los angeles

My Culver City Neighbors: Conserving Paper Even When Losing a Found Turtle

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

So the sign below is currently taped to a telephone pole a block away from my apartment. I never thought an 11-word sign could cause me to have so many questions. What happened here? Did someone find a turtle in the neighborhood and post the original sign, which said, “FOUND TURTLE CALL (310) 558-XXXX?” And then I guess the finder lost the turtle again so the original owner decided not to put up his own sign, but instead just alter the existing sign, changing “FOUND” to “LOST,” adding that it was “8 inches” and that “she got out of the backyard“??? And I guess the original owner wouldn’t want people calling the original finder so to cut out the middleman, he updated the sign with his phone number?

I guess another possibility is that a really dumb person lost their turtle, and they accidentally wrote “FOUND” instead of “LOST” on the sign. When he went to update that mistake, he noticed he also put down the wrong phone number initially, and he decided there’d be a lot better chance of his turtle being found if he added the super-helpful details of its size and the fact that it got out of his backyard.

Are there other possibilities? Maybe the alterations were made by some punk kid just fucking around? Would love to hear any other logical explanations you have.

 

 

 

 

 

-Thanks to Julie for pointing this sign out.

Life Lessons in San Francisco: Pie Shakes are Good, Babies are Difficult, Humping Can be Effective

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Here’s a random list of things I learned over my 53 hours in San Francisco last weekend:

1). You can always count on your friends to give great advice when you’re having a major dilemma. Here’s the problem I approached my friends with on Friday night as we were crushing beers: Recently at the local dog park, our female dog has been approached and mounted by some male dogs. It gets to the point where the male dog’s red rocket is definitely alert and ready to go, but there hasn’t been any penetration yet. Sometimes the male dog’s owner has been quick to correct his dog, and sometimes the owner isn’t paying much attention so no action is taken. When I ran this scenario by my friends, there was an immediate consensus: next time a male dog is trying to hump Molly and the owner just sits by watching, I should slowly inch closer and closer to the owner until I’m close enough to hump his leg. And then, if the person still doesn’t get uncomfortable and start to pay attention to the situation, I’m supposed to start humping his leg and asking him “if he likes that” as I hump over and over until he gets it. I’m sure this won’t get me and my dog ostracized from the park.

2). Pies taste good, milkshakes taste great. Pie Shakes may be the world’s greatest food combination invention. A place called Chile Pies (& Ice Cream) in San Francisco makes homemade pies, and one of the menu options is for them to put a slice of pie into a blender with milkshake ingredients and make a pie shake. Just like it sounds. And because this is the smartest food operation going, they give you a straw that’s thick enough to allow you to suck up chunks of pie crust. Priority one for me when I returned to LA on Monday was doing a google search for “Pie Shakes in Los Angeles.”

3). In THIS POST a while back I discussed how raising a puppy is harder than raising a baby. I’m now willing to admit in some instances I may be wrong. For example, when I want to watch 10 straight hours of football on Sunday, I simply leave the dog in her crate for a few hours at a time, then take her for a super-quick walk so she can go to the bathroom, and then I feed her a couple times by putting food into a bowl and leaving it for her. As I got to experience this past Sunday, a baby can be a bit more complicated: During that 10-hour football-watching period, you may have to change a baby’s diaper four or five times; you probably have to put more effort into feeding it than just leaving food on the ground and letting it eat when it’s hungry. And you probably have to deal with a nap gone poorly where the baby is screaming bloody murder in its crib for 45 minutes. If I need Molly to sleep, I toss her in the crate and she sleeps purely out of boredom. Easy peasy.

4). Drinking heavily two days in a row used to be as easy as this: Drink heavily until I pass out on night one, then wake up and drink heavily until I pass out on night two. Now if I wanna binge, I have to make sure I’m equipped with Advil, Tums, a toilet to puke in and an updated will. Life’s so complicated these days.

5). When you’re at an airport bar watching football & baseball, and you’re surrounded by all guys except for one woman, do NOT be the guy to acknowledge that woman when she awkwardly says to no one in particular, “This is so weird that we’re all sitting here in silence not talking to one another.” I should have been as much of a dick as the guy to her left and turned my chair to face away from her. Unfortunately I took the bait and got stuck in a very strange conversation. It’s a learning experience that taught me to always have headphones in my ears even if I’m not listening to anything.

6). I’m mature enough at this point to consider washing my friend’s bedsheets after I stay in his bed for two nights without his knowledge. But only mature enough to consider it, not actually do it.

7). Now that I’m a writer-in-training, there are plenty of people who want to help me generate story ideas. Over the weekend, these ideas ranged from a blatant rip off of Inception called Perception to a story about me staging my own disappearance on an Alaskan cruise and then blogging from a mystery location. With helpful ideas like that, I can’t believe I’m not already a famous writer.

I’m Like Really Starting to Hate the Word Like

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Remember when I restarted my legendary ShitList a few weeks ago? You don’t? Maybe THIS will jog your memory. Unfortunately not too many things are pissing me off these days so the ShitList probably won’t be making a regularly-scheduled appearance. I do, however, have one item that should be on a list like that.

It’s the use of the word “like.”

Proper use = the last sentence of my first paragraph in this post: “I do, however have one item that should be on a list like that.” In that instance, “like” means similar. A list similar to my ShitList is what I was saying. It makes sense.

Improper use = this sentence that I heard a woman in my writing class say last week: “Like, this is like based on a girl who like drank like 20 beers at a party one night, and she like started throwing up on like everything in the house.” Six “likes” in that 31-word sentence. I especially liked her ability to use “like” as the bread to a word sandwich with “drank” as the meat…”like drank like”…that’s poetry.

Anyway, this isn’t a new phenomenon…I know that. But I’m thinking it might be more prevalent in LA and especially around women. People who are good at speech and talking (clearly I’m not one of them) will say that “like” is used as a filler word, sometimes replacing “uhh” or “umm” when a person isn’t quite sure what they’re going to say next. My advice to these premature talkers is to shut the fuck up until you know exactly what you want to say. It’s not difficult. But it does make sense that women would be worse offenders here because generally speaking they feel the need to talk more frequently, and they also tend to tell longer, more boring stories. This gives them much more of like an opportunity to need filler words.

Anyway, if I hear too many more sentences similar to the one my classmate said, I’m gonna like, throw like, a chinese star like through like someone’s head. You like that?

