Q is for questionable intellect

Dear Q train,

I hate you a little bit right now.

My sincerest disregard,

the fool

blunder of the day

It's been about 57 degrees below reasonable for the last few days. A little while ago, I ventured to the corner store to get a soda for my lunch. It was a desperate act that I should have foregone, but alas, I am weak. I left my glasses on for the errand (because I am also lazy), and the turtle fur wrapped over my mouth and nose made my lenses fog for most of the outing.

So I made my lunch (turkey bacon and mozzarella on an english muffin with kettle chips) and sat down on the futon with my recently purchased vice. About halfway through the sandwich, as I laughed along to Joey wearing a top hat (I,too, am wondering why there is a wikipedia entry for a Friends character), when I noticed that my glasses were fogging up again. I took another bite from my sandwich and sat there confused. Could it really be that cold in the apartment?

And then I realized that it wasn't fog. It was smoke. Coming from the kitchen. Apparently I was so distracted by the joy of having a cherry coke zero and a plateful of salty goodness that I forgot to turn off the burner. I ran into the kitchen (all 6 steps) and there was smoke streaming from the matte black surface of the pan (the lustre of oil having been seared off).

I flicked off the burner, ran the 8 steps over to my dresser and yanked the battery out of the smoke detector. I should stop here and tell you that the smoke detector was on my dresser because of an earlier incident in which the Sauce made squash fries that also caused a blanket of smoke to diffuse throughout the apartment.

It's been a half an hour now, and the air is almost clear. Let's not talk about the 10 minutes I spent madly flapping a dish towel about. I think Petey is still hiding under the bed from the terror and my toes are still numb from leaving the windows open.

horsin around with Ira Glass

I'm headed to the horse country of Virginia to spend the weekend playing board games and listening to my friend's dad talk about obscure 1930's movies. There are 4 Vamoose coupons in my pocket (free ride!), a smelly turkey bacon/mozzarella sandwich in my bag (sorry seat neighbor), and this american life podcasts to drool over.

Have a good weekend!

double parked

I've moved* 7 times in the last 6 years. 6.5 of those 7 moves can be credited to the brawn and generosity of my friends (and sometimes friends of friends).

The law of averages has been kind to me thus far in my apartment hopping lifestyle. I've never had to pack a truck in the rain, although I have had to drive a 14 foot truck towing a 4-wheel car dolly through the mountains of VA in a heavy downpour with 2 cats and an anxious girlfriend in the cab (mountains of VA = transfer truck central). I've never gotten into an accident while driving a moving truck. I've never had a flat tire or run out of gas or ended up on the side of a highway with a smoking engine. There are so many nightmares that I could be whining about right now, but I've never had to live them.

While my lucky streak held up for that other little .5 move, I can safely say that it was the most nerve wracking experience of my entire portability history. You would think that something so insignificant as a .5 move wouldn't be so scarring, but my pulse still quickens when I hear the belch of a large truck pass by.

I know many of the few of you who read this blog have driven a rental truck before, but trust me when I say this: until you've driven down the streets of brooklyn in a 16 foot truck, you haven't lived the fear I speak of. I don't mean to say that my fear is of a superior caliber than your fear; I just mean that our fears are simply not the same. Others of you may be thinking, "delivery trucks do it every day! how hard can it be?! some old lady driving a school bus has more balls than you!" And you'd be right on all accounts.

The one good thing that I can say about the combined 15 hour/2 day drive (besides the opportunity to listen to 8 hours of Ira Glass), is that it prepared me for what was to come. (Much the same way training wheels prepare you for riding a roller coaster). I made it through the tollbooths and the bridges without incident. My confidence rose with every last minute lane change and every blare of the horn (and there were many of both thanks to unforecasted lane closures). But as soon as I turned on to 4th Ave in Brooklyn, I was ready to call the moving guys and pay one of them whatever it would take to get them in the driver's seat. I was even prepared to pander to their masculinity.

After 20 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic and an infuriating pit stop for gas (would you just keep driving if you saw a moving truck trying to swing wide into your lane to avoid a parked car), we made the turn onto Sackett Ave. The sight of brownstones lulled me into a false sense of homestretch-ness.

I knew that parking was going to be an issue, but I wasn't really aware of the solution until Norman, the superintendent of the building, said in his Italian singsong, "yeah, you know, when a truck comes, you know, he can't get by, so you just move the truck and park again." It could have been worse. I could have had to move the truck 9 times instead of 3. I could have side swiped any number of cars, some of which were double parked and occupied by parents waiting to pick up their kids from school, but nothing horrible happened. The shear possibility for disaster was enough to stress me out (not to mention the look on Charrow's face whenever I re-parked the truck by trying to get as close to side as possible to circumvent another trip around the block). By the time we were unloaded, the throaty sound of an approaching truck was enough to make my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth.

