on the move

I've been trying to catch my landlord to give notice for the last week. I'm not sure if he's out of town or avoiding me or worse. This is freaking me out because I don't want there to be any way I have to pay for two apartments for a month. I know it will work out, but I've got a nervous constitution at the best of times. There's nothing that would indicate my landlord would suddenly get crazy, but you never know.

Today I went to the apartment building I'm supposed to move into to check out the new place. What a relief. It's a good size (relative to my awkward spider-infested one), decent layout and has a patio and garden area. It's unfortunate that I have a black thumb and kill plants without effort. (I suppose this is the point; plants require effort.) I'm glad I got to see it before the move. People have expressed disbelief that I would move in without seeing a place, but family friends own it and it's unlikely they would suddenly be slum landlords. I mean, I worked for them for 5 years. Is it possible they would become terrible all of a sudden?

I have so much stuff to sort through and get rid of. I HATE moving because it makes me look at stuff I don't necessarily want to get rid of but that I don't use. My sister drops comments about doing a clean sweep through the place. This is why I hate HGTV; it gives people ideas. It's hard to defend things that you want to keep when other people don't see the value in them. Case in point: my sister wanting me to recycle some of my DIY magazines. Ya, right. I didn't try to toss her ceramic love bears or the cougar painting when she moved.

Oh, totally unrelated, I photocopied something at work that had "white master" on a post-it note. For some reason this was disturbing.

Also at work, I catalogued some new children's books donated from Tonari no Gumi, the Japanese cultural organization in town. They were easily the most interesting books I've seen for ages. Ladies in Japan made them for a "friendship exchange" and are fabric books with removeable velcroed parts and moving stuff and are just so cool. Most of them were in Japanese, so it was good practice to read and figure out what the stories were about. One of my co-workers figured it would be a fun project to try to duplicate, at least in part. I agreed. Reminds me of the bag one of the ladies at my Japanese job made for me. She made felt faces of kids in the school (there were only 4; I lived in a tiny village when I was in Japan) and put one of me in the middle. The reason I love it so much is she embroidered my name like she pronounced it under the face: Kalen.

Currently listening :
Bring It Back
By Mates of State
Release date: 21 March, 2006