Reader Trivia Answers: We have a Winner! (And Many Losers)

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

I promised answers to all the trivia I unleashed on my readers earlier this week, and I never break a promise.

Let’s begin with the three poll questions I posed in this post.

First, the answer to which country (not counting the US, UK, Australia and Canada) has read my blog the most. Germany was the runaway winner according to my readers’ votes with 42% of the total vote, followed by Japan and Singapore, each with 21% of the vote. But none of those answers was correct. The right answer is Egypt, which got only one vote. Congrats to whoever said Egypt!

Next, there was the question of which blog post was the least read of all time. According to the voters, this was an obvious answer. A whopping 63% of the responders said “Euro Update: Are We Supposed to be Excited about 1-1 Draws” was the least read blog of all time. I get the reasoning behind this…no one likes soccer. But the soccer blog was not actually the least read. The post titled “March Madness: More Than Just Basketball to Help End Relationships” is actually the least clicked on blog so far. Once again, only one person voted for this option…congrats once again to that person (and if the same person got the Egypt answer correct, wow).

The final poll question in this article asked the readers to vote on which blog was the most read of all time. For those of you who voted for the Bieber Blog, the Bachelor Parties Blog, the Opening the Kimono on Work Jargon Blog or the Scamming Restaurants with the Bereavement Menu blog, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. None of those blogs even cracked the top 15 for most overall views. So it’s down to either “A Thorough Examination of Bird Poop Being Good Luck” or “Perfectly Good Excuses For Leaving Work Early.”

Those two posts are actually the top two most read on my blog, but in what order?

Almost 60% of the voters picked the Leaving Work Early post as the winner. And not a single person voted for the Bird Poop post. The readers missed badly here…the Bird Poop post is the most-read blog of all time!! And the Leaving Work Early post is a DISTANT second…over 100 less views than the Bird Poop.

Why is the Bird Poop article so popular? No idea, but it’s amazing that when I look at my stats every few days, the Bird Poop post has increased by another 5-10 views. It’s the gift that keeps on giving for the WBFF blog.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…did anyone guess all 12 pictures correctly in the Around the Clock Trivia from Monday?

Out of all the responses, this picture seemed to trip people up the most:

That is a picture of a lake in Wakefield, Massachusetts…Julie’s hometown.

Out of hundreds of guesses, there were three people worth highlighting. Two of them (Mike “The Dream”, and Aaron “Pueto”) only got one picture wrong: Mike, guessing Wakefield was actually the Ozarks, and Aaron guessing “somewhere in Europe” for picture #3, which was Barcelona (Aaron was technically right, but the judges were looking for something more specific).

And finally, we had one winner: Neil “Nkilla” Gariepy. Here was Neil’s guesses:

1. LA
2. Boston
3. Barcelona
4. Fitchburg
5. San Francisco
6. Heavenly/South Lake
7. York Beach
8. Yosemite/Vernal Falls
9. Monterey
10. Napa/Sonoma
11. Wakefield/Lake Quannapowitt
12. La Jolla/San Diego

So, Neil, what will it be? A free In-n-Out/Five Guys meal on your first trip down to LA? Or an autographed photo of two of LA’s most famous people? You do not get any bonus prize for being extra specific with your answers.

If I do future contests, I will probably put in fine print that “immediate family members of WBFF blog employees are ineligible” so that other people besides Neil have a chance to win something.

Around the Clock Trivia: WBFF’s First Legit Reader Contest

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

While I’m busy cleaning up my puppy’s bodily fluids (and solids), I thought it would be fun to engage my readers in a game of “guess those 12 random locations.”

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I’m a pretty big Pinterest basher. After all, it’s the thing that causes every girlfriend to freak out when you throw away a wine cork (“I was gonna use that wine cork to make a corkboard, and then use the corkboard to make homemade wine corks!!!”)

But I’ll be the first to admit that Julie hit a home run with her Pinterest-inspired homemade wall clock:

Rather than use pictures of ourselves for the 12 numbers—which would have been a progression of photos with me wearing less and less clothes in each—we chose 12 different locations that had some kind of meaning or relevance to both of us or at least one of us.

The challenge to my readers, of course, is to name all 12 locations. You don’t need to be too specific…the town or city will do. For instance, if we had a picture of the Space Needle on the clock, you could guess Seattle and you’d be right (we don’t have Seattle by the way).

The first person to guess all 12 locations correctly—and since there’s no way anyone will be able to do that, I’ll award the person who gets the most correct—will win an actual prize with real value. Even if you’re unsure, give it a try. My prediction is that no one gets more than eight right.

The prize will be your choice of a fully paid In-n-Out Burger meal (this prize can only be redeemed in LA, in person) or a specially autographed photo of two of LA’s most famous people (shipping included).

Below are the 12 pictures with a corresponding number before each picture. Please reply in the comments section, email me, tweet me or MySpace Message me:

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

#11

#12

Groupon Has Failed Me For the Last Time

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Isn’t Groupon supposed to have deals specifically tailored to individuals? Why the hell do I go through the trouble of telling Groupon that I’m a male who lives in LA and only enjoys Sports and Food if the company’s just going to ignore all of my demographic data and clog my inbox with random deals? Even if the only thing they pay attention to is my gender, you’d think I wouldn’t have gotten this deal.

This is exactly why I pretty much ignore all Groupon emails at this point. At least Living Social sends me deals for Brazilian Steakhouses, Palm Springs getaways and Surfboard rentals.

Anyway, I’m curious from the ladies in the crowd: Is changing your name a big enough annoyance that it’s worth buying a Groupon deal to help out with this? Isn’t it as simple as changing your Facebook profile name?

Topeka’s Biggest Celebrity Visits LA Then Writes About It…Sort Of

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

[Editor’s Note: You’ve probably noticed guest blogs popping up on the WBFF blog recently. Not only does this give me more free time to sit by the pool at my apartment complex and take random weekday trips to Palm Springs (my current location), but it allows me to tweak my resume to say something like, “Responsible for managing a team of writers on an internationally-renowned blog.” I’m happy to introduce a new guest blogger today, Matt Blanchette. And he’s not just any ordinary Schmoe…Matt happens to be the pride of Topeka…Yes, Topeka, Kansas. Feel free to read more about my most famous guest blogger HERE. Matt was our first official visitor in LA over the 4th of July week, and we did our best to stay busy. We agreed that having him write about his experiences would be a good way for other would-be-visitors to decide if visiting us in LA is worthwhile or not. For some reason he seemed nervous about writing too much in this blog post (something about boring people, which I try never to worry about), so I’ve taken the liberty of adding to his thoughts (my comments in red). Enjoy.]

