x_los: (Andrae?)
This will be incoherent, it's 5 am and I am le tired.

Frustrating day. Woke up with a bit of a migraine, but dosed it off. Made sweet potato falafel and helped Katy hunt the gas meter a bit (it proved illusive, landlady's proxy had NO idea where it might be, had to email old roommate Rob).

BUT, from roommate Kasia, got some disturbing info--said Proxy-Doxy might be moving someone into the downstairs room. Now this is ODD, given that, at our meeting, we established that I could pick a friend the housemates were comfortable with to move in there, and it was implied this could be taken care of when the repairs to the house were complete (they're not yet).

Kasia said the landlady thought she might have someone for the downstairs. The landlords finding a tenant themselves has never happened in all three years of Rob's tenancy, and due to this, and also because the landlords had moved to America, Katy has moved into my room but isn't ON the lease. So if this person is some bosom chum of proxy, we face a REAL issue. I have no guilt on this score--the people are getting paid, and Katy and I and undertaking improvements and necessary cleaning, directing the builders to a silly degree, recruiting other tenants of good habits and facilitating their lease-signing processes (Jo, Phillippa, probably Peter later) and generally being excellent stewards of a property that had been allowed to fall into dilapidation. My parents' rentals were often trashed by vile occupiers, and I've seen and heard some dubious shit in the course of helping them/working for them, and this wouldn't make even my mercenary mother bat an eye. My role here is pretty similarly unpaid!Property Managery (apparently when I said 'I will never work for my mother ever ever again' I meant 'but I will find her clones on another continent and somehow wind up doing similar work for /them/, wooooo!'), but I didn't mind because it allowed me the control I needed. BUT if some little schmendrick comes in and whines about my girlfriend living with me, /well/. It puts the kibbosh on our cat-related plans for the mo, as well.

Also, just generally, I feel in a shared house that having no say over who the roommates are is--weird, creepy, etc. Invasive. Not what I signed on for, given my phone conversations, emails, and meeting with the landlady in which we discussed her preference that I have a group of friends in the house to create a feeling of mutual responsibility for it, etc. I know you can't spell 'non-consensual' without 'sensual', but bitch this was NOT my understanding when I signed the dotted line (of your poorly constructed contract with no rider-signature-line and thus little legitimacy/protection for /you/, what what WHAT were you thinking? *Sassy Gay Paralegal* Seriously though, don't c/p your contract together when you don't know what you're doing and haven't had anyone who does look it over, you wind up with some indefensible bullshit.).

We currently only have girls, and Peter I really like and trust, and it's not like I necessarily think every strange dude is not to BE trusted, but I don't get on with every random guy THAT well, I don't feel SUPER safe. The landlady says the potential new tenant is a student, she THINKS not my friend, and that she'll tell me more when she knows more. In a sense this is heartening: if she doesn't even know whether the potential tenant is the friend I was earlier told I could have in the downstairs bedroom, how close can they be/how likely is this person to rat us out? Yet how can the landlady not know this information? Where is this person coming from, if she doesn't know that? Say it's a friend of the landlords' family, so potentially like them Indian, from a relatively traditional background--how cool is she going to be with the lesbian relationship upstairs? Say it's a 17 year old raver, or a brat, or a studious SILENCE!!nazi, or, like my last flatmates, someone language-barrier-tastic?

I can work this out when it comes to it: if the child comes at all (which won't be immediate) (and given the family's general disorganization, I have my doubts, and I'll sweep in with alacrity to arrange an alternative candidate), and if she's not for winning, there's always saying 'my girlfriend's housing's fallen through and either she needs to share my room (and we can make arrangements to compensate you (though privately I'd rather not, this rent is sweet and I'm pretty dependent on it until my job improves or I get more student loans)) or, or I'll have to sublease and move out', or Katy 'living' elsewhere but actually just staying there like two nights a week.

I just hate having put Katy in a precarious situation, even if we can sort it. I didn't think I was being a chancer on this one, because Rob has had SO few problems for years. Even Katy's mom and mine, relatively stern-eyed ladies, smiled beneficently on the arrangement. Damn damn damn damn. There's nothing to do for it but wait, but I know I'll stew until I hear more.

So after that mess we went out to Anna's--Mexican was fine (kinda uninspiring, after the build-up, with the sort of blandness and limited ingredients I dislike about El Maguey-style commercial Mexican), got Anna coffee-syrups, then went to Eds for GOD AWFUL cheesecake I wrote them a 'come-to-jesus' note about on the back of a customer membership card and then pocketed because it was too mean to leave. I got violently ill--the migraine blossoming into a full and fruity nausea--and the bus home did me no favors. I proceeded to be Really Really Ill.

On a positive note, we watched like three episodes of Next Gen today! 'Inner Light' is next!

Too worried about stupid house shit to sleep, I applied to the last ten of this weeks' jobs. Too many landlady!emails today for my pleasure or productivity. :/ Talked to Bess--the audition posts are up! Yay.
x_los: (Default)
My birthday was the best, thanks for wishes all-- my girlfriend took the day off work, we woke up lazily with ST:TNG and opened presents, went out to grab some coffee and run errands, came back and made GLORY.

