Even closer

Almost there

Cat in a traffic jam DC

Lunch in Woodstock

Drivin' my big ol' truck

Loading Day (first of several, actually)

Before.

The crew. Most of it anyway. The two brothers are off somewhere doing something.

Ahh, perhaps eating lunch. Homemade ham and bean soup (made last weekend -- I'm not that crazy.)

A chair before stretch wrapping.

A chair after stretch wrapping. Stretch wrap is my new favorite packing material.

Raking leaves (for some reason!) and jumping in them. You can't stop these volunteers!

Moving the dresser.

wrapping the dresser.

The truck. It's big. really big. I was waffling between a 16' and a 22' truck. Because I'm a great person, the Penske guy decided to give me a free upgrade to a 26' truck. When I tried to get something smaller, he admitted that they only had the 26'. Going to be interesting piloting that sucker down a snow-covered streets in Boston!

Disassembling the bed. Wildlife sightings included dust bunnies the size of small dogs.

After.

Y2K Nostalgia

Cleaning out my office, and just came across a notebook full of notes taken in meetings about Y2K preparedness. Full of things like "Buy flashlights!" and "Go on generator at 8PM no matter what?" I still remember that New Years because my friends all got together for a big party in NY, but I was required to be at work in case there were power outages, computer failures, riots, plaugues of raining frogs, etc.

I spent the entire night staring at my computer screen watching nothing happen. What a way to ring in the milleneum.

Cake

It's official -- I'm really leaving. I can tell because we ate cake with my name on it.

That and I received an automatic e-mail from HR telling me that I need to disable my own computer access. It was a very recursive moment.

Boxercize

Just sent the following e-vite to 11 of my closest friends and vague acquaintances in Boston. We'll see how many folks I can sucker into white washing the fence:

"Help Me Unload A Moving Van" Party

Host: Yours Truly
Location: Casa Nueva de Me
Somerville, MA
When: Saturday, January 21, 9:00am
Phone: 555-5555

Featuring "Boxercize" -- the fitness craze that's sweeping the nation!

Ever been at a party and thought "Man, this is a drag. All these people are boring, and the guy in the corner is totally plastered and making an ass of himself. If only there were some heavy boxes here, I could at least be keeping fit by lifting them and carrying them up a flight of stairs."

Well, this is the party for you! Not only will there be no drunk guy in the corner, but the host is thoughtfully providing a Penske moving truck stuffed to the brim with physical fitness opportunities! Simply show up, grab an armload, and soon you too will see how you can boxercize your way to a new you!

But wait