I am literally so appalled I can't vocally articulate it.  Instead, I'm going to do it with evocative prose.

So Squatter Roommate got a week's extension on moving out, because my landlord is a more decent human being than I am.  His deadline was yesterday, so you'd expect that he'd spend the extra week packing, preparing, maybe moving some boxes out as a prelim.  Because that would be sensible thing, right?

But no, because it's the sensible and socially responsible thing to do, and Squatter Roommate has proven to be neither of those things.  My landlord came up to check on things around one yesterday afternoon, when SR had not only failed to pack up any of his shit, but completely disappeared.  He didn't packing up until 2 a.m. THIS MORNING.  While I was SLEEPING.  He and his shady friend were banging around moving the goddamn tv in the middle of the fucking night.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MOAR

Apparently, he asked Billy if he could leave one or two things on the porch until he could come back for them, by Wednesday at the latest.  "One or two things" apparently means A HUGE FUCKING PILE OF CRAP, because SERIOUSLY, there were six coats, about eight hundred pairs of shoes (I know women who own fewer shoes than this asshole), like three boxes of books, his fucking guitar amp, and a small end table. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.  SR has a very different definition of "moving out" than I do, and he's really lucky that Billy didn't let me throw all his shit out into the alley.  Because I REALLY wanted to.

He was a filthy, filthy man, and when he left the room he left a residue of grime on the walls and an atmosphere of STINK.  A whole day of scrubbing with various cleaning products only got the worst of the grime off the walls, and I can still SMELL him under the Pine-Sol.  I sound like a fucking crazy person, but I really can't stress enough how thoroughly disgusted with this whole situation I am.

The crowning glory on this whole situation is that when I asked him for his share of the bill money for September and October, months he definitely lived here, he blew me off with a "fuckin' bitch" comment.  EXCUSE ME.  I KNOW YOU ARE PISSED BECAUSE YOU GOT EVICTED, BUT GROW THE HELL UP.  

 On Friday I skipped work to have a mole removed from my foot.  The mole was not cancerous, but my dermatologist said it was definitely a "high risk" blemish - words that made me nervous enough to have the whole thing cut out.  So now I have four stitches in the really thin skin right about my heel on the inside of my right foot.  It hurts to walk, so I've been moving in this kind of twisted club foot-esque fashion.  When strangers ask me why I'm limping, I've been telling them mysteriously that I have a congenital birth defect.

But seriously, if I don't know you, why would you care about my foot?  Or expect me to share?

Before I got my parrot, I did a lot of reading on them - what they eat, what their habits are, that kind of thing.  Because I am a responsible pet owner.  Almost everything I read said that conures like to have hidey holes, things to poke their heads in, and things to sleep in.  So when I set up Dizzy's sleeping cage I included a fuzzy sleeping tent.  I had no idea if he was actually using it or not, because he always wakes up before I do; but Monday morning, I slept all the way through to my alarm and realized Dizzy wasn't making noise in his cage, waiting to be let out.  I pulled the sheet off and had a split second panic attack because I couldn't see him in the cage at all - until I noticed the long red tail feathers poking out the end of the fuzzy tent.  He didn't move or make a sound until I tugged on his tail feathers, wherein he immediately poked his head out the other end all "What?  A guy can't get five more minutes?"

And it was pretty much the cutest thing ever.

There are three firms that work on the floor that my dad's firm is on.  One is a two-man team that just broke off of my dad's firm.  They're very used to using the assistants in the office to do their filing and such, but one of them is such an asshole that as soon as they formed their own firm all of us were like "Oh good, we don't have to deal with them anymore."  But since they do still need administrative help, I've been hired to do part time work for them (about 5-7 hours a week) at an additional income of $20 an hour (which is slightly more than my normal hourly rate).  As a consequence, I will end up staying later or coming in earlier more often so as not to affect my salary, but hey, extra cash is extra cash.  I will gladly come in an hour early to the tune of an extra $100 a week.

I got my shipping notice for my copy of Star Trek.  While I'm slightly annoyed that I don't have it NOW THIS INSTANT, I'm willing to wait for the sake of the discounted price I paid for it.

