« August 2005 | Main | October 2005 »
September 19, 2005
Drag, drag, drag your ass
Drag your ass to work;
Everybody on the D train
Is a stupid jerk.
Woe is me; it is Monday and I am filled with ennui.
(And cannot stop rhyming, apparently.)
(...Crap!)
This morning was a comedy of oversleeping, lost hairbrushes, malfunctioning Diet Coke can boxes (all those words are there on purpose, I swear), and fashion mayhem. And that was all before I got to the stupid train, which I did not give enough weight to in my attempts to mentally prepare for my new commute. "Three stops!" I thought, back in my innocent days. "Why it's nothing!" Nothing, until you count the unpredictable, anywhere from five to forty (FORTY!!) minutes' wait time, the only opening the front doors on a whim, so you never know where you have to be to embark and disembark, the stupid stupid in your way people who do not respond to "excuse me," whether uttered with dulcet sweetness or the piercingest snark you can muster.
Blah bloo blee. It's Monday and let's be honest, I'm not going to go anywhere with that. Instead, here is another song for you. This is one of Murray's many theme songs:
The wonderful thing about MURRAYS
Is Murrays are terrible THINGS
Their bellies are made out of RUBBER
Their claws are mounted on SPRINGS
But, by far the most wonderful thing about Murrays...
Is there...is only ONE!
THERE...is only ONE!
This is a good song to sing when Murray does that thing where he rolls around all cute-like, and gets you to rub his belly, and then kills you. The shouting helps with the pain.
Murray dealt pretty well with the move, except for some tragedy involving the hated cat carrier and the loud, obviously Satanic and deadly, truck. But he's not too keen on letting us out of his sight these days; when I'm home, he follows me from room to room, resentfully, as if thinking "If you are going to be so fickle and untrustworthy that I must keep tabs on you, could you at LEAST light someplace so I can get some rest!" When I go to the bathroom, he is really displeased, and sits outside the door scratching and meowing. I'm pretty sure he thinks that the front door leads to another room, where Josh and I go and hang out without him, just to be mean. Oh the accusations when I get back from work!
Posted by hilatron at 10:09 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 16, 2005
Well, hi.
It is looking a little barren around here, no? I have been living a strange, boxy life, one that you are probably lucky I haven't been documenting anyway, because I am oh so boring. I have, however, recalled that I have a movie blog, which has a couple of new reviews for you.
Also, there is no good place to put this, so. I really thought that there was no way that I could get more angry, outraged, horrified and sad about the tremendous national failure to get our thumbs out of our asses that was the response to Hurricane Katrina. Oh how foolish are the hopes of the young: what the hell is this? Seriously, Fashion. I am agog. You have some 'splaining to do.
Posted by hilatron at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 04, 2005
I am tempted to take that last entry down, as the cumulative news from New Orleans seeps into my slow brain after a few days off the grid. Seems pretty assholish to be bitching about how hard it was to lug ALL my STUFF into my new safe apartment with my healthy loved ones, you know? But that would be sneaky, so I suppose I will just have to ask your forbearance.
New Orleans. I don't know about you, but I can't stand to watch the news for more than ten minutes at a time. It's just incomprehensible. I'm so, so sorry to those who are trapped, those who have lost and those who are lost.
CNN was showing footage of people (finally) evacuating the Superdome. A little boy held a piece of cardboard for a makeshift dustpan as a grownup swept up some trash, in preparation to leave - a square foot of neatness in the middle of unbelievable filth, danger, sickness and despair. Totally futile, of course. But also the how and the why of recovery. Best wishes and high hopes for those who keep doing futile, necessary things.
Posted by hilatron at 12:50 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
September 03, 2005
Undorsement
Not only will I advise family and friends to avoid them, but I will consider it a personal insult if anyone I know ever enters into a truck rental contract with U-Haul ever again.
One month ago: I call U-Hell to reserve a truck for the morning of Wednesday, August 31st through the evening of Thursday, September 1st. We need to be out of our former apartment by 6am on the 1st, but the new place will not be ready until 9am. So we need to do a one-shot move, one big truck, all packed up the day before. Noooo problem.
One week ago: I get a reservation letter that says I have a truck reserved for "one day" and they will call me by 5pm the day before to confirm the pickup location and time. I call them because I have a funny feeling about the "one day" thing, since we're going to have the truck for more like a day and a half. The U-Haul lady says that one day means 24 hours, but if we keep it longer then we will just pay for an extra day, no late fees or anything: they just schedule pickups, not returns.
7:00pm, Tuesday, August 30th: U-Haul calls to tell me that they cannot tell me where or when we are to pick up our truck, but that we will get a truck of some sort, some time the next day. Oookay. Hence the not sleeping!
7:00am, Wednesday, August 31st: We are perfectly, completely, gloriously packed. On schedule. Enough boxes and tape, but not too many. Boxes sorted by room. A plan in place for packing the truck for ease of unpacking. It is a thing of beauty.
11:00am: We start calling U-Haul...
1:00pm...then Budget, and Ryder, and Penske...
2:00pm...then random people who might know a guy with a truck...
4:00pm...no trucks. Panic. Despair.
4:30pm: U-Haul has a truck available, finally, so sorry for the wait but people returned trucks late. Late? How can there be "late" when your reservationists do not take into account the time that callers like me say they will return the trucks? The truck is in Salem. Oookay.
8:00pm: Ten hours after we had planned to start, we return from Salem (rush-hour commuting on the way out, Sox game traffic on the way in) and start loading.
2:00am: The apartment is empty and clean. And now we have three whole hours to sleep! (As an aside, that was the most satisfying vacuuming I've ever done, although the neighbors probably didn't feel the same about it at 12:30 on a Wednesday. But seriously. The filth! The miraculous transformation! Wow!)
So, anyway, Thursday is kind of a blur, but we did manage to unload everything and return the truck "on time." Heroes include Josh's dad, who has now helped us move twice, this time knowing what he was in for; the Qs, who arrived at just the right time during frantic truck-loading to help us figure out how to Tetris all the furniture in; a Salem-based co-worker who let us follow her home the fast way and then led us to the highway after we picked up the dastardly late truck; another co-worker's boyfriend who came and carried boxes for three hours on Thursday even though he himself just moved. They are all awesome. I'll still cut them dead if any one of them gives those U-Haul fuckers any money ever, though.
Posted by hilatron at 12:56 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack