apt. 3745 1/2's take on life

This is why I love my roomies:

Ma: So Jackie and I were thinking, lets not get presents for each other this year because, well, we're poor.

Me: Yeah, I totally agree. But we should do something fun together instead. Hey, how about we go for all-you-can-eat sushi together and pay for one another's meal?

Ma: Haha. Perf!*

This conversation would pretty tidily sum up my apartment's motto on life. Or at least our motto for this particular stage in life. The stage when we really have no clue where our lives are really heading, so to make up for the stress of uncertainty, we focus all of our attention on living in the now. Now, truly living it up requires a fair amount of time and monetary resources, which aren't quite in abundance lately. But not to worry, in developing our creed, we took this into account.

To address the time issue, spontaneity is key. We don't waste time sitting around deliberating over whether or not to do something (unless it involves working up the energy to go to the gym). When we have an idea (like to plan a celebration in honor of 11-11), we just pounce on it. For example: Last night, we accidentally missed the newest episode of How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM or "How I Did Your Mom" from now on). Mary Anne immediately texted the nearest DVR owner and fellow HIMYM fan, ensured said tv show was recorded, and proceeded to invite ourselves over to his house to get caught up. But naturally, before we left, the three of us changed into our sweats and matching UCLA sweatshirts. That particular decision doesn't really have any purpose. My roomies and I are just kind of obsessed with each other. Anyway, we jumped in the car, drove on over, and managed to see our show only an hour after it aired... and a half hour after we realized we'd missed it. Score!

Method two for maximizing your time is really quite simple. Forgo sleep. But for more detail on how we accomplish this, you'll have to read Mary Anne's blog.

The other limiting factor to our go-getter attitudes is money. Lets face it. We won't be making bank anytime soon. But seriously? Who cares? Whats the point in worrying? When else are we going to be our age again? Never! So in response to that, we've decided that since we truly don't have that many other expenses in our lives yet, we are going to go out. A lot. L.A. probably has some of the best food from pretty much any country you can identify on GeoChallange (you can google it under "annoying but addictive facebook games"), and probably some of the coolest nightlife on the west coast. Just a block away from our place are at least six or seven restaurants boasting different 'authentic (insert country)-ian food' signs. Who knows how long we'll be here, so we plan to make the most of it. Basically, as long as we have enough money for rent, gas, and catfood, the rest is game for having fun on the westside (and perhaps the occasional adventures to Sunset or Hollywood). What have we decided to call our lifestyle and motto? We dub it "Living the Dream".

Live it up. We certainly will.



*"perf" is an newly coined abbreviated slang term referring to the word "perfect". Expect to encounter many more "abbrev" words coming out of our "apt".

our cats the escape artists.

Between my room and Jackie's is a door that blocks access from the living room to our bedrooms. We've started to close it at night to keep the kittens from disturbing our slumber (ie pouncing on our faces) but as of late there have been some peculiar occurrences straight out of the twilight zone.

Yesterday morning after hitting the snooze button on my alarm at least five times, I heard a crash. I jumped out of bed and ran out into the hallway and opened the door into the living room. All seemed peaceful and serene. No movement, no scattered remnants of tabletop decor on the floor... wait. No movement. Where are the cats? Whatever. I'm going back to sleep. I still have a good five minutes before I need to even start considering getting ready for work (I began convincing myself I could probably be ready to go in 5 minutes if it meant sleeping in even longer). At this point I turned around, about to return to my room when I nearly tripped over two small furry creatures sitting attentively about 3 inches from my toes. Huh? How did you get here?

Now I know my memory is not at its best early in the morning, but I swear I shut those cats out in the living room last night. And they most certainly didn't slip past me in the past 10 seconds. I was sure. But then, as I turned back towards my room, I noticed the counter top in the bathroom looked a little barren. Upon inspection, it became clear that someone, or a pair of someones had knocked my toiletry bag off the counter and straight into the neighboring trash can. Ew, gross. I turned around and glared at the culprits, eying me innocently from the hallway. "How the hell did you guys get in here?"

I quickly ushered the two misfits back out into the living room and shut the door. Crazy cats... mmm bed.

Fast forward to work later that day (I did wake up in time by the way). Jackie and I are chatting about our weekend when suddenly she gets this serious look on her face and tells me "ok, we have a problem". Uh oh. Whats wrong? I ask. She starts by telling me a similar story to my own this morning.

Apparently, after some mysterious cat sightings in the hallway, Jackie finally spotted the source of their interroom apparrating abilities. We have an old school heater in our apartment that happens to span the wall between our hallway and the living room. So far we haven't needed to use it. Actually, we probably couldn't if we wanted to since we'd need to get our gas company out here to manually light the pilot light. The kittens however had done their share of exploring and discovered that the bottom of this narrow, boxy apparatus is actually completely open. A few days ago, while I was out of town, Jackie finally caught them red-pawed, as they tumbled out of the heater into our hallway. Cats, you really are ridiculous. Now normally I would just laugh hysterically at the absurdity of the situation (actually, I did do that). But the biggest problem with this discovery is the fact that when we do finally get that heater working, any time the cats decide to take a stroll through the wall, they'll find themselves in a FURNACE. So besides trying to teach them to not jump on the table and eat our food, now we have to figure out how to keep them from making fried kitten of themselves. Fantastic.

Oh children, what are we going to do with you.

my little piece of cyberland

Greetings. It seems I've jumped on the bandwagon and started up my own little piece of internet real estate. We'll see if it actually gains any value with time. My mom always said I should invest in property.

I guess its only fair I provide a little background before I begin:
I'm a recent college graduate now putting down some temporary roots in the vibrant, smog infused, freeway labrynth of Los Angeles. I have two roommates, two cats and one cheerfully bright little room all to myself. When you've spent four years sharing a room with other people, a single occupancy room suddenly looks more like private beachfront property. I'm loving this real estate analogy.

My current job is nothing to write home about. In fact, I tend to avoid discussing it because it makes me sound like drifting through life. Not true of course. I've got a current theory/model/motto about life that my roommates and I practice diligently (more about that soon). I've also got a plan, and though it doesn't always move forward as rapidly or seem quite as lucid as I'd like, its slowly coming together.

Ehh... you know what, the rest is not all that interesting. Or if it is, I'll come back to it at a later date and time. Whats more intriguing is what I have to say about that big wide world outside my purple, second story apartment door, as well as those little moments that deserve more recognition than they often get for adding the real spice to life. For now though, since my class is commencing, I'll leave you guessing.