Our original plan was to pay the "friends" who helped us move (the uninsured "friends" that we must never tell anyone from the management company about), and drop off the truck together. But there were boxes on the curb to be taken up and a Fed-ex truck that had been slowly making its way up the street for 25 minutes was fast approaching. So I double checked that I had all the maps, including my NFT book (care of Liz), and set off with a chorus of honking in my wake.

I got lost. Luckily traffic was so bad that I had time to readdress the map and get back on track. And then I got lost again. I finally had to pull over and call the drop-off place because I couldn't navigate the one-way streets well enough to get the one block that I needed, and I was off the NFT map. I asked the guy who took the truck how much I'd need for the bus ride back to Park Slope. "2 dollars," he said as I flipped through the cash in my pocket, "but you need quarters." When I asked if there was anywhere nearby for me to get change, he looked at me as if I was wearing a big slice of tenderloin around my neck and I had just asked where I could find the nearest underground dog fighting ring. I happened to have 6 quarters in my pocket and he rummaged up another 2 from somewhere behind the dingy counter.

1 bus transfer and 25 minutes later, I walked into the smallest apartment I've ever rented to start an existence in the biggest city I may ever call home.

*moved = relocation of all belongings from one dwelling to another. change in zip code not required.

hello nyc, goodbye national moron

It's been a very tiring couple of weeks. I will give a more in-depth run down of the move (yes, we wooed the co-op board ---- all two members that we met with), but for now I just want to say happy new year!

(and what a year it will be without you know who making a big you know what out of the country)

Z is for zoloft

I originally intended for today's lead picture to illustrate the fact that we have not stopped moving for the last 3 days, but when I look at it all I can see are the ZZZ's, and it makes me sleepy... so sleepy...

No matter what I try to do ahead of time, the last 2-3 days before moving are always a whirlwind of crap shoveling. Trash, recycling, goodwill, peddling wares to friends, it all takes a certain amount of scrambling and energy, but it's worth it to keep from being those people that leave mounds of perfectly good shit next to (but never in) the dumpster.

The cats are not very happy right now. We stayed up so late that they didn't even muster for their usual 4:30 am feed-me-now-or-i'll-scratch-this-mattress-until-my-claws-come-out ritual. Either that or I'm so tired that I slept through the whole thing.

So in about 5 hours we will having a loading party (which will involve neither poo nor hard drugs) and then we will go out for beer and pizza.

After which, the world will look like so:

cardboard Tetris

I love boxes. I love them so much that I like to keep a few around every time I move to a new apartment. Sometimes I even leave them packed full of stuff. For months. With the exception of my baseball card collection, I emptied the contents of every last box I had when I moved to Atlanta. It's harder to avoid unpacking when you're living with someone, but there's no rule about getting rid of the boxes (see picture above for example of a first generation box*). Charrow put up some resistance to my acquisitional tendencies, so I finally gave in and toned down the prowling.

About two months ago, I had a legitimate reason to hoard them once again. The keys to packing are box size and item nesting. Too big, and you'll never get your arms around it OR if you're a poor packer, you or the unfortunate victims you enlist to help you move will never be able to lift it. Too small, and you'll end up with 4 items per box, and a lot of wasted packing tape. The copy paper box is the obvious utilitarian receptacle, although it's a little small for kitchen stuff. My second favorite box is now the wine box. If you get them from the liquor store, they still have the cardboard separators. I had way too much fun packing glasses yesterday because of those little inserts. No more wrapping mugs in newsprint and getting ink all over my fingers. I don't know what what took me so long to realize their usefulness. Last in my packing arsenal is the tall kitchen bag. Towels, bedding, jackets, lumpy cats, blankets. They all take up way too much cubic space unless you shove them in a trash bag and throw them in the truck to fill in the cracks.

Charrow has been extremely patient with my "ways" as she likes to tell everyone. In other words, she stays in the other room and periodically asks me for assignments. I blame my systemic rigidity on too many moves as a military brat and too many games of Tetris. I was conditioned to be a packing machine.

On Sunday, the cardboard fruits of our labor will be loaded and ready to transport up to Chevy Chase, MD where they will sit in a moving truck until we get the nod from the co-op board. Our interview is (finally) scheduled for Tuesday (12/16). Instead of flying up to NY for the interview and returning to the waiting area known as our apartment, we are setting up camp at Charrow's parents. If all goes well and they agree to let us in to their elite fold, we hope to move in by the 19th. If they inform us that we are unworthy of caressing their belly button lint, much less taking up residence in their building, we will be forced to get a storage unit and start a second round of apartment hunting (i.e. Plan B).

I'll take bodily fuzz worship over Plan B any day.

first generation box = box that item was originally packaged in upon purchase or receipt