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September 22, 2021 - Image 6

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To whatever poor, tortured soul occupies

this apartment next,

You will earnestly swing open the heavy front

door, gleaming with a streaky coat of clinical,
blueish-purpleish-greyish paint, and you will
smell mold. You’ll learn to grow accustomed to
the scent — no obscene amount of Febreze or
air freshener plugs will ever succeed in masking
it — but it will make you flinch upon entry.
Unfortunately, this will be only the beginning of
your torrid love affair with Apartment #1.

You’ll walk into the bathroom and look up at

the ceiling, only to find it sloping downwards
to greet you, slick with an impenetrable coat
of orange stains and stray hairs embedded into
the paint. You’ll wonder if you had come to the
wrong address; this is not the shiny, pristine
apartment you were advertised through the
realtor’s photos. It’s on you, after all, for not
questioning why they weren’t willing to let you
tour any units prior to your arrival.

Do not expect the fridge to always work. Or

any of the lights, for that matter. Your apartment
is prone to power outages, water shut-offs and
a plethora of other issues that are just enough to
begin eroding your already wire-thin nerves.
Your “sent” mailbox will become cluttered with
emails filing for countless work orders so that you
can shower or wash your laundry or repair the
flooding toilet that had you and your roommate
ankle-deep in dirty water for an entire evening.

Apartment #1 is, for all intents and

purposes, a hellscape. Your roommate will joke
that it isn’t meant to sustain human life: it’s the
seventh circle of hell, or a cosmic joke or some
bizarre purgatory you’ve been condemned to
as penance for 20 years of bad karma — it must
be. No other explanation seems to make sense.
But if your experience is anything like mine,
Apartment #1 is not just a subpar place for you
to reside during your sophomore year. It will
prove to be so much more than that.



It might be the place where you have your

heart shattered into a million pieces.

You’ll get the call on an unassuming August

morning, rousing you from a deep sleep. (If
you’re like me, you’re curled up on a mattress
pad sans mattress, resting atop a half-built bed
frame). You’ll know what the call is about before
you answer, and you will never hate being right
more than you do when you hang up the phone
a brief twenty seconds later. You come away
from the call with no flowery summation, no
eloquence or profundity or understanding,
nothing at all except the truth: your world is
heavy and someone you love has just died.

Your family will leave the country the next

day for the funeral, and they will be gone for
months afterward.

Your room will be cold for weeks.



You will lie in your bed, finally sporting a

mattress, one October night. Your body will
be tugged in and out of sleep, eyes heavy from
the day’s exhaustion and body heavier from
the weight of your bones and the world and
whatever else. They’ll flutter open and peer
up at the window situated over your head, and
behind the slits of your shutter blinds, you’ll be
met with another pair of eyes.

Pressed against the glass stands a man, and

you’ll realize he has been watching you sleep.
You will not know how long he had been there,
or why. But you will never forget the shape of his
boots, with tattered laces and fresh dirt clinging
to the worn leather, the eerie stillness of his
stature, the dark shadows cast over his face and
the unplaceable coldness behind his unblinking
eyes. He will not move. Neither will you.

Then you will scream. He’ll vanish just as

soon as he realizes you’ve seen him, and your
roommate will storm out of the apartment
minutes later in search of him, only to find a
blanket of darkness.

You’ll write it off as a harmless peeping

Tom. You’ll blame it on the basement-level
apartment, call yourself silly for daring to place
your bed near the window. You’ll tell your
friends the story, elaborate and humorous,
frantic hand gestures and laughs masking
the discomfort that lays beneath it all. But you
will have nightmares; rolling in your bed and
strangled by an indiscernible sense of dread,
you will fight off the insidious understanding
that you are a woman and that means being
watched while you sleep, that you are the
property of everyone but yourself and that even
your own bedroom cannot belong to you.

You will buy blackout curtains.



The kitchen has just enough counter space

for a microwave, and you will have to suck in
your breath to slide past your roommate each
day, narrowly ducking towards the fridge or
cabinets.

In the months spent shrinking under the

grim fluorescent light, you will have to eat
again. Winter is fierce, nipping away at you
with unrelenting cruelty, and the gnawing
pangs of hunger will slowly subside into a dull
nothingness that sits in the pit of your stomach
for weeks. You will have to relearn the hard-
wired, evolutionary underpinning of survival,
and you will feel silly and incompetent and
heavy, so heavy.

