yesterday:

• call new apartment management company to express my distaste for the memos stuffed under our doors wednesday night, wherein it was stated that ours is a “no-pet” building and it has come to their attention that someone is breaking the policy… and that violation will incur their wrath in the form of (a) immediate lease termination and (b) still being held liable for rent for the remaining term of the lease. it is, in point of fact, not a “no-pet” building; it is a “no-dog” building, and i paid a deposit and have in my possession a piece of paper which documents my permission to have two cats. i really didn’t appreciate the tone of the memo. i further didn’t particularly care for the attitude of the person to whom i spoke on the telephone, who responded to my commenting that it was “frustrating” to be told you’re at risk of losing your apartment for something you’re allowed to do by saying that it was “frustrating” for them to have to clean up dog feces in the elevators, and going into some detail that i frankly just was not interested in. well, i can certainly appreciate that frustration, but you know what, i really didn’t appreciate the snarky attitude as though the dog shit is my fault, and my complaints about their threat-memo were clearly irrational. i miss the old apartment management company. they were always so nice. anyways, i went through my apartment paperwork and found the cats-are-so-allowed-and-don’t-tell-me-they’re-not paper, which i photocopied at work so that i can give it to Angsty Manager Taking Out Her Dog-Poo Wrath On Me Lady, as she claimed that she had no knowledge of anyone being provided with more than verbal permission to have cats, nor any pet deposits being required for same. that should be fun.
• after that, wherein i decided that my previous fears that the new management company — who bills us not for rent but for ASSESSMENTS — is plotting to turn our building into condos and kick all the renters out at the end of our leases may not be groundless, i called my mother. which was about as pleasant as it always is. at least she was home so we avoided the “i leave voice mails, she never calls back” rigmarole. yet, do i have any hope for compliance? not really. if nothing happens, i swear the next step is telling her to buy the house from me or i’m going to sell it. four years. FOUR YEARS.
• i cannot afford to buy a home. or, i should say, given my current debts and cash flow, i could afford to buy something in the approximately $25-75k range. which is — and for those of you who don’t live in chicago or another major metropolitan area, i’m not kidding here — a parking spot. as i do not fancy living out of my car, i shall have to continue to rent. this means that if they do condo-ize my building, i’ll have to leave the neighborhood, as printer’s square is, i think, the only rental building in printer’s row. i’d have to go at least to south loop, or possibly university village or west loop gate. i do not want to move. i like printer’s row. i really, really like printer’s row. i don’t want to move. i don’t want to move. i don’t want to move! goddammit!
• additionally, it’s really depressing that everyone else around me is buying homes. i hate the fact that i own the house in texas. i hate the house in texas itself. i resent having given up any first-time-homebuyer benefits, when i would really need them to buy a home where i actually live. i want to buy a place that i can live in. i want to not be vulnerable to hateful landlords anymore. i want to paint the walls funny colors if i want. it makes me sad to watch yet another friend buy a home, because i really want to and i really, really can’t.
• i went home, in a pissy mood, intending to sulk all evening with a bottle of wine, delivery food that is bad for me, trashy television, and my knitting. so i went home, ordered a pizza (hawaiian, mmmmm), put a DVD in the player (queer as folk, middle of season 2, from netflix), went to check my email briefly. five minutes later, i noticed that the DVD player was still saying “disc loading.” thought, “hmm, that’s odd,” and decided to reboot the DVD player. … the DVD player will now not power on. so it’s holding a netflix DVD hostage, and i’ll have to disassemble the player to get the disc out so i can return it. the one good thing about this scenario is that at least there are no late fees with netflix. and i have a project for this weekend, i guess.
• so now i don’t know if i want to buy a new DVD player or not. i need one which is multi-region capable, macrovision disabled (because it has to be piped through my VCR because of my crappy teevee), and convert PAL to NTSC. which means i can’t waltz in and buy a cheezy model at target. i have to research into what models support what hacks and how well they work. and i had not really planned to buy a new piece of electronic gear. i am beginning to come to the conclusion that electronic gear in my apartment is cursed, what with my DVD player dying on top of my G4 acting completely wacky since i moved in (yes, it’s plugged into a UPS), one TiVo losing the ability to emit sound, and a second TiVo occasionally losing the ability to tune into channels and requiring a reboot to fix. i blame the neighbor’s subwoofer and its subsonic electronic gear-killing rays of death.
• have i mentioned that i still hate the subwoofer neighbor? BECAUSE I DO.
• of course there’s an option to getting a region-free DVD player.. just get rid of all my PAL/non-region-1 discs. too bad that requires spending a lot of money to buy new region 1 copies of what i already have, and just plain sacrificing the r2 discs that they don’t have r1 versions of.
• i came in to work in a still-moderately-crappy mood and decided to listen to the wall. i double-clicked on the first track at, oh, probably 10 AM or something. around 1300, michael remarked that every time he’d come in to my office, he heard the airplane landing, and i said he probably just timed it right. around 1415 or so i realized that it had actually been set to repeat that track and i had listened to “In The Flesh” approximately 75 times (based on the track count of that and the other tracks). four hours, and i never noticed i was listening to the same song over and over and over. i am dumb.
• i have to take my car in for a tune-up next week (40,000 miles, vroom!) it must be noted that a tune-up is significantly more expensive than a oil change (with synthetics) and basic check. it’s a couple hundred dollars more than i was expecting to have to pay. there goes any yarn shopping for the near future. BOO! :( i wanted to make a hat for pirate dan, and some other things. this is sad.
• gas is $3.15⁹ for premium (which my snooty german car requires) at my neighborhood “cheap” bp. i have a little over half a tank. i’m hoping it does not go up significantly before i next need to fill up, which will be in about a week (given at least one trip to the suburbs, when i take my car to the shop, in Oak Lawn, for its tune-up).

yeah, life sucks. i’m going to go kittenbreak for a while. BABY CATS SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS.