Saturday

Because I work on weekends, my news is rather less glamorous than one might hope. I got up early in order to turn the (newly scoured) apartment over to the landlord and co. When they'd failed to materialize by ten-thirty, I hied me down to the basement apartment and rapped smartly on the door. This was in due course opened by a mammoth gentleman (they're all kind of mammoth and weather-beaten) who informed me that they'd all done "too much drinking lat night" to allow for any work; and that he was Joe ('I'm the one who speaks perfect English'), works the door at a club called 'the Fireplace' and that I should go by this weekend, because he'll hook me up because everyone in this building "is like family."

The building, fyi, contains the landlord, an Iraq vet called Bonecrusher, and the Polish family upstairs, who have a little dog with an extensive wardrobe of sweaters and coats. Oh, and me. Because I don't speak Polish, my contact with everyone's pretty limited. Well, I guess Bonecrusher's English is pretty good, but the landlord told me when I first moved in that combat drove him crazy. He's home all the time and watches TV non-stop. Sometimes I see him in the hall and we hug; I've brought him cookies a few times. Oh, and occasionally the family upstairs drops things off their washline onto my little deck. After an unfortunate incident in which the daughter walked in on Slim drinking coffee naked (inevitable; he's naked a great deal of the time, being from California), we devised a system in which we put anything of theirs in a basket in the hall.

There's a party tonight, but my apartment is so lovely and clean; and I'm too tired to brazen out being a shopgirl tonight and act like some kind of z-list 'it' girl and put on an outfit besides. I did all that stuff last week.

There's a meat recall on; good thing I just had frozen peas and canned tomatoes for dinner! oh, and a Kozy Shack. Shak? Inquiring minds want to know. Oh, and apparently the Big Apple Circus is back in town.