I also found this. Did you want me to keep it, Steve? Should I throw it away?

More here at Found Magazine.

Maybe that was overdramatic, but the fire was a bit out of hand.

The BBQ was just a last minute thing to celebrate nothing and everything, but I began to realize that this marked the end of the days at Apartment 235. We were all splitting ways and moving out. Gone are the days of questioned sexuality, freak dancing to “Brick House”, calling Brad the apartment slut, fruit fights, and Latina Magazines. The walls of that apartment are naked, the rooms empty, and the air silent. It still smells strange in there, regardless of how many scented candles we burned to mask a garbage can about three days past capacity. It was a metaphorical launch pad to the rest of our lives. Relationships were forged and tested within those walls. Apartment 235 was the beginning…

I hate that frickin’ apartment. We still owe two months of rent on it, and we all moved out.

-One sturdy knuckle
-Power Drill
-Drywall Screws
-Provolone Cheese

Directions: Knock on wall until it sounds like you hit a stud. Drill a hole. Repeat until stud located.

We put up shelves at the apartment, and I realized soon that a screwdriver and power drill are not the only things you need to put up shelves. For one, a stud-finder would have saved us about 34 holes in our walls. Also, measuring the distance between the studs would have been the smart thing to do. However, without the stud finder, I was able to make an ungodly amount of stud finder jokes.

After we mounted the shelves, we discovered why people use levels. And why people who don’t have stud finders buy spackle. Provolone cheese works suprisingly well for filling the old holes.

Not that I care. Who really asks these things and cares about the answer? Especially here on a website where I don’t know you/you don’t know me. It’s a formality, so please, keep your Thanksgiving turkey/turducken stories to yourself while I tell you about mine:

I had an uneventful Thanksgiving. All I know is I didn’t end up with a piece of turkey liver in my mouth a la last year or the year previous. More often than not I will be plowing through my Thanksgiving meal forcing quantity not quality and inevitably a piece of turkey liver will show up in mouthland. It takes all the manpower not to vomit all over, but in the process, the entire contents of Thanksgiving dinner roll out of your mouth, down your turkey bib and onto your khakis. Disaster avoided.

I had a rare moment this weekend where I was not hastily doing homework for the impending end-of-the-semester deadline. My mind is only thinking about letterform and photography. The latter being more interesting, while letterform has only managed to burn the letter A into my retinas. No need to explain – it doesn’t make sense to me either.

Intersparsed between homework and not having fun, I did wage Black Friday (aka the busiest shopping day of the year). I made the trip down to Fry’s Electronics considering picking up an 80gig hard drive, not so much because I needed it, but merely because it was a smokin’ deal. The parking lot was so full if Burt Reynolds turned sideways, he would have knocked down half a Mormon family, two shopping carts, and scratched the clear coat off five cars with his mustache. Burt Reynolds wasn’t there, but you can imagine. It took me about 15 minutes, but I found a parking spot. It was a close call, but the car fit. I headed in and saw the longest checkout line I had ever seen. I went to the hard drive section, saw there were none left, was asked various questions by non-techie senior citizens about hard drive technology, and then left the store. Merely because I am 20, people assume I know everything about computers. And of course I do, I just don’t work there. So I left the store, found my car, neatly scratched from some bozo who doesn’t know how to park, and drove off.

Regardless, Black Friday wasn’t a wash – I purchased art supplies. I walked out of Michael’s with nine frames, two mat cutters and a ruler. I was about to leave when the impulse items – several Christmas trees – caught my eye. I bought a $15 one that looked sturdy. I brought it to the apartment hoping it would pop out of the box fully assembled with blinky lights and an animatronic Santa at the top of the tree. It didn’t. The tree had 50 tree parts and a one-page instruction sheet with a picture of a lady falling over in her chair. I didn’t understand the instructions mostly because I didn’t see where the lady fit into the whole setup process. Instead, I followed the clever color/letter coding and built the best Christmas tree in our apartment. It leans and it has no ornaments, but I shoved an empty pack of Marlboro’s on the top (interim Santa/Angel), so it’s got a bit of class now.

Anyway, I was on candle-duty, trying to pick out a sweet-smelling yet manly candle from the Safeway stock. This is quite difficult to do as is, but then about 90% of the candles are named “Sensual Fruit Lavender Bouquet,” and I know I can’t walk up to the cashier and pay for them without looking over my shoulder. I could buy that latest flavor of “Mystical Tingleberry”, but how could I do it and respect myself as a male? I guess I could take the candle and slap it between a large steak and an issue of Car and Driver, but that would end up being a $25 candle. Where are the scents “Lumberjack Pine” or “Benchin’ 250 at Gold’s”. I want something to make me feel like a man. Don’t guys care about how their apartment smell?

Well, I stood in front of this large assortment of candles just staring, because it’s overwhelming. I look over my shoulder, pick up a candle, and give it a whiff. “Mmm. Fruity, yet I don’t want our apartment to smell like 600 girls.” I kept sniffing, sorting, and before I knew it, I was standing really close to a guy I didn’t know. Both with candles in hand, smelling the scents, and then I thought, “Is that Celine Dion playing on the Safeway speakers?” It was. The guy next to me mumbled something so I slapped that candle back on the shelf and fast walked it over to the meat section. I grabbed a large pack of hot dogs to make me feel like a man again. I talked to TJ and Steve for consoling. Then, I waited for that guy to leave and ended up buying “Vanilla.”

