The Burner Gambit
Sunday, June 15th, 2025 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
80F and sunny, going down to 62F tonight.
The little kitchenette in this flat is equipped with two electric burners built into the countertop, and a microwave on a shelf above, between the cabinets.
Because microwaves are useless for cooking food, I bought my convection airfryer, right after moving in, which is far superior, but the sacrifice was to give up the burners, as the only place to put the air fryer was on top of that range, which is flush to the counter's surface.
But today I got a bug up my ass to remove the microwave, and put the air fryer in it's place, on that shelf over the countertop!
The issue was that there wasn't enough headroom for the air fryer, so I finally modified the shelf today, lowering it by an inch, to get that needed headroom.
Sadly, only after doing the work, did I discover that the air fryer is also several inches too deep to sit on that shelf!
Like an old tube TV, the air fryer has a big protuberance sticking off the back, that's not part of the main housing, so it's true depth is deceptive.
And since that protuberance is an exhaust, it also needs some space behind it for airflow.
The partial solution to this condundrum began with shoving the microwave under the bed.
There happened to be an unoccupied void under the head end, next to the underbed storage drawers there, where the microwave fits just fine and is now 100% invisible!
With that gone, I can put all the stuff that was on the countertop, up on the shelf; bread, ketchup, parmesan cheese, coffee creamer, fire extinguisher, etc. And there's enough space left up there to stow the little coffeemaker when not in use.
So, if I want to use the burners, I can put the air fryer on the stand next to the rocker.
That gets it out of the way, but keeps the countertop free to prepare the food I'm gonna cook.
I also have to get the knobs for the two burners out of the drawer and pop them on, of course.
But it's doable!
Earlier today, when I thought my plan was gonna work, I made a special trip to WalMart to get a small frying pan, sauce pan, and spatula.
And they're really nice!
I made space for them in a base cabinet drawer by throwing out a bunch of shitty tupperware that I haven't used in over a year.
So... knowing I have that stuff on hand is gonna motivate me to use the burners once in a while.
After a year here, this finally unlocks, grilled cheese & tomato soup!.. other soups, stews & chili, and breakfast fare like pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon!
Cuz... man cannot live on frozen; pizza, burritos, chicken patties, and pot pies, alone!
I also do have a toaster hiding in a drawer so, if I am making those scrambled eggs, I can bust that out and make some toast!.. now that the countertop's been cleared.
Again, not the ideal situation, with having to move a 25 pound steel box onto a stand by the rocker, in order to do this stuff, but... still a quality of life improvement for year two in this same tiny studio apartment!
The whole purpose of the little round stand by the rocker is to be a, "free space."
If i'm sitting in the rocker, it's where my beer and ash tray sit.
If I'm getting my lunch ready before work, it's where the coffee and water bottle sit and wait to go into the backpack with the lunchbox.
If it's, say, a solstice or equinox, it becomes extra altar space for a seasonal ritual.
But by default, it's empty.
So it can hold the air fryer when I need the burners, just fine!
I didn't realize it at the time, but year-one in 1106 was about learning how to survive year-two in 1106!
Last year's makeshift exhaust fan for the summer months, is this year's real exhaust fan, and a working exhaust vent in the bathroom.
The radiator mystery revealed itself over the winter... that it just kinda turns on and off whenever it feels like it, so a space heater is needed to supply heat when it's not running.
The best place for that exhaust fan is on the window sill, throwing some heat at me while fresh, but cold air streams in through the crack in the window sash.
The humidifier was kind of useless. Wasn't much needed and didn't make much difference, but blew the power strip breaker if it ran for over an hour.
Required an extra stand next to the bed too. So... not worth the hassle.
A roller shade behind the blinds was also not worth the hassle, cuz it kept losing tension and wouldn't roll all the way up.
The blinds are good enough to block the light while I'm sleeping.
As I often repeat, the specific furniture I was able to bring here made all the difference.
