Author: Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

First Post from Pine

Well, here I am in Pine. I was actually here yesterday, and had internet access, but was just about too tired to post. That, and I had to finish assembling/setting up my bed before I could pass out. And having a place to sleep took precedence over posting. Oh yeah, and before yesterday I had never in my memory used a wood stove for heating. And sleeping in a warm bed was even more important than posting, so I spent a good amount of time fussing with the wood stove, trying to get it lit or stay lit or produce enough heat… What fun this is! I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it before long.

I’m still very tired. After my last post (the one that broke the site for an hour or two the other day), I slept a couple of hours but then just kept working continuously until last night, when I slept much longer than I expected. Then today I worked all day, about half doing manual labor around the property and half unpacking. Which is just as tiring as packing. A lot of lifting and shifting and moving big heavy things around. After I finish this post, a couple of emails, a couple of reviews, and maybe reading whatever has been posted on ME, I hope to keep unpacking, at least until my clothes are unpacked. I’ve basically been wearing the same outfit for three days. (Yes, I changed my socks , underwear, and handkerchief. Silly.)

Did I mention my arms are sore? And my legs? And my ass? Not from sitting, but actually from working. I don’t think my ass has ever been this sore from work before. Most of me, actually, is pretty sore. My feet. My neck. And my knees. Remember my post about my knees before? How one of them was always pretty bad, but that I keep injuring it recently? Yeah. It hates me now. Much of what I’ve had to do, even aside from packing and unpacking, requires bending over. Except I can’t crouch down to get closer to my work, I have to bend in the middle. I tried crouching a couple of times today and it just … well, my knee made me very unhappy about having tried that. There are stairs to climb here, and I was up and down a ladder all morning, and my knee let me know every step of the way that I shouldn’t have tried crouching before-hand. Hopefully it will mend itself over time. I shouldn’t be doing too much crouching or climbing the next few days. I’m supposed to be running the store here, instead.

Have I mentioned that since I have dial-up, I’m doing all my writing of emails and posts and reviews in a text editor before logging on? Not a big deal, but I thought I’d mention it. There’s only one line up here, so I don’t want to be on the line too long. I was on way too long yesterday, downloading all the emails that came in between when I brought the computer up here a week and a half ago and last night. There shouldn’t be as many tonight. Well, let me go see… Now downloading 1 of 6. Not bad. Good thing I checked this morning, actually. There were 14 then, I think. Anyway, I’m gonna go read my email, then cut and paste everything I’ve writtn where it belongs, then get ready and go to bed.

(* Oooh. An email just reminded me of something I determined today. Now I really DO want an iPod. I used to just like the idea of them, but now I have all sorts of time I expect to be spending outside doing brute-force or repetitive tasks all over the property, and a portable music player like that sure would be nice. If I can get some of my paintings to sell above the cost of maintaining ME, I’ll see about getting one. *)

Be kind to your knees…

You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Some of you know that I’ve been working on steam-cleaning my carpets lately. I want to do as much as possible to leave on good terms with the rental company, which means not leaving dirty, worn-out carpets. I’m pretty good at getting the carpet a lot cleaner, and I own my own steam-cleaner. Except that one part, a part that is supposed to hold the dirty water in while I am doing the cleaning, and then from the cleaner to the sink, just a tiny piece of plastic that locks into a small hole to keep the water in, became damaged. I don’t know exactly when the damage occurred, or how, but it looks to me like someone tried to put it down a garbage disposal or under a lawnmower. So it mostly holds the water in, but sorta drips, too.

So I’ve been cleaning my carpets in a direction of travel that allows me to not carry the leaking-dirty-water-device over already-cleaned carpets. I’ve even been using plastic garbage bags as well as I could to catch the water so it would not make it to the ground. Except that some drips out no matter what. And despite my efforts to keep drying the kitchen floor, just now as I was nearing completion of the dirtiest floor (my front room), really just trying to rinse the already hand-scrubbed-clean carpet, I needed to empty/refill the ‘bucket’. Man, was I not expecting what happened next.

I suppose that since I was actually at the passage to the kitchen when it occurred, the machine had been maliciously leaking water onto the tile floor. Then some sort of partial vacuum was created around the bottom of the ‘bucket’ so that when I tried to pull it out, I had to pull harder than normal. And then it broke free and all of a sudden I was pulling hard against no resistance, with my bare, wet feet on the wet tile floor and then I wasn’t standing anymore. Now, I’ve learned not to reach out and try to grab things on the way down, as that usually just increases the damage, but man, did I hit the ground hard on my left knee and what now feels like both of my wrists.

