Saturday, January 22, 2011

Moving: The Play-by-Play

Dr. Robert Goddard at Clark University

Surprise! I am now a Brooklynite. But it was not always this way... no, less than three weeks ago, I was still franticly trying to escape Nowheresville, NY.

Day 1 [Monday, Jan 3]: Schmem and I see several apartments with Hipster-Real-Estate-Agent Benny. One of them has a staircase you could break your neck on and a bedroom that smells of cat pee. The instant we walk into the one, we fall in love. We make a deposit and go home, giddy. I forbid myself to do anything that evening.

Day 2 [Jan 4]: I wake up early and fax the paperwork that is needed to Hipster Benny's office. I begin a day of frenetic list-making that culminates in a hypercoma that can only be fixed with excessive aerobic exercise.

Day 3 [Jan 5]: We are approved as renters, and then asked by the landlord if we could move in three days earlier than anticipated. We are unenthusiastic. I begin to amass a list of things I forgot to ask about the apartment when I was seeing it.

Day 4 [Jan 6]: I worry about what to do about furniture, particularly my desk. My lovely sister won't let me take the one that is in my old bedroom because "the bedroom was mine when we bought it, so it's my desk." I'm not allowed to have the bureaux in the basement, either.

Day 5 [Jan 7]: Move-in is pushed ahead by a few days to coincide with lease-signing. I worry about money and try to set up the same Quicken program I failed to set up a few years ago, with a similar result. I investigate applying for food stamps and unemployment.

Day 6 [Jan 8]: I gather most of the things I think I'm going to want and move them in to the basement to make grouping them into boxes easier. All of my books get to stay behind until I have a bookshelf. I decide to make a clever desk out of a 6ft board I find in the basement and some sawhorses. This will be the most gloriously big desk I have ever had.

Day 7 [Jan 9]: I sand and prime my deskboard. After much hemming and hawing I buy paint for it in an eye-gouging shade of orange. All of the other colors looked like old lady linoleum.

Day 8 [Jan 10]: In the morning, I take a second walk-through of the apartment to measure the windows and walls to make sure everything will fit. After picking up some kitchen chairs from my Grandmother's house I sand and prime a cabinet and a shelving unit. In the evening I attempt to organize my paperwork, but give up out of sheer exhaustion.

Day 9  [Jan 11]: I have a long phone conversation with Schmem using google documents to double-check what each of us is bringing. I take the rest of the morning off to go visit boyfriend and relax. In the evening I enlist my sister to help me paint furniture, and my father to help me sort out and pack things. I also go fake shopping online with my gift cards and make my first ever Credit Card payment.

Day 10 [Jan 12]: I stop keeping track of anything, enmeshed in a painting-packing-organizing-culling marathon during which I am tired during the day & worry myself to sleep every night.

A different pile

Today, a week after moving in, I am just beginning to buy sufficient quantities of groceries & get my mechanical problems fixed (I just got internet yesterday). I may not love this area, but right now I feel like I need to live here for three years to compensate for the amount of effort it took to get here.

But it's a city on the move, I hear, & Manhattan calls...

Saturday, January 8, 2011

I'm Never Moving to AZ

Arizona - Navajo Reservation

This article would infuriate me if I didn't think it was kind of a joke.

For the state, the issue is not so much 'The Tempest' as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, 'The Pedagogy of the Oppressed' and 'Occupied America,' which Mr. Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated."


Now why would Latinos in Arizona think they were being oppressed, Mr. Horne? What could possibly be happening in your state to make them think such a thing? It's clearly the things that they're learning in school from their teachers. It absolutely not what they hear every day from their neighbors like you, or on the radio about new immigration laws.


I'm glad that your solution to the problem is so efficient. I know that in the past, when people have had revolutionary literature forcibly removed from them, they have always simply forgotten those ideas and returned to being chattel, and they definitely never came up with new ideas of their own.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Things I Love Thursday: 2011.1.6

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Kevin Pollack's Chat Show: I found this totally by accident while searching to see if there were any recordings of Michael Gladis singing available (answer: no). Pollack is an actor who mostly interviews other actors, so the material goes way beyond "tell us a zany story!" I feel like I've learned more from watching that show than I did from my 6-month subscription to Backstage. The archives are avaliable on iTunes, or on his website. I recommend the interview with Aaron Stanton, & the one with Neil Patrick Harris.

Pizza Bagels: I found a package of these left over from Little Sister's Birthday Party, & they made my world a happier place. Junk food is so comforting sometimes.

HypeMachine's 2010 Zeitgeist: The Hype Machine is the greatest thing to happen to music on the internet EVER, & this is their year-in-review feature which gives you easy access to thousands of hours of streaming music. Variety & shit, y'all.

Aloe Sprouts

Aloe: Specifically, the seeds that I planted a few weeks ago which are SPROUTING! Things growing is like magic. I don't understand it, but I love it.

Honorable Mentions: ♥ My dog Asleep on my Bed ♥ Dave Eggers ♥ Birds Eating at the Window Feeder ♥ Plans ♥ Card Games ♥ Coloring Books ♥ Texting my Cousins ♥

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Moving

Cuba Gallery: Boots / lighting / feet / shoes / photography

If this is a blog, I guess that means you're a little interested in my life, right? I may as well tell you what's been going on recently, since I know I'm an Anthropology project for at least one of you.

***

I've been actively searching for an apartment in the City so Nice They Named it Twice with my future housemate Schmema since the end of November.

So far, I've only been able to bring it down to neighborhoods & generics. I don't want to live in Bushwick, I don't want a shotgun-style apartment. I like Astoria, I guess I could bring myself to build a wall in the Living Room. I won't pay more than 2K/month, I won't live more than a 10 minute walk from the Subway.

Schmema lives in Syracuse, so we've been thinking it will be easier for us to sublet for a month so we can be together to look at things. Scmem likes Brooklyn, I like Queens. Neither of us has an animal. Yet.

Camouflage class in New York University, where men and women are preparing for jobs in the Army or in industry, New York, N.Y. They make models from aerial photographs, re-photograph them, then work out a camouflage scheme and make a final photograph (LOC

Some people have asked, "Why New York? Why not somewhere cheaper/more livable/warmer?" The answer is... because it's always been the center of the world to me. Because the whole time I lived in London I couldn't stop myself from comparing it unfavorably to NY.

Because there is so much art & culture there that it could very well take your head off. Because so many beautiful & interesting things are free. Because my obsessive, pushy workaholic attitude is grating here, & what's needed there.

And because I HATE CARS. I can't stand them. Right now, financially speaking, my options are buy a car OR move out, not both. And I'm sorry Nowheresville, NY, but you don't offer many opportunities to suceed in the arts. Or make more than $12K/year  if you're not a real estate broker/nurse/lawyer (actually, what DO people in my town do? Commute to NY mostly, I think). So I'll move to an outer burb, where my commute may still be an hour long, but at least I can read the whole time & I don't have to live in constant fear of being in a car accident. Just getting hit by one, I suppose.