I remember laundry being simpler

subtitle: Bless my heart, sometimes I just don't think things through.

We've been here, what? 3-3 1/2 weeks? However long it's been, it's high time we did some laundry. Since I'm the one sitting at home most of the day, I decided I'd be the one to step up and do the laundry.

Holy poo we have a lot of dirty laundry. No matter! I'm college educated! I know what quarters look like and how to insert them into machines! This will be the easiest thing ever!

Having decided to go to a laundromat, I sat down at the computer and began the first step: finding a laundromat. I type in "laundromat" into my browser's handy google window thingy and a mere fifty bajillion links pop up for laundromats in Baltimore. Hmm. I can't really just go to the place closest to my house, that's how you get  your stuff stolen. Hmmm. Ooo! I'll just check out our city paper's "best of" list for the last couple of years. Jordan, you're brilliant and beautiful and everything anyone would ever want to be.

I find the winners from the last few years and use that to narrow my search. The winner from 2008 is located in Fells Point. A mere mile or so from my house! Excellent!

Brilliant idea: I'll knock out two birds with one stone and take Dill along with me! He enjoys walks and outdoors and pavement and peeing on things, surely he'll enjoy this adventure.  I threw all the clothes (all the clothes that will fit anyway) in the new bag I got from the local army/navy store and prepared to go.

Poop, I totally forgot about laundry detergent. We don't have any of that yet. We do, however, have a big bag of soapnuts. Yes, soapnuts. *sigh* See kids, soapnuts are what you have in your house when you decide to live with a borderline hippie. Not the anglo-rasta hair wearing weed smoking hippie, but the worse kind.  The kind that actually wants to help the environment and other people and animals...kind. Yeos had ordered these from the internet a few months back. They're some sort of natural berry or something that has the qualities of soap in them. or something.  Okay okay, I admit I don't know exactly how they work, all I know is that all you have to do is put five of 'em in a sock and the job's done. Lacking any sort of alternative, I went to locate the soapnuts. and a sock. sigh.

Duffel bag filled with clothes, sock filled with soapnuts, Dill on leash, shoes on feet, I'm ready to go. It's then that I realize I'm the white person black comedians always joke about. I'm *that* white person. I swear I should get a stipend from the neighborhood for being their constant source of amusement.

Outdoorsy nerd shoe. Please note the chacos tan line.

Ridiculously large bag of clothes. It's not only black for all covert ops, it's also functional!

Dill always gets nervous whenever he senses an adventure coming up.

Soapnuts? Check.

Soapnuts in sock? Check. (Thanks Chris. I'm pretty sure it's yours. I would hate to use one of my own)

Dill does not trust the soapnuts.

Ready. To. Go. Nerd levels: maxed out

Armed with my new awesome bag, my comfy toes-y shoes, soapnuts in a sock, high hopes and my trusty, yet slightly gassy, dog, I was finally ready to set off!

Disaster happened almost immediately. First of all, I should never, ever have walked for the first time. That was a stupid idea. Secondly, I should have called the place to make sure they existed. Thirdly, I really shouldn't have left my GPS at home. Fourthly, when it wasn't where it was supposed to be, I should have gone back home right then instead of walking around for almost two hours. 

Lessons learned people, lessons learned. 

So instead of having any sort of laundry adventure, around hour 3 I was hot, miserable, and thoroughly sick of lugging around a huge bag of freagin' clothes. Therefore, I made the executive decision to stop somewhere and have a beer. Luckily, I was in Fells Point for most of the walk so finding a restaurant with outdoor seating wasn't difficult.

Not a bad view at all.

The place was nice. I was scared it'd be crazy expensive, but my glass of miller lite was only $3 and they even brought out a water dish for Dill. awwwww

Dill approved of the stop.

After sitting in the shade I felt much better. Not better enough to walk all the stupid way home, but better enough to call Yeoman to come pick me up when she got off of work. =)  Like any self-respecting nerd I pulled out my Nintendo DS and sat by the water to wait the half hour it'd take for Yeos to come get my silly butt.

