basement party

This is my first full time job. This is the first time I have signed a lease. This is the first time I bought lipstick. This is the first time I have made an on line dating profile, and gone on a blind date. This is the first time I have bought a gym membership. This is the first time I have bought pussy willow in the spring.  like my mother does. This is the first time I've had a budget spreadsheet. This is the first time I've attended a party that was attended by the police, twice.

The apartment-wide party really did end up happening on Saturday night. Adrian Paras Amy and I went down to the basement and there was a dj playing in the corner with his laptop and a movie projected behind him, another one waiting for his turn at the set, wearing lab goggles over his glasses. A couple lamps and some Christmas lights, someone turned on a couple bike lights and it looked like a strobe blinking in the corner. Like an edgy bar where they can charge you 12$ for drinks, except with a laundry room at the entrance. At 10:30 the cops showed up, right as we had shut off the music (there was a quick interlude for a fund-raising auction, which was actually pretty funny.) They said something about usually being reasonable before eleven but that we were so loud they could hear us a block away. I blame the building architecture for acting as an amp.

They left and soon after we continued, the number of people swelling and multiplying; people who didn't live in the building, people who were friends or dating, people who came after they heard it was actually a party, people who came before to create critical mass. I ended up stereotyping apartments: the demure and professional girls, and tall bro-y potheads, the nerdy MIT students. A few of the apartments opened up their doors and we went on an apartment tour, exploring the different layouts, the messes of one set of people, the meticulousness of another, the pile of shoes at the end of a hallway and the posters in the kitchen, sangria standing on the kitchen table. Paras's friend came with a horde of Germans, I talked to a couple who didn't live in the apartment, recently moved here - she's Columbian, he's Italian. One girl started apologizing to me that she wasn't more outgoing, as if a total stranger could have noticed her sadness amongst dozens of people. A girl asked her "why are you sad?" and she said "oh. nothing, oh someone just didn't come" and we nodded sympathetically. I said "if I knew you better, I would give you a hug" and she responded "I can use one, yes" surprising me more than the boy who decided to put his phone my dress pocket, a pocket between my shoulder blades that I cannot really reach myself, and a little less than the German boy whose female companion kept pointedly making out with him while he was talking to me and Paras, him going on about how not Jewish my nose is and that I don't have horns, not necessarily in a mean way but just rather unaware that I don't know anything about him. I walked up and down the stairs, weaving in and out of a few apartments, grabbing another bottle of beer, going back to the warm basement and up for gulps of fresh air on the deck, again with the Italian-Columbian couple. And at 1am the cops came again and Paras and I sat contentedly on the porch.

blue tape white snow

I got paint at Pills Hardware store and somehow ended up with a VIP card, 10% off with a signature of the owner (I'm much friendlier when I'm tired.) I got Yosef to come and help me evacuate all my belongings, blue tape the floor, paint the walls. I took him out for pad-thai, so I don't think he regretted coming.

I also went with my family to New Hampshire. We went snowshoeing. Sima struggled to get up the mountain but then we slide down most of it on our butts, the longest snow-slide and excruciatingly fun.

Black Cat White Cat (1998, Yugoslavia, Emir Kusturica)

dream --
We had crash landed on another planet, our jar of human stem cells cracking in the process, the culture spilling all over, infecting the air. The creatures that lived in took on the form of what they touched, and so they looked human. But if they touched you, you turned into one of them: empty, imitative, reflectory. And so we were terrified: who is human and who is not? They moved and were watching us, slowly pretending not to hunt.

a taste of life

Work, Work, Work (double), Work, (off), Work, Work (double), (off), Work, Work, Work, Work.
The snow hit hard and I ended up staying at Rita's, sledding in the morning before going to work and getting stuck there because people didn't come in for the night shift, and with the exception of me and one other person, everyone working evening was working a double from the day shift. Which meant that, five days after being mandated to do a double, I got mandated to do a double again. 3pm-7:30am. Not something I ever wanted to do or desire to repeat.

But one good thing: one Sunday the mbta was canceled and I had already gotten home on Saturday, so I had to call off work. Therese and I went to Aeronaut Brewing Co. for a beer & cheese tasting. We walked through the snow for half an hour and it was so beautiful, the snow falling softly, the roads mostly void of cars, and street lamps casting yellow-pink light. The brewery was gorgeous too: a huge hall with high ceilings and a bar, large Christmas-tree bulbs hanging on the rafters, which made it feel both spacious and intimate. And another hall where the beer and cheese was presented to us, pleasant strangers to talk to and we walked home through the snow satisfied.

My apartment just had the fire alarm go off. Everyone evacuated and a girl from one of the apartments started organizing a party for next Saturday. Amen to taking advantage of the situation.