6 — Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com

By Steve Faiella
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/20/21

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/20/21

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Monday, September 20, 2021

ACROSS

1 Simon __: kids’

game

5 Not for kids,

moviewise

11 Small amount
14 Shopper’s

memory aid

15 Aviator Earhart
16 Skating surface
17 “I had no __!”
18 It follows

35-Down

19 Milk grain
20 Imitative bird
22 Pioneering game

consoles

24 Reaction to a

strange object

28 Lengthy tales
31 e__: online

instructional
guide

32 Shoot well under

par, in golf lingo

36 App purchaser
37 Serious criminal
39 Actress

Anderson

40 Everest and K2:

Abbr.

41 Out of practice
42 Lender’s claim
43 Stick-in-the-__
44 Make like new, as

old furniture

46 Tater __: deep-

fried potato
morsel

47 Parisian season
48 Semiannual

occurrence that
begins 18- and
66-Across

49 Opposite of

WSW

50 Showed again
52 Bandage brand
53 Less adulterated
55 Summoned, as

the fiddlers three

58 Comfy shoe pad
61 With milk, as

café

65 Crystal ball gazer
66 In 2021, it begins

September 22nd

70 Place to

de-stress

71 Turkey neighbor
72 In twos, like

socks

73 Nosh
74 Fathers’ boys
75 Gets hot on

Twitter

76 Many pop-ups

DOWN

1 Lose one’s

footing

2 Musical based on

an opera

3 Belgian river
4 Movie with

R2-D2

5 Dreads sporter
6 Excite, with “up”
7 Thrice, in Rx’s
8 New Haven alum
9 Kitchen dweller

of song

10 Motley
11 Designer

Christian

12 Smoothie

berry dubbed a
superfood

13 Wagers
21 “I see” words
23 Ring-shaped reef
25 “Same drink as

always”

26 Semi-annual

occurrence that
begins 28- and
35-Down

27 Black-and-white,

e.g.

28 It precedes

66-Across

29 Sharp-witted
30 Word with role or

identity

33 Hang around
34 Common soccer

deadlock

35 It follows

66-Across

37 MHz measure
38 “Eli’s Coming”

songwriter Laura

44 Kidney-related
45 Describes in

detail

51 Squirrel’s haul
54 Web address

letters

56 Jumped
57 Widely known
58 Wife of Osiris
59 Fiddling emperor
60 Actor Connery
62 Away from port
63 Apple tablet
64 Body art,

casually

67 Former Mideast

org.

68 Deadlock
69 Keats’ “Ode on a

Grecian __”

SUDOKU

WHISPER

“God I hate
you.”

“I love you.”

WHISPER

By Mark McClain
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/08/21

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/08/21

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Wednesday, September 8, 2021

ACROSS

1 Chess result
5 “NASCAR on

NBC” analyst
Earnhardt Jr.

9 Metalworker

14 Cancún coin
15 A party to
16 Island near Maui
17 *Devoted ESPN

viewer

19 Uneasy feeling
20 Word after box

or law

21 Bullish sound?
22 Wail
23 *Spec for

sandpaper or salt

27 Coll. near the Rio

Grande

29 Hard rain
30 Dance class topic
31 First name in skin

care

33 Caddie’s offering
35 Make a wrong

turn, say

36 *Quarry that

supplies
aggregate

40 Guys
43 Jai __
44 Quebec’s __

Peninsula

48 Racecourse

shape

50 Ready for bed,

briefly

53 Long-running

CBS series

54 *Garden walkway

component

57 Malarkey
58 Pachelbel work
59 Treasury

secretary Janet

61 Sahara features
62 Last player

selected for
a Wimbledon
ranking ... or part
of each answer to
a starred clue

65 Locale
66 Heck of a hike
67 Dell rival
68 Brings in
69 Actor Grant
70 Drive-__

DOWN

1 MLB rally killers

2 Researchers’

publications

3 To date
4 Klingon officer in

the “Star Trek”
franchise

5 ’70s hot spots
6 Strengthen, as

glass

7 Seuss’ Cindy __

Who

8 Suffix with exist
9 Language

student’s
challenge

10 Medieval estates
11 Thankless sort
12 Preferable,

gastronomically

13 Major success
18 Half a mint?
21 Contrived plot
22 Alert for an actor
24 Checkout printout
25 Unload, say
26 “Morning Edition”