My mom has decided she wants to see more movies in theaters, a result of which is that I get to see more movies in theaters.  We saw Coco Before Chanel on Sunday, which was pretty much brilliant, and tonight we're going to see An Education.  I've also been holding weekly movie nights, the goal of which is to bring films most people haven't seen before, and so far it's a resounding success.  Our roster so far:
Sunshine
The Slipper and the Rose
A Boy and His Dog
Frailty
Night of the Hunter (which I'd seen!  Did Seth show me this?  I don't remember!)
I've got Saving Face on the backburner, and my mom gave me a pamphlet with cult films on it from the library, so undoubtedly movie nights will only get more interesting.

I've been sleeping rather well, although I woke up this morning and my room felt like the Sahara.  All our radiators are on now, and leave a horrible whistling and dry heat in their wake.  The heat bothers me, and the noise upsets Dizzy like nothing else I've ever seen.  This morning he was making sad little distressed noises that were pretty much heartbreaking; I sat with him snuggled into my chest until I had to leave for work, which seemed to soothe him a bit.  He's currently hunkered down under my ear and into the crook of my neck.

I've been handed a project at work that is almost too big for me.  I'm calculating damages for an entire class, and the defense council demanded it today before they filed a motion to compel.  Suffice to say, I did not get it done; I had to take some of it home so I can hopefully get it done by the end of the week.  If they file today it won't go through until Friday, so hopefully it'll be done by then so my attorney can be like, "Here Judge, this is what they so doucheishly asked for, we have it right here."

I ate a caramel apple yesterday, and it tasted like autumn.  All the leaves are turning color and looking beautiful, and I can wear my awesome woolly slippers around the house.  I love fall.

I had a funk-ass horror dream last night... I don't remember everything, but the general gist was that there was a Prince, and his birthday was coming up, and I was some kind of minor hanger-on to his entourage.  At one point we (the Prince and six or so of his buddies, and myself) killed a really massive squid/octopus/thing, and cut off all of its tentacles.  I pushed the now-legless body stump back into the ocean, and then we retired to some pub to tell the Prince how awesome he was.

The next day, or at some point in the undefinable future of dreams, we go swimming or something, and what should come rising out of the depths but THE RAVAGED TENTACLES OF THE OCTOPUS.  This is one of two scenes I remember very well, because frankly ocean where I can't see the bottom scares the bejeezus out of me.  So the angry octopus comes rising out of the deep dark ocean, wraps what's left of his stumps around the Prince and drags him off to who knows where.  There is much thrashing and shrieking from the entourage, but the Prince is totally drowned and dead.

A little later again, we're walking across some rampart dressed all in mourning, and I turn to look over the edge of the stone wall out into some kind of bay, and I see three really, really awful things:

1. A really, really big, chained outline of Cthulhu under the surface of the water (even in the dream, at this point I was like, well, never watching THAT movie again....) which is really evil and scary and people either don't notice it or don't care; I get the impression that it's a fact of this town's life because of the two other things I see;

2. A retainer poking a bobbing lump that looks like the Prince's head suffused onto the octopus' body out into the bay toward the Cthulhu shadow;

3. A tradesmen of some kind (I want to say a baker, but I don't know for sure) accidentally slip and fall into the water, and emerge with a literal target branded on his face.  While we watch, he turns into a raving madman who, after people try and restrain him, rips off his own arms.

On waking, I realized that I can never watch that Cthulhu movie ever again, and that I probably shouldn't play the RPG even though I kinda want to. 

Since I moved back from Iowa, the mattress I was sleeping on has occupied the garage.  It is a lovely, serviceable double that I've slept on for most of the past eight years or so, and I was thrilled when my mother said I could take it to school with me.  Of course, when I did, my parents promptly bought a queen sized bedframe and mattress to put in my room, so that people could continue to use it as a guest room.  This is the bed I've been sleeping on since I got home, since I obviously can't have two mattresses in one room.

I am in love with this bed.

It's squishy but not uncomfortably so, it's big, it's wonderful, I sleep soundly on it.  Now that I'm moving out in a couple of weeks, I'd started resigning myself to transferring back to the double and readjusting my sleep habits accordingly, and frankly it was making me sad to know I wouldn't get to sleep on this mattress anymore.

