Half a Table

It is called fear and is seeing a great renaissance

Rarely do I use lyrics from the same band, let alone the same song twice in the same quarter, let alone one night after the other. Still, this was appropriate (from the Dresden Doll’s song “Sing” for those unfamiliar with it), I just finished watching the Frontline report on Darfur.

Unfortunately I was too tired to really get as much from the program as I wanted, but I was impressed that they invoked the lessons unlearned from Rwanda, as well as mentioning the fact that Sudan had been embroiled in a twenty year civil war prior to the onset of violence in the Darfur region.

As much as I would like to think that the seventeen people who watched Frontline this evening will raise their voices, I think that if nothing else the last four years has taught us that public awareness doesn’t mean anything without the force to back it up. As much as I would like to be a pacifist, I simply don’t see the world having changed enough for that to be a reasonable approach to dealing with other human beings.

In other news… and because I am far too tired to post intelligently on this topic for which I care deeply, we finally have heat! There were about five guys working here from 3:30 to 8:30, they completely replaced our entire HVAC unit, which means that we now have glorious heat coming from the vents in all of our rooms. Things that we apparently don’t have: a working dryer, the ability to change our shower head.

I spent the majority of today at my old apartment, cleaning and painting and running errands to the hardware store. I will certainly miss living in the same block as a Whole Foods, 24 hour CVS and Ace Hardware store. Still.

So in the two and a half years since Leia and I painted my bedroom (with it’s horribly textured walls), I had become cocky. I said “Jeez, after those horrible walls in Denver the smooth walls of my place will be no problem!”

Let it be known that I recant. There is nothing so horrible about off white walls that I would dare paint rather than just deal. Hanging pictures, posters, fabric, anything is better than the hours and hours that go into painting (please Dan, don’t back out on our date for Sunday… there is no way I will be able to finish this without you).

I no longer feel guilty that I have been unable to get ahold of my friend from whom I got my old apartment. She left me a bunch of her really nice furniture, and I have been attempting to send her some money to defray her loss. Now though… thinking about the fact that I saved her the money of repainting her walls, and all that will cost in time, energy, and of course dollars…. now I don’t feel so bad.

My hands hurt with blisters and I am sore from four full days of moving. I am looking forward to some quiet time with my family over the next couple of days, before I have to get back into the swing of painting on Sunday.

Ugh. I swear I’ll be more interesting and less whiney next week. I SWEAR.