04.14.09: the dirty dozen, part III {le vent du metro}

09 heartening spot of the day: via rachel, i discovered the bright side project, a site that spreads the word about designers and rewards clever commenters (rachel won a gold clutch by telling a marvelous story about bread dough and her family's old car). dailycandy explains it well:

These days, it’s pretty tough to find the sunny side of the street.

But stationery designer Tristan Shout Brando is a ray of light during dark times. She has come up with The Bright Side Project, which is dedicated to reminding people that there is still goodness in this crazy world.

Here’s how it works: Every day in March there will be a question posed by an accessory designer (coming months will have different themes). One lucky reader with a creative answer will win a creation from said designer. Easy as that. The queries are intended to get people thinking on the — you guessed it — bright side. (Think, “How do you define internal peace?”)

my bed bugs comment is unlikely to win me a toywatch (a shame, as i've been batting my eyes at them for several months now - we feel strongly about enormous watches at kidchamp HQ), but you never know, right?

10 speaking of the buggers, we're very nearly at yet another finish line: six weeks after we found our first little friends on the mattress, we get to unpack our apartment! on thursday, that is. at present it still looks like this (the giant ziplocs have to stick around for three weeks after the last exterminator visit in case anything decided to linger and hatch - blech). the drama of reimbursement is far from over, however: though our management company promised they would cover our expenses, they ultimately offered credit for half the receipts we forwarded (a thousand-dollar difference). we explained in the friendliest possible terms that we were already lowballing our out-of-pocket costs - in my original letter, i'd tried to demonstrate our good faith by including an extra five pages of receipts for which we weren't asking to be reimbursed - and were told that we'd receive full credit if we signed a new lease (our old one is up in september). internets, my needs are simple: i want to stop imagining that things are crawling on me when i sleep, and i want to repair this giant bug-shaped hole in our bank account without going to housing court. cross your fingers for us!

11 in happier news, we finally got something together for our anniversary this weekend. it's not our wedding date, mind you, but it's ten years since we started dating in oxford; a decade is pretty cool, no? the original plan was to jet back to england for a long weekend in our old stomping grounds, but we're smack in the middle of shipping the june issue here at work - and tickets to london, recession or no, are still pretty outrageous. philadelphia is only an hour away, though, and joe and i have both been itching to go there for awhile now: alors, we shall celebrate in philly! train tickets are a mere $45 or so each way, and i found a good deal on a boutique hotel near rittenhouse square; we've got reservations at osteria (saturday night) and amada (an early dinner on sunday), i'm looking into museums, and i've been studying design*sponge's philadelphia design guide. my trip folder sez epic in loopy rainbow script across its cover; here's hoping, you know? any hidden philly gems we should know about?

12 in bright side and giant plastic bag news, giant inflatable animals made of subway exhaust (or, as joe and i call the footy breeze that whooshes down the platform and curls our hair on the lower east side, le vent du metro)! this footage has been everywhere, but that doesn't keep me from watching it several times a week.

03.25.09: bed bugs, fin (?)

we have a rather curious thursday ahead of us: the exterminators will be giving whatever bed bug-related nonsense remains in our apartment a second walloping sometime between 10 and 2 (i'm hoping for something in the middle, since we have to spirit the cats to the vet for boarding and perform a few operations on the bed to be sure we don't rip our costly new encasements), my mother and her boyfriend will be coming in from california to run around with us for the weekend, and morrissey will be joining us at carnegie hall to...do whatever he does when he's not canceling performances. what would that be, exactly? i've spent the majority of my life wanting to see it, and am still processing the fact that i will. i haven't got a stitch to wear.

the world became a better place when i stopped worrying about infesting my books and started reading again (i seal each one back up in a ziploc bag before i go to sleep, which - listen, i want these bugs gone). i'm glad i managed to read watchmen before i saw the movie, as said movie was thus a little less ridiculous. i'm extra-glad i then started brideshead revisited, which has been a marvelous and much-needed virtual tour of oxford,* where joe and i met and were married (our tenth anniversary** is in less than a month, and since there's pretty much no way we can afford to get there in person, i've been feeling extra-nostalgic). unfortunately, this particular order of things has pretty much ruined the eventual viewing of last year's brideshead revisited movie, for the english actor matthew goode (extra-foppy ozymandias in watchmen) is charles ryder, too. how am i supposed to take that seriously? charles ryder is a pretty foppy character as well, mind you, but man.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 what did you think of watchmen (book or movie)? what got you through the dan and laurie love scenes (textual or onscreen, really)?

