Recently, I read a post written by my beloved friend Marci listing 6 things about her new home in the big apple. She commented on the subway, her tiny apartment, $219 month gym memberships, elevators at work, grocery shopping/laundry-doing, and crowds and/or noise; now I can only come up with a few topics, but anyways, it's my turn.
Recently I moved to the tiny town of Whitesboro, New York. My internship working in Verona, brought me to search surrounding towns with year long expensive leases for shit hole unfurnished apartments. I finally found a listing on craigslist, rent: one bedroom, tv, internet. A room in a house, owned by a clown.
1. Clowin' Around. Let's start here. I live with a professional clown. Yes, it sounded great, a house with a pool and hot tub, wireless internet (thank goodness), a furnished bedroom, including a tiny tv, except the owner is a red nosed, big shoed clown. I have seen her in costume, she's not that bad, but the clown decorations around the house are kinda creepy. Her stinky little dog is really annoying too, lil shit thing that barks every time I try to slip quietly in and out of the house. She also rents out the room across the hall, to a zookeeper. Summer '08, clown, zookeeper. Enough said.
2. Now Marci says how much she misses her car, and hates riding the subway everyday, bumping into strangers. I drive 30 minutes of boring NY state thruway, only to get to work and hear my coworkers bitch about their hour long commute. Don't get me wrong, I love windows down with the music blaring, but with gas prices, and the speeding ticket i got last month, it's not so much fun. FYI first time ever getting pulled over, ever, I was issued a speeding ticket. I didn't notice the speed limit dropping down to 55, and well going 78 in Binghampton, not a good deal. Another huge FYI that gets you 6 points on your license in the state of New York, and bonus! 6 points enrolls you some driver responsibility thing that means you have to pay an additional $300 to your fine, over a period of three years (oh, thanks!) I can't forget to mention that Whitesboro and the greater Utica area thought it'd be a good idea to not mark roads with their names. I think I've gotten lost while driving about once a week. You'd think I'd be able to start learning my bearings, but guess not. It took me almost 2 months to realize I didn't have to pay the toll and drive on the thruway to get home from work. PS not only did Utica not make road signs, mapquest doesn't know the right streets either. I knew getting lost on my way moving here was a great start.
3. Riding up 17 floors in a tight elevator, not fun. I feel ya Marci - reminds me of freshman year in the East Tower, 11th floor go really frustrating when the fatties on floors 2,3 rode the elevator up the one or two flights when they could have easily taken the stairs. Really crazy rules here, not only does my job insist that women wear heels to work everyday, and no open toes, we're supposed to also wear stalkings or panty hose with skirts. Rockin the peep toe today, day #89 of my violations, or somewhere around there.
Minor note to #1, the tv i was referring too.. well, I've been here for three months, surfing a total of 12 basic cable channels. It's been a long 90 days of everybody loves raymond and king of queens re-runs. Just realized that by going into the menu function on the tv, and moving the cursor over to extra menu features, I can flip the tv from shit 12 channels to full on cable. Yup, I could have been watching project runway, but instead it was some episode where Ray Romano pissed off Debra who in turn pissed off Marie, which Frank found hilarious, and Robert just felt stupid.