First off, I want to thank Ross for allowing me to be his second guest blogger, and god help me I am determined to do better than a series of blogs about Euro League Soccer.

I found myself with some free time over 4th of July and campaigned some friends for a free place to stay. Ross and Julie were very insistent that I head west, so LA it was.

Our visit started with a look at Ross’ new “haircut.” And by “haircut”, I mean “letting it grow out in any direction for as long as possible without ever trying to tame it in any way.” Turns out, I missed the accompanying mustache by a few days. So if this whole comedy writer thing doesn’t pan out, I am sure there is a 70’s era porn star impersonation gig available for Ross. [It’s true, I haven’t gotten a haircut in at least three months. I tried to keep the mustache going for as long as possible, but it got really itchy and almost caused me to be unexpectedly single. Here are some pictures of the three-week experimental mustache and the “hair growing in any direction.”]

First stop on my trip, a hike in Malibu. Aside from getting lost looking for a lake, which turned out to be nothing more than a puddle, the highlight came from a 15-year-old girl at the swimming hole. Basically this was a cliff jump into the water, but one girl decided to stand on the edge of the cliff for 20 minutes while everyone screamed at her to either jump or die.

Long story short, after we left, three fire engines and ambulances raced towards the hole. I can only assume this is her:

[Matt’s totally underselling just how ridiculous this swimming hole scene was at Malibu Creek State Park. It was a small swimming area littered with douchey teenagers who had absolutely no adult supervision. If it hadn’t been so damn hot out, and if we hadn’t been promising Matt an awesome lake to swim in, we probably wouldn’t have bothered jumping into the swimming hole because it just seemed like something bad was going to happen with all those kids. Julie even said this out loud while we were swimming. The funny part (if there is a funny part to this story) was when we left the hole and were walking down the trail towards the parking lot. We heard sirens in the distance and joked about how they must be coming up to Malibu Creek because that girl who refused to jump fell off the cliff and killed herself. Two minutes later those fire engines and ambulances are tearing up the trail towards the hole. Anyway, below is a picture that kind of shows you what we’re talking about. And also, getting lost wasn’t a total downer because Matt & Julie got to play inside some props from M*A*S*H.]

After Malibu Creek, it was off to a Malibu Vineyard…where they happened to be shooting season one of “Ready For Love,” the new reality show from your favorite housewife and mine, Eva Longoria.

The setup is simple: a good-looking guy takes multiple women out on dates one after another. In this case Ben, the good-looking guy, had his choice of five or six very attractive, though malnourished, females. I admit, I do not watch reality dating shows, but it was wild.

One of the female producers (who we called Scissors, for her ability to scissor the girls to put them in a good mood) had the unenviable job of coddling each woman while Ben was on dates with the others. In one case a hysterical woman was only put at ease when she was handed another bottle of wine to suck on. Basically all the women sit in the “bullpen” and wait for Ben to call on them.

Ben did get some action, to which I gleefully proclaimed “They’re kissing, they’re kissing.” (I had an entire bottle of wine.)

Look for this scene on the show on NBC this fall!

[Matt’s description of the “They’re kissing, they’re kissing!” moment doesn’t come close to doing it justice. Here’s how I would have described it: “And after two hours of staring at these reality show contestants nonstop—to the point where we wouldn’t have been surprised if security had asked us to leave the premises—we finally saw Ben essentially choose his favorite girl by making out with her…at which point Matt turned into a fifth grader who was seeing two of his classmates kiss for the first time, and he exclaimed in a pre-pubescent shriek, “They’re kissing, they’re kissing!!!”]

Day two (4th of July) was Dodgers Day. If you have not been to Dodgers Stadium, don’t, or at least do not sit in left field. It is basically a stockade. Fans have no access to center or right field, nor the rest of the stadium. You have one bathroom, and one concession stand, which has limited food options (dodger dog, chips, and cracker jacks).

And check out the scoreboard:

I felt like I was watching RBI baseball 1993. Nicely done, Frank McCourt.

As for transportation options, there are none. The traffic is a nightmare, and to walk (which we did) takes about 30 minutes to get to civilization. Luckily we found a dive bar that included a shot of Patron with every beer.

But hey, at least the fireworks at the stadium were good.

[OK, I gotta stop you right there, Matt. The night of the baseball game escalated quickly because when we finally got to “civilization” and jumped inside a bar, the bartender confused me with a drink special to the point where I ended up ordering each of us a beer and two shots. And even though we decided that was too many shots, we went ahead and ordered a third shot just moments later. Other things of note that happened after those shots were: Matt contemplating drinking a beer that a stranger had left on our table, Matt buying a 12-pack of Budweiser over Miller Lite just because the cans had an American Flag symbol on them, Matt & Julie getting in an argument over the difference between a pizza with buffalo sauce on it and a pizza with buffalo mozzarella on it (I did the sensible thing and ordered the pizza with buffalo mozzarella AND got a side order of buffalo wings), and finally, Matt working up the courage to get a picture with one of our childhood idols, the Ultimate Warrior…see below.]

Most of you have stopped reading the blog by now so I will speed through days three and four.

[Matt is really underestimating how bored the WBFF blog readers are at their jobs. He doesn’t seem to understand that people have been reading my ramblings for months now.]

Going to the beach is never a sure bet in LA, as far as I can tell. We were not blessed in that arena.

[What Matt is trying to say here is that we didn’t get good beach weather, and as a matter of fact, I haven’t yet been to the beach in LA when it has been beach weather. I hope that changes soon because why the hell did I move here if it wasn’t for the beach? Here’s a picture to show you just how non-beachy the weather is every time I try to bring someone to a beach in California.]

[For some reason, Matt decided to leave out two of the coolest things we saw on Day Three of his visit: the back of the Hollywood sign (sure everyone can see the front of it from all over LA, but how often do you see the back?), and people randomly getting foamed up and washed down at Venice Beach.]

And if you plan to be a tourist and do sightseeing when you go to LA, appeal to Julie. Ross is not sympathetic in that area.

[Completely true. I will pretend like LA has no sightseeing or landmarks until you’re convinced. And if you’re still not convinced, I’ll tell you that they are all closed for maintenance.]

Also in LA, everyone seems to be in the entertainment business or curious if you are. And you “think” you see celebs everywhere, but we really did not see any that I know of.

[Wow, Matt totally glossed over the fact that on Night Three when we went to a free concert at the Santa Monica Pier, him & Julie spent the entire time staring at a group of people and debating whether one of the women was a celebrity. The entire night. I’m not even exaggerating. Matt was saying things like, “I watch A LOT of TV so I’d know if she was famous…unless she’s on one of those Real Housewives shows or reality TV.” To which Julie quickly replied, “Oh, I’ve got those covered. She’s not from one of those shows.”  This topic is ripe for an entirely separate blog…thinking we see famous people but never being able to put a name to the face.]

So I guess the point of this blog is to get others to visit LA, so I would recommend it. Maybe that will buy me a second blog.

[Gee, thanks for the ringing endorsement, Matt. “I guess Ross wants me to say LA was fun so others will visit…so yeah, it was fun.”]

[For anyone who does decide to visit, I can’t guarantee that we’ll see the filming of a not-going-to-be-on-the-air-long-anyway reality dating show, but I promise we can find a group of people to stare at in Santa Monica and discuss how each of them might be famous.]

The Man and Woman Shopping Dilemma: A Classic Chicken-and-Egg Situation

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
My body automatically goes into this position when I’m forced to go shopping

With Julie and I still being recent relocators to LA, I expected to have to deal with multiple shopping trips for buying household items during the first month.  Even though we filled up an entire 16-foot Uhaul truck with existing possessions, you’d be amazed at how many trips to Target we’ve already taken.  And actually, I’m not complaining about Target at all in this post.  I love that place.  I’m fine with shopping at stores where I can see the actual benefit to me being there.  At Target we’ve bought things like a toaster oven, a mirror, a filing cabinet and some additional storage space for our kitchen.  I understand these purchases; I’ll use these items regularly.

The type of shopping that automatically turns me into an asshole is when I’m forced into a store that I would never go to on my own.  For instance, we walked into Michael’s arts & crafts store yesterday, and Julie tells me we need to get a glue gun, cork board, marbles, a clock kit and sandpaper (fucking Pinterest is suddenly the bane of my existence). Since I’m totally confused by these items and can’t understand how they’re possibly going to affect me in a positive way, I go into one of two modes: Either I turn into the little kid in the picture above and find a place to lay down, or I go into dickheaded sarcasm mode.  My brain used an embedded “women be shopping” formula and concluded I was in for a 90 minute nightmare.  I decided to take the dickheaded sarcasm route this time.

“Really?  We need to make our own coasters and clocks now?”

“We have bottles of glue, gluesticks and superglue at home.  Why do we need a glue gun again?”

“Let’s just ask that store employee for the five things you need so we can get the hell out of here.”

And my favorite, “No…you shouldn’t be looking at paint and glitter because you specifically told me you only needed five items, and Martha Stewart’s Paint & Glitter wasn’t one of them.”

When we left Michael’s after only 20 minutes, Julie said I should wait to complain until after I see if it’s really going to take as long as I think.

This leads to my chicken and egg dilemma: Was Julie’s trip to Michael’s always going to be a brisk 20 minutes no matter what?  Or was it my constant bitching & moaning and policing of her every move that caused her to speed up?  I’m of the school of thought that says the bigger the scene I make in one of these stores, the more embarrassed and annoyed she’s going to get, and the quicker she ends the pain for both of us.  You can argue that I’m wrong, but just know that I have 29 years of data from constantly pulling this same move on my mom that says my attitude while shopping directly relates to how quickly the girl I’m with gets pissed off and ends the trip.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet on LA’s Toughest Physical Challenge

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Do these stairs look intimidating?  I can’t tell if this photo does them justice, but they are fucking ridiculous.  I’ve tried walking up them twice now, and the next time I go, I’m taking camping gear and setting up shop at the halfway point on night one.  It’s about a three-day journey to the top at my pace.

I haven’t even begun exploring LA’s most difficult hikes or running trails, but I’m calling it already: this staircase at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook in Culver City is the toughest workout you can get in the city.

Beyond the fact that it’s like a third of a mile straight uphill, the stairs are completely uneven and awkwardly spaced so you’re sometimes taking two or three steps in between each stair.

I’m throwing out the challenge to all comers now: visit me in LA and run all the way up the stairs (and live to tell the tale), and I’ll buy you In-n-Out Burger or Five Guys as a reward.

If you think you’re in shape, I promise you’ll rethink that after the staircase-of-death challenge.  Just look at the people in this picture who are either stopping mid-stairclimb to rest or actually having to sit down on the stairs.

The allure of the stairs is the promise of amazing views of the entire LA area at the top.  I tried to take a picture of the view, but threw up all over my phone instead.

Does My Girlfriend Secretly Think I’m the Least Handy Man Alive?

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

I would never have thought the answer to that question could be Yes until about a week ago.  Up until then I figured she thought I was reasonably handy—like she knows I know the difference between a phillips head screwdriver and a flat head screwdriver, but probably assumes (correctly) that I can’t change the oil in a car by myself.  Have I ever changed a flat tire?  Hell no.  But have I successfully started a camp fire?  Of course (lighter fluid, starter log and match light charcoal).

But then a week ago I rented a moving truck, and on Wednesday night we packed all of her and her roommate’s things into the truck.  On Thursday morning, I helped her roommate drop off all her stuff at a storage unit, leaving only Julie’s items in the truck.  After I drove home , I looked in the back and saw that boxes had flown around all over the place.  Makes sense since the roommate’s items were gone and there was nothing holding Julie’s items in place anymore.  When I called her and told her I was busy rearranging the truck because this happened, she told me to leave it alone until she got home to fix it.  But she didn’t say it in a “Gee, Ross, I know you’ve got a lot to do today” kind of way.  She said it in a “You’re probably gonna fuck it up even worse so just stop” kind of way.  I admit I’m not the world’s greatest packer, but come on…

And then today, I’m on the phone with her (she’s in San Francisco, I’m at our new apartment in LA), and she asks if I tried to setup this tiny metal file cabinet thing we bought from Ikea.  I told her I hadn’t, and she literally said, “Oh good.  I don’t want you to try to do it and screw it up so just leave it for when I get back.”

Of course I was flabbergasted, and she quickly backpedaled saying, “I just figured you’ve never setup Ikea furniture so you might not know how to do it correctly.”

First of all, I’ve setup plenty of Ikea furniture, but that’s besides the point.  Anyone who has ever been to Ikea or seen a piece of their furniture knows it’s made to be 100% idiot proof.  The furniture and their corresponding directions were made so even my unborn nephew could easily build a dresser from the womb.  Like if you just empty the Ikea box onto the ground, there’s a 66% chance the different pieces will put themselves together for you.

And just so everyone knows how big of an idiot my girlfriend really thinks I am, here’s a picture of what she didn’t want me trying to setup:

Eight total pieces, two different types of screws.  Lucky for me, she just inadvertently gave me permission not to lift a finger around the house for the next 16 days while she’s gone.

Adventures in Relocating: Fallout from the Move

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Eleven days of silence from the WBFF blog probably has people worried sick.  Am I alive?  Stuck under a pile of moving boxes?  Busy selling movie scripts all over LA?  Auditioning for my first (porn) acting gig?

Actually, in those 11 days, I spent five of them on a bender in Boston—Red Sox game, Celtics game, Wedding, Memorial Day BBQ, and a Wake (yes, my family typically serves alcohol at wakes…you know it’s a great idea)—I spent two of them packing four peoples’ lives into a moving truck, and I’ve spent the past four days unpacking in LA.

There might have been a post over the weekend if the company that was supposed to setup my internet and DirecTV service hadn’t completely boned me.  The reason I pushed to leave San Francisco at 4AM on Friday morning was to make sure we had enough time to get to LA, unpack everything from the truck and have the TV setup so these guys could do their job when they showed up at 4PM that day.  Only they didn’t show up and wouldn’t be able to until Monday.  I put together a sob story for the sales rep, saying that they were hurting my ability to work from home without the internet, and that I had plans to have friends over on Sunday night for dinner and watching the Celtics game.  He must have known that I have no job and no friends because he didn’t really compensate me much for this inconvenience.  The company’s name is Bel-Air Internet, and they are on my shit list.

But I digress.

My favorite thing about moving out of an apartment is the discoveries you make in random places you haven’t checked in years.  For instance, when we moved out of our college apartment, I’m pretty sure we found a mouse trap behind the mini-fridge that had a dead mouse on it…and that dead mouse had apparently died while trying to eat a smaller dead mouse.  At the apartment in San Francisco, my favorite discovery was this jar of mayo in the cupboard.  Expiration date: September ’08.  I tried to take a picture of it next to something white so you could see the color discrepancy:

Pretty gross, but I ate the whole jar.

Up until a week ago, I had never been to a self-storage facility.  I’m now convinced I’ll never go back to one.  In my head, storing possessions at one of these places is as simple as driving your truck right up next to your unit and unloading.  Kind of like this:

But reality is slightly different.  Reality is parking your truck in a tiny, crowded garage where there is only one elevator that everyone fights over to get your stuff up to your storage unit.  Reality is trying to navigate the world’s narrowest hallways with a dolly full of your possessions, while ducking under low-hanging pipes and lights.  And unfortunately, reality means realizing your storage unit is elevated about 10 feet above you, and good luck carrying those 70lb boxes up the librarian’s staircase without killing yourself.

This picture doesn’t do it justice. But picture those top units being 10 feet above ground and having a wobbly staircase as the only method to haul your shit up to them

After living in my new apartment for three days, here are the additional positives I’ve found that weren’t obvious when we toured the place in May: the flushing power of the toilet, the perfect temperature in the apartment by keeping the porch door open at all times (no need to use the central air so far), and the amount of power outlets throughout the place.

And here is the one negative I’ve found: lack of lighting even though there is an endless amount of light switches on the walls.  Seriously, there’s no overhead light in the living room, the bedroom or any of the closets.  And yet, there are at least seven light switches that do nothing, like they want to be used for overhead lights.  Even the kitchen is too dark in certain corners when the lights are on.  How many lamps will I have to buy to properly light this apartment?  It feels like more than five.

When Julie and I were moving in over the weekend, I was looking for one thing early on that I could start a huge all-out war over with her.  I picked the way she puts the toilet paper on the toilet paper dispenser.  I walked out of the bathroom on Saturday and said, “This just isn’t gonna work. You always put the toilet paper on upside down and I can’t live with that.”  I expected a fight, but instead she told me she didn’t even notice how she puts it on, it’s not even worth thinking about, and she’ll do it the way I want.  How dare she be so dismissive about something so important to me?

Speaking of the lady of the house…I folded a load of her laundry yesterday, and I never want to attempt it again.  My clothes have basically two shapes: regular-looking pants and regular-looking t-shirts.  My clothes are also made of only two possible materials: cotton and denim.  I know how to properly fold these shapes and materials.  Apparently a woman’s wardrobe consists of more variety: tank tops, strapless shirts, dresses with one sleeve, strapless dresses, skirts, shirts with a deep V-neck, normal length pants, three-quarter length pants, sweatshirts that look like shirts, shirts that look like sweatshirts, three different thicknesses of sweaters, belts that apparently go in the wash…and of course there are different materials that don’t want to fold like my cotton shirts.  Even though by living together we’re merging a lot of possessions, I’m pretty sure we’ll continue to do our laundry separately.

Adventures in Relocating: Apartment Hunting, “Move-in Ready” Cleaning and Sexual Offenders

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

So the clock is ticking on the month of May as I have only eight more free days before June 1st to get my life from a state of chaos to a state of organized chaos.  While it seems ridiculous to be wasting this precious time blogging, maybe recapping the progress I’ve made so far will lower my stress level.

Here’s where things stand with the relocation efforts as of Friday morning, May 11th:

Apartment Hunting

-It was official yesterday: We have an apartment in Culver City locked up with a lease starting on June 1st.  It’s funny how location, a fancy-looking complex and an amazing sales guy can make you forget about your ideal budget for an apartment (but I swear I’ll use the pool and the gym all the time!)

-I almost panicked when one of the first people I mentioned the signed lease to said, “Culver City?  Why would you want to live in that shitty area?”  He’s someone who is supposedly very knowledgeable about LA, but then he said Culver City is in the “valley,” and I realized he’s actually just a fucking moron.  So I think I’m still happy with our location.

-No, I won’t include a link to the building we’re going to live in because it never seems like a good idea to put your exact address on the web.  You can email me and ask nicely if you really want to see.

-It took us two-and-a-half trips to LA to find the right apartment.  I consider my roundtrip to LA and back this past Tuesday a half trip because I was there for less than four hours (but was in the car driving down and back for over 11 hours).

-In total, we made 17 appointments to see apartments over the course of those LA visits.  I believe we only went into nine of them because the other eight ended up being “drive-bys.”  Drive-bys happened when we felt like either the apartment was too far removed from civilization or when we feared for our lives because the neighborhood it was located in probably experienced a lot of actual drive-by shootings.  Of the nine places we really looked at, three would only show us “model units” instead of the actual units we’d be living in.  Sorry, but you can’t convince me to sign a lease based on the theory of “your apartment could potentially be similar to this, but we’re not sure until you put a deposit down.”  If they had allowed us to live in a model unit Arrested Development style, that would be a different story.  A few other places just weren’t a good fit for whatever reason.  There was the in-law apartment where the owner who lived in the main house was about 92 years old.  I’m not living in a place where there’s a 95% chance that my landlord would die only a few feet away from me within the first month. There was the lovely homeowner who when I asked her how maintenance gets done in the apartment said, “Oh, that’s easy.  I’ll send you a YouTube video on how to fix things when they break.”  And finally, there was the leasing agent who told us he wouldn’t live in the area we were looking if he was us…as he’s showing us an apartment he theoretically should be trying to sell us on.  It’s a good thing the place we locked down worked out because it really doesn’t feel like we found too many other options.

-If there’s one thing I’m most excited about with a new apartment, it’s picking a junk drawer.  I’m actually bringing a box down to LA that’s filled with take-out menu’s, rubber bands, Sharpie’s missing their caps, some old Christmas cards that should have been thrown away five months ago, a stapler, a mouse trap and a deck of cards.  I cannot wait to fill up my new junk drawer.

Moving Logistics

I’ve secured a moving truck for us to drive down to LA on June 1st with all of our possessions.  I don’t have a lot of experience with this so I wasn’t sure what size truck to get.  I went with a 16-footer.  Since Julie isn’t yet an expert on driving a manual transmission, which my car has, she’ll be the one driving the semi down to LA.  My hope is that I’m not updating the blog on June 2nd with a picture like this:

Cleaning

-Unfortunately before I can pick my new junk drawer, there are things to do at the old apartment in San Francisco.  It would be nice to leave this apartment the same way my roommates and I left our college apartment at the end of senior year…basically without cleaning the place at all and then simply telling the landlord to use our security deposit as our final month’s rent.  I don’t know how we got away with that without a lawsuit, but I have a feeling my current landlord wouldn’t really be on board.

-Not only is our landlord expecting us to clean, but she told us it needs to be “move-in ready” in order for us to get our full security deposit back. To me that’s a very subjective measuring stick.  What’s move-in ready to me may not be move-in ready to her.  For instance, I have no problem moving into a place that has a giant circle of dried paint embedded into the carpet, and even better, the dried paint has a large piece of broken glass stuck inside it:

You may not be able to see this clearly, but it’s paint that’s been there for over six years with a large piece of glass trapped in it

-She may not think of that as “move-in ready,” but if I cover the entire carpet in white paint and then stick random pieces of glass in the paint, will she maybe think that’s the type of flooring she originally put into this apartment?  Luckily if she does tell us she needs to replace the whole carpet and that it’s coming out of our deposit, my Uncle Steve owns a furniture and carpet business in Massachusetts, and I’m sure he will gladly ship a nice carpet out here free of charge to help the cause.

Sexual Offenders in Your Area

-As I was reading through my new lease yesterday, I noticed a section about sexual offenders.  I didn’t really pay attention to what that section was telling me because I got distracted by this link they included: http://meganslaw.ca.gov/disclaimer.aspx

-The next thing I know it’s three hours later, and I’m still screwing around on that MegansLaw website.  Go ahead and give it a try, but just make sure you have some time on your hands.  I was searching for sexual offenders in my new LA neighborhood, my current SF neighborhood, and even the neighborhoods of some of my friends.  Once you’ve done the same, you’ll naturally start drilling into the individual offenders to see what they look like, what their crimes are and what documented scars and tattoos they have.  If you’re like me, your imagination will run wild when you read the crimes because the descriptions are vague.  For example several of the offenses I saw were tagged as: “LEWD OR LASCIVIOUS ACTS WITH A CHILD UNDER 14 YEARS OF AGE.”  I’d like to know what these acts were specifically and how much “under 14 years of age” were the children.

-For those of you worried about me and Julie, relax.  The closest sexual offender to our new apartment probably isn’t doing much offending these days:

That’s everything for now.  Time for me to re-read the manual for my new vacuum to see what setting will suck up a “dried paint and glass” combo.

Watching Sports on Tape Delay: a Stressful and Chaotic Practice

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

Being able to listen to the Red Sox radio broadcast on WEEI through my iPhone is one of my favorite things about modern technology.  With the MLB.tv subscription, I can actually watch the Red Sox games on any of my devices, or if I happen to be in a situation where I can’t look at a screen, like when I’m driving, I can still listen to the game live.  So even though I was faced with the daunting task of driving the six hours back to San Francisco from LA by myself on Tuesday afternoon, I was excited that three of those hours would be spent listening to the Sox/Royals game. With the converter I use that plays audio from my iPhone over the car’s speakers, I was set.  A 16oz Red Bull, some beef jerky, a full sleeve of Sour Cream -n- Onion Pringles and the Red Sox game on my car radio… where’s the downside?

The downside was that I basically had to keep my hand on the radio’s volume knob for three hours in case WEEI wanted to interrupt the broadcast to update its listeners on the Celtics playoff game.  Over the course of the baseball game, I think WEEI did this four times.  Luckily I was ready each time and avoided hearing the score of the Celtics by immediately turning the volume down.  Other than almost hearing the score accidentally a few times, the other problem was that I had to dedicate one of my hands to the volume the whole time.  I was already one hand short because I kept getting my entire right arm stuck inside the Pringles container.  So I was basically driving up the 101 at 80 miles per hour steering with my knee.

The reason I had to censor the score updates is because I had the Celtics game taping on my DVR back at home.  Knowing I’d be in the car at the same time the C’s were trying to close out Atlanta, I wanted to avoid any exposure to the score so I could watch it later Tuesday night.  On top of the radio situation, I also had to avoid all text messages, phone calls and the urge to scroll through Twitter while driving.