I lurched up, dropped the ‘bucket’ in the sink to drain, and immediately poured myself a glass of caffeinated beverage to take some pre-emptive ibuprofin and tylenol with. Because although I couldn’t feel it yet, I knew how hard I hit the ground, and I knew there was very soon going to be pain. (For those of you who don’t know, caffeine speeds the absorption of ibuprofin and tylenol into your body. Excedrin, if you look at the active ingredients, is ibuprofin, tylenol, and caffeine.) Then I came into this room to collapse for a moment, to relax.

And my head managed to collide with something hard on the way down.

Which is nuts, because there’s very little left in the entire house at this point. The chances of my head colliding with anything on the way to the ground is slim. But, well… As I was trying to lower myself carefully to the ground, my left knee refused to cooperate and kicked itself out from under me. And it decided it was going to (hey! my right knee is starting to hurt now, too! no fair! I don’t remember hitting both knees!) start up with the pain, too.

So I’m taking a few moments to rest now and make this post and not stand up… and then I’m going to go for a walk and not steam clean for a little while. This can be much more hazardous than it looks.

Ahh, farewell…

Okay, so an entire bottle of champagne on an empty stomach, when given a chance to digest, get me just past buzzed to tipsy. But the question now is whether I go for the remainder of the everclear and tequila left in my fridge, try to finish off all the alcohol in my house before I leave Tempe, or whether I let it just sit there and eventually (likely) get thrown away. Probably I’ll go to sleep. I’ve finished the dishes and it’s late enough.

I went down to the Italian Ice place, and despite the fact that the AZ Republic article about them and their own menu/flyer says they’re open until 2AM on Friday and Saturday, their window (and the fact that they were obviously closed at 1:15AM) says they close at around 11PM. So that didn’t work. And the streets were mostly empty, since I was at least 15 minutes past last call. But I did go ahead and wander into the adult store (which I haven’t been in in at least 6-8 months, but where I used to hang out at on weekend evenings for a long, lonesome time) where ‘Starla’ was back after transferring to another location and back, basically for the duration of my not bothering to go into the store. (Actually, I only went in because I saw she was there through the front window.) Anyway, she seemed glad to see me (despite the fact that when I asked her out months and I don’t know how long ago, she turned me down), and even asked me to come back on the morrow when she was less busy so we could spend some time together before I left town. (Which is more than many of the people who claim to care about me have done in the last week.)

Anyway, I’m sure i had a point. What was it?

I like this feeling. This … my senses are dulled feeling. like numbness pressing in on me from the outside. Sleepiness, but moreso the desire to go to bed. (With someone beautiful…) I remember what it was.

So I’ve been living in Tempe for almost 6 years. I’ve been living in this house for nearly two. I don’t know ho wlong it has been going on, and I won’t explain the details (since it could result in trouble), but I’ve been living within about a block of an honest-to-goodness speakeasy for almost two years without knowing it. The weekend before I leave town (almost irrevocably), some strangers on the street deemed be worth stopping and talking to, and then when the conversation turned that way, deemed me ‘cool’ enough that they assumed I already knew that it was there, and when I did not explained it to me, where it was and how to get in &ct.

Finally, the scene I knew was here, the ‘cool’ people I’ve been looking for, make themselves evident, and it’s just days before I leave.

Speaking of which, the day I disappear may have moved back all the way to Wednesday. Which may be interesting, since it would give my stuff a full week to live in Pine without me. Oh, and because almost all my utilities will be turned off Monday. So, we’ll see how that goes. I may end up without internet access for a time anyway.

And no, I don’t know what’s going to happen with my phone. I think I’d decided that I’d like to switch over to the TDMA and keep my old number instead of paying huge cancellation fees and having to give everyone a new number until I kept running into so much trouble with trying to do so. I tried calling, but the won’t take my call between 1 and 6AM CST, because of ‘system maintenance’, which I assume means their slavesemployees are sleeping. Pardon any typing errors; I had an entire bottle of champagne on am epty stomach not too long ago. I think I’m doing quite well, considering.

I think I’m going to go to bed now. Much like last night, I may have to jump up a couple of times to make a post or write a poem or something. I hope everyone has a wonderful day today. I also hope some of the insane traffic we’ve been having lately keeps coming back for more. Woo.

