Chu-soaked.

Yeah. Don't expect those puns to stop anytime soon.

Just in case anyone was wondering, my neighborhood is now a river, which smells like a sewer. I nearly died on the stairs just now, when my naive notion of "waiting for it to let up" finally caved in, and I went out for cigarette reinforcements. Why? Because the four floors of steps leading up to my apartment are stone, and the roof over them basically doesn't exist in places. And I was wearing flip-flops, which is the only reasonable thing to do when running out to the shops involves the equivalent of crossing the Congo.

It's a ghost town out there. The only life to be seen are a few lingering, bored shop vendors peering out at empty streets from under awnings and huge caravans of families crammed into vehicles with all kinds of fermented vegetables, slowly rolling out toward the freeways and various in-laws' hometowns.

As for me, I can't be bothered with this shit, honestly. I'm going to stay inside today and clean the floors, while taking breaks to sulk about not having woken up in Shanghai this morning by reading about other people's fantastic adventures Out There in the World.

And, here's a gross factoid for you: sometimes I save the cups from coffee carry-out, rinse them in my sink and refill them with homemade lattes, because I have thing for the way coffee tastes out of a paper cup. So I'm doing that as well.

Boo hoo hoo.

(Don't let me fool you with all of this. I'm exactly where I want to be, at the moment.)