magnetic and pantsless

this is all chattiness about flatpack furniture, tool use, and problem-solving skills, so run away if you don't want to ( read more... )

this weekend, as promised, i finished cleaning out the cabinets and unpacked my kitchen! i also finally figured out why i couldn't get that Ikea light fixture to install properly, so the dining room now has light. i still need to get fluorescent tubes and new plastic and some drywall anchors to fix up the kitchen light fixture, but it's all shaping up very nicely.

i still need to pick up a cheap set of shelves at Ikea to hold chiles and wine and cookbooks and stuff, but it's otherwise ready for a good mopping. and i need to get off my butt and assemble that bathroom etagere i bought last weekend, so i can get my bathroom organized. and i still haven't put up my movie posters. and the living room will be full of boxes for the foreseeable future.

still, it's starting to feel like home. sort of. it'll be a while yet, i think, but it's getting there.

so, aside from the fact that my entire body is a mass of aches and pains (due to overexertion and severe clumsiness-induced bruising), things are going most excellently. the job is good, the apartment is good (although still not fully cleaned or unpacked-into), and i'm in a pretty damn good mood overall.

Thursday, after a time-consuming miscommunication, i had dinner with my first real-life crush (my first ever crush was, of course, Han Solo), Erik, who happens to live in Austin now with his wife. i hadn't actually seen him in something like 20 years, but we picked up right where we left off. it's incredibly refreshing to talk to someone i've known for so long (since i was 14!). we talked and talked and talked and talked and they closed down the restaurant and we stood outside talking and talking and talking and finally reminded each other we should get going and then talked and talked some more. and tonight we're going to meet up at the Continental Club for happy hour and see a gypsy jazz band called Paris 49 that he insists i must see. i expect we'll, um, talk some more. and i hope i'll get to meet his wife soon, since she sounds amazingly cool. she's apparently one of the top contenders for Funniest Person In Austin.

Friday i spent quite a bit of time on the phone with former fling jbsegal, during which i managed to inadvertantly beat the crap out of myself while attempting to converse and do other things at the same time. this was fairly painful, but the entertainment value was worth it.

Saturday i did a ton of random household stuff: laundry, taking-out of trash (mostly packing material from Ikea), putting-away of clothes, and deflating-of-airbed. then the lovely and wonderful spinsono and i had dinner, sang Steve Goodman songs, and rescued a Freecycled bed from the far northern wastes of Austin, with the help of with the help of madspark's truck. i forgot, however, to retrieve the herbs Matt and Susan have been babysitting for me, or the pots from bquinlan and valkyrie_kitten's backyard. (i couldn't take them home the last time i was there because it was raining and they were full of mud.) incidentally, my patio gets just the right amount of sun in the early part of the day, but is protected from the harsh afternoon sun... and the light comes in at an angle, so there's an area that's always shaded for things that can't handle full sun. it's going to be perfect for growing herbs. i need to hit the Home Depot soon and pick up a good-sized rosemary plant to put in place of the missing shrub just outside my patio -- it'll make things look better and have plenty of room to get big. (i use so much rosemary that i'll kill a small plant within a few months.)

the orientation of the apartment, and the number of big trees surrounding it, means it stays amazingly cool even on warm days. we haven't had any real scorchers yet, but even in 80+ degree weather i've been able to keep the windows wide open, and when it's cooler than that, the apartment is actually a little too cool for my taste when there's a breeze. i should save a fair bit of money on my electric bill thanks to that.

not having to pay money for a bed meant that Sunday i could spend several hundred dollars (but less than the bed would've cost) on other important things like vacuum cleaners, bathroom etageres, bedsheets, cushy mattress toppers, oscillating fans, potholders, saltshakers, sink strainers, alarm clocks, and random miscellany from an especially overcrowded dollar store. i restrained myself from spending $80 on a supercool comforter set from Target (BTW, they also sell this one for less than half of what Bed, Bath, & Beyond wants for a nearly identical one), but succumbed to the lure of the salad spinner i've been coveting for several years now, which is just too long to covet something that only costs $20.

and last night i finally cooked an actual meal in the new kitchen: a chicken leg quarter, marinated in lime juice, olive oil, garlic, and black pepper and broiled, with a baked sweet potato on the side and a couple of small-but-delicious yellow mangoes for dessert. i should've added some chiles and cumin to the marinade, but i didn't think of it till later.

it's become clear that every time i use the stove the smoke alarm is going to go off, and it's one of those annoying ones that's wired into the electric system. i had to yank the wires to shut it up. there's another in the bedroom, and that one doesn't go off when i cook, and i never close doors when i'm home alone, so i'm not too concerned about having unhooked the stupid thing. i had the same problem in my Pacifica apartment; you'd think someone could manufacture a smoke detector that's usable in a one-bedroom apartment, wouldn't you?

installing a ceiling fan in the dining room area and fixing the screen so i can have both windows open all the way may help with that issue, but i'm hoping i can spend next weekend actually resting, because i need some damn recovery time. sheesh.

of course, all of this meant that i didn't get much time to rest, so i'm still bruised and achy and tired, although having a real bed to sleep on definitely helps. it smells a bit of cigarette smoke, and i couldn't find a properly impermeable mattress cover in the stores, so i've ordered a zippered vinyl one; with the thick fiberbed on top, breathability won't be an issue and it should help with the reek.

so. jazz and conversation tonight. life could definitely be worse.

because my landlord is a moron who told me my furnace was electric and not gas, my pilot light isn't lit. see those toes in my icon? they're COLD. (temps are in the 30s-40s today. never mind that they were in the 80s last week, this is fucking Texas.)

i've figured out how it should theoretically work: i turn the gas valve until it's parallel to the line to turn on the gas, then i turn the knob to 'pilot' and push it down to make the hissy gas noise, and then i light the pilot and turn the knob to 'on'. right?

apparently not. at firsti could get the pilot to light for a few seconds, but as soon as i tried to turn the knob to 'on' it went out. now, no matter how long i hold it down, even though i can hear the gas, i can't get it lit at all.

what the fuck do i do to make it stay lit?

if it helps, the furnace is a Ruud UGAC-045CD.

my chilly kitties thank you.

so, after visits to Target (where i got cute pajamas on clearance!) and Home Depot (there's one right at Woodward and 35, i don't even have to get on the access road!) i triumphantly returned home with... a bunch of stuff. in the last half-hour i've installed a solid ceiling hook from which to hang my handy sock-and-underwear organizer, fixed the lampshade on the bedroom ceiling fan, replaced the showerhead, repaired a loose drawer roller, and glued and clamped the two splitting drawer bits in the kitchen. if i can maintain momentum, i'll clean the kitchen cabinets, inside and out, with soap and water. i've got contact paper to put down when they're dry, and the outer layer of plywood is actually kind of pretty, and should look much nicer once i apply furniture polish.

i have to wait for full daylight to replace the dining room light fixture, since i can't see to work. but i bought a nice heavy duty stepstool so i can do it without breaking my neck. i forgot to pick up a new drain stopper thingy for the bathroom sink, and i still need to take down the plastic from the kitchen light fixture and measure it so i can get more, at which time i can pick up some anchor bolts for fixing its wooden frame. i talked to the landlord and he said he'll make sure the disintegrating shelves get replaced reasonably soon. (he feels guilty because the workmen still haven't done the work he ordered in the bathroom, but since that's all relatively unimportant i don't really care. i think they were going to paint the bathtub -- i'm going to ask him not to have that done because i don't understand why you'd do that in the first place -- and put up new towel hangers. whee.)

oh, and i forgot to pick up a new cover plate to replace the missing one on the kitchen light switch. but i've got all my cleaning supplies rounded up now, so once i'm done with the cabinets i can do the counters and the floors. one of the screens in the kitchen has a cat-sized tear, so i'll have to ask bquinlan to fix that (since he foolishly told me he knows how), and i still need to work out how i'm going to wedge them from outside so the cats can't push them out of the frames. oh, and the knob on the front door needs replacing, but that's another thing i can easily do myself.

there's about a four-inch chunk of kitchen linoleum torn up in front of the fridge... i'm not sure what i'll do about that yet. it's hardly worth demanding they replace the whole floor, and i sure as hell don't want to do it. i suppose it's not really important.

i think that's about it, although i'd be obliged if anyone can tell me how one might go about cleaning the world's filthiest miniblinds. they replaced all but one set -- i assume because this set still works fine -- but holy SHIT they're dirty.

oh yeah, and i gotta remember to get a toilet brush when i'm at Ikea tomorrow. (who's with me? come on, is it even possible to spend too much time at Ikea?) why i didn't drop the whopping 99 cents on one last time, i do not know, but i refuse to pay a premium for a fancy toilet brush. i mean, honestly.

thanks to a couple of generous housewarming gifts via PayPal (thanks, 2wanda, ronebofh, and yong_mi!), i can afford to buy a microwave for my new place. before i do that (which i won't do till next week anyway), i figured i'd see if anyone had any recommendations, because i know a lot of y'all are the kind of people who do obsessive product research before buying anything. i might as well reap the benefit of your experience, yes?

so anyway, i've got a budget of $80. obviously i'm not talking about an expensive unit here, but i'd like to find one that's big enough to hold a full size dinner plate. anyone have any experience with cheap microwaves lately?