April 2, 2003

• Back from a "spaghetti eat" at the frat.  Though they ply your plate with grease and starch to satisfy your appetite on their cheap budget, you can't beat three bucks for a complete meal including salad, beverage, and dessert--especially when your boyfriend's paying.  Not many guys eating in tonight, a number having gone to some off-campus meeting, so it was nice, quiet, except that they watch television in the dining room like a bunch of old-timers.  The Darcie Diet is about to have its day; I can't stand the wastage when the food's coming out of my own pocketbook and, as I'm sure my readers have been anxious to predict, my waistline has gotten noticably tighter after only two weeks.   I must've gained two or three pounds.  I guess you can't even finish something later or the extra cals from all the rich food add up.   I think, too, that Darse might've had a faster metabolism from smoking, or maybe it was the few inches she had on me in height and her long legs.   I read that muscle tissue burns the most cals, and since the legs are the most muscular part of the body, the longer, the better, which might partially explain why men can really put it away.   (A high school friend of hers says she "just threw everything up," but I never saw her binge.) 

  
  

  Dinner and a hot foot soak was what I really needed to warm me up on this freeze-your-buns-off day.   Here last week we thought we were heading into an early summer with a couple afternoon temperatures of 80 degrees F., but the weather suddenly turned schizo as soon as classes started.   Donna gave me and Chelle a nice surprise by taking down the shower doors, filling the tub with hot water and aromatic bath salts (everyone's taking advantage of the clean john while it lasts), and drawing up three chairs.   Taking off her shoes, she explained how her grandmother had always sat with her feet in the tub after a long, hard day.   So we each took a seat beside her, talked, and relaxed, letting the fragrant steam clear our sinuses.   Speaking of which......  

  
  

  We're trying to get a fire going in the living room--one last fire before the season finally turns--to warm the house up before bed, but the flames keep petering out even though we adjusted the damper several times.   Damn chimney must still be dirty even though Jackson came by to clean it last fall.  It was plugged so badly when Chelle first signed the lease nearly two years ago that putrid smoke like a combination of sulphur, burning rubber and hair filled the room.

  
  

  "Creosote,"  Jackson squinted up the shaft and pronounced, introducing us to this gunky by-product of pine combustion.   You're not supposed to burn pine and related woods.  Creosote clings to the inside of the chimney and can actually catch fire itself, igniting shake roofs.   The degree we had it was producing toxic smoke and potentially fatal carbon monoxide.  Well, what could be done about it?  He shrugged, chewing his gum with professional ease.   Meaning:  Ex-PEN-sive.   Meaning:  Higher REN-tal.

  
  

  Chelle glared at him as if he were a roach in men's clothing.  "I can't live without a fireplace!  It's what sold me on this ratty old house!"

  
  

  They were supposed to have the entire flue lining replaced to get it up to code, but Sayler thought he could get by calling in a chimney sweep.  (Chimney sweep?!?  I hadn't known such a being even existed outside of Mary Poppins.   At least, I'd never seen one in all my nineteen-plus years.   They must really work in the dead of night as in the movie.) Cheaper yet, he could have Jackson RENT the proper tools and long-handled brushes and scrub down the thing himself.   Hell, the guy's skinny enough, we joked. 

  
  

  So he'd said the fireplace problems were under control.   Shit.  It's my turn to go by and bug Sayler. 

  • 11:39 pm
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