So the summer is finally beginning to wind down and I finally had a day off after a round of 21 straight days worked (most of them being 7.5-10 hour days too!). I have 4 days left of work for this month, then hopefully settle into a more regular schedule in September.
It's been a crazy summer but overall one that was what I needed. I'm mostly settled into my apartment, though I still have one box and one suitcase left to unpack...we'll save that for my next day off...3 days from now. Here are some comments from life on the 20th floor:
--I get deeply, irrationally pissy when people from floors 2-5 use the elevator. After two years living in a 5th floor walkup, I've become a bit critical, I know. But seriously...if they don't have bags and aren't infirm, quit holding me up! Not that I wouldn't have used an elevator to get to my 5th floor apt if I had had one, but come on...I paid my dues.
--my complex has these great walking paths all over the place, a pool, and I have roof access with a view of the lake. It ALMOST makes up for the fact that my windows directly face the building across from me..very limited view.
--speaking of the view, I suppose there might be an age where being able to see naked people when you glance out your window might have been a funny thing...a novel thing...something. But 25 is not that age. It's annoying and gross. From my couch, a glance to the right gives me view of 9 floors worth of communal dwelling, windows lighted at night, curtains never closed to hide away any intimate moments that may
need to be hidden. Sometimes this is amusing...seeing a couple fighting in a hallway and then seeing both sides of a closed door as the woman inside waited for the man, who was leaning hopefully against the outside of the door, to leave. Other views...well...they aren't so amusing. I don't want to see all that business...but I also don't want to close up my own curtains either...it's just too dreary with them shut. (although I at least have the courtesy to close them before I shower and whatnot...oh well.
--another note on the view: *before you read: I need to share--this is
NOT as bad as it seems it's going to be. Just follow it through* Ok, so one afternoon I was watching 30 Rock and enjoying a cup of mint tea when I saw, hands down, the most awful thing I've ever
almost seen in my life. I had been looking at the liveliness of a plant that sits by my window when the corner of my eye caught something white and about 5ish feet long hurling downward past my window. I screamed one of those nightmarish inhaled screams/gasps/shrieks and froze, pulse racing, knees and arms beginning to shake. I really think I've never been more terrified--as one of those out-of-body, primal forces moved me to the window to make sure of what I thought I saw. Thank God, literally, what I instead saw was a striped white and pink towel, that though once was falling downward had now been lifted again by the wind and was floating around somewhere near the 8th floor now. It must have been hanging to dry up on the roof when the wind set it free, letting it fall past my window and causing the deepest shock that I've felt in a while. Maybe it hadn't even been falling so fast ...but out of the corner of my eye, the glimpse I saw was enough to make me think the worst. It's made me add a request to my YARPs at night...please let this building never experience the thing I thought was happening...
On to more pleasant topics:
I went and got my hair cut today. Over a year ago (May 2008), I had my hair chemically straightened here in China. It was ok, nice to not worry about humidity and whatnot, but my hair always looked really lifeless, so I decided to let the "perm" grow out. It's been weird because as my hair grew, the top part grew in curly/wavy, but the bottom lengths were still stick-straight. Today, my hair had finally grown enough that I was able to get the last of the permed hair cut off. It's nice to be back to natural. Anyway, at the hair salon, I really liked the product that we used to curl my hair, so I bought a bottle. The back of the bottle is so classic Chinglish that I had to share. Beware, there is randomly placed, nonsensical cussing underneath:
Funny Hand
Characteristic: The special shape formulation
canbe made alive with texture in curly hair,mo
re Imply to moisten the formulation speciallyc
an be quickfor fuck of Curly hair compleme
' humidity,is lustrous and vivid and bright
the curly hair.It still imlles to do not gl
ue toget fed up with the formulation s
-pe cially making your show hair it is
clear diy todo not glue to get fed up
with increment luster, increment cu
-rly haira degree.
*spacing, spelling and grammar left the same....ohhhh China.
