2:16 AM: Party planning update

I asked for more information from my waitress tonight, and it turns out that the restaurant portion of my karaoke place -- that is, the room with the tables -- is closed on Monday nights. The kitchen's closed also, but the bar's open, and there's free pizza. So the options are now:

1. Have the party on my birthday itself, have people congregate around the bar, and enjoy the free pizza.
2. Have the party before or after my birthday, get an actual table, and there'll also be karaoke.
3. Have the party on my birthday, and find someplace else to have it.

6:04 PM: Outlook hazy, try again later

In other news, the semester is over! This is mostly a good thing, although I've been bouncing between getting depressed about having nobody to hang out with in the area and melodramatically concluding that I'm going to die friendless and alone -- or at most that I'll have a bunch of IM windows popping up to wish me well on my deathbed -- and realizing that the past few days have actually been kind of encouraging on the social front. I even got invited to join a writing/critiquing circle over the summer, which could turn out to be a really good thing. (It's also encouraging, in that apparently there are people who appreciate my somewhat harsher than average critical style. Yay!)

In other news, totally need to find a job now. Plan to hit some temp agencies next week, going in person rather than applying online this time around.

Also thinking of swinging by New York next week while I have the chance, although that's totally up in the air just now. Stay tuned.

So, with just ten shopping days to go until my birthday, I've been trying to figure out what, if anything, to do in terms of a party.

The past few years, I've had small gatherings at my apartment. But while I've considered doing a massive cleaning job and throwing stuff out and shoving everything that isn't bolted down into the loft area, the fact remains that my apartment isn't much larger than a breadbox, so it's really not very suitable for party purposes. That leads me to the uncharted (for me) territory of having it somewhere else.

There's only one venue in town I'm very familiar with, that being my karaoke bar. This is actually not a bad choice. They've got tables, they've got booze, they've got cheap food. The question, then, is what night to hold it. I can either go for my birthday itself, a Monday night, when there's no karaoke, or move it to the preceding Saturday or following Thursday, when there is. Me, I like the karaoke, but I'm aware that the same isn't likely to hold true for a bunch of the people I'd be inviting, so I'm somewhat grudgingly inclined to go for the birthday itself.

Other considerations: does having it on a weeknight make it easier or harder for people to attend? I have no clue. Also, the kitchen closes much earlier, at 9 PM, on Monday nights... on the other hand, there may be free pizza. I'm unclear on how those two conditions are reconciled, never having been there on a non-karaoke night. I'm gonna have to ask for more information on that tonight, I think.

The final question is whom to invite. Currently, I've got a list of a few classmates -- selected using the rather arbitrary criteria that I like them and I remember their names -- plus a couple of other people. Goodness knows whether any of them would be likely to make it, but at least the plan is starting to come together.

So I got a letter from my landlord today, offering me a lease for next year, at thirty bucks more than I'm currently paying, boosting it to $720 a month. I have fifteen days to decide whether to take it or let 'em put my apartment back on the market.

At this point, I'm thinking there's only one thing that would induce me to endure the horrors of moving again. The price is pretty cheap by local standards, after all, and I love being within walking distance of school. I can live with climbing five flights of stairs to my place. I can live with sleeping on the couch. I can live with the lack of a real oven and any kitchen space to speak of. The one thing I'm having a lot of trouble living without, however, is a bathtub. I've had only one bath in the past ten months, and that was in Texas. I'm sick of showers. (I take them, I hasten to add, I just don't like them.) So the game plan is to ask the landlords whether they have any units in the same price range with a bathtub, while also checking out the listings on Craigslist. If I can find something suitable with a tub, I'll move; if not, I'll stay put.

Wish me luck...

4:59 AM:

I got my chapbook back from the printer today, and it looks pretty spiffy, if I say so myself. I don't know that the content is of incredibly widespread interest, consisting of an essay grappling with some of my feelings about some postmodern fiction, and a story used as an example, but it definitely has some fun bits.

I found a less expensive printer than the one I originally got my price quotes from, and ended up printing rather more copies than I can ever expect to sell (I asked for fifty, and they gave me seventy, sixty-nine of which have staples). The upshot is that if you'd like a copy of your very own, that can be arranged, at bargain-basement prices!

Just how much, you ask? Well, there are three options:

1. For two bucks, you can pick up your copy in person. This is a great offer if you happen to live in the Boston area, but it's not otherwise likely to apply to y'all.
2. For three bucks, I'll mail you a copy anywhere in the U.S. (That includes sixty cents in postage, about a dime for the envelope, and about thirty cents for rounding umm, handling. Right. Handling.)
3. For five bucks, I'll mail two copies anywhere in the U.S. Not that I can think of any reason why you'd need two copies, but a bargain is a bargain! (This includes eighty-three cents in postage, about a dime for the envelope, and only about seven cents for "handling.")

11:16 PM: The Countdown Continues!

15 shopping days until my birthday!

The entry title is not likely to come as a complete surprise to anybody in the Boston area, but I do have a specific reason for having that sentiment just now. See, the Boston Phoenix is a free local weekly that actually does have its uses in general, listing events in the area, and having some articles of interest and such. It also has a section for personal ads. As I haven't been getting all that terribly far by other means, I thought that this might be worth a try.

The instructions alongside the personal ads in the Phoenix every week state that, if you'd like to reply to a personal ad, you need to do so by phone. You can either have it charged to your phone bill, in which case calls cost $2.19 per minute, or you can use a credit card, in which case there are a few options.

Alternately, you can place an ad yourself, which is free. The instructions for this have the word "free" in capital letters and large type. "FREE," it says.

Not explained anywhere in the section is how one goes about getting responses once one places one's FREE ad. They helpfully explain that "Once you've submitted your ad we'll contact you with your voicemail box info and details on how to record your greeting and retrieve messages." And that's it.

Using the third of their "5 fun ways" to place my FREE ad, I went to their Web site. Before placing the thing, I went looking for further information on what happens after the ad is placed. None was to be found. There were thus two possibilities:

1. The ads were really and truly free, and there would be no additional charges down the line. Their plan was to thus amass a great many ads for people to respond to, upon which they would make their money.
2. They were complete and utter scumbags who deliberately weren't telling potential advertisers that there would be a price for retrieving one's messages, preferring to keep that as a surprise.

1. As luck would have it, I placed my ad before they put that section to bed and cancelled it afterwards, so they couldn't really do anything about it.
2. They could have yanked the ad out in time, but chose not to, in hopes that people would call and spend $2.19 a minute just to be told that the ad had been cancelled.

Bart: "Lisa put a witch's spell on me."
Lisa: "It's called Wicca, and it's empowering!"
Bart: "Wicca's a Hollywood fad."
Lisa: "That's kabbala, jerk!"