airer

28 Alternative to

Margie

32 Noted period
34 Important
37 Square up
38 Hotel shuttles

39 Light earth tone
40 Short flight
41 Hurricane

mandate
responder

42 Tropical

grassland

45 Sudden stop

sound

46 Trailblazer
47 “C’__ la vie!”
49 Umpire’s

pregame request

51 Olympic star

Jackie __-Kersee

52 Deceptive
55 Wine qualities
56 Building wing
60 Challenge for an

atty. wannabe

61 TiVo, for one
62 Agcy. concerned

with fraud

63 Gershwin

brother

64 R&B’s __ Hill

When the fall semester commenced, I

finally had the amazing opportunity to meet
many of my fellow Michigan in Color writers
in person for the very first time. Nearly every
single person I’ve met so far has asked me
something along the lines of: “So, how do
you write those horoscopes?” I always try to
stammer out a response that isn’t too long-
winded but still encapsulates the process,
even though it always ends up sounding like a
different language to the other person.

There is a misconception that horoscopes

are just completely made up by the writers.
However, they actually require a lot of research.
Horoscopes are based on various astrological
events in a given time frame. In astrology,
space is divided into twelve 30-degree circular
sectors that encompass all of the planets in our
solar system. Each 30-degree sector is what we
call an astrological/zodiac sign. In my weekly
column, I mainly focus on planetary ingress
(planets moving from one sign to another),
transits/aspects (the angles that planets make
with each other), retrogrades (when planets
appear to move backwards) and both full and
new moon phases (signals of the start or the
end of a life cycle).

The first step in my writing process is to

find out which events are occurring each
week. I always use cafeastrology.com to track
each event every week, and then I compile all
of the planetary movements and the dates and
times at which they occur under the “Celestial
Motion” section that appears at the top of
every horoscope I publish. I use this section
as a general guide so I don’t need to waste
space on dates and information applicable to
all signs in the individual zodiac sign sections.
However, I don’t put the general information
into paragraph form until I’ve finished writing
each sign’s messages so that I know what topics
I mention most throughout the piece and I
can ensure my general information will set
up the readers to understand their individual
sign messages. I also know that people often
skip the Celestial Motion section, so I want to
make sure that everything within the zodiac
messages can stand on its own.

Up until this point, my process requires

little effort since I’ve only taken down dates so
far. Now that I’m ready to write the individual
zodiac sign sections, I need more information
that is zodiac-sign specific.

I base my zodiac sign section on the type

of astrological event, the planets involved,
the signs of the planets and the astrological
house(s) (another rotating wheel split into 12
sectors just like the zodiac wheel). The house

wheel makes one full rotation every two
hours, which is why it’s important to note the
exact time that these transits occur. There are
different ways to determine where the houses
start and end, but I use the Whole Sign House
system, which neatly aligns the houses to the
zodiac wheel. To find where each planet fits
into a house, I use a website to draw a birth
chart for the date and time of each event I want
to track.

You might know that each sign has its own

properties: Aries is the sign of passion and
anger, Taurus is the sign of love and luxury
and Gemini is the sign of communication
and intelligence. However, each planet also
has its own set of properties: Mercury is the
planet of communication, Venus is the planet
of love, Mars is the planet of anger and passion
and so on. Houses also have their own set
of properties: the first house deals with self-
identity, the second house deals with money,
the third house deals with communication
and so on. While signs and planets typically
deal with areas of someone’s personality,
houses represent an area in a person’s life. For
instance, if your birth chart has an Aries Sun in
the seventh house of partnerships, your Aries
sun traits of passion and straightforwardness
will manifest in your relationships.

