ONE is the BEST NUMBER EVER!

so, i just discovered the joys of Google Reader. More on this later.

I also just clicked on my own blog in Google Reader and read the title. which is in your view up there right now. and thought..."hmm, haven't been writing on those lines in a couple of weeks." so, i'm going to try to amend that, as winter makes me an angry suicidal depressive and all i want to do is eat, sleep, and murder people with my eyes. right. and yes, there probably is medication for that. but i'm averse to pills and wouldn't take it anyway, so that is a moot point. thank you for pointing it out, though. you are a good friend.

So, due to winter-ness and angry suicidal depressiveness, i haven't been having too many adventures of late. the whole of the last 48 hours or so of mine have been spent largely within the confines of my own apartment, as the evil twins have LEFT THE CITY for the weekend and won't be returning until tuesday at the earliest and wednesday at the latest. i have been reveling in my complete aloneness by leaving as much of my stuff as possible scattered in completely obvious places ALL OVER the common area, watching TV LOUDLY until late into the night, and walking from my room, to the shower, and back again, completely NUDE. Also, i have rearranged the cupboards to just exactly the way i like them (and the freezer, too), smoked INSIDE, and had an imaginary fight in my head with evil roommate 2 about how she is no longer allowed to sit on my couch or use my dishes since she took all of her free-and-now-in-theaters-so-the-only-way-i-can-see-them-is-to-pay-
$11.50-which-i'm-not-going-to-do movies and hid them somewhere. (she works at a talent agency and they get all of the "reviewer" copies of new releases. ER2 USED to put them beside the TV for all of our enjoyment. then they "mysteriously" disappeared. which i'm trying very hard not to be angry about because that would make me just as immature as her. but seriously. she uses my couch. i want to use her movies.)

Moving on. The one thing i HAVEN'T done so far during this gloriously alone all all alone in my apartment alone with no roommates at all all weekend alone for THREE DAYS alone with no roommates, is laundry. Why? You ask. Let me tell you. (i am the queen of segues. did you see what i just did there? brilliant!)

So, i get off the train coming home from work on Valentine's Day, visions of sugar plums dancing in my head (or vascillating wildly between excited expectation and premature disappointment, whatever), when i get an acrid whiff of smoke and notice that there are 6 fire trucks in front of the building across the street, along with several police cruisers and a few pedestrians. being the (proudly) calloused New Yorker that i now am (see previous post), i was tempted to look at my fingernails while passing by seemingly so nonplussed as to NOT EVEN CARE that there were fire trucks across the street, or possibly to not even notice. Until i realized that firemen were carting the burnt remains of washers and dryers out of my very own laundromat!

now, as you know, i am a fun and carefree kind of girl...as long as the fun and the carefree-ness are properly planned out ahead of time. so imagine my dismay as i realized that I AM GOING TO HAVE TO CHANGE LAUNDROMATS. which means

1. Physically finding a new laundromat
2. Carting my 25 pounds of laundry further than across the street
3. Doing my laundry in completely unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar neighborhood people
4. Developing an entirely new "laundry routine" (I won't bore you with the old one. but i had it down to a 90-minute science of efficiency and absolute perfection)
5. READJUSTING BACK to my old routine once this laundromat re-opens, if it ever does, but i don't know if it will because what if that mean Asian lady torched the place for the insurance money and now it will be some kind of terrible sushi place or something?

So, I've basically decided never to do laundry again.

Is it just me, or am I becoming crazier and more anal retentive as I age?

All right then, we've covered how i'm alone in my apartment (please do not come kill me, as i am having a lovely time. if you would like to kill one of my crazy roommates, however, please let me know and i'll help you set it up.), how the laundromat burned to the ground (slight exaggeration. everything is still standing, though the building is empty), AND everything I've accomplished this weekend. Oh! Including my taxes! Which i did for the first time by myself and i am anticipating more than one thousand dollars of a refund, which i think is not enough considering that i am a quiet, well-mannered citizen who barely needs any government services at all and believes that her good behavior should be rewarded with a refund of all the money the government didn't personally spend on her this year. which would be all of it. but i'll take the thousand bucks. of my own money. which i gave you and you've been keeping so you can give it back and make me feel good about this whole "I work hard so the government can squander my dollars and i can only afford to live with two crazy people instead of by myself because i pay taxes" racket.

i'm rambling. i know. i'm beginning to remember the occasional downsides to living alone.

1. squalor
2. talking to inanimate objects/using the internet as your sole social outlet
3. eating (ALL THE TIME. no WONDER i used to be so fat!)
4. noticing every single itty bitty tiny noise and thinking it is a large Serbian man who is breaking in with the express purpose of slitting my throat and raping me.

OH! Right! This is the best part. Well, maybe not for you. but i'm excited about it.

so, i haven't really had a chance to sit down since the beginning of the year and really think about my life. i like to do a kind of "life assessment" around this time every year, you know, because it's a new year and my birthday's in february, and i'm a goal-oriented type-A perfectionist who needs to have something to work toward. or...what? i don't know. but it's not pretty.

ANYWHO, you still there? should i stop now? i should. but i don't want to.

anywho, i've been spending a lot of time during the last few days thinking about my "priorities." This is kind of like new year's resolutions but not. so, one of my priorities is to get my finances in order. i'm usually pretty good with money, but since i moved to new york, i've been pretty lax with my expendable income, and as a result, feel like i'm floundering a little bit. SO, the first thing i decided was to write down where every dollar of my money goes for the next month so i can see where i'm spending money. then i can adjust. but what i found has already started to happen is that i'm thinking about my money and where it's going more, and so i'm being more deliberate about how i'm spending it. For example, when i went to the grocery store today, i was comparison shopping the cans of beans. the first can i picked up was 99 cents, which i usually would have just thrown in the cart. but i looked around and i found that the store brand was on sale for only 50 cents! Half price! So, i got out of the grocery store for around $38 bucks with two big bags of food that i guess generally would have cost me around $50 if i hadn't been paying closer attention.

So, i haven't fully formed my "priorities list" or whatever it is i'm going to call it. basically i'm looking at my whole life versus what things are important to me and what goals i want to attain and then tweaking things to achieve/be happy. i'll update you when i've got it mapped out a little better.

enough for now. byeee!