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.
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.
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