Friday, May 23, 2008

Boxworld

They are still scattered about Paramour, hunks of corrugated with what I'll call the miscellany of personal possessions dribbling out of them but for the most part I am nicely unpacked.

This is due to my revolutionary packing method known as "Tape it Shut and Put it in the Truck." Essentially no more than moving armoires, cupboards and cases with most of the crap in them, still in them. Except for glassware, the technique pretty much worked. Ok, the gin got a little bruised but on the upside, all the martinis are pre-shaken.

This isn't the Knob and Tube. Paramour was relatively well taken care of and not kicked around, ridden hard and put away wet the way the knob and tube was. Not every room is a project although the salmon colored kitchen countertops are starting to irritate me. I did paint the bedroom and the dining room, the latter being in a relatively sunless part of the house was done in industrial green and Lefortovo solitary is positively cheerful in comparison. This of course is all academic, I'm still living the "Must Love Dogs" life and eating chicken over the sink. I've found the park though and drag a stolen dog there once a week in hopes of Diane Lane just perhaps taking a walk by.

The garage needs work. Specifically it needs electrical power, the old feed having been disconnected when they found out it damn near preceeded Edison. This is a similar case to the garage at knob and tube which did have power but it was delivered in the form of an unshielded underground cable that I accidentally found once while planting a tree and once while burying a cat. The cat was dead and had my spade cut in six inches to the left so too would I have been. I'll get to the garage. Once it gets power I'll have to decide if I put in door openers or keep up the current routine of morning deadlifts. The knob and tube opener is misfiring and needs adjusting. It either lifts anemically or with such force in opens and closes that it mood swings to an extent that would put the emotional roller coaster an old girlfriend used to be to shame.

Most of all, the place needs bookcases. One of the charms of the palace was the three built in bookcases in the living room and study. There was room for everything and then some. If I acquired too much stuff to move again in the time I lived there, it was stuff with covers and pages. And that's stuff that even I will concede myself. There are absolutely no places for books in Paramour so I have to get around to building a couple of built ins. Of course for this I need my power tools and for this I need power in the garage so it looks like another ride to Home Despot before a shred of culture other than yogurt graces the place again.

And the place needs my computer. I'm working off a work-assigned laptop which is fine if you don't mind typing on "My First 'Puter" by Fisher Price. Plus it has to link into a remote network which works but takes its time getting there. Somewhere the base server is a 56K baud dial in to Myanmar. Once I get my box set up in the home office, I'll be a little freer to blog with relative impunity. Though to think about it, three walls of the office are windows so I may keep my punities on.

After all, the neighbors haven't figured me out yet and I hate raising the drawbridge when villagers show up with torches and pitchforks again.

Bunny on.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Hello Paramour

It feels like I just did this and that's perhaps because I just did.
Move, that is.
On the geological scale of time, living at the knob and tube is the equivalent of an ant fart. On the chronological scale of my life and my moves, I'll kick it up to grasshopper flatulence.
Hasn't even been three years since I settled into the old place where the kids who had lived there marked their growth spurts with boogers on the door frame. And now I'm out and in a new place. I'm looking for a uniform of some sort. Perhaps I'm an airline pilot or a too-old Marine, this move has come on so fast and furious.
I'm neither. It was just time and circumstance. Relocate to a new town, closer to the job. Much as I would have liked to drive 160 plus miles a day for another few years...
Plus it was getting along time to gather Thumper and make it a house I'd have to consult on colors once again.
And tongue in cheek, since I am so named in a certain legal proceeding, we named the place Paramour.
She's an old girl. Not as old as the knob and tube, but not too far off. She's a tad bigger but you couldn't film a Shining Big Wheel scene in her without someone getting their knees abused.
She's in a little better shape but still not perfect. A rainy morning today inspired the front gutter to do its best impersonation of the Horseshoe Falls on to the porch roof which of course spattered into the bedroom window, waking the cat up.
Not my idea of a wet dream is all the cat told me before she sandwiched herself between my face and my last source of oxygen.
Looks like I'll be cranking up my Home Depot frequent flyer miles.
And remind me to tell you about the move.

Bunny on Paramour.

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