Apologies for the month's hiatus - I got a little busy with my last week of work, my stay in Cleveland, and my move to Boston. I'm back now, and oh dear Lord will I have a lot to blog about.

By way of introducing you all to my roommate here in Boston, here's part of an e-mail I wrote to a friend about her latest move:

"So I went out to the kitchen to see if there was anything there I remotely wanted to eat (answer: no), and I found a post-it note on the fridge. It says,

"Hi everyone,

Lets remember to not let go of frig and freezer doors and not bang cabinet doors."

There are several things wrong with this note.

1. "Everyone" consists of the note writer (my landlady/roommate), three cats, and me. Unless the note writer wants to use the note as a reminder to herself not to do it (in which case I'm not nearly as annoyed), there is no reason to address it to "everyone" when she quite obviously means me. Addressing it to "everyone" puts it firmly in the realm of Passive-Aggressive Notes (of which fine examples may be observed at http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/).

2. Since she clearly meant the note for me, I'm not really sure why she wrote me a note about it instead of speaking directly to me, which she has in fact done multiple times today and could have brought this up during any one of our conversations.

3. Unless the cats have somehow developed opposable thumbs, nobody's been banging cabinet doors and letting go of fridge and freezer doors. I should explain that the doors haven't got springs in them that keep them open, so if you don't hold on to them they swing back and smack into the wall. It is perfectly reasonable for my landlady to ask me to be careful, which she did the day I moved in. Consequently, there was no need for her to tell me about it again unless I'd been ignoring her request. I have been here two weeks and have let go of the door precisely once, when the alternatives were a) let the door hit the wall and rescue a beer bottle from smashing on the floor, or b) keep hold of the door and allow the beer bottle to smash. Guess which I thought was preferable.

4. This is a good example of my landlady's apparent belief that I'm out to trash her house and have no respect at all for her stuff/space, or alternatively, that I know nothing about taking care of a house/cleaning up after myself. Neither is true.

Is it any wonder I'm drinking at three o'clock in the afternoon?"

So as you all can guess, my roommate situation here in Boston is not nearly as great as my roommate situations were in Kingston and Pittsburgh. She's about my mother's age and apparently thinks she's my mother, except that my mother was never a tenth this annoying. (Hi Mom! Thanks for not being a pain in the ass!) Once I start work on Monday, though, I won't have to see her all day, which will be just lovely.

And other than that, my life in Boston is awesome! For the last couple of weeks, I've been settling in and exploring, and I still have so much left to do and see. I love this city and I love my neighborhood, I'm making some new friends, and I'm really excited to start my job. More posts soon!