literally, an entry

i watched a lot of the prime time coverage of the olympics. one of my pet peeves was aired. one of the announcers, the guy who announced the diving, was talking about how strong the chinese fan presence was at the diving competition. he pointed out that you could see many red flags behind the platform. he said, imagine what it will look like in beijing olympics. "a sea, literally a sea, of red."

people have taken to using the world "literally" as some kind of generic word of emphasis. it makes me want to become a grammarian. i gaffe a lot, especially here, but it astounds me that people (professional announcers) don't know what they're saying.

olympic remodeling

today i changed a deadbolt lock for the first time. hurray. i made some progress with the house (by which i mean home/apartment/place) in general. who knew putting in drawer linings could be so rewarding? and i love my new vacuum cleaner. i bought home improvement for dummies. witness the new leaf.

i turned on the tv today for the first time since i moved. i love watching the olympics. there’s cable reception here even though i didn’t ask for it to be turned on, so i get a good picture. without the cable, there's no picture at all.

it reminds me of when galen and i got fancy cable at my place during the 2002 olympics. he brought over his old tv. we set them side by side, tuned them to different events, and gorged ourselves on olympic goodness. i’m not sure what it is about the olympics that is so appealing. i really like hearing the stories of the athletes, although it’s kind of disappointing to hear so little about non-americans. it’s cool that they put olive wreaths on the medalists. the cycle road race event today was really cool – an unknown, sergio paulinho, came in second.

i’ve rearranged my bedroom so that there’s a desk area. now i’m looking for a screen to keep it out of view.

i took mac to the vet today to look at a sore on his nose and a lump on his chest. the lump turned out to be a harmless fatty tumor, and the vet wasn’t worried about the sore. so it’s good. he’s taken to the walk-in closet. it’s his den, his lair. it’s pretty cute. i send him there when he barks out the window, and he retreats there on his own. friday holly and i came to my place for lunch. it’s great seeing mac more often.

hiroyuki tomita, a male japanese gymnast, has funny hair. aren’t you glad you read this entry?

Los Angeles, more alien than Mars

I guess one of the things I find odd about this is that they didn't know how to rotate the picture, so it looks like the rack is on its side. But what I find the most odd is this: "won on the Price is Right."

Brand New Wrought Iron Bakers Rack with wine rack - won on the Price is Right. 6ft x2Ft wide. Free delivery in Los Angeles or Orange County Area

Pessimism, the other white meat

Don't get me wrong, I'm ecscatic about my new place. Still, there've been some hiccups. Sorry about my long gap of no blogging. Mac's birthday is Tuesday (and Dad's too); I'm having people over. I'm also corresponding with a few people about being my roommate. I'll be showing the place in the next few days, boxes and all.

hi gia -

i moved in on saturday. the key pickup went perfectly smoothly - thank you. unfortunately, there are still a few things that need to be worked out. will you do me the favor of sharing this with george? thank you.

there's stuff that was left behind here by the sellers that i assume is garbage, stuff like a half-filled peanut butter jar, a half-filled syrup bottle, garbage can lid, etc. i'm not especially happy about that or the inch-thick cat hair and crusty cat vomit on the carpet, but when those were the only things i'd seen, i wasn't planning on bringing it up with the sellers.

that changed. i have come across a few issues that need to be addressed. these are: the missing refrigerator, a missing garage remote, and stacks of bricks and paint cans on the porch. i'm not willing to dispose of 30 bricks and 5 cans of paint. it's my understanding that the air conditioners were also supposed to stay, but i don't really care about those. this was my understanding because the escrow agreement has added, not boilerplate, language that says that the sale includes "any and all appliances." i'm working without a refrigerator, and two coolers of frozen fish and meat have gone bad. this is an expensive inconvenience.

the drains were not fixed, they're still really slow. i thought they were going to fix them and some other thing that was brought up in the pest report. what happened with that?

to resolve these problems, i propose that the sellers pay to have the carpets professionally cleaned, either give me the fridge that was here before (which i saw - i don't want some other old fridge) or reimburse me for a new one, bring by the missing remote, and haul away the bricks and paint.

i imagine that it sounds like i'm picking out every little thing, but there's a fair amount of stuff that i'm omitting from this message. i know moving is a hectic thing and we don't necessarily get to accomplish all the things on our moving list, but these problems are outside normal inconvenience. these issues would have come to light when i had more bargaining power been if the walk-through happened after the sellers had moved out, which makes me feel a bit taken advantage of, especially given that i didn't charge them for staying those extra days.

can you drop me a line monday to give me an update?

thanks,
holly

p.s. there are also some things here that the sellers might want: two drawers in the built-in dressers in the walk-in closet, 4 large canisters of powdered baby formula, a large box of sweet 'n low packets and some cans of liquid baby formula.