Finding a pencil

In honor of my amazing current roommate (and baby brother) who is getting me all kinds of hard-to-get books on the list today (yay for being a student?), a post on all my roommates over the years:

When I first moved to DC I lived with four people in a huge house in Silver Spring. It was a pretty great set-up, and we had a lot of fun together. It was surprisingly drama free for so many people living together. No passive-aggressive notes about anything, for example, and no arguments about thermostat settings. We survived Snowpocolypse together, too. One roommate spent the whole week baking; we had homemade bread of various kinds, quiche, lasagna, donuts, etc. We probably all gained about 15lbs. This also led me to playing Risk the right way for the first and last time in my life and it was very stressful.

Then I lived in a house with strangers fairly briefly. Nothing too notable, except the guy was kind of a jerk; he would leave the AC on all day and he just used the toilet paper and never contributed. Eventually I just took to not leaving it in the bathroom. I don't know what he did then, but he still never contributed.

After that I moved to an apartment that was a one bedroom and a converted living room. It was okay for a brief stint. The roommate was not notable overall; we didn't ever spend time together. She had a cat, and I cannot for the life of me remember the cat's name. This makes me so crazy. I knew it at one point, I called him by his name, etc. Whenever I try to remember his name, though, I remember the name of the cat at the hostel Sarah and I stayed at in Rome for six days in 2007; why can I remember that but not this more recent cat who I knew for a longer period of time?

Next I lived alone in a studio. It was great and I never once locked myself out, despite having several mini panic attacks about that (which my father assisted with by sending me articles about how corrupt locksmiths are; thanks, Dad!).

When I moved to my current place I briefly lived with a temporary roommate found on Craigslist. I nicknamed her (not to her face; I'm not sure, though, if that makes it better or worse) "the puppy" because she was rather puppy-like (she was 22, just moved to the big city, etc.). She was a great roommate from a Parks & Rec definition.

And now I live with Josh!