Roommate update

He's trying to kill my patience with a thousand paper cuts. I know I thought I wasn't going to get annoyed about stuff like this, but taking stuff out of the trash is getting old. Who knew that aluminum cans could be recyclable? Still, in and of itself, that didn't annoy me, because I'd rather dig through the trash than have to make conversation with him. Dinner wasn't that bad, because it was pretty easy to get him to do most of the talking. A while ago, he'd hinted that he'd wanted to ask me all about my life, and there was a little bit of that, but managed to give short answers and get him to talk a lot more about his. He asked me what I did when I spent time online-- did I surf the web? I didn't think quickly enough to say that I mostly watched porn, or anything equally interesting, so I just said that I mostly read the paper and e-mailed with friends. He asked me what was going on in the world; I shrugged. I don't think he understands this whole reading the paper thing, which scares the crap out of me, because he's an 06, and it would be best for the country if he saw staying informed as a civic obligation rather than an exotic activity.

To his credit, he did clean. He also inadvertently made himself useful-- he caught me pensively staring at my pantry, lost in analysis. I thought out loud, "do I want bulghur or buckwheat for lunch this week?" He voted for buckwheat. I must say, it's quite nice with black beans and roasted vegetables. That--well, mostly the cleaning--put him back on my good side, but then he had to forward me some sort of listserv notification of something that my employer is going to be doing, FYI. But I try to keep my employer out of my weekends, as well as my personal e-mail, to the extent possible. Doesn't always happen, but it doesn't help when he forwards me things. That I'll find out about anyway soon enough (and sure enough that notification crossed my path several times today, and it didn't help to have seen it on Sunday). What got him firmly back on my shitlist, however, was knocking on my office door this morning to say goodbye before the workday. Boundaries. There's just no need for that kind of thing.