I picked the perfect time to move.  A long weekend when everyone's out of town.  I like having something to do on a holiday besides holidaying all damn day long.  For me, holidays have always been something to slog through — all it meant growing up was that there were more adults around bitching at you, and they were drunker than usual.  Granted, if you waited around long enough eventually they passed out in front of the TV. 

Point being:  packing up and preparing for my move was a welcome diversion from holiday horrors. 



I don't know if I would go so far as to say that moving beats the holiday slog.  There are similarities, but the main drawback is all that heavy lifting. I'm not a pack rat, but I have now declared an official moratorium on buying books.  If not for the box after box of books this move would have been a breeze.  But humping all those heavy boxes full of BS up and down the stairs — I'm over it. 

Sully helped me out, as I mentioned, Saturday.  And my Merchant Mariner was there for me Sunday.  You can really tell who your friends are when moving time comes around.  Ex offered to lend a hand, but then suddenly had to do some ironing — in Miami.  That's cool.  When it comes time to build his website — well, I may just have to do my ironing that day.

Sully was a martyr (and we love him for it) but my Mariner refused to take any books up at all, and I can't say as I blame him.  When I said I was finished with books, period, he said he didn't know why I'd ever started.  And I'm beginning to wonder myself.  What has it really added to my life except for net weight?  I'm leaving the bulk of them in boxes for now.  I've unpacked what I consider my essentials — the ones I like to just look at there on the shelf, that remind me of who I am, or wish I had become, or hope someone mistakes me for. 

When the going got tough packing up I just pretended I was going through the personal effects of someone who had died at forty, in obscurity and squalor.  That livened things up a good deal.  I had recently watched a brutal documentary about dying alone with no next of kin called A Certain Kind of Death, which added immeasurably to the experience.  I pictured piecing a stranger's life together through scraps of post-its, porn, family pictures, file folders full of pay stubs, holey socks, and dust bunnies. 

I just kept muttering "poor sick bastard."

Moving, like most things, always gets me reflecting on mortality.  Hey, don't knock it — the Stoics very sensibly said "it is a wonderful thing to learn thoroughly how to die."  Reflecting on Epicurus' advice to "think on death" Seneca wrote:

You may deem it superfluous to learn a text that can be used only once; but that is just the reason why we ought to think on a thing. When we can never prove whether we really know a thing, we must always be learning it.

I'd almost rather die sometimes than set up my internet and cable if you want to know the truth.  That's the first thing guys do when they move into a new place, though.  Gotta get the TV and internet hooked up.  Shit's like crack.  But there's always some glitch. 

The problem with the new place is it's set up like a dumbbell — the bedrooms are in the back of the apartment and the living room and all the rest is in the front, with a long hallway in between.  I set up the wireless in the back.  I'm getting a good, strong signal back there — it's excellent in both bedrooms — but it's down to one bar out front, and Jake's not picking it up on his iphone at all. 

The city of Boston started a pilot program for free wifi in the Fenway a couple of years ago, and the landlady handed over an "open-mesh mini router" when we moved in with vague instructions on how to use it, so that might be an option for the front of the apartment, but I don't know.  

The situation would not be so frustrating if it were just me, but Jake seems to have brought along a slight sense of entitlement about certain things.  I think it's the generation gap.  At times so far it's felt almost like dealing with a teenager.  He assured me he knew nothing about setting up wireless networks, but after I'd set up ours and it was rubbish, all the sudden he's an expert.  Still, he hasn't volunteered any solutions, just that he's sure there is one I haven't come up with.  He's been nice about it, but still.

I guess you could call it youthful (as opposed to useful) optimism.  I do wish he was a little more hands-on, though.  Two heads are better than one.

We're in the stage — the same with my landlady — where we're definitely sizing each other up.  There are five pegs for coats next to the door.  I came out of my room yesterday morning and he had claimed three, and I had a feeling if I didn't take the other two, that'd be that.  I mean, where those three jackets came from all the sudden, I don't know — two I could see — seemed like a land grab to me. 

The issue right now is not to set a bad precedent.  I'm not sure about Jake, but I think my landlady might take me for a chooch.  And I have to admit I was so smitten with the place I didn't take the time to really check it out.  Like, for instance, for some reason the fact that there is a radiator valve but no actual radiator in my room totally escaped me.  The room was furnished when I first saw it, so that might explain my assumption that there was one.  Good thing it's going to be a mild winter.

I dunno, when I went to see the place for the first time, the main thing was to make a good impression, and I got the distinct feeling that Landlady would have been put off if I'd nosed around under the counters or asked if she could put the radiator back where it belonged.  I might not have gotten the room at all.  She would have seen it as a big red flag.

I mean, I sympathize.  I do.  I know she's not getting what she wants in the way of rent, and that's a bummer.  But that's not my fault.  And it doesn't change your obligations as a landlord or mine as a tenant.  The truth is, I'm only being reasonable.  And asking her to be reasonable is not unreasonable.  I have responsibilities as a tenant, and she has obligations as a landlady.  You meet yours.  I'll meet mine.  Everybody'll get along just fine. 

But it just highlights a home truth: money and internet access.  Those are two things that can bring people together, and tear them apart. 

Frankly, I don't know what to think about it all just yet.  My back still aches from lugging all those books up three flights of stairs, I've been waking up with a crick in my neck because there's a draught in the room, and my space — roughly half the area of my old room — is still in total disarray.  I'll let you know what I think when the dust finally settles and I get the wireless up and running.