Continue reading Ahh, farewell…

Korbel Blanc de Noirs Champagne review

I will be the first to admit that I am not the one who should be reviewing champagne. Or really any alcohol, for that matter. Something about reviews should be done by people who enjoy the sort of thing they’re reviewing. Like movies. I love movies. I should do movie reviews. Not this. But I had to say something, so it may as well be here. Oh, and as to why I’m drinking it at all: Someone very kindly bought me the bottle for my birthday, back in September, and since I promptly lost my job, I didn’t have much to celebrate. I was going to open it when I was offered a new job, but that hasn’t happened, and with the move to Pine I’m not really on the job market any more. So I may as well drink it now, while I’m cleaning the kitchen anyway.

I don’t typically drink. When I do drink, it is not typically wine. I’ve only tried a few different wines in my time, and I don’t recall liking any of them. Two champagnes, three not, but seriously, they’re all bad grape juice as far as I’m concerned. Oh, and I don’t like things to be fizzy, so champagne is like taking something I don’t like and adding a feature that I feel takes away from the likability of the thing.

When I take a normal mouthful of this … stuff … even the air preceding it into my mouth offends me. Little warning bells and alarms start going off in my head. See, I know what bad food smells like. I live alone and can’t possibly finish every package of food I buy; not enough things come in single serving containers. Also, I’ve recently been cleaning out my fidginator in expectation of moving out of here soon, and coming across the most interesting things I forgot I bought. And in order to get them from the fidginator to the trash, they have to pass by my nose. So I know what bad food smells like. I know what a dozen types of mold and rot smell like. The smell of this champagne falls neatly into the category of some sort of fruit or vegetable that’s gone bad. Probably something sweet, like grapes or cherries rather than something dull like celery or something rancid like meats.

The first couple of sips were interesting, if not a little misleading. You see, since my body is sure this stuff is some sort of bad food that I ought not be consuming, it let me take the first mouthful, alerted me to possible danger, and assumed I would stop consuming the stuff. The second mouthful, I think my body was too shocked that I hadn’t heeded its first warning that it didn’t know what to do with me and let me just swallow, no problem. I was able to note that it was tart and sweet at the same time, and that the bubbles were annoying.

I paused for a moment, doing other things, running some hot water for more dishes, hiding the soul-eating monster in the fidginator’s crisper for the next unsuspecting residents… When I took the next mouthful, it occurred to me that perhaps I was not properly appreciating it, so I drew air across the surface of the champagne before allowing it to gently cascade into my mouth. I then held the champagne in my mouth, swishing a bit to be sure that I experienced the full flavour experience of the wine, and finally swallowed it.

I then noticed that my face had managed to contort itself into so tight and awful a constriction of muscles that I could not prevent drool from escaping the downturned corners of my mouth. My eyes were squeezed tight, as though the vapors from the champagne might somehow rise up and blind me, and the rest of my face was reacting as though I had just swallowed a concentrated liquid nerve gas. I proceeded to ask Iain via IM why anyone would drink wine, let alone champagne, (which is like wine gone bad via bubbles) and he was little help. He suggested that champagnes tended to be sweeter than wines. I almost want to go try some of the not-sweet wines he’s referring to, see if they don’t cause my facial muscles to actually tear away from the inside of my face.

Every subsequent mouthful is proving to be a challenge. After the first three, I seriously considered just dumping the stuff, and going down to the store to buy some soda or something to drink while I work. Then it occured to me to take a deep breath away from the scent of the champagne and then to not allow air to pass through or to my nose while drinking. This would allow me to seperate the tragedy of the actual taste from the offensiveness of the odor of the champagne. This actually makes it easier to drink. The tart, biting (still screaming that something has gone bad therein, but not as loudly) taste of it actually does have two or three layers of different types of sweet hiding within it. In order to accurately judge the flavour of a thing, it is easiest to separate the flavour from the rest of the experience. To say, “Would I like to be able to get this flavour as a cream ice at the local Brooklyn Italian Ice place down on Mill?” Which, in this case, I would not. (Speaking of which, as soon as I finish this review I’m going to go see if they’re still open.)

Oooop. There goes the last mouthful of the bottle (after not eating for four or five hours, even when I don’t like it I get a good buzz) and the champagne glass I was drinking it out of into the dishwater. (Yes, I have a couple of champagne glasses. Don’t ask me why.) Overall, I would say that I am not a suitable judge of this product. Then I’ll go ahead and say that it is sweet and tart at the same time, and that if you like drinking things that smell and taste like they’ve gone so far bad they’re trying to kill you, you may like this. I’ll also ask someone else (presumably someone who likes drinking wine and/or champagne – yes, I’m talking to you, Zoe) to go get a bottle of the same stuff and write a better review as a comment to this one.

Thank you, and good night.