Enough is Enough

I wasn’t planning on doing this quite so soon-  but as I’m about to move a very long distance away from Shadetree, am either on-schedule or ahead-of-schedule in doing so, and what little salient commentary I have or wish to share about RL is limited to dumb-ass one liner posts about bubble-wrap, it seems obvious that it’s time to shut this puppy down.  So consider it shut down.  I declare the Interregnum over.  Goddess grant me the strength and the perseverance to make sure that whatever comes next isn’t twenty times worse.

Interregnum the Site will be left as an archive in this subdomain.  I have no plans to replace it with another site at this time.  There is a very nice forum, the Amber Horizons neighborhood forum, which I am the Administrator of, and which has recently been reopened after migrating it to my server;  if I choose to post anything in the near future, I will be posting it there.  The threads on the forum containing Second Life and Myst Online: URU Live content are publicly viewable by Guests, without registering, but any personal posts I make will probably be put in an area visible only to Members–  which I mention only because registration is currently closed to new members, pending replacement of the existing captcha scheme with a new one that spambots haven’t cracked yet.  ;P   If you are not already registered as a member there, and want to be, e-mail me [ace @ the root directory of this site];  I can set you up an account and password personally, with a minimum of fuss.

see ya ’round the campfire

Ace*

Take That

Major props to Church for helping me decimate four closets, two bureaus and the entire kitchen.

W00t!

Freedom Rising

All the books mentioned in my previous post have been welcomed with open arms at the care center where Opal is receiving her physical therapy.  The seniors and other full-time residents there are starved for new reading material, and anything they’re not interested in, the staff is happy to find homes for or take themselves.  Bullseye.

Uriel helped me haul all the books there.  He and his wife are going to rent a truck, and take the couch and all the bookcases, plus possibly take the rest of the furniture, too (except for my computer chair and table, unless it turns out in the final hour that those two things won’t fit in my car after all.)   We got the antique Russian pine cabinet into the back of his car and sent that home with him today, rather than have him drive away empty.

Next up:  kitchen, closets and bureaus…

Now I’m Pissed Off

What kind of fucking world do we live in where libraries are tepid about taking donated books?  I have a considerable collection I have to get rid of–  and I’m not talking about shitty paperbacks with the covers ripped off here, I’m talking about well-kept paperbacks and softcovers, nice contemporary hardcovers, art books, history books, fiction, non-fiction, you name it–  and the Shadetree librarians are looking at me like I’m offering them severed fish heads, saying, “Welllllll…    if there’s no textbooks…    and you bring them in just one bag at a time…  and there’s not too many at one time…  or overall…”  Fuck you!  FUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU.  How about I put them in a trebuchet, light them on fire and launch them into the parking lot?

God damn.

As the Dust Settles

CLUTTER

The number of boxes has diminished to a manageable level, but I have maxed out pretty much all my available storage, and there are still plenty of things I don’t know what to do with.  For the moment these things are mostly strewn around the walls.  There are snow shovels and vacuums, brass mugs and cider bottles, boxes of unwanted kitchen implements I’m trying to hand off to niece Kate, boxes of Jack’s old toys that need to go up into Weaver’s attic, boxes of tools I need out right now, giant piles of folded-flat boxes destined for the Empress’ storage unit because I don’t want to throw them out in case I have to move again…

HARDWARE

I now have a toliet paper rod.  Oh, wait, a toliet tissue spindle.  Excuuuuuuuse me….

There is no screen in the kitchen window.  That was supposed to be put in Monday (which I knew it would not be, Monday being Labor Day,) or failing that, yesterday.  This wouldn’t be terribly critical, except that there is only one window in the kitchen, and no exhaust fan, so it is unnecessarily punitive cooking in there without it open.  If I do open it, without the screen, I get flies.  I have averaged about 1 fly in here per day.  Which is quite a bit, compared to what I’m used to. Read the rest of this entry »

Victory

Widow Heathcliff returned my entire security deposit to me, plus the $1.08 interest it accrued.

Score one for taking the high road.  Now let’s all get on with our lives.

Restoration

The poster I bought when I was sixteen and have kept in “my room” ever since fits perfectly inside the paneling of the bedroom door.

What a wonderful omen!

1-1-2

failed

…to install air conditioner in living room window. Wood acquired from Home Despot and cut to fit window specifications matched height of metal stripping perfectly, but resulted in unanticipated consequence of windowsill being too level.  Wood must actually rise to about half an inch below metal stripping, allowing vanes to rest in front of stripping and weirdly-contoured air conditioner bottom to rest on wood.  No way to jury rig this with existing materials.  Plan:  return to Home Despot and acquire thinner wood.

jury-rigged

…coverage for bathroom window in shower. Frosted window film acquired from Home Despot proved to be too complicated to apply, and of uncertain staying power in hot, moist environment.  Covered window with old towel and fastened in place with binder clips instead.  Reward:  ability to take shower without direct observation by passers-by.  Plan:  return film and associated tools to Home Despot;  acquire small tension rod from Bed Bath & Beyond.  Hack up old shower curtain to make small window shower curtain.

succeeded

…in hanging bedroom curtains. Screwed inexpensive double curtain rod hangers from Bed Bath & Beyond into virgin territory on bedroom walls, resulting in rock-solid hold.  Curtains from previous apartment more than adequate to cover window expanse.  Reward:  ability to change clothes in bedroom without direct observation by neighbors, and light obscuration.