But yesterday I received wonderful news: my parents sold the beach house they owned part of!  And we get to bring back all the furniture we had there!  And by the way, Martha, do you want the queen mattress up there?  No?  Well, how about the one in your room now, and we'll just replace that one with the beach house mattress?

So I'm incredibly pleased, even though the room I'm moving into is not big and the mattress will likely take up 90% of my floor space.  I love this bed and I get to keep it.

Continuing to enjoy Netflix.  I watched Cthulhu the other day (made recently, not the old black and white one or the one from the eighties) and I have mixed feelings about it.  It is very Lovecraftian, and it has a decidedly amateurish feel to the camerawork, which I think might actually be beneficial to the effect.  I dunno.  It's short, so at least if you don't like it, it doesn't last very long.

Priceless, on the other hand, is lovely and charming and satisfying.  A very solid French romance with Audrey Tautou, who I think is gorgeous.

IKEA tomorrow, for to buy shelving.  I love buying housewares.

Saw District 9 tonight.  It was...much better than I expected, but it was also much, much harder to watch than I expected. 

( District 9 spoilers )

I did read two excellent books last week, both by Charles de LInt and both vastly different experiences.  I liked Yarrow more than Angel of Darkness, and eventually I'll write about why.

I've decided I'm going to play in a WarMachine tournament coming up at a Chicago games store, so in preparation for that I have a buttload of painting to do and I also need to practice playing timed games.  I know that I take too long to think about my turns, so I really need to work on konwing solidly what my army does, what I have to do to get them to do their thing the best they can, and how it all will play out in different games.  I've got three weeks, so we'll see if I can get ready in time.  If not, I'll at least have a fully painted 500 points and actual tournament experience, even if it's a losing experience.

Brilliant idea posted over at my alt account, flights_of_fancy .  It boils down to: gaming companies that make awesome games do not always write awesome stories.  I can write awesome stories.  Maybe if I send one some writing samples, they'll let me do freelance prose work on their next army book.

Gen Con Indy was SUPER SUPER awesome.  Billy and I got there early Saturday morning, so we had plenty of time during the day to walk around, check out demos, spend way too much money, and hang out with cool people (Like Sohmer and Lar from LICD!  Billy brought them Red Bull and they were very charming).  I was satisfied at the end, but next year I would like to go for the whole weekend and take advantage of the things we didn't have the downtime to do.  For instance, they had a room with hunderds of board game titles that you could check out like a library and play with people, and this room was open 24 hours a day.  I have a theory that Tsuro, played for hours on end, will eventually result in achieving Nirvana, so obviously I have to test this theory.  It would have been interesting to attend some panels and speakers as well, and I definitely would want to get more demos in. 

Cool things I did at the con:

- Bought the new Privateer Press faction book for the Retribution army.  Couldn't buy the heavy warjack kit because they sold out on, like, the first day.  Poo.
- Demoed and purchased Malifaux, a skirmish based war game in a western/horror/steampunk/gothic setting.  I liked it a whole bunch, and the guys were really nice, and they're the company I want to write for.  One of their characters wears a white furry top hat and stripped stockings.  HOW CAN I SAY NO.
- Bought my own set of gaming dice.  They're pretty and blue.
- Tried orange root beer, and decided it tasted too medicinal.
- Saw some fairly phenominal costumes, including some very classy WarMachine casters and an awesome Eldar farseer robe.
- Took pride in the fact that my nerdy tattoo is cooler than a lot of peoples' nerdy tattoos.
- Hung out with webcomic artists
- Played Tsuro, a brilliantly simply board game wherein you move your token along a path and try to run other peoples' tokens off the board.  Plans to buy it are in the works.
- Watched Billy play Arcane Legions.  Unsure about how impressed I am with it.  The Chinese get dragons and stone lions, and the Romans get armored bears, which is pretty badass.  Not convinced about gameplay yet, though.
- Watched Wizards of the Coast fail at running a Magic 2010 tournament, which is sad when you think about it; they really should have more practice at that.

It was a fun time.