I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that I knew Celine Dion was singing or that I find hot dogs reassuring.

It’s so bad. It has the same look as Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries but with an interesting twist: it sucks. I don’t know if I will ever trust Safeway cereal again. The best part is that you get a lot of it, which is a good value. The bad thing (aside from flavor) is that it’s in a plastic bag, so when you pour it out, the thin plastic shell collapses under the pressure and it pours out about four inches too early and all over the counter, the floor, in your hair, behind the fridge, and then like two kernels roll into the bowl. They mock me. So really, you get a massive amount of cereal to compensate for how much you actually dump on the floor.

And I need to go to sleep because I swear I’m seeing things.

It was an unnerving feeling that caused Greg to cease his activity. “Is someone looking at me?” he wondered. Only his beloved friend Steve was in the room, busied by the limitless diversion of the Internet. Greg slowly, quietly put down his pencil and ruler and allowed his gaze to intercept Steve.

Steve sat innocently at his keyboard, undoubtedly listening to a new Foo Fighters song or that U2 cover by Johnny Cash. Greg, satisfied that his paranoia was completely without cause, resumed the application of graphite to paper.

It was not long before that nagging gut feeling came back. This time Greg quickly snapped his neck up from his work, instinctively, to the only other person in the room…Steve. As he did so, he shouted the vile accusation: “STOP LOOKING AT ME WHILE I WORK!!!”

Steve, with feigned surprise, said, “Hey man, I’m just checkin’ out these phat tunes from Pat Benetar…calm down.”

For a moment Greg’s hands shook with rage and he felt an instinctive pull toward the x-acto knife on the edge of the table. Realizing the absurdity of his sinful impulse, he bitterly continued his seemingly endless task. Was the constant monotony of forming hundreds of Roman characters on a sheet of paper making him go insane? His mind flew to a memory of a story he’d heard about the art professor who worked too long at developing the holy grail of fonts, Times New Comic Sans Bold, and then completely lost his mind. “I’m just imagining things,” Greg thought. If only he could believe the comforting lies he told himself. He resumed the scrawling…

…Steve, upon hearing the telltale sound of pencil against paper, turned from the screen displaying his formidable library of Neil Diamond songs and began again to stare.

Things seem really busy lately. It feels like I’m hurrying through one thing just so I can get to the next thing and hurry through that. I had to frantically try to clean the house yesterday between going to school and whatnot; as many people know we had our first onecommunity meeting (went really well, lots of fun). I spent all of today checking my watch while in school, looking forward to getting out so that I could do homework and go to Savers to buy my Halloween costume. It’s just one thing after another after another. I guess I’m just trying to hurry up and get to the weekend…tomorrow Greg, TJ, and I are leaving on our third annual trip of reflection to Sedona. We’re actually going to camp out overnight and then hike all day Saturday. So exciting, so relaxing, so much fun. Hopefully that will put an end to all this craziness.

As I mentioned earlier, I went today to buy my Halloween costume (to be worn down to Mill Ave. on the fateful day). As a group, we’re going with a superhero theme (anyone who’s interested in joining us is welcome…just let me know so we can work things out). I’m going as the Incredible Hulk:

I got the pants, I got the wig, now all I have to do is whip up some crazy homemade makeup I found on the internet. Hopefully it won’t stain my skin…I have class the next day and the thought of going in with all my skin tinted bright green is very unappealing.

Well, I’m off until Sunday, probably. When I come back, I will have the serenity of Caine, from Kung Fu.

“When one eye is fixed on the destination, you have only one eye to search for the way.” – Caine

Down to business. Right now I’m listening to Def Leppard. Generally, I think they’re crap, but the song “Two Steps Behind” is good in that cheesy 80’s power ballad sort of way. Fun fact: the drummer of Def Leppard has (had? he could have od-ed or something by now) one arm. Tell your friends…

Today was the weekly shopping trip with TJ, also known as procrastination when I need to be writing a paper. We went down to Target; I had three things that I needed to get for sure. 1) I needed rat food for Kitty, 2) I needed one of those snazzy notebooks with the black and white cover that contains graph paper, and 3) I needed a new pair of sandals because my trusty (not anymore) pair broke. I didn’t get any of those things, but I’ll tell you what I did get. I got a 2 hour reprieve from doing homework, a pair of Gap pants for $3.47, some sweet-smellin’ body wash, and some baking soda toothpaste. If anyone gives me guff for buying Gap pants and bodywash, I’m going to lock myself in the bathroom for two hours, draw a hot bath, listen to angry girl punk music, and eat a half gallon of H䡧en-Dazs. I’m not a pansy!

TJ and I have decided that we’re going to open a store in the mall called “Seasonal Crap.” It will only sell stuff that is out of season that other stores don’t carry. Here’s some things that we’ve tried to buy over the last few weeks that were nowhere to be found because they’re “seasonal” items and aren’t carried year round: sandals, swimtrunks (non-ugly ones), otter pops, goggles, Easter bunny suits, and many more. Well, I guess we didn’t try to buy Easter bunny suits and that “many more” part is a lie. I just thought the list was more impressive before I started writing it. Anyway, we’ve made a lot of unsuccessful stinkin’ trips to Target and the mall. Hey Target! You know what’s out of season? THOSE FREAKIN’ CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS YOU PUT OUT IN AUGUST!!! JUST SELL ME SOME BLINKIN’ SANDALS!!! Ok, I need to go breathe into a paper bag and put my feet up.