This is where things start to get pretty

complicated; houses in horoscopes aren’t
exactly the same as house placements in natal
charts. The houses are labeled from numbers
1 to12, and the planets fall somewhere in these
divisions. When interpreting birth charts, you
simply mark down the number of the house
that contains the planet. For example, if Venus
falls inside the house labeled fifth on the birth
chart, we would say that Venus is in the fifth
house; it’s pretty straightforward. While I
haven’t been able to find exact instructions
on tracking houses in any astrology-related
articles online, I have read many other
horoscopes and noticed patterns in the
definitions of the houses and the descriptions
of each sign’s horoscope. First, locate the
planet of interest on the chart. Next, look at the
sign and the house that contains the planet.
Regardless of the numbers displayed on the
chart, I assign this house as the first house for
this sign. Each sign has its own definition of
houses, and the house containing the planet in
question is always assigned as the first house.

The next numbers in the sequence are

assigned to each house in a clockwise
direction. Since I want to know the planet’s
house number for every sign, I just go counter-
clockwise around the circle. For example,
let’s say that Mars’ orbit has led it into Libra’s
sector of the sky. This means that for Libras,
Mars is in their first house. Virgo is one sign
counterclockwise of Libra, meaning its first

house is one house counterclockwise of
Mars’ current position. Houses are counted
in a clockwise direction, so Mars is located
in Virgo’s second house. Leo is two signs
counterclockwise of Libra, so this means
Venus is in Leo’s third house. Continue with
this cycle until each zodiac sign has a house
number assigned to every planet with a
notable planetary event.

According to the event type, planet, sign

and house, I can get an idea of what astrology
predicts will happen. Using our earlier
example, we will say that Mars is moving into
the sign of Libra. Now, I want to know what
this means for Capricorns. Capricorn is nine
places away from Libra counterclockwise,
so we know that Mars is in Capricorn’s tenth
house. When a planet changes signs, it takes
on qualities of the sign and house it enters.
Mars is the planet of passion, Libra is a sign of
diplomacy and the tenth house is the house of
career and ambition. From this information,
I would say that Capricorns will have some
sort of breakthrough at work, and they should
communicate their ideas with their coworkers
and managers in order to progress. Repeat this
process for every astral event for every sign.

Once I’ve finished writing for every sign,

I go back to the Celestial Motion section and
note all the general information that I don’t

cover in the zodiac sign sections or information
that I think is useful for all interpretations.

These are pretty much the essential

components of my horoscope configuration.
There are other concepts I include in my
horoscopes such as ruling planets that I didn’t
include here, and there are concepts like moon
signs, chiron and minor aspects that I don’t
even include in my horoscopes because, in my
opinion, they are too irrelevant and excessive
for a weekly horoscope. The amount of time
I spend on each horoscope depends on the
number of events per week, but they can range
anywhere between two to six hours.

I cannot speak for every astrologer, but this

is my method of writing horoscopes. As far
as I’m aware, there is no definitive guide for
horoscope writing, and I don’t particularly
think there should be. While astrology is a
practice with pretty defined guidelines, I
think it’s important for people to define their
belief system for themselves.

Resources:
If you’re completely new to astrology, I

recommend using Cafe Astrology’s free birth
chart reports to get familiar with the meanings
of different planets, signs and houses as they
relate to your life:

https://astro.cafeastrology.com/natal.php

If you ever come across a word you don’t

know in astrology, theastrologydictionary.
com has a ton of definitions:

http://theastrologydictionary.com/
If you’re interested in learning more about

any astrological concepts like houses or
retrogrades, astrology.com’s “Learn” page has
great links to different resources:

https://www.astrology.com/learn
I use astrologyking.com for all my

information on the dynamics of different
planetary transits. This website also has good
information on aspects in birth charts:

https://astrologyking.com/aspects/
I use Astroseek’s birth chart calculator

to draw charts for my horoscopes since this
website allows you to easily change the date
and time:

https://tinyurl.com/535c2v9f

If you want to read more horoscopes, I

referenced these when I was trying to figure
out how to deduce information for my column:

https://staging.chaninicholas.com/

horoscopes/

https://www.vice.com/en/topic/monthly-

horoscopes

https://www.allure.com/topic/horoscopes
https://www.astrology.com/horoscope/

daily.html

Demystifying the horoscope writing process

ANDREW NAKAMURA

MiC Columnist

Design courtesy of Andrew Nakamura

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Ode to Apartment #1

YASMINE SLIMANI

MiC Columnist

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