The show goes on

Things have really begun to settle down here, beginning to feel like home. For one thing, the dog has finally remembered that she enjoys eating anything off the ground that even remotely resembles food, something she'd forgotten about in the hustle and bustle of moving. We walked through the cemetery today and she shoved her nose behind a gravestone and came out crunching on a bone. What kind of bone I have no idea. Let's hope someone just happened to be eating chicken there.

I've been trying to get the apartment decorated. I have quite a few nice pieces of art to hang up. Problem is, I'm not too keen on putting more holes in the walls. For some reason there are nails hammered in everywhere, but not in a way conducive to hanging anything. They are placed with no discernible planning or pattern. On one small spot of wall there will be two or three nails in a row, each a different height... too close together to really put any one frame on them, let alone three. Or there will be two nails, one about normal height for a picture, the next a good foot or so lower so I can hang one picture, but two would look ridiculous.

I could always remove a few nails, set things up right, but like I said, I'm not sure I am comfortable putting a bunch of new holes in the wall. I guess the last tenants didn't really care, but for the life of me I had no idea what it was exactly they were doing. I did take advantage of some of the more well placed nails, but for now a box of art goes unhung.

Still cooking for myself almost exclusively. It's sort of difficult to really cook here. A lot of ingredients I'm used to are unavailable, and the ones that are are sort of dumbed down. Like yesterday when I wanted to make enchiladas but couldn't find any corn tortillas. The wheat tortillas I did find were as thick and doughy as lavash bread. They ended up soaking up far too much sauce and basically liquifying. The enchiladas didn't turn out that great. Asian food is a little better represented, except one of the brands of Chinese sauces is called AH-SO written out in a stereotypical Chinese script. I think the sauce's one defining trait is that they are all neon colored and thick as jam. The store does carry more authentic sauces too, but the AH-SO sauce is the most prominent. Also, the store's habeneros have been green for two weeks now. I don't think anyone knows it should be any different then that.

Weather's been absolutely fantastic though. If you look at a color coded temperature map the entire state of Maine is blue, except for this strip of orange and yellow running up the coast. I guess this kind of weather runs right up into New Brunswick a bit too. In a lot of ways this place is like San Francisco. This morning when Hastur and I went on our walk it was cloudy and rained a little bit, this afternoon there was not a cloud in the sky and it was warm and still, and then when I took Hastur out on her long evening walk it was cloudy and windy again. Still, this coastal weather should make for a nice mild winter. I hope there's some good, light snow, but I don't think I'll have to beware any blizzards or extreme storms.