last night... shit. so we're all hanging out drinking behind our apartment building in this common area with some neighbors, and I get up to go inside and make some jello shots for the float trip tomorrow. it was 11 or so. I was in there for probably ten seconds when L comes POUNDING on my door... "WHERE'S YOUR PHONE? CALL 911. MARC JUST HIT SOME GUY WITH A CHAIR." WTF? Then Marc comes in with his shirt all ripped up but no blood or anything, which is a relief. Marc used to be a bouncer at a club, and was good at the "look big and intimidating" part but terrible at the fighting part. Every time it actually got physical, he lost. He was always coming home cut up or beaten or not seeing straight, it was terrible. lover not a fighter. so why hit someone with a chair?

apparently some drunk guy had wandered into our apartment parking lot and started pissing on cars, a wall, etc. (we live downtown right by the bars, so this is annoying, but not surprising) One of our neighbors asked him not to do this. the guy hits him. the neighbor knocks him down. the guy gets up. the neighbor walks back towards where we'd been sitting, and this guy is still following him, trying to knock him down but he's so drunk he can't really do much... he punches a metal pole a few times, yells a bunch, his buddies come over and these horribly drunk girlfriends of theirs. by this time someone was trying to call/flag the cops down, but there were none to be found, and nobody was answering 911 (it rang like 14 times, that gives you confidence, right?) finally drunk guy tries to pick up a metal deck chair from the tables, goes to hit our neighbor with it, marc picks up a plastic chair and hits him, he collapses. Big head gash on his brow, lots of blood, his drunk wife is there trying to kick everybody's ass, she rips marc's shirt and starts hitting him, it's great fun.

Finally we were able to flag a cop down so I go get marc from inside to talk to them, with this sinking feeling like the night would end with him getting arrested, but the cops were really cool. The got the parametics to bandage up massively drunk guy. They pulled the drunk girls off marc... they were yelling and screaming, "HE DID THIS! HE KILLED HIM! IT WAS HIM! and he tried to choke me, and hit me, and probably beats all his women, and he's fat..." and one of them punched marc in the chest RIGHT in front of the cops and they start asking how bad she wants to go to jail. The attacking group consisted of one large more sober guy who seemed to understand the situation, and he started on "hold the drunk girls back" duty. Marc was all shakey but the cops didn't talk to him much, got his name and info and said that it sounded like he did what he had to, and the guy probably collapsed more from a combination of shock, alcohol and adrenalin than actually being hit, and his head wound would just need a couple stitches. I still hope nothing bad comes out of this, the people were yelling all sorts of threats.

anyway, yeah, time to go get on a river, where there's room for everybody to just get drunk without having to kick each other's asses.

I wanted to set up my network today, mostly because marc has been keeping really busy with helping me out in the new place and I was afraid he'd get to the network phase, and I'd have to be one of those girls whose boyfriends set up their networks. unacceptable. unfortunately I've failed somewhere... I can plug into my router and do just fine, but when I try it wireless everything is super painfully slow and times out. Unless I'm just pinging. I can ping anyplace, no packets get lost and the time ranges are normal. So I'm not totally sure what's up.

last night was a blast! we went out to dinner with ms a, her man and their friend from out of town, then we came back here. humaazul stopped by to say hello, and then another friend of ours from across the hall came over and we sat around and talked until midnight-ish. it's so cool to actually know some of my neighbors. my last apartment, all the neighbors were either really standoffish or downright scary. The House was in a typical suburb, totally boring, I think we were the scary ones because people on the street knew there were 3-4 20-something people (plus a good number of our friends, often enough) and we didn't really fit in. Plus it's a subdivision, you know how that is. Everybody goes from their house to the garage, drives away, then drives home and closes the garage again and if they go outside at all it's the back porch with the privacy fence, so they don't have to come into contact with anyone. miserable.

So my apartment is still basically a disaster but marc knew yesterday that people might be coming over, so he arranged the living room area very nicely. Set up the TV and the nice shelves, cleared off the couches, made sure the floor was mostly crap-free. I was amazed when I got home from work, seriously, and it helped us all be comfy last night so we could just relax. Today I broke down a bunch of boxes and collected all the beer bottles in one box and went to the recycling center a little ways south of here. Wichita isn't big on recycling. We don't have curbside, and there are only two places that recycle glass and they're not open very many hours a week, so I'd never been there. My last house we just threw everything away. and I mean everything, it made me almost sick sometimes, I felt horrible but didn't know what to do and knew my roommate wouldn't support setting out bins for different recycling things. Plus I know I'm not much one to talk, but I think they were really bad at buying over-packaged stuff. Recycling is, for me, sort of a new apartment resolution. I'm going to subscribe to the paper soon and will have to recycle that, and if all my friends make this the pre-party location we're going to go through a lot of beverage containers (unless I just get a keg every weekend... that's not a bad idea).

I got an apartment! here's what's awesome about it:

• It's near downtown, so I can walk to cool stuff, and my drive to the east side for the new work assignment will be shorter, and it's closer to my college too.
  
• It's a big crazy loft! The bedroom area is upstairs
  
• Much bigger (square footage wise) than my last apartment
  
• Has a storage closet
  
• The kitchen is big and open, not like my old apartment where it was basically a closet
  
• I can keep my bike under the stairs
  
• Faces south, so there's lots of light all the time, I can grow plants! Or, at least, not use lack of sunlight as an excuse when my plants die.
  
• It's my own apartment!

What's bad:

• still only one bedroom. but it's like 1000 square feet, so whatever.
  
• it's close to some train tracks. I sort of like trains, but then again, I've never lived right by train tracks, so we'll see how it goes.
  
• no washer/dryer, no hookups. it's back to the land of quarters for me. but it's next to the facility laundry room.
  
• sort of expensive. my rent will basically double, plus I have to pay utilities now. but for the past year I've been paying hardly anything for rent and going crazy, so this'll be like the opposite! And really, any apartment I was looking at was going to significantly increase my rent, so whatevers (again).
  
• um... that's it!

soooo excited about this... when I put the deposit down, I called like three people but nobody answered phones, that was annoying. my boyfriend was at work and could only text, but he's way excited for me, he got to see it a few weeks ago when we first found it.

my move in isn't for three weeks so I've got time to organize and pack up. need to spend this weekend organizing, I think, in between studying I just need to go through crap and get RID of it, dump a lot of clothes, that sort of thing.