02 what does one wear to see morrissey?

03 is the brideshead movie any good?

04 how do you celebrate (dating, wedding, civic, fill-in-the-blank) anniversaries?

*per evelyn waugh, "the turf in hell passage knew [charles and sebastian] well." that's right, y'all: we not only made everyone go to a bar after we got hitched, we sent them down hell passage (eventually renamed st. helens) to do it.

**dating, not wedding: we've only been married for two years and change. not yet that old.

03.12.09: apocalypse chow

thanks to a leftover feeling from last week's bed bug drama, or a mood i caught from barreling through watchmen this week (a strange, strange thing to read before falling asleep each night), or the announcement that lindsay lohan has created a self-tanner, i've got apocalypse on the brain. it's in the air, i think,* and has been driving everyone toward comfort food: joe made his mom's tuna casserole (and a tuna-less version for me) on sunday, so we've been rocking the cold war leftovers (with peas and mushrooms) all week. rachel just whipped up an awesome-looking batch of mac and cheese with wild mushrooms and sage over at heart of light. even the office has been getting into the act: there's a mac and cheese bar (so those exist, apparently) in the cafeteria this week. i have no problem with that.***

in other news, while i have had no luck finding a majestic wizard comforter (my web searches end on slanket pages and/or meditations on gandalf's death), the internet has lots of dragon comforters for me. it's just as well that we can't actually buy bedding for another month or so - cuts down on the stunt purchases.

*my inbox this morning, from joe:

Some of the "latest news" on CNN.com:

Baby covered in blood taken off death porch**
Man strips naked in 7.31 seconds
3 deer make beer run, exit back door

**really, cnn? "death porch"?

*** when we've recovered from this week's casserole, i'm so making cornbread topped apple macaroni and cheese - i'm a sucker for random savory recipes with apples.

03.09.09: bed bugs, the stimulus package

we turned a corner on bug-related angst this weekend, i think. our (twice-encased and cheaply temp-blanketed) bed is back on the floor, we are back on the bed, and the cats are back to bullying me from my pillow. i celebrated by spending all of yesterday either asleep or reading watchmen (my copy had been quarantined with the rest of the books from our bedroom - sorry, evelyn waugh and tom pynchon - but i decided it could come out of its baggie for supervised visits, since there's no way i'm waiting six weeks to see the movie).

as i lounged, it occurred to me that we've finally gotten to the pleasant part of our pestilence-related spending. new bedding: we needs it (and our management company will probably spring for it). i am very fond of shopping for blankets, sheets, and so on - unsurprising, really, considering how very fond i am of sleeping - but have had no occasion to buy anything for quite some time. here in the wake of verminpalooza (starting from scratch, more or less), it's like my job. i know a few of you are bedding-lookers as well - what's caught your eye lately? what colors or patterns do you guys use in your bedrooms?

03.06.09: bed bugs, XOXO

i am back at the office! i forgot to replace my possibly-bug-tainted brush after tossing it the other night and had to comb my hair with a fork this morning, but: back at the office. i feel infinitely more human, and like falling asleep at my desk.

to make up for having confused you in my last post with a paper suit picture from days and days ago, let me tell you something more recent: the exterminators finally arrived late yesterday afternoon, and we were kicked out of the apartment and into hell's kitchen for the rest of the evening. then the dry cleaners called to say that they needed our vacuum to suck the air from the space bags we gave them;* alors, we took big gulps of air, dashed back into our place to dump our last load of laundered clothes and grab the vac, and took off down the street (we'd already been banished for three hours at that point and really needed to pee, so we were running to finish the errand and get to a restaurant).

celebrities v. giant inflatable rats:** little j edition

when we turned up ninth avenue, joe almost clotheslined taylor momsen and her posse with the vacuum as they came out of a restaurant. that would actually have been horrible, of course, and i can certainly differentiate between actors and their roles, but jenny humphrey might be the gossip girl character most in need of a good clocking with a major appliance. the world is a mysterious place, no?

rats: 4.5
star: 12

*debugging the apartment and killing a 101 in 1001 {II} list item (085 buy and start using vacuum storage bags) at the same time: an eerie coincidence (i ordered the bags a few weeks ago and they arrived just before our sanguivorous little friends did), but convenient.