And over a year I've learned how to take things out of drawers and closets to set up the desk as a temporary workbench for wood, or electronics, or other projects, and then put everything away again, when the project is over.
Most recently, I gained the new laptop, and also have the turntable down out of the closet to occupy the space where the printer and scanner had been living, on the far end of the desk.
The printer and scanner are now in the drawer with all the paper and printer ink, available if needed, but out of the way.
I was using both of them almost daily after Dad's death, to deal with paperwork related to that... and later, to the refinance... and later to the foreclosure, that defense, the house sale, the job application, and the apartment application.
But that's all died down now.
I needed the printer last week to print up the AC request form, but... these days, 95% of the time, both the printer and scanner can stay out of sight!
The parking garage has proven not to be much of a problem.
Even in the dead of winter, the walk between there and here's not bad.
And with the luggage dolly, and the new backpack, it's no problem taking things back and forth.
I did learn, early on, to always park on the 4th floor, because there's never space on 1, and space on 2 or 3 is never a guarantee.
Always parking on 4 means I always know where I'm going in the morning.
I also learned that the loading area in front of the building is always blocked, so on Sundays, I take the dolly and backpack with me.
Most of the weekly groceries will fit in the backpack, with just a single paper bag for light stuff like bread and whatnot... and then the dolly is for the beer.
I just park in the garage and walk it all back home.
There's never been any issue with the laundry room or mail room.
Both are easy to access and use 24/7.
The only issue with the trash room is that the dumpsters WILL be overflowing on Sunday nights!
But otherwise, it's part of my daily routine to take my garbage with me on the way out.
This means garbage never has a chance to pile up in the flat!.. and so two small trash cans are all I need... and one even smaller one in the bathroom.
Back at Melody Manor, living upstairs, it was a huge production on Tuesday nights to get all the garbage and cardboard downstairs and out to the bins.
But the main survival technique I was forced to learn this past year was, of course, going to Elgym to record my vocals!
But the necessity of that resulted in some better equipment, and a more efficient technique for capturing good vocals over a short period of time.
Had I been able to just move into an 07 unit, back in April, I may well have settled for high-latency, non-monitorable recording, and wasted whole weekends trying to get vocals for a song... doing endless punch-ins... rather than just banging out seven full takes in an hour, all with headphone monitoring, and then zero in on the good bits later.
Also, I do like that i'm taking advantage of the walkable urbanity of the downtown!
No space to scream at home without negative consequences?.. that's fine!... cuz this is the city, and there's a recording studio four blocks away!
I resisted having to do it that way, but now that I am, I like it!
It also gives that new backpack a whole other critical purpose, on Saturdays.
I made this big deal about buying the new backpack on January 7th, because the old canvas one was too floppy and jangly and stupid!
But the new yellow & black one that I got at that start of the year has become mission critical, every day of the week!
Even though I couldn't swing a full unlock, liberating the burners today was still a big deal!
In retrospect, I could've done it on day one!.. just by shoving the microwave under the bed and using that shelf, as it was, to put all the stuff I was keeping on the countertop.
But for the first two months here, I held out hopes of buying the house back.
And for the next seven months here, I continued to think of 1106 as a temporary life raft until I could get into the 1BR I surely deserved, after what I'd been through.
It wasn't until this past spring, that I realized there's only one style of unit in this building that's worth upgrading to, an 07 or 01 style, and that they don't have any turnaround!
It's the 02s and 05s that see most turnaround, followed by the 03s and 04s, but none of those styles are any good for recording vocals... yet all are enough more in rent to make Elgym no longer affordable.
Thus, I'm in 1106 for the foreseeable future!
One more year, almost certainly, if not two or three more!
And that's a LONG time to wait for a grilled cheese & tomato soup at home on a rainy Saturday!
Three day work week coming up!
Thursday is Juneteenth, which we have off, and I secured Friday as a vacation day.
I think I'm gonna spend the long weekend processing all the vocals I've recorded so far, in Studio C... and doing some kind of ritual... and making a grilled cheese!
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