* This steak, 5 pounds for a very good cut from M&S.
* Chips from a chippy re-heated by frying in the beef grease/marinade--two pounds for a bag the size of Katy's torso. Salt and vinegar.
* Wasabi-mayonnaise dip--wasabi paste stirred into some mayo. Seems gross? Is LOVELY. Zippy and creamy and great.
* Home-made lemonade.

I could not move after. SO WORTH IT. Best lunch ever--and for like, £3.50 a person (some bulk ingredients like the mayo and wasabi paste not included, so maybe add another pound for the small quantities of each used, and the little bits of veg in the marinade).

Then I made a red-velvet cake. ...or tried to. Katy said she'd never had one, so I scrapped my plans to make the other thing both because I turned out not to be in a vanilla-mood and because I wanted her to know the awesome. My cake, the Nigella Red Velvet, was a DISASTER due to the stupid buttermilk not being the right kind (thanks, ASDA's Misleading Polish Foods Section) and having to use MASSES of chemical-tasting liquid food coloring rather than the small amount of paste she reccomended. It was lovely and red, we iced it so cutely, it looked great.

It tasted like being rejected by food. All food. EVERY FOOD.

I cannot explain how sour-to-the-point-of-acidity, how over-flat and nigh slimy, how disappointing it was. I frantically re-checked this recipie, other similar ones, becuase this could not be INTENDED to taste ANYTHING LIKE THIS. But as far as I could tell I'd done every step perfectly correctly, even compensating for one of the cakes coming out a little underdone relatively neatly. I'd done the conversions perfectly. The ASDA employee had assured Katy that this WAS buttermilk (but dairy products vary wildly from country to country, look at UK and US yoghurt and the Devils' Food Cake debacle of Jo's birthday). I figured it must be down to the food colouring and buttermilk, but still am not 100% satisfied in my mind. It was the second time the cake had defeated me, and after all the fuss about not wanting one from a bakery.

Remember the embarrassing bit of Castrovalva where Ainley!Master shouts 'MY WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEB!!!!1!!!!!' ? I pretty much did that, but with 'cake.' I stomped around the kitchen, cleaning it up, scrubbing it by hand, then mopping it, throwing the cake into a tupperware to deal with later, and headed with Katy out to Richmond to the Thai Cafe, where we had an absolutely lovely (and cheap--6 pounds for entrees!) dinner--lovely aromatic green curry, /nice/ pad thai once it had been introduced to chili oil (nutty and fresh, though could have done with more nam pla). Very aromatic and soothing ginger tea. I wouldn't want it every day, but it was good.

We walked over the river--all the boats are back, and the street-lamps too, which had briefly been replaced with ugly boxy things accompanied by apologetic notes from the council reassuring everyone that they were only temporary. Oh, to live in Richmond and to have that little to worry about.

Back at Katy's David gave us easter eggs (they don't do baskets here) and Anna gave me a tin for my new Eclectic Kitchen Design back at mine. She was disappointed not to have found a Royal Wedding tat one--siiigh. Must I burgle charity shops for the tat I crave?! V. nice flocked wrapping paper, even if it does shed. I have always admired vintage flocked wallpaper.

Assured Katy that I ABSOLUTELY did not want any more cake, or even to look at or think about cake, pie, cupcakes, or pastry of any kind. But while my back was turned she very sweetly made me a new one (Allegra's Big Kitchen Cake/Never-Fail Victoria Sponge out of Leon I), and this despite my sulky 'OMG EVERYTHING IS RUINED FOREVER, I DON'T WANT A CAKE'. She mixed my first cake's perfectly good cream-cheese icing with a dollop of lemon curd and put it and the jam I'd made at the weekend in the middle of the cake-layers, so I would feel like I'd helped make this one in a substantial way rather than 'like a big failboat.' She ringed the plate with 'happy birthday Erin' in children's alphabet fridge magnets. I about cried because how fucking /cute/ is that. VERY.

...okay so I actually cried a bit, but in a Very Happy way. It was a very happy birthday.

Presents!

- some money from my mom I am supposed to buy theater tickets with, for myself and Katy, but which I might actually use for shit like food and not making Katy pay for the flight to America for my sister's wedding, sorry to say
- my dad's taking me out to the theater/a NICE restaurant in NY when we're over for that
- kitchen tin from Anna
- card from my grandma (yet to arrive)
- little brother Samuel, 13: "i will grant a gift of protection in which i have already vested on you but it is still good upon you"
- giant Cadbury egg from David
- Katy got me a nice towel, Toby Hadoke and Rob Shearmen's "Running Through Corridors", the new star trek movie, Bernard Cribbins reading Winnie the Pooh (IT IS THE CUTEST, I HAVE LISTENED TO THE BALLOON ONE! SUCH LOVE!) as a card, the original star trek movies (convenient/cheap boxset, but sadly they've yet to arrive), and a very nice V&A tray to carry dinner down on once I've made it

P.S. Have salvaged icing, given cake back to nature to be enjoyed by squirrels, foxes. Scratched self on barb wire in process. Stupid cake.

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