Galaxy of Emptiness

My apartment is empty. I mean really empty. My subletters are all gone, and the first of my roommates for the year is moving in this weekend, while I'm in Dallas for my friend Elisa's wedding.

No cats, no dogs, no birds. I see the odd bug wandering about, specifically a very fast centipede who it appears has set up shop in or behind my printer. Other than that, it's just me.

I had my friend Jack over last night to watch the 2nd season Simpsons DVDs, which I got in the mail yesterday, and it was suddenly odd to have another person in my apartment.

The joke I keep hearing is that now I can walk around the apartment naked, but really, that gets kind of old after about 20 minutes. Plus, if you get used to it, it can present problems when roommates and potential other subletters move back in.

I guess I'm lucky that I've been pretty much gone all week, seeing Second City monday night, Beth Orton tuesday night, watching Simpsons til my eyeballs glazed over last night, and then running around trying to get ready for Dallas tonight.

It sure can get quiet though. I'm going to have to start working out my amplifier just to break the silence.

And what a shame that would be...

Crowded

I went and saw Beth Orton tuesday night, and she was excellent. The crowd for the show was really weird. She has a very odd blend of styles, which brings in a really weird mix of audience.

She is known for her work with the Chemical Brothers and her first album was what drove her to be called a techno-folkie, so there were a lot of rave kids who wanted to listen to something you don't need ecstasy for.

She's English, so you had a number of anglophiles and random English people who have moved to Chicago.

She's moved more into more standard folk on her last couple of albums, so you had both your middle-aged folk fans, your flannel-wearing folk fans, your semi-hip grandmas, and your token lesbian couple with insanely bad hair.

All in all it was a good concert, because she really makes some beautiful music. But it was one of the oddest crowds I've ever seen.

Workin' it

Yeah, so at least this one will have a post time of the mid-afternoon because I'm in the process of calling every cable network in the United States to try and get some sort of guidelines on how to submit programming.

Responses have ranged from the standard "We don't accept unsolicited programming" to names and phone numbers of half a dozen people who might have the answers.

As you can imagine, this is utterly riveting. But it must be done, and as the intern, I'm the lucky one who gets to do it. So since I'm getting stuck on hold quite a bit, I figured I might as well do something useful and bring you all up to speed.

Whoa...

My mom bought a condo and is going to sell the house I grew up in.

Details to follow when I'm less exhausted.

Question

Is it bad that after finally cleaning my room, I'm still reflexively stepping over imaginary piles of crap?