During the past year I've taken a ton of photos of my new apartment, along with other places/people/pets/practices of note. It's been forever since I posted any, and I'll probably put up a whole page of apartment pictures at some point (I took over 100 during the moving in and unpacking and furniture assembling stages, primarily for the edification of my parents.) but for now I'm just going to post a few pictures every few days. Or at least do it this once, before I forget and post photos again in like, April.
I signed up for DSL when I moved, since I didn't really care about watching TV, and DSL was much cheaper than cable modem service since I would have had to get cable TV with it. They'll start you of at $25 a month for the cable modem, but it goes up to $40 pretty quickly, and cable TV is about $45 right from the start. So it's $65 at the cheapest, and $85+ not long after. Instead of that, I'm paying about $35 for my phone and DSL, though I pay more for a cell phone which I actually use, unlike the land line, which I never use at all and only have because otherwise my dad will lecture me about what I would do in an emergency if the cell phone service was down. (Answer; I'd die. But until then, I'd have $16 more every month.)
DSL isn't as fast as cable modem; my download is capped at 200k/sec; but it's not too bad. I gripped a bit when I moved in, but I've gotten used to it. I only noticed the speed angrily while spending 7 or 8 hours to pull the 3.5gig HGL alpha/beta clients.
The photo here is of part of my AT&T DSL installation kit. You can pay to have a technician set it up for you, but I just had them mail me the install kit. You get the DSL unit, which is basically a cable modem with slightly different plugs, some ethernet cord, and install instructions which are glossy, full of colorful pictures and diagrams, written in about 22 point font, and clearly intended for the use of the utterly technically illiterate. Best of all, there's a backup CD that functions as a sort of tech support placebo. There's nothing on it but the 100k install file you automatically download when you first go online, but if you can't get online to download that file, it won't matter if you've installed it from a CD or put the CD into your toaster.
In my case that was irrelevant, for reasons you can clearly see in the above photo. I didn't drop it; it came out of the protective sleeve in this um... slightly suboptimal condition.
One of the biggest improvements in this apartment from the one I formerly shared with Malaya is that this one gets a lot more sun. I wouldn't necessarily have considered that an improvement at times in my past life, but after watching plant after plant slowly wither and die in Malaya's sparsely-windowed condo, and on her very shady, roof-covered back patio, I've had a lot of fun growing houseplants of all types in my sunny kitchen and on my open back patio.
I'm on the second floor, so it's okay to let Jinx sit out back, and earlier this year, after I'd planted tomatoes in big pots, but long before they were large enough to need wire support to keep growing up, she chose this perch one evening. I thought it was impossibly cute, with her on the little plastic lid throne and everything.
A shot of the tomato seedlings, shortly after they came home to live with me. I thought the pots I put them in would be more than sufficient, but by September there was hardly any dirt left in the pots; it had all been consumed by the plants and displaced by roots. I got quite a few tomatoes out of the 5 plants though; certainly enough to pay off the dirt/water/plant costs 50x over, and that's not even counting the superior flavor of homegrown tomatoes, and the enjoyment I got watching them grow.
Well, I didn't actually sit and watch them; I'm not quite that taken with agriculture, but I did measure them every week or two until they were shooting up well past the top of their metal cages and putting out so many shoots that precise quantification of their dimensions became impractical.
I don't actually have any shots of them at full size, tragically. It's too late now; they're still alive, much to my surprise with overnight lows in the 30s (2-4c) lately, but well past their prime. There are four plants left; I had to put one underachiever out of its misery a month ago, and while no new growth is going on, there are quite a few green fruits on the plants that are slowly, slowly yellowing. I pick them once they get orange and put them in a sunny windowsill, where they ripen beautifully. Even now, at damn near Xmas, they taste so much better than store bought tomtoms.
Dusty came to visit for nearly two months during the summer, while Malaya was traveling abroad, and encountered some health problems, as his defoliated tummy demonstrates. Sadly, the prognosis was not good. More news on him in a future update.
He did rally from his health problems after some expensive vet time, and was his active, normal self for most of his stay. Here you see him in one of his favorite perches here; halfway up the bookshelf I converted into a cat tree, gazing out the sliding glass door and patio. He greatly enjoyed looking out the windows here, and lying in the sun on the back patio, which is odd since he didn't spend much time outside or window looking at Malaya's place.
Labels: apartment, dusty, jinx, photos
