the twilight zone

do you know what it's like to be in the twilight zone?

I DO.

so, tonight, i'm walking home from work and i'm completely maxed out. a co-worker was sick and couldn't be at work tonight so i had to hold down the fort by myself which got pretty stressful. i survived, but all i wanted to do when i got home was soak in the tub. after stopping at the supermarket and renting "baby mama" from redbox (which came out on dvd yesterday), i finally get to my place, turn the key, and walk inside.

the living room is empty.

now, my roomate and i had arranged for our place to be exterminated today in order to combat the unfortunate bug/creature infestation (you don't want to know what i've found in there...). so i figure, hmm. the exterminators must have emptied out the living room in order to do the best exterminating job they can. i walk into the kitchen...

the kitchen is completely empty.

there are dead bugs everywhere, though. so i think to myself, great! they've done a great job exterminating and now the bugs are dying. woot. but was it necessary to move absolutely everything out of the kitchen? i mean, my supply of food, that i had been planning on eating tonight, is gone...

i decide to check out the situation in our rooms upstairs. i get to my room...

my room is completely EMPTY.

okay, i'm thinking, this is a bit much. what would warrant the exterminators to remove every single object from my room? my bed is gone. what am i going to sleep on?!

my roomate's room is completely empty as well.

this is so weird, i'm thinking. they must have found something harmful that made them absolutely HAVE to remove every single object from our apartment. asbestos? oh dear. so if they found something menacing, that's all fine and dandy, but WHERE did they put all of my stuff and WHY has no one notified me??

i go outside and dial my roomate's number on my cell phone. couldn't she have called me to let me know what was up?! i start freakin out a little bit. how am i gonna have my soak in the tub/relaxation session when my clothes are nowhere in sight, my towel, and everything i need is MISSING. i start making plans to call a friend afterwards and ask if i can stay at their place for the night until i figure out what's going on.

while my roomate's cell is ringing, i quickly glance at the apartment number of my place.

it's not my apartment.

turns out i had entered the apartment a couple of doors down from mine. BUT since there is no one living in this apartment at the moment, the door was unlocked, which is why i was able to get in with my key. the fact that there is no one living in it explains why it was completely empty.

the kicker was that this place was a CARBON COPY of my place, with absolutely NO differences in structure or design. since it looked exactly like my apartment, minus the absence of all of our stuff, i never questioned the fact that it was mine.

if someone had been living in there, the door would have been locked, my key would not have worked, at which point, i would have thought to myself, "why isn't my key working?" and which point i would have looked up at the apartment number and realized that it was not mine.

but the circumstances led me to believe for several minutes that it indeed was my place and to imagine all kinds of scenarios as to why absolutely everything had been removed.

once i realized my mistake, i walked a total of 5 feet to my apartment and realized that everything was intact. PHEW. but i'm telling you, that was a bizarre experience...

how did i manage to walk into the wrong apartment, you ask? am i little slow on the uptake, you wonder? i dunno. like i said, i was maxed out...

once i got to my actual place, i threw together a few ingredients in order to create a late meal, and it turned out to be a lovely number that i decided to call "susie's turkey and chunky tomato salad." i'm still amazed at the amount of creative freedom one can find in preparing meals.

so there ya have it. i'm out of the twilight zone, but i'm also beat. off to bed. nightynight!

effing amazed, and a day in the life

i'm effing amazed. i'm effing amazed at this whole preparing your own meals thing. it's like the monotony of grabbing quick food at the same places is gone and a whole new realm of possibilities now exists. it's awesome! a photo of tonight's dinner:



tacos with grilled chicken (who knew you could buy it already cooked and pre-packaged?) pieces of avocado (chopped up in deformed chunks...how am i supposed to know how to slice a friggin avocado?), tomato salsa, and cheddar cheese, with a side of yellow corn tostitos and salsa with melted cheese. YUM!

basically these tacos and the salad from my previous post are two small steps for actual cooking, two giant leaps for creativity and excitement for susie at mealtime. which makes me happy happy happy!

today in general was pretty good. work was alright (i work at a "burger joint," if you will) with the exception of an annoying customer. in the restaurant business (diner business? somewhere in between restaurant and fast food?), no matter how good a job you are doing, once in a while you will be told that you are doing it badly. it's just part of the game. so today i'm refilling the iced tea dispenser when a lady comes up to me and says, "excuse me. i'm really dissappointed. i SAW you take out food to other customers. but you just LEFT mine up there, and i had to leave my toddler in the corner to go get it." i replied with, "oh, i'msorryiwasrefillingtheicedteawedon'talwaystakeoutfood usuallywejustcallnumbers," to which she replied, *dirty look.*

the truth is, lady, this is a burger joint. we're not waiters, we're cashiers. we call out your number when your order is ready and you come and get it. sometimes if it's not busy, we're extra nice and we bring your food to your table out of the goodness of our hearts, to which most sensible people say "OH! you BROUGHT it to me! how kind!" cause it's not expected.

so...i'm sorry you had to walk a total of 10 feet to grab your food.

once again, it's just part of the game.

anyways, what else happened today? my lovely friend mike who i hadn't seen in a while stopped by, which was nice.

also, when my shift was over, i did what i always do on my walk home. i whipped out my cd player (i sold my ipod a while ago to help pay for that month's rent. so now i'm going old school but i want to get another ipod that holds more music in the near future...too much information?) and commenced the heavenly, glorious, transcendental experience of singing showtunes. ooh, you laugh. but i have so much fun that i don't care if people see me. well...i care enough to pause the music if someone is walking close by but then i just bust out again. tonight it was legally blonde, the musical. (anyone see the reality show on mtv? looooved it)

i'm sure there are some who might think it's dorky but it is one of my absolutely favorite things to do in the whole wide world-- sing. the fact that i love it so much is enough for me to not care what people think if they see me, you know, performing songs full out on the street. although that is kind of a funny image i must admit...

the other day my co-worker and i saw each other across the street when we were both on our way to work. once we got inside the restaurant he says,
"You were singin!"
"You heard me all the way from the other side of the street?!"
"Yeah! You were singin loud!"
"I was?! Oops..."
"It's cool though, you were happy!"

damn straight.