Newly assembled and officially the most important piece of furniture in the house at present: bookshelf. Very large. It folds. 5 shelves. From Target. Terrifying fact: it's nearly full, and I haven't unpacked half the books I have in the apartment yet, and that's nothing compared to what I have to ship here from Chicago. I will get more bookcases, and find some space to put them in my room (there is no way all my books will fit into the living room without being incredibly unfair to Chris). Also, at least 80% of these are textbooks. That I like. Yay!

As noted earlier, Chris and I now have food and I have a Rice Cooker of Ridiculousness which I am super proud of (still have "shiny new X" syndrome). It makes lugaw (rice porridge) and steams things and I can make it do stuff like "I put things in you! Have them cooked when I get back at 2am tomorrow morning!" Other vital cooking equipment obtained at Super 88: wooden bamboo paddle for wok-awesomeness and plastic Chinese-style soup spoons for... well, soup. And for microwaving things, because I hate having to hold a dripping spoon of oatmeal while I watch the timer.

I'm also really happy with our silverware; it turns out that Chris and I had eyed the same set separately (same store, same day, different independent trips) and he had been hoping that I would get them (we had agreed I'd buy the silverware) but he never told me, so when he saw them later in the car he was quite pleased. Likewise with the bookcase I got, actually. I am not as happy with the plates I got, but they are nice enough (just slightly more breakable than I'd like them).

Aside from moving in, I went up to Nashua today to see Chandra, and currently am writing from her couch as she has just gone to bed. This after having me look through fashion websites to pick out styles that I liked. Whee. To be fair, I did ask her to help me do something along these lines (something something enough people have requested wardrobe overhaul and I should probably learn how to dress sometime...) I learned, however, that I do not like anything on fashion websites at all. Poor Chandra mostly learned that I like zippered hoodies. ("You keep talking about functionality! I'm trying to get you to describe emotions!" "I, ah, feel happy when I'm functionally clothed?" "Argh!")

My put-on-clothing checklist runs as follows: "Am I naked?" (If so, get dressed, repeat the question.) "Will I be cold?" (If so, add more clothing, repeat question.) "Are all the things I'm wearing clean?" (If not, do laundry and/or change clothes and repeat the question). If these three pass, I walk on out the door. So my current style can probably be described as Mel Does Not Know How To Care About Whether The Things At The Top Of Her Drawer Actually Color-Coordinate Oh Boy Does She Look Like A Dork But Hey She's Happy So Whatever.

I'm feeling mildly adrift, but happy (then again, I am always happy). In one sense, I have stability - apartment, forthcoming paychecks, impending piano lessons (YAY!) I think I'm way too happy about the piano part and must temper my enthusiasm so I don't overdo it and burn out and stop practicing completely in a month because I can't keep up with my far-too-ambitious expectations for myself; this happens often.

On another side of things, the feeling of being the N+1th wheel is somewhat acute at the moment, where N is the number of people who have "each other" and a place they fit, with not much room for more. Really, I do have a lot of people (I am very lucky) who do care about me; many of my friends are nearby and awesomeness abounds, so I shouldn't have much regarding this to gripe about; I'm in the city that I love with people that I love and places, projects, things to do I love, and bookstores. (Come on. Best bookstore city ever.) Plus I may soon have an Actual Bed. What's not to like?

Oh - amusing story about the bed. I went to the discount furniture outlet and strolled to the first salesman I saw and said "I have a twin size mattress and I need something to put it on." He looked me (5'8") up and down and said "A twin size mattress?" I said "Yeah." "For you?" "Yeah." Turns out the twin size beds they had were mostly in the kids' section, so I could get (1) a trundle bed! or (2) a princess canopy bed! or (3) a seafarin' captain theme bed! (They, alas, did not have anything shaped like a racecar. I would be tempted otherwise.) I was a little tempted by the trundle bed until I realized it costs a lot, was heavy, big, and meant that any guests we had would have to be incredibly deep sleepers to not be roused by my "grah! I'm hyper and can't sleep yet!" pre-nighttime thrashing.

Tonight I sleep on Chandra's couch. The margarita-half I drank (more like 1/4 a rather large one - I had some of Chandra's) will help with the impending unconsciousness shortly, so this should be an uncharacteristically brief night thrash-about. (We had Mexican food tonight, which explains the title of this post.) Hurrah for spicy things, and now hurrah for rest.