um... wasn't really decorated. Former Self wasn't into that sort of thing. It was simply crammed full of functional crap that made the space feel cramped. Honestly, it would have made anyone feel depressed.

One of the first things I did after the brain chemistry got fixed was to ditch about half of the furniture. The great purge of the last couple weeks merely got rid of the other half.

... the bread is cooling on racks... except for the chunk I'm eating. It's actually a little sweet, but not bad over all. I think it will be even better once it has cooled. Yum! And made with whole wheat flour, and half splenda, too!

Hmm, I wonder if the bathroom has a door, or needs a shower curtain? I wonder where the phone connections are? I wonder how big the windows are? I need to find this stuff out... I should call and see when they'll be ready for me to see MY apartment, as opposed to the model.

It might be nice to get new dishes, too. There's a built-in china hutch. My current dishes are a plain-white set that my parents received as a wedding present, forty years ago. They're rather generic, and rather indestructible, unless you happen to try to microwave a potato on one of the plates, in which case they violently explode. So I don't do that.

Yawn... well, it doesn't seem too hot, so I think I'll wrap up my blueberry bread loaves and head towards bed. I have a lot of cleaning to do tomorrow.