My own official Fall season started here when the furnace turned on the other night. Of course, I'd left the windows open, so that helped the temp inside get down to 50-ish, but still.

Happy birthday, erika!

OMG, I have to NEVER EVER BUY the TJ's chocolate-covered almonds with sea salt.

Oh yeah.

As soon as the Christmas assortment chocolate-covered JoJos come in, I'm buying at least six boxes.

Totally. Last year they ran out 3 weeks before Christmas, and I couldn't get any more! NEVER AGAIN.

The local weather stations are beginning to talk about the average day of first snowfall.

Meanwhile, just reading this gave me a moment of anxiety.

Before the end of rent control, Beacon Hill had some pretty skanky, cheap rentals shoulder-by-shoulder with luxurious townhouses. I definitely remember seeing a coin-op laundromat, but that's more than 10 years ago easily.

The back end of Beacon Hill (the side that intersects with Cambridge Street, as opposed to Charles Street) is filled with townhouses converted to apartments. At least, when I lived there in 1993. The place I lived in (on Grove Street) had enormous common area rooms, tiny bedrooms,and ENORMOUS COCKROACHES. HMOG. New Orleans sized. Not the size of New Orleans roaches, THE SIZE OF NEW ORLEANS.

Many of my friends also had apartments in the ass end of Beacon Hill, in similar carved up slumlord apartments.

Not the size of New Orleans roaches, THE SIZE OF NEW ORLEANS.

Heh.

When I was looking two years ago, I saw some of those places, mostly fixed up and not cheap, but still tiny and weird.

I thought my worst roach experience was living in Florida for two years (where they call them "palmetto bugs" and they FLY), but it wasn't.

I babysat/nannied for a couple in Rupert Towers in the east 90s when I was twenty, and it was a couple of big, lovely highrises. Their apartment was gorgeous -- three bedrooms, three baths, big open area living/dining/kitchen. And OVERRUN with roaches. I would run the dishwasher and open it to see roaches scurrying over the clean dishes.

Apparently it was due to the incinerators or something, but whatever. I was never so glad to quit a job. I had to stay with the baby for a week once while they were travelling, and afterwards I swear I had PTSD.

S. and I lived in a studio two floors above a Chinese restaurant, and I swear we saw a roach maybe once. So weird.

We have the flying Palmetto bugs here, too. There's actually a band called the Palmetto Bug Stompers, which I think is hilarious. My poor roommate is particularly traumatised by them, and she works at the zoo, which is overrun. I never thought about it, but it makes sense that the zoo would have them all over.

Happy birthday, erika!

Oh, this is fun. Retrospace blog I found on Rookie.

flying bugs of the size of palmettos is something I find VERY disturbing. I'm always 1 second away from a scream when I am in their presence.