…in cooking a hot dinner without spontaneously combusting. Kielbasa and frozen bag veggies, cooked in the same water, plus Kraft Macaroni & Cheese amped up with a little left over bleu cheese.  Watered down iced cranberry-pomegranate juice to drink.  Reward:  full stomach.

Prioritization

So anyway…

The move went off without a hitch, unless you want to count the inconvenience of having to stuff somewhere on the order of 80-90 boxes plus a host of assorted paraphernalia into my new place.  The movers were friendly, punctual and totally professional (now that I have my Internet back, I hope to drop a line to the owner and tell him so);  they arrived at 7:30 AM, and the whole job, soup to nuts, was done before noon.   They had no problems with any of my stuff, except for the boxes of books, which were the first things I packed, and which I knew were way heavier than they should have been.  They suggested politely that next time I use smaller boxes for those, and I was appropriately chastised, and that was that.  The one mover took the remains of Heart Reborn, which I had put out for recycling, for himself, to chop up for parts.   I gave him my blessing.

When they were done loading into my new place at Shadetree and had gone on their way, I crossed the street to the Kosher Market and got a lemonade, then drove immediately back to Sealand to finish the cleaning and be done with Widow Heathcliff’s place.  I had been cleaning it all along as I packed (and honestly, I wasn’t there long enough to really mess it up), so there wasn’t much to do.  I vacuumed and picked up Jack’s scattered marbles and Legos and rubber bands, wiped off the counters, cleaned the fridge.  There were some marks that just wouldn’t come out of the “stainless” steel sink, but then, I cleaned all the black mold out of the soap dish in the tub that they missed cleaning before they handed it off to me, so I counted that as net zero (knowing that they won’t).  Then I threw the vacuum and the odds and ends into the back of Gloria, handed back the keys and walked out.  I said goodbye to Carmine, next door, before I left, and also tried to go see Leticia down at the bank, since she was the first person in Sealand who ever helped me, and since she remained happy to see me every time I encountered her over the next seven years.  I had planned to give her the silk flower out of Gloria, the one I found lying on the sidewalk at Fifth Street. But the flower fell apart in my hand as I tried to take it out of Gloria’s vent, which I took to mean Gloria was annoyed at me for trying to remove it, and Leticia wasn’t there anyway, so I left it where it was and burned rubber.   The Widow and her daughter have 30 days to get my security deposit back to me.  I would be surprised if they didn’t find something to charge me for, something really stupid or outrageous, but then again, maybe not.  Just no way to tell. You wouldn’t have thought they would’ve evicted me either, and they did.

Since that time, outside of walking Jack to school, it’s been all about unpacking boxes and infrastructure.  The biggest drawback (and greatest irony) in play right now is that I have no air conditioning:  the unit that was supposed to come with the apartment has not been delivered, and the unit that I brought with me is still in its box, on account of how the windows here have weird metal flanges around them, and on account of how the bedroom window, which is where I would be inclined to put it, is four feet wide, making the installation an engineering project that I am at a loss to handle.  Plus the heat has gone back up to the mid-90s F.  So I sit in front of my little black Vornado fan and sweat prodigiously (shut-up Neuro), drinking cold fluids, and lying down when it just gets to be too much.  I also have no blinds, nor curtains, nor any hardware extant on the wall that would allow me to hang blinds or curtains.  Therefore the plan for this morning, roughly speaking, is to measure everything within an inch of its life, go to Home Despot, get whatever kind of wood I think I might need to put my air-conditioner in the living room window, add some wall hooks and/or curtain rods, and also maybe acquire some kind of transparent contact vinyl that I could put in the bathroom window, inside the shower.  And then do whatever is necessary to cool this place down and create a space where I can at least change my clothes without direct observation.

I do have a rather lovely shower curtain that I got from Bed Bath and Beyond.  (And a rather less lovely shower curtain liner.  And some rad, double-sided shower hooks.)  And a bizarre metal object reminiscent of a trash can built into the bathroom wall, which turns out to be a hamper.  I do not, however, have a toilet paper rod.

And I have FIOS now, fulfilling my ancient vow, and upon which many other things were waiting.  After a rough start, it seems to be working correctly. But that’s probably a separate post…

Goodbye Sealand

“…And so in every way, Sealand is exactly what it is, and nothing that I expected it to be.  And it remains somewhat opaque to me, despite all my description.  Jack comes first; work comes second; all of my obligations come third, and that leaves time to explore the environs a distant fourth, if on the list at all.  I am mystified by the seeming lack of people my own age, by the absence of places I’m used to thinking of as integral to a local scene, but I’ve had no time or energy to place into solving those mysteries. I raise my eyes to the horizon and there are the same vistas and landmarks there I’ve seen a thousand times before, but all at new angles now:  familiar things presenting unfamiliar sides of themselves.  No doubt it will unfold as it should.  There is the day to day fight, and sometimes there is beauty, if you know how to take beauty where you find it.

We shall see what Magic there is in Sealand.

And if there is no Magic in Sealand—  then perhaps we shall make some.”

–The Book of the King, “Sealand (part 3)”, October 17th, 2003

—

“Do you recall how, when we strove upon the balcony, you mocked me?  You told me that I, too, took pleasure in the ways of pain which you work.  You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light.  A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were.  His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires…  his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old-  but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream.  Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure.  Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new.  Reason opposes tradition.  Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him.  Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man and mocked-  guilt!

“Know then, that as we existed together in the same body and I partook of your ways, not always unwillingly, the road we followed was not one upon which all the traffic moved in a single direction.  As you twisted my will to your workings, so was your will twisted, in turn, by my revulsion at some of your deeds.  You have learned the thing called guilt, and it will ever fall as a shadow across your meat and your drink.  This is why your pleasure has been broken.  This is why you seek now to flee.  But it will do you no good.  It will follow you across the world.  It will rise with you into the realms of the cold, clean winds.  It will pursue you wherever you go.  This is the curse of the Buddha.”

Taraka covered his face with his hands.

“So this is what it is like to weep,” he said, after a time.

–Sam (the Buddha), Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

Robot Echoes

Did you know you can schedule posts to appear, even when you’re not online?

I had forgotten that.  :)

See You on the Other Side

I got the keys!  It’s time to pull the plug!

Holy cow…  I’m gonna need a shower curtain…  And a few hundred other things…

Escape

It is still cool.  Still raining.

Three of Gloria’s tires have been refilled to 32 psi, and are holding at that pressure.  The fourth remains at 28 psi, because on that tire, the Union Jack valve stem that the Empress gave me has again fused to the valve, and cannot be removed without a wrench, and I did not have the wrench in the car when I visited the gas station.

I called the A+ mover back and told them that the other estimate I had gotten for the job was significantly higher, and asked if it was possible for them to send a representative to the house.  The owner of the company came himself.  He proved to be an extremely competent and professional individual, and allayed all of my fears that I might be getting swindled with a long discussion of all the particulars, including a thorough discussion of moving insurance, which the other company had not bothered to address.  He adjusted the estimate upwards slightly given the access conditions here at the Sealand apartment, and because we both could see that I was going to have more boxes than I had originally claimed, but the estimate total remained in the ballpark of the figure he had first given me, and I resolved to hire his company if possible.  When the supervisor at my new apartment confirmed the date I would finally have access, I did.

I get the keys Friday night, the 27th.  I unplug Eve on Monday, the 30th.  The movers come between 7:30 AM and 8 AM on Tuesday, the 31st.

I am moving to Shadetree.  My new apartment is 300 feet from the co-op where my son Jack lives.

Critical Failure

I packed the coffee!

What the fuck was I thinking??

Breathe

The heat wave has retreated.  It started raining three days ago:  a real, steady, all-day rain, with a wind that drove the drops through the windows and over the sills and into every room in the house.  Every time that happens, it feels like the first time it’s ever happened, anywhere, ever.  Every time that happens, it’s a relief.

Gloria is protesting, convinced that the pressure in her tires is low.  And really it is, since the ambient temperature has lowered by a factor of 30 degrees Fahrenheit or more, which is sufficient to lower the pressure inside the tires by a considerable margin.

I have been in touch with two movers.  They are both accredited BBB businesses.  One has a B+ rating;  the other an A+.  The B+ company, as required by law, sent an estimator to the house who examined everything, had a discussion with me about what could be moved as is and what needed to be packed, gave me a bunch of information, and then provided me with a written non-binding estimate which was both much more than I wanted to spend and exactly what I expected to have to spend.  The A+ company, in defiance of the law, did not offer to send an estimator out.  They requested instead that I send them an e-mail list of what I needed moved, and the owner of the company talked with me about it and the circumstances on the phone.  The information he gave me about what could be moved as is and what needed to be packed more completely matched near exactly with that of the B+ company.  The estimate came in at about half the price, partially because he figured on a lower time to complete the job.  I was not offered a written copy of it.  These circumstances of course, are precisely the circumstances under which all the horror stories start on the Internet.

The time period I am attempting to move in is also apparently the busiest moving time of the year:  end of the summer, end of the month, right before school starts and Labor Day, which further complicates matters.  And I have no way of knowing when I’m going to get the keys.  The super thinks it will probably be this Friday.  Probably.  If not then, he says definitely by the 31st, so I suppose I should try to book the move for then.

Packing continues.  It is, of course, only me packing:  none of my family is available or willing to help, few of my friends are local and able to help, and concerning those few, I already spent their effort and goodwill moving into this place, and figure I better not impinge upon them again, lest I totally piss them off.  I might be able to get it done in the time left available to me.  Maybe.  I have the very small advantage of having thrown out a lot of crap moving in.  It may not be enough to counterbalance the short time period.

I am also running out of groceries.  And clean laundry.

Of course, if I give up and pay double rent for a month, I can take as much time as I like…