Getting along

Last night I had a dream that the Plague was coming again. This could have something to do with me reading the grocery-store aisle bestseller, The Plague Tales, but I would like think it has something to do with the reappearance of the overbearing presence of school. I mean, all the symptoms are the same. Dry mouth, nervous twitching, innumerable aches and pains (school creating mental ones, plague creating physical ones), swollen glands, black and purple spots, pus-filled sores, they're ALL the same. In my book, the only way to cure the Plague was to perform an elaborate ritual involving lepers' pennies and ground up bones, so I'm thinking the antidote to School will have to wait.

But enough of that! On to happier subjects! Such as, how every single radiator I've ever come across has been haunted.

I guess it started with the small radiator we had at home in CA. You might wonder why one would need a radiator in California. It's to warm up towels when you're jumping out of the shower or to warm up socks before putting them on your feet. This radiator happened to decide one day that it was time to burn a hole in the carpet. Poof. Just like that. That radiator is still sitting around waiting to be deported to a Russian family who might need it more.

Next we approach the Hungarian radiator. I've never seen that radiator turned on, but as I see it, it serves as a spider tent during the summer, and a spider bbq during the winter.

Next we arrive to the radiator my first year of college. Which we didn't discover until December, when we had started burning newspapers and old math assignments in a campfire constructed in the middle of the floor to warm us up. This radiator whirred like a 1980 IBM computer, and clanged like a nuclear generator. We even named the spirit that lived inside of it's gaping belly, but I forget the name. Maybe it was Nelly.

Nelly was a bit more silent during my second year at college. It came along only once or twice, but it has made a violent comeback this year, albeit less frequently, since people decide to turn on the heat in my apartment building when no one is here so that your shower curtains can be warm, if nothing else.

So this is where I live. In a haunted apartment, with boxes still waiting to be unpacked, and with a now-finished second season of Desperate Housewives.

Welcome!