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Installed but Not Configured I am still alive. I have taken to writing entries at rather bizarro hours, no? I've been awake since about 5 a.m. I am what I'd call "installed but not configured" in my new place, which is to say that everything has been moved in, but next to nothing has been unpacked. My studio/lounge/office is sort-of set up, as I'm sitting at my desk staring out the window over the east side of this city as I type this. I'm on the seventh floor, higher than basically anything else in this vicinity and on the corner of the building, so there's a fair-sized intersection below me. I can see the highway and the harbor and various other streets and tops of buildings (I am no longer on the side of the building where I can watch the clubkids coming and going to and from Gotham Citi). I love the sound of the highway, and I always have. I find common traffic noise incredibly soothing in a very urban way (not horns honking and sirens, but the semi-constant whir of cars passing, occasional brakes, engines which rise and fade). It's grey and rainy outside, just the way I like it, but unfortunately, only now does it occur to me that my umbrella is in my car, which is parked in my parking space, which is about ten blocks away, very near to the church, where I'll be heading to sing in about two hours. Singing three services today means I get about six miles of walking done, not that I particularly need the exercise right now, considering the whole moving experience. The movers were most amused that I would actually help them carry stuff. Two of them just kind-of looked at me oddly, but one actually admitted to this as we were chatting and he said, "You know, when people hire us, they usually just stand in one place." I explained that I bore easily, and I figure carrying things gives me something to do, as well as getting their work done faster (they'd told me they had what was supposed to be merely a two- or three-room job this morning, which in fact, turned out to be about a 7-room house with a garage). They made my life far less hellish than it would have been had I tried to move all this stuff myself, so I tipped them quite well, I think. I am very sore, indeed. The guys who do this for a living know very well what they are doing. They know how to pack a truck; they know how to pack an elevator; they know how to move your shit; and they are buff, tough muthafuckas. I am preppy musician boy who sits behind a desk from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. After they were done and I'd managed to unpack enough stuff to find cleaning and shower supplies, I poured myself a glass of Southern Comfort, scoured the bathtub and the toilet (I am a freak about bathroom cleanliness), and straightacting.com be damned, lay down in the hot soapy water for about a half-hour with my drink. (Unfortunately, I failed to observe that I'd had exactly two doughnuts (from Dunkin Donuts) to eat since my late lunch the day before (McDonald's, of all things), which was all I'd eaten, basically, since my early lunch the day before that, which I think was a bit of pasta, so when I got out of the bath, I was a little, um, off-balance, yeah, that's it. C called and had other dinner plans for the evening, so I went downstairs to Tycoon's, the restaurant/bar on the corner on the first floor, for dinner, as there is practically no food in my apartment at present, and even if there were, I wasn't exactly up to cleaning and unpacking the kitchen (I'm also very particular about the cleanliness of the kitchen; all surfaces will be wiped down with ammonia before anything is unpacked and put away). Tycoon's serves good food (perhaps a little pricey) and a lot of it. I can put away some food, but I typically end up taking home half of what they serve me. The nachos they serve as an appetizer are about the size of Texas; two people could easily make a meal out of them. Last night, it was a pint of Sammy and a "Jay's 'Stay Out of the Paint'" sandwich (roasted turkey breast, sauteed mushrooms, melted swiss...I chose to have it on pumpernickel...Their sandwiches are all named for either people who work there or local characters) with fries. The atmosphere is very cool, very friendly, including the whimsically snarky signs ("Sorry, We're Open" and "Pay Little or No Attention to This Sign" among them), and sometimes, they have live music (and someday, it might be me...more later). I paid up, chatted with Kay (the owner) a bit (she always remembers me for some reason, which is fine by me as she's super-cool...and probably old enough to be my mother, but still lookin' FINE, just so ya know...She makes me think of that Kim Carnes song, "Bette Davis Eyes"), and headed home to consume an entire two-litre of Diet Pepsi whilst watching THE NOTORIOUS C.H.O., which I'm gonna have to watch again, both because I fell asleep a couple times (exhausted from spending the former portion of the day moving the last few things (ahem, three carloads' worth -- I wasn't quite ready for the movers when they got there) out of the old place, vacuuming the floor, cleaning the refrigerator and locking myself out for the first time ($25 to be let back in; I had to write the guy a cheque), then running across town to catch the cable guy before he left (they were supposed to call me before sending him, to make sure I'd be home; I had to go buy a replacement for my old alarm clock, a very nice one by Seiko, given me by my aunt & uncle just before I left for college, which I dropped as I was taking it out of the old apartment; it may be fixable, but I need to be sure I wake on time). My kitchen is a wasteland. My living room is a sea of boxes (amidst which I slept last night). My bedroom is in about 15 pieces which I hadn't the energy to assemble yesterday (perhaps today). I've just done my first load of laundry in this place (and discovered that the little arrow that tells you which cycle you're selecting is out-of-whack, so I spent about twenty minutes twisting the selector around, figuring out where cycles begin -- THAT will most definitely be a service request, as will a bit of cosmetic work in the bathroom; I have no clue who did the CYA phase of construction on this building from my firm, but there are a handful of things for which I would have absolutely busted the contractors' asses, and I can't believe someone didn't), so now, I can wear underwear as I go sing. I think the Jesus would appreciate my wearing clean CK boxer briefs underneath the dry-clean-only wool trousers...or at least the intention. I discovered whilst sitting on the toilet that one side of my apartment faces almost directly across the street into the New Haven Coliseum parking garage. Charming. Blissfully, I don't think it's used much anymore, as they're planning to demolish the thing, eyesore that it is. There is apparently a group of people bent on preserving it, who've stenciled signs and put them up around town saying "SAVE OUR COLISEUM". I desperately want to run around with a big red marker and write on them, "FOR WHAT?!" No bands ever play here anymore because the facility is old and not as large as, say, the Oakdale in Wallingford, ten miles up the highway. College basketball games around here are rarely large enough to warrant use of the space. The last two hockey teams which played here have left. (I don't know about Beast of New Haven, but I went to one of the last team's, the New Haven Knights, games, and they sucked hardcore. It was as though they were being paid to play to lose; it was the laziest hockey game I've ever seen.) Why not put something in the space that WILL be used? I think at this point it would be less expensive to rip the thing down and replace it than it would be to renovate it in such a fashion as to make it viable once again. (And it once was: Jim Morrison was arrested here, ya know.) Anyway, it's nearly 9 a.m. (I've showered, etc., in the interim, obviously.) I should go brush my teeth and get walking. Later. r
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