What else can I be but what I am?

[austin_dern]

As mentioned, blither hates her toaster, so I cleaned my apartment. ``Why, Gracie?'' Because I have inordinately pointless stories about buying toaster ovens I'm happy with, and she would like to see the one I have now. Taking pictures is easy; the challenge was cleaning my kitchen enough I could put up a picture of it without shame. That extended naturally to cleaning the daylight out of the rest of my apartment, so it's nicer-looking and surprisingly larger than it is when I really live here. Thanks go to Argon who doesn't mind me tucking these pictures through his web site.

The toaster itself is a nice oven model, without control over temperature but a perfectly serviceable timer. It handles my needs, which are mostly Lender's Fake Bagels, toaster oven pizza, and roti prata. Persil, Spin, and Dixan are approved laundry detergents for my washing machine. The kitchen comes with fridge, sink, oven and not much else. When I got electric and water turned on I asked the company to turn on gas too; they refused. I guess they didn't think I'd use it enough, and they're probably right, since I've only wanted to oven- or stove-bake something two or three times the year I've been here. A sample of what's in my fridge is surprisingly normal; note the ``Italian pizza'' listed as Ethnic Cuisine.

Laundry, as mentioned, just gets hung out to dry; I have a patio so I don't have to hang it out where it may rain. The wooden poles just hang up out of the way most of the time, but you can imagine them to be Enterprise pipelines carrying plot devices if you kind of squint.

The living room came mostly furnished; all I really provided was the phone, the computer, the cable modem and the TV and DVD set. The CD player came with the cable subscription for some reason.

My rough definition of luxury is enough bookshelves I don't need to double-shelf anything; I've never come close to it. The iBook I do most everything on here features my coati plush toy; I also have three balata rubber coatis to keep it company. The computer is standard enough, but the keyboard is a neat Chinese-language iMac keyboard I picked up from the AppleCentre on Orchard Road.

My bedroom? Probably about what you'd imagine, apart from the plush eagle I picked up from the Smithsonian National Zoo and would have sworn I'd sent to orv five years ago. What I'm doing with it here is beyond me. My bedstand reading material reveals pretty much everything you need to know about me. Note the plush rcoony to the side.

The dining room I don't use much as it's easier to eat out most every meal, so I spruced it up by putting my music CD collection on it. Missing from the collection: The Beatles' White Album, which is in my office, and Rubber Soul, which is missing. Note I had to pad out the rectangle with video CDs. And outside is the courtyard, including picnic grounds which I don't use enough, but which is always nice to walk through. And that's home, more or less. Got the toaster?

Trivia: The words ``chortle'' and ``galumph'' are the creations of Lewis Carroll. Source: The Origins and Development of the English Language, Thomas Pyles and John Algeo.

Currently Reading: Roughing It, Mark Twain.

Comments

[blither.livejournal.com]

I loved this!

I very much approve of the toaster over, it has quite a vintage look. And your apartment looks huge and it's nice knowing your so comfortable. The coatis made me giggle.

When I get into the new house, I promise to take pictures and post them. Yes.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, there's another room, the guest bedroom. I didn't include it in the tour because I didn't have a good picture of it. It is a really nice, spacious apartment; if it weren't for the bookshelf problem and the narrowness of the study (between bookshelves and desk there's barely the room to walk) I'd say it was just the right size even for a big guy like me.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, the window to another world is from the guest room.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Neat! That's a lot nicer than the tiny little place where I'm living now. The courtyard is nice too - there's just something pleasant about palm trees. For whatever reason, I always like to see where other people live. I should clean up my own place, and post pictures.

"Balata Coati" is fun to say, too.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There's courtyards mixed in and around the different buildings -- six others in my complex -- with other courtyards offering playgrounds for kids, rocks that are supposed to be good for you to walk over, things like that. Courtyards like that are common to nearly all housing developments, really. Just about all of the population lives in high-rise houses; after the first wave of desperately needed construction the awareness that people needed their homes to be uniquely theirs drove design. I don't believe any two housing complexes exactly duplicate one another, nor do two buildings within one exactly duplicate themselves, and the common areas are deliberately unique and personal. It's all very humane.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

I was going to gripe that you have CDs sitting out in the open here and there, not in their protective cases, but you're forgiven 'cause I also see that you have the TRON DVD. *grin*

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Actually, the CDs not in protective cases are ones that only came in envelope sleeves, or else are unsuccessfully burned archives which I can't bear myself to throw out because no matter how many times I test them, and check my real archive CD-ROMs, I can't convince myself they're not my only copies of various archived things.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

The Toaster oven is very nice. It looks both functional and gently stylish.

The apartment seems.. capable, but there's just unending waves of white walls. A bit of color, a mirror, perhaps a poster or two and you have a nicely Verne-Yip-minimal apartment; as it is now it looks underdecorated. Still, more than I can lay honest claim to, so I oughtn't comment. -1-)

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is. Ever since my teenage years with bagged comic books covering a wall of my bedroom I've been shy to actually put anything up on any wall, no matter how good a reason I have. Trivialities on the fridge are about all I can bring myself to hang.