While this was far from my first time doing the tape delay of a live sporting event, it really got me thinking.  Is it worth it to temporarily cut yourself off from the entire outside world because you want to watch a previously-played game as if it’s happening live?  Are some games acceptable to do this for while others are not?  Are you allowed to strangle someone if they happen to mention the score of the exact game you’re trying to avoid hearing about?  It’s a dangerous game we play when we try to create an alternate reality where a sporting event is “live” only when we’re ready for it to be live.

Like I said, I’ve been dealing with this conundrum for years.  Living in California makes it even more relevant because during the week, most games played by my Boston teams begin by 4 or 4:30, and unfortunately getting out of work early isn’t always an option.  So you do the whole song and dance of taping the game and telling all your coworkers that if they check on the score and happen to mention it to you, they’ll never see their families again.  And generally that works because people don’t want their loved ones to die, and because it’s just one hour or so that you have to avoid all spoilers for.

But what about those weekend days when a game starts at 1pm, but there’s just no way you can watch it until 7 or 8 that night?  How hard is it to avoid a spoiler in that situation?  On that kind of day, it’s not like you can sit in a dark cave shut off from the rest of the world until you’re ready to watch the game.  If that was the case, you’d be watching the game live.  No, on that weekend day you’re inevitably in a situation where you have to go for a hike with your girlfriend; or go apartment hunting because you decided on a whim to move 400 miles away.  So you’re out in the real world where all sorts of idiots can screw up the game for you. You somehow have to avoid the game being ruined by people who are around you as well as accidentally seeing the score on TV or hearing it on the radio.  It’s stressful to the point where you’re not even remotely enjoying whatever that other activity is that you got sucked into.  And then the person that made you participate in it gets pissed off because you’re ruining everyone’s day…and suddenly she wishes you had just stayed home and watched the game live.  (Hint: ruin enough of her Sunday hikes and brunches and she’ll never ask you to miss a game again)

There’s one other problem with this practice of taping the games.  This past Tuesday night I was taping the Celtics game to watch it by myself when I got home, but many times a group of us will decide to avoid seeing the score of a game, and we’ll all get together later in the night and watch the taped version.  So in theory you have three or four people who are all on the same page, having shut themselves off from all communication about the result of this game.  But then you start watching, and suddenly one of the guys is on his iPad screwing around. You warn him that if he sees the final score online, he better not say anything.  He doesn’t say anything, but the next thing you know the Celtics are down by seven points with three minutes left, and this guy is putting his shoes on and getting ready to leave.  Gee, I wonder if maybe you already know the Celtics’ comeback fell short if you’re walking out the door in silence as the game is still happening on my TV?  If you have that friend who really can’t commit to avoiding the result, just stop inviting him over for these delayed viewings because his body language will ruin the outcome for you every time.  It’s similar to when you tell your friend not to mention the score because you have it taped at home, and then he says, “ahh, I’ll save you some time, they got crushed tonight.”  He thinks he’s doing you a favor, but what he doesn’t know is that now you’re planning to get back at him by ruining something he really cares about, like his upcoming wedding.

My final take is that you cannot do the tape delay thing for the biggest games…The Super Bowl, The NCAA football and basketball championships, any championship games really.  These games are important enough that you should be watching live.  And you can’t do it everyday for regular season baseball, basketball or hockey games.  That’s just obnoxious to be avoiding the outcome of a game every single day. And you can’t do it for football on Sundays because then you miss the RedZone Channel and following your fantasy team live as the games are happening.  So really, the only appropriate time to watch games on tape delay is for early-round playoff games in all of the major sports.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go setup Game 6 of the Celtics/Hawks series to tape later tonight.

Adventures in Relocating: Why? Why Now? and other FAQ’s

Posted on by Ross Gariepy

I’ll try to tackle just a few of the basic questions you might have about my plan to relocate to LA.  For this specific post, let’s just address the broad questions that everyone seems to have.  Some of you have probably already heard a bunch of these answers, but keep reading anyway.  It’s not like you have something better to do with your time.

1). Why LA?

Whenever I get this question, it’s accompanied by a disgusted look on the asker’s face.  What that person is really asking is, “Why would you move to a city that’s best known for its traffic problems and the fake, superficial, self-centered bastards who live there?”  Good question.  And those who know me well could also add in, “Why are you moving to a city you’ve never even been to?”  Again, great question.  The answer is because I want to be a writer in the entertainment industry.  Look, if my passion in life was to be a woodworker in Santa’s workshop, I’d be moving to the North Pole.  And if my passion was taffy-making, I’d be on my way to York Beach, Maine.  If those are your passions, you need to be in the places where you’ll have the best chance to get your foot in the door (as a side note, being a woodworker for Santa and being a taffy maker were my 2 passions up until the age of 16).  With entertainment, LA is where I need to be.

2). What makes you think you can succeed in the entertainment industry?

Well, you’re reading this blog right now, aren’t you?  Also, I think I’m a natural born storyteller.  I remember being picked for the role of “narrator” when my fifth grade class performed Aladdin…though in hindsight that might have been because when I tried out for the role of Aladdin, I kept getting a boner every time Princess Jasmine talked to me. And I also remember a priest at Church telling me I should be a lector (I think that means someone who reads the Bible stories during Mass) because I had storytelling talent…thinking back to that now, there’s a 100% chance he was just saying that so I’d let him take a closer look at what Princess Jasmine did not want to look at.

(Side Note: Have you seen the shit that gets made into TV shows or movies these days?  C’mon, this is gonna be a piece of cake.)

3). What specifically do you want to do in entertainment?

Writing scripts for porn seems to be my calling, but I’m wide open to any type of writing that’s considered entertainment.  No, really it’s all about comedy writing for me.  Right now that makes me think script writing for TV or movies, as well as sketch comedy…think SNL, the late night talk shows, Daily Show, etc.  But if someone wanted to pay me to write quasi-funny blog posts, that would be cool too.

4). OK, script writing.  Do you have any experience whatsoever doing that?

Depends on your definition of the word “experience.”  If experience to you means writing a couple of TV scripts more than two years ago, and then doing nothing more since, then yes, I have a TON of experience.  I also took an online class two years ago through the Gotham Writers’ Workshop that tried to teach me how to write a funny TV script.  I even got a group of friends together to do a table reading of my script.  I realized the script was no good when my drunk buddy drawing fake abs on himself with a marker got bigger laughs than any part of my story.  So no, I don’t have a ton of experience writing and completing scripts, but man, if you could only see my Google Docs account with all of my brilliant ideas…

5). Why not continue writing in your free time in San Francisco so you can keep a full time job?