Cause everyone keeps a DS in their bag for emergencies, right?

Ever the trooper.

In conclusion, laundry didn't get done that day. Heck, I'm sitting here writing this on Monday and it still hasn't been done. Whoopsiedoodle. I'll be doing it tomorrow, during the 2 hours it takes for a shop to perform a safety test on my car so it can be registered. ugggghh. That process has also been a massive pain, but hopefully it'll be all worked out tomorrow. Rest assured I'll be most likely complaining about it here. =)


As a side note, I've changed some settings so now anyone can comment without signing in or signing up for anything. 

Our house! aka the ghetto!

Some people may think I'm exaggerating the ghetto-ness of our place. They might think that since I've never lived in the city I can't really tell which is just normal city dwelling and which area is the actual ghetto. Well friends, I can assure you I live in the real deal. Tomorrow I'll post some links of descriptions about my area, until then, just know that my neighborhood is named Middle East. Granted, it's because it's located on the east side of the city, and why yes, it is centrally located in the east side, but still. The name makes me giggle.

To the pictures!

Here's a shot I took from the street in front

Our house is the lovely one in the middle. (the black door) Our closest is neighbor lives in the white house. There's a few more empty houses until the next one.

As you can see in this shot

Except for maybe one or two of them, all the cars you see are owned by Johns Hopkins employees or visitors. There's a two hour limit on our street and the parking lady is VERY serious about that. Around 5 or 5:30 all the cars clear out and the streets are pretty much deserted.

Looking out from our front door gives us this wonderful view of a beautiful empty lot. Bonus: it has Yeoman's car on it! (To avoid the scary parking lady, we have to park in the lot so we don't get a ticket for parking on the street. We don't have a resident parking pass yet)

If there is one thing I love, it's empty lots. Thankfully, there's another one right beside us! *whew*

The colorful building in the background is part of Johns Hopkins. They're our next door neighbor basically.  There's been a recent outcry about the amount of employee and visitor's cars that have been broken into, so JHU has really stepped up the amount of patrols. Yay for us! What's really funny is watching the security? police? guys roll down the street in full SWAT-looking gear on their urban "tactical" segways with fat, off-road tires. Yes. Segways. I feel safer already. 

This is our prime parking spot. They put the wooden fence up for the dogs. It's illegal for dogs to be tethered so you see tons and tons of fences like this one. Most of them are chain link, but we're fancy y'know.

Why yes, that is a tree growing in the house beside us. What's your point?

To get from the car to the house, you have to go around because the rental place doesn't have a key to the back door. (Let that sink in for a minute. I'll wait.) It's not a big deal though, you just go through the lot which leads right to the front door. It even has a nice little concrete step someone made! (or a concrete block someone forgot to move. whatever)

This is just a very short introduction to our place in Baltimore. I have tons and tons of pictures from our 3 week adventure of living here that will slowly be posted on this. It's going to take some time catching up, but eventually I'll get around to posting everything I wanted to.

Introduction

This is me and some of my friends. I love them.

but this is me at my old job:

I did not love my job.

I could write an entire blog about customers and my view of them after working in the customer service industry for many years, but it's probably not good for my blood pressure. Instead, I will chronicle the move I made with my girlfriend, Yeoman and our two dogs from upstate SC to Baltimore, MD.

This blog is mostly way for me to keep my family and friends updated with all the things I'm doing up here, but it's also extremely therapeutic. I have absolutely no experience living in the city and as such, I'm constantly amazed and confounded by big city life. I'm sure I provide much entertainment to the other citizens of this city as I fumble my way around such complicated issues like how do I send mail without a mailbox, or how do I get on the subway?

I've tried to document most things with pictures because I figure that's easiest. I'll also be sharing stories, and conversations I've had as I slowly transform from a gun-totin' redneck who lived in the mountains to a gun-totin' redneck who lives in the city.

Comments are always appreciated.