The Conical Glass: Boo

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Boo

It's Halloween, and I expect trick or treaters will start roaming the streets anytime now. Sadly, there will be no candy offered here. A couple weeks ago, I asked my friend Rose Anne, who lives a few blocks away, how many trick or treaters they usually get on Halloween; since we've lived in an apartment for so long, I haven't had to worry about handing out candy for many years. "Oh, we don't do Halloween anymore; we just leave our porch lights turned off," she said. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that was even an option. Ordinarily, I think it's fun to see cute kids in their costumes, but we had our furniture moved over to the new house today and I really don't feel like spending the evening on trick-or-treat watch, especially since I'll be here alone tonight. Plus, all the stress I've been under lately has driven me to eat more than I usually do, and I worry that Joe would come home to find me passed out in a heap of fun size Snickers wrappers. Better to just keep it out of the house.

My running clothes are around somewhere, probably in a box marked "Sewing Room" or "Baby" -- we got all of our moving boxes on Freecycle, and I didn't always do the greatest job of crossing out the original labeling. Of course, packing and schlepping boxes is excellent exercise. We tried to move a lot of the smaller stuff ourselves, so the pro movers were left with the biggest items: the monolith and its corresponding media unit, our bed, my large desk, the loveseat, etc. The 7-man crew (most of them Tibetan) managed to load and unload all of it in 5 hours, most of which was probably the travel time required to take stuff from our condo, down the two elevators, to their van. Moving stinks, but the process was relatively painless. (Stu Miller, in case you're looking for a great mover in the East Bay.)

At one point, looking at all the boxes, I said that moving made me wish I could just get rid of everything and live a monastic life with nothing but the clothes on my back. "Do you know how often I hear that?" asked Stu. "Every day. People say, 'Oh, just drive it off a bridge.'" Like Steven Wright said, "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it"; you may only have a 2-bedroom apartment, but you wouldn't want to pack it all up and move it.

Today would have been the 90th birthday of my great-Uncle Andy, who died two days ago. Sadly, he had been severely disabled for quite a few years, but he will be remembered by everyone who knew him for his good humor and charitable acts. I won't forget how excited he was when Joe appeared on "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" a few years ago -- he loved quiz shows and crossword puzzles, which, fortunately, he could continue to enjoy even as his body failed him.

posted by 125records @ 4:35 PM

3 Comments:

At 9:01 PM, 2fs said…

Sorry to hear about your uncle.

But I'm fascinated by the concept of Tibetan movers: did they chant first, or levitate the furniture?
At 7:15 AM, neal said…

It's your year for hanging out with Tibetans!
At 3:25 PM, brianna said…

sorry about your great-uncle - that's a rough one.

on the lighter side, when we last move we were told in no uncertain terms that we could have all the boes we wanted for free, as long as we gave them all back. i had to fight the urge to label them things like "bedroom toys/props", "suspension apparatus", and "organs".