That would make sense, wouldn’t it?  Rather than go to LA with no job and no experience, maybe I should have waited until I could complete a few more scripts in my free time.  The problem is I’m just not wired that way.  I can’t stare at a computer screen for 45-50 hours a week at my job and then come home and write until I go to bed.  The reason I was able to complete two scripts in 2010 is because I was unemployed during that time.  In the two years since then while having a full time job, I’ve written no scripts.  I’ve launched three different blogs with varying degrees of failure, but I really haven’t put enough time into writing.  I actually just counted the number of books on my bookshelf where screenwriting is the primary topic…I have 18 of them.  It’s time to stop reading books, stop writing down the next great idea, and just write.  Write until enough people tell me I’m horrible or until I’m on the verge of homelessness.

6). When did you know you were going to make this move?

I think it all began when I was about 12 years old and tried to watch the movie Fantasia.  I thought, “You gotta be fucking kidding me…a whole movie with Mickey Mouse and no sound?  This isn’t entertainment.  I need to fix this industry.”

More recently I’m pretty sure I knew during those unemployed days of 2010 that I eventually had to give this a try.  I would have done it right then, but I was out of money after screwing around for four months in Europe and Australia.  But if you’re asking when did I specifically know that I would be making this move in June 2012, then I’d have to say it came on November 3rd, 2011.  I know it was that date because it says so in my diary.  And that was the day I had jury duty.  I remember sitting in that courtroom praying that I’d get picked to be on the jury for a six-day trial so I wouldn’t have to go to work.  That’s when it all came together. Why would I stay at a job that makes me want to be at jury duty instead of working?  After that it was simply a matter of calculating how many more months I’d need to work to save up the right amount of money for my journey.

7). Is there anything you wouldn’t do to break into the industry?

Blowjobs.  Handjobs, yes; blowjobs, no.

Well that’s all the time we have today.  I hope you all learned something, and I’ll be back with more next week.

Adventures in Relocating: How Adults Do It

Posted on by Ross Gariepy
This is exactly how I plan to move my things on June 1st

When I relocated from Boston to San Francisco with my brother in October 2005, I didn’t blog much about the moving preparations.  As a matter of fact, I wrote only one blog post about the move before the move actually happened.  Somehow it reveals absolutely nothing about the route we were taking, the transportation to get to the new destination, packing up all my belongings, saying bye to friends and family, tying up random loose ends, or what my plan was once I arrived in SF.

This is probably because I was five months removed from college graduation with no possessions, no money and no plan.  Back then it was basically one brief conversation between my brother and I where we decided we were moving, followed by putting all of my clothes into a large duffel bag the night before we left.  If I had been a committed blogger back then, I would have written about the amazing going away pub crawl my friends in Boston threw for me…a night that must have been good since it ended with me puking in the urinal of the White Horse Tavern and trying to escape the wrath of the bouncers.  I would have mentioned how one day before we were set to leave, my brother tried to fix something in the car we were driving out to California only to inadvertently short out the radio.  And when we told my Dad we might have to delay the trip by a few days to get the radio fixed, he basically threw his car keys at us and insisted we drive his car out West. In retrospect, what should I make of the fact that my Dad wanted us gone so badly that he literally gave away his car to ensure we wouldn’t linger? I also would have written that my brother’s friends threw him a great going away party in Fitchburg, but the only problem is that it occurred the night before we were leaving…and he got HAMMERED.  This led to a great moment where I had to wake him up at 9am the next day to tell him we had to get going, only to have him look at me like he was hearing of this “moving west” plan for the first time.  To say he was hungover and unprepared would be insulting to hungover and unprepared people.  He woke up, found a duffel bag and started shoveling clothes into it.  That’s the full story of him packing to move his entire life 3,000 miles away.  I would have finished my blog post back then with a note on how I had to smoke a five-pack of Phillies Blunt cigars to stay awake at times when I was driving (did I mention I had no money? Five cigars for $2.50 was me splurging at the time).

But even if I had been writing all that down while we were moving, I still wouldn’t have had much to say about the preparations.  For example, I never thought twice about mail that would keep getting sent to my old addresses in Boston and Fitchburg back then because there wasn’t any.  I didn’t really care to have the bank’s letters that said “stop trying to withdraw money, you have none,” forwarded to my new address in San Francisco.  Actually, I didn’t even have a new address in SF.  I was sleeping on my oldest brother’s couch until further notice.  That’s another thing I didn’t have to do in 2005…look for a place to live prior to moving.

So here’s my goal over the next few weeks: to unleash a new series of blog posts that will educate you on the successes and failures of my move to LA.  The title of each of these posts will begin with “adventures in relocating” so if you really don’t want to read these, you’ll know which ones to ignore right away.  And for those of you saying, “LA?  What the fuck is he doing moving to LA?” Well, I’ll have a post coming up soon with answers to all the questions you could ever ask.

For anyone who has relocated as an adult, you probably realize that things were a little more difficult than my experience seven years ago. You deal with tying up loose ends in one place while establishing yourself in another place.  And my move to LA is coinciding with me being jobless, which means I’m not going to spend money on having professional movers pack up my shit and deliver it to my new apartment. And I’m not going to pay for the cleaners to come to my current apartment to help me get my security deposit back.  There’s a lot more “do it yourselfness” going on here.

But I expected a lot of work, and that’s why my last day at my job was April 27th.  I’m moving on June 1st so I wanted the entire month of May to take care of all these things; big things like finding an apartment in LA and renting the right Uhaul truck, and little things like using leftover gift cards to places that only exist in San Francisco before I leave.

But then I went and booked a trip back to Boston from May 21st through May 30th.  Why did I plan a trip that takes me away from everything I have to do for the final 10 days leading up to the move?  I can justify a piece of the trip because I’m going to a wedding in Boston over Memorial Day weekend, but the extended 10-day trip?  That was probably dumb of me.  Soon I’ll be panicking because there’s less than three weeks before I have to be 100% ready for this move.  There are also a couple days where I know I won’t be productive: May 7th when me & the brothers have a final golf outing together, May 12th when we celebrate the going away of me and Julie in Golden Gate Park, and May 20th when we party one more time in a way that’s only possible in San Francisco….Bay2Breakers.

It’s May 3rd.  I have 15 open days to find an apartment, pack up everything and move.  Something tells me I can’t get away with shoving all my belongings in a duffel bag and sleeping on someone’s couch this time around.