I got mail!

One of the unexpected complications that arose from moving into my old apartment turned out to be mail delivery. I filled out a change-of-address form a year ago when I moved. As it turns out, those things are harder to cancel than you might think. (At least one person had something returned to her that she tried to mail me).

But, after filing a form, speaking with the carrier, learning the form was out-of-date (and that the carrier had filed a new one for me), and filing my own up-to-date form, yesterday I got my first piece of mail at my new/old address!

It was stamped “Return to Sender”—twice—but by God, it got delivered!! Yaaaay!

Thanksgiving travels

I made a pilgrimage over the holiday weekend.

Here he is wrestling with his mother:


And here he is eating quietly:


These are two of the twenty-four pictures I took of the pandas. The children standing behind Dad and me loved us. Hahahahahaha.

Helping out the stalkers who might’ve lost the trail

Coffee shops really seem to be the only place to go for internet access—I’ve had bad luck with just serendipitously happening upon open networks.

In any event, the promised update on my apartment situation:
When I discovered I’d be moving back to New York, I wrote my old landlord to see if he had any places in my old building available. He did, in fact—across the hall from my old place. When I got to town, I looked at it. I liked it fine. But someone who liked it better was the woman living across the hall. In my old apartment.

So we switched. And I moved back into my old place. (If you’re curious, there’s actually a picture in my very first post here).

But in her brief time in my apartment, she’d made some changes. The change to the bedroom was the main one:


And so...
My dedicated parents came up to New York and spent the weekend working.

Here they are putting the dropcloth in the closet:


Mom’s got her painting suit on:


Here’s Dad applying the white paint:


And then the accent color:


And here’s the finished product!! Yaay!!


(There was some dust on the lens—the paint job itself was fine). Now I just have to finish putting all my stuff away.

Still no internet

The no-internet-connection-at-home situation is killing me. Sorry for the silence! For those proud and few of you out there who actually read this, please keep checking. I’m on the lookout for convenient places with wifi. And one of these days—just maybe—I’ll have internet access at home once more.

Settling in is slow

I still don’t have an internet connection at home. I’m doing my best to post here, but I was thwarted earlier this week by an unfortunate pricing policy in a coffeeshop and a surly worker.

But now I’ve been mildly more successful—I’m sitting in a different coffeeshop, in a row with four other people using Mac laptops, and eating an unbelievably overpriced sandwich.

But I forgot to bring the wire to attach my camera to the computer, so I can’t use the pictures I took of my apartment this morning. That’s life.

Instead, here’s a picture from last Tuesday:


Yaaaay!

New beginnings

I’ve decided to accept that I’m going to keep the blog going, at least for a little while. As a result, I’ve changed a few things in the sidebar to accurately reflect both my own geographic location and other people’s location in relation to me. But I’ve kept the title the same. It may confuse others from time to time, but you know why it has that name—think what an insider you are!

And here’s a picture from the weekend. Why, oh why were there surgical gloves lying on the bench in the subway station at 10:00pm?


Now... I’m moving out of my temporary housing and into my apartment later this morning. More about that later, I’m sure, but it means I might not have internet access at home for a while. I’ll do what I can. Keep the faith.

Happy day after Halloween!

At least, it was happy for me. I got a lot of very nice calls and e-mails, and I had a lovely dinner with a few friends last night, some of whom I hadn’t seen since returning. I even got to blow out a candle.