Slum sweet slum

so this is the place i lived from fall 2000 to summer 2001; or at least part of it.

but first of all, before anything else, we must have a picture of jeff! and my little carpet from morocco, but jeff's more important, because those slippers in the lower left corner smelled funny, and the world must know that they belong to him. and the little mermaid pennybank in the upper right corner can be blamed on him, too. jeff's great because he put up with me making him do stuff like reach high shelves and putting up christmas lights. (he used to have longer hair, but that studly buzz-cut only cost him nine bucks.)

so after that little interlude, here is the view towards our door, displaying our wonderfully cramped kitchen (note that the microwave couldn't even fit in it), teasing little views of our lovely shelves, and the ugly light fixture. oh, and the funky green stool; can't forget that. the plank that the microwave was on was in our apartment when we moved in—we never found out why. to the left of the kitchen and that shelf was a little red-headed step-child of a closet, which we didn't know what to do with. so we bought cheap shelving and turned it into our pantry. we were very proud of our pantry.

the below was our happy couch. our happy couch belonged to multiple uwired employees, and i inherited it when chris moved to pullman. the guys were kind enough to go get it while i was in hawaii, and i paid for it ever after. it had the dirty little secret that it was a sofa-bed, it had been clawed and had holes poked in it, and it got very hot when the sun came in the window in the afternoon. but i loved it anyway. and my lamp from shiga's imports and costco pillows are oso cool. my subwoofer was finally in the same physical location as me, too! yay!

because this was an apartment where i lived, christmas lights had to necessarily be an integral part of our lighting scheme. they're lovely, and we got two of the strings up in these pictures for free from patrick. free stuff is good. (you can't tell from this picture, but that dimly-seen clock's numbers are in kanji—i love shiga's imports!) anyway, most of the time at night, we just had the christmas lights and the lamp on... sometimes the kitchen light, too. we avoided using the ugly light fixture at all costs because it was blinding. we liked our cave.

the below is nearly the same scene, but taken with the flash. so a) it's not as pretty, and b) you can actually see the detail of that really odd space we had under the stairs. ariel is there in all her glory, enthroned above jeff's and my collection of rpg books and board games, next to the strange candle that my father gave me that i just don't understand. jeff's poster is so tasty, too. the old months of my kabuki calendar were later put up in the stairwell, so it wasn't so plain for long. we could have killed... i mean grown... plants in that window (it's got shelving), but we never got around to it.

the below was taken leaning over the stairs on the way up. as can be seen, we didn't have a lot of space. nor stuff up on the far wall at the time (that would change... sometime). nor a large tv (which would also change... sometime), but the 13 inch one we had at the time this picture was taken was a free loan from ken, so we couldn't complain. i fought a constant war against clutter and boxes, which i had just started to win when i took this picture (sort of), but it didn't really last for long. isn't our coffee table wonderful? it's got a shelf underneath it to put all of our crap. how convenient! ikea is god's own store!

the below is the clutter of what was laughably advertised as this place's upstairs fourth bedroom. we suppose you could fit a bed up here, but you'd have people walking through to get downstairs from richard's room, and that would suck. so it was our computer room, which i let the boys rule, and was therefore a complete mess. not that it'd be that neat if i'd gotten up there; there were far too many cables for neatness. our switch was hidden somewhere in the picture, and that window looked out on a small roof that we could have smoked on if we were so inclined.

looking back at the stairs, this is the back of richard's head. on the left, unseen, but behind where those monitors were, above, was his bathroom (jeff and i shared one downstairs), and right next to the fan was the door to his bedroom (the largest of them all, the punk). this window also looked out on another roof that we could have smoked on, if we wanted to, or grown plants on (as the previous tenants did), or sat on and throw things at the freeway (which was only about 10 yards away, sigh). but mostly it was important for airflow, because this little space up here got really freaking hot.

bonus round! these are dark pictures of my room.