Girl problems

Tonight my roommate and I went out to a Mexican restaurant.  I imagine that because I was wearing actual pants and he was wearing sweats, that because I wore a coat and he had on a t-shirt, that because I ordered with words and he ordered by pointing to a name in Spanish, and because I paid with a credit card and he gave me some wadded up 5 dollar bills that it looked like I was babysitting and the cute waiter was immediately uninterested in me after having given me the invitation to flirt.

I'm never going to get laid living with this guy. Ever.

Snow Day '07!

Three years ago, it snowed here in Austin so my neighbors (Erik and Ten Spot) and roommates (Andy and Yoda) and I went exploring.  Andy, Yoda and I are from south Texas and had never seen snow before.  Erik and Ten Spot had lived in Massachusetts so they thought this "snow" was some kind of a joke.  It was.  I still thought it was pretty great.  Check out this frozen fountain at the Capitol!

And this awesome view from my stoop with snow accumulation!

 
After our walk downtown and back, Yoda and I were in the bathroom thawing our feet in the tub under warm water while Erik and Ten Spot retired downstairs to watch The Sound of Music.  When my roommates and I went out again to collect snow and icicles, we saw a tree branch fall on Erik's car.  He didn't believe us when we told him what happened because he probably thought we were going to pelt him with the snow balls we collected.

I didn't take pictures because he didn't want to submit it to insurance.  Sucks for him.

Is that water coming from the ceiling?

Every apartment is plagued with "apartment problems".  Approximately half of these have to do with the water, specifically in the bathroom.

About a month after I moved in with my downstairs neighbors, my former roommate Greg came down to let me know that there was a problem.  I figured this had something to do with money, of which I had none, so I ignored it.  When he knocked again, half an hour later, I went upstairs to see just what the hell it was he wanted.

"Corey's in the bathroom," Greg told me.

Okay.  Whatever.

I went to the bathroom and tapped on the door.  Corey responded with a screeching, "HELP ME," to which I responded, "What the fuck?" and peeked inside.

There was Corey, haphazardly dressed in green swim trunks, trying his damndest to plug the jet of water that was spewing from the wall where the faucet had once been.  For some reason a chef's knife was plunged into the linoleum flooring.  The only thing I could do to help was call the maintenance man.  Any apartment dweller should be laughing at the futility of this decision.

Half an hour later, the maintenance man came up, but immediately left again, as could have been anticipated.  I was soaked, bailing Corey out with a gallon jug and a tea cup. He had been in the tub for about 2 hours and was pruning something awful, but I wasn't about to switch roles with him.  Meanwhile, Greg had been surfing the internet, likely hooking up with 16 year olds, as he did so frequently, while Erik and I tried to keep the building from flooding.  Could we ask more from Greg?  Absolutely not.  He was essentially useless; an ugly piece of art.

After all was said and done, the city had to come shut water off to the entire property (some 300 units) and install new fixtures in the bathroom.  I had wasted an entire day off from work making sure I didn't have water damage to my ceiling, and all the while, I was consoling an anxious, high-strung Corey in the bathtub with pressurized, boiling hot water and an ignorant Greg, who kept wanting to tell me the Mets' record in 1998.

To this day I will not take charge of any bathroom situation, no matter how dire.

We was like peas and carrots

What I loved most about living with Erik is that for 2 years we never ran out of things to talk about.  We never had an awkward silence and we were never annoyed with what the other was saying.  He and I had perhaps the widest variety of conversations I can recall having with any one person.  Topics of discussion included:

- Nuts and bolts
- The downside to the metric system
- Celebrity chef Bobby Flay
- Brands of wood stain and methods of staining wood
- Cacti
- The dictionary definition of the word "thermostat"
- Bonnie Tyler as expressed in flow charts

Interestingly, he and I had absolutely nothing in common other than our keen sense of observation and uncanny ability of knowing a little bit about everything.  Anyone who has ever gone to a party with Erik and myself knows that when we combine forces, everyone feels as if they have somehow "connected" to us. This is especially hilarious for us because we were probably black-out drunk.

The world is just a little bit more boring without Erik around, but I get a lot fewer hang overs.

Where are you going? Where have you been?

My roommate Wade and I are co-workers.  This occasionally becomes problematic when either of us wants time alone.  For as many environments as we find each other in together, he still feels the need to tell me when he goes somewhere.  Sometimes when I'm in the bathroom he stops to let me know that he's going to school, or to a friend's house, or wherever.

At first I found this behavior odd, perhaps because my family and friends are typically not the type to communicate to one another while in the bathroom, though I know that potty talk is fairly common in many circles.  But beyond where I was at the time he delivered his itinerary, I wondered why it mattered to me where he was headed.  Why go out of one's way to make public something so frivolous?

So I checked my Twitter account and realized more people know what I had for lunch than should ever give a damn.  From now on I'll just say, "Okay. Good bye."

What My Roommate is Doing Right Now

My friends tell me I move a lot.  In the past 3 years, I've lived in 5 different apartments with 7 different roommates.  Somehow I have managed to be the anchor of reality for the majority of these people.

I took this photo of Yoda in the bathtub of my first apartment after having this conversation:

ME: "Are you STILL in the bathroom? What are you doing?"

YODA: "I'm in the bathtub with some money."

I guess I thought he was lying.