Hi everybody. After a few false starts, our little site is live! I guess introductions are in order -- I'm Addie, an average, unassuming, ordinary single girl living in San Francisco. The obnoxious, rude, hairy monster you see peppered around the site is my roommate, Pest. (Short for "Pestilence," which is his middle name. A more apt abbreviation there never was.) I'm sure he'll chime in later with his own comments. Finally, there's Kyle, the mysterious guy who gave us a little corner of his website to mess up with our inane banter. He likes to keep a low profile, so you probably won't be seing much of him in here. If you want more information on us, check out our full profiles.

I'm new to this whole blog thing, so forgive me if I stumble a bit here and there getting started. I suppose the question on everyone's mind is how exactly I ended up with a monster as a roommate. Well, it 's a long story... no, scratch that. It's actually a short story -- Kyle condensed the whole thing into a 25 page comic. It's being published later this month in Tokyopop's "Rising Stars of Manga" graphic novel. I suggest you pick up a copy, if you're into that sort of thing. The ADD version of the story is that Pest followed me home one day and refused to leave. Now, he sits around my tiny apartment watching TV, emptying the pantries, and shedding like crazy.

So, starting today, I'm going to be writing up some of the more interesting events in my otherwise ordinary life. I hope you derive some enjoyment from them... at the very least, you can feel better about your own life afterwards. Living with a monster isn't the glamorous life it appears to be on TV sitcoms.

So, Addie, I read your profile, and it says your occupation is "Barista?" What the heck is that? I thought you had a lousy minimum wage gig minding the counter at an unpopular coffee shop. Are you moonlighting?

Oh, and I took offense at your derogatory use of the word "hairy." My people prefer the word "furry."

Well, I was going to put down "service industry slave" until I found out that my peers at Starbucks are "barista partners." Not *just* "baristas," but "partners." Wow. Anyways, it's just Italian for "someone who makes coffee" or something.

According to Babelfish, you're still just a "monster" in Italian. Bummer.

Ah, but in French, I'm a "monstre." And I can probably add a "le" to that for extra flourish. Hmmm... "le Pest"... I like the sound of that. It's rather dignified, like me.

Umm, yeah. That puts you one step closer to being an animated skunk.