I feel like hell.  My head hurts, my stomach hurts like I'm hungry but I have no interest in food, and I feel sweatingly hot and shiveringly cold at the same time.  Last night I turned my fan off because I decided it would be better to sweat than to be too cold and too hot at the same time, and I woke up absolutely drenched.  I've turned off the AC in my house prematurely because I'm having so many temperature issues.  So now I'm overheated and sweaty again, but I also don't feel like I'm going to freeze my skin off.  Also I am drinking LOTS of orange juice.

Suffice to say I called in sick to work today and tomorrow, which I hated doing but I really think I needed to.  Being on my feet for five hours when standing up makes me dizzy, and also being around food when I'm pretty sure I've got the flu, seems like an EXTREMELY bad idea to me.  So now I'm watching movies with Dizzy, who is happily trying to eat the keys off my laptop.

What I really want is some Italian ice, because it's cold and refreshing and not filling.  But I don't trust myself to drive.

I finally have a typical schedule at Borders this week, which is phenomenal.  I'm on for 24 hours, which still isn't full time, but it's at least the same that everyone else is getting.  So I'm not quite as pissed off with them as I was last week.

I've been feeling sort of off kilter these last couple of days, and I was really afraid for a bit there that I was getting sick.  Thankfully, this does not seem to be true, as today I'm feeling quite well.  Which is especially good this week, since I will undoubtedly be engaging in all sorts of shenanigans.

Well, probably not.  But I could, since my entire family is now out of the state for the next week.  My sister is up in Wisconsin with some of her school friends, and as far as I can tell they're basically planning on being drunk for the week.  My parents are in the Florida panhandle, where my uncle has rented a house for the next couple of weeks - I declined to go because of work, and also because while I love my family, having that many of us in such a contained space is really a recipe for disaster.  Or at least a couple of really good fights.  So I'm holding down the fort with Dizzy and the dogs and trying not to be too lonely.

Work will help.  So will Shark Week, and Billy, who said he'd keep me company.

Firstly: If you've been tagged, you must write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question. (I'm too boring to change any questions)

Secondly: Tag eight people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you.

Lots of pillows or just one?

• As many as I can get my hands on.  Since I moved it's been less; in my apartment, the pillow situation was OUT of control.

What kind of books do you read?

• Most things.  I really, really like science fiction, and good fantasy - although 95% of fantasy written today is crap.  I also enjoy humorous essays.

What are your most awesome skills?

• I'm really good at proof-reading, and also at making first impressions.  I'm proving to be a decent war gamer, and I'm really good at watching movies.  I'm ok at writing.

What's your occupation?

• Barista

What's really creepy?

• Dark basements, streets without streelights

Wat's your current fandom/obsession/addiction?

• Warhammer/WarMachine, Dizzy the parrot

What food could you eat every day for weeks and not get sick of?

• Ice cream, and also lamb

What websites do you always visit when you go online?

• Hotmail, Gmail, Facebook, LiveJournal, DreamWidth, Twitter, and then my webcomics.

What was the last thing you bought?

• Across the Universe

What was the cutest thing you've seen today?

• Dizzy leaning into my hand to take a nap

Do you get cravings? If so, what do you crave?

• Sweet things.  Sometimes burgers.

What do you do to change your mood?

• Listen to music, reread books that make me happy, talk to my boyfriend

What is your zodiac sign?

• Taurus

Do you want to learn another language?

• Honestly I have no desire to. I don't ever intend to be in a foreign country long enough to need it.

Five things you can't live without.

• The internet, cellphone, sweatpants, pizza, and a driver's license

What is one song you could listen to repeatedly without ever getting tired of it?

• "When the Day Met the Night" by Panic! At the Disco

What are you looking forward to?

• Seeing folks in IC tomorrow

Say something to the person who tagged you:

• Ashley: I'm excited you're going to be in Chicago next year so I can see you all the time!
• Amanda: You're SUPER brave for moving somewhere you wanted to be, totally self-reliant.  I'd never have the guts to do that all by myself.

Tagged: delia , sandboxriot , dokkaebi , qichi , starsparkle333 , fireflyrebirth , carveyfan27 , twilightmagi