**an ongoing tally of the famous people and union-displeasure-indicating balloons i see in the city.

03.05.09: bed bugs, day 4

03.03.09: bed bugs, days 1-2

oh, internets. we are hoboes in our own home. we got our homework assignments* from the exterminator late sunday; after a magical evening on the floor in our living room (naturally, the pump for our air mattress broke), we started turning our apartment into garbage. two full suitcases and a duffel bag of clothing came out from under the bed and ended up on the curb (in sealed plastic bags); almost all of the bedding from our wedding registry is now gone. our management company agreed to foot our dry cleaning bill,** so the clothing and bedding that wasn't too infested to save was hauled up the street to the cleaners last night (we won't get it back until after the exterminators come, and then it has to stay in sealed plastic until retreatment; last night we slept under our coats, and i've been wearing the same black tank top since sunday morning).

ironically, the mattress and box spring are staying with us after all: trying to get them out of the apartment would have inflicted critters on all of our neighbors, and the exterminator tells us they'll be fine after reconditioning and encasement. that is my first takeaway message for you, internets: buy a bugproof encasement for your mattress and box spring. in our case, it will seal in and starve any stragglers; in yours, it'll prevent infestation completely. seriously: buy one online right now. best hundred bucks you'll ever spend.

my second takeaway message is that disposable tyvek suits are more translucent that one would imagine; don't get so distracted by looking like a beastie boy as you douse your apartment with pesticide that you forget to put on extra pants before dashing outside with the vacuum bag.

still waiting for the exterminator to call (they were snowed in yesterday and no one showed up to work). think good thoughts for us.

30-gallon trash bags filled: 25
today's cost: $200

*an eleven-item tale of property loss. here's #4:

Empty all closets, dressers, bookshelves, wall units, hutches, breakfronts, etc. throughout the residence, including platform bed drawers (if any). All items that have been removed from these areas should be inspected, cleaned and put into plastic bags and sealed tightly. All of the above mentioned items must be vacuumed once they have been emptied to eliminate any live bedbugs or eggs that may be present. Also, remove all framed pictures and decorative items from walls and vacuum. Place vacuum bag in a sealed plastic bag and discard outside for garbage removal.

**just the dry cleaning, mind you. special treatment for the laundry will be another $300-$400.

03.01.09: bed bugs, day 0

hey, look at that! i was starting to tire of posts about food preparation, and the universe did me a solid by making me part of a new saga. we have bed bugs.

joe has been arguing this for a week or two now, and i've been calling him a hypochondriac. sure, he was covered with little red bumps - but i wasn't, and anyway, they were much smaller and lighter than the bite pictures we found online. besides, i'd just finished that book about bed bugs and knew what i was talking about. i peeled up our sheets and mattress pad, looked for the telltale fecal stains (like little black pin pricks), and found nothing. then the bumps turned up on me, too; this morning, i pushed the bed back from the wall to give the far corner a look. there i found...

L: hey, what should we name that first bed bug i caught and put in a jar?

J: benjamin.

L: because...?

J: because of all the benjamins it's going to take to get rid of him.

...benjamin. no photophobia for this motherfucker: he was lounging on our box spring like he was waiting for a mai tai. then i discovered a ton of fecal stains, just about a foot under where my head is when i'm asleep.

i called 311 and learned that i'm supposed to report a bed bug infestation after my management company fails to do something about it. i called our super and got no response; i then called our property manager, and ditto. we agreed that we would throw our mattress and box spring away (they're almost ten years old anyway, and the cost of reconditioning them would, i reasoned, be comparable to a new set on super-sale), so i made a run to the hardware store for painters' suits, plastic for the doomed mattress, and trash bags.

when the super called back an hour ago, he told us that an exterminator came around the building to inspect for bed bugs just yesterday, and did he come to our apartment? (he didn't.) i googled our management company and learned that several of the buildings on our block have been infested for years - and that some tenants have been to court about it. you guys, i smell big fun.

30-gallon trash bags filled: 3
today's cost: $30 (so far)

01.07.09: new year's realizations

kyle maclachlan is much more attractive than i'd given him credit for being.*

reading poetry is dandy, but writing it leaves me a bit cold at the moment (and that's fine; we'll reconnect if we're meant to settle down together).

there is nothing wrong with failing to own belts.

if bed bugs want to live in your apartment, they pretty much will.***

i've got a photography ego (even though i'm a newbie and i know it).

i'm fond of my job. quite fond of it, actually.

*poor kyle: david foster wallace's "david lynch loses his head" (in which he became "nerdy and potatofaced") really did a number on a generation of ladies, i think.**

**exception that proves the rule: kick-ass agent cooper tattoo.

***not my way of saying we have or have had them ourselves; i've just been reading about them (fun book, incidentally, though it'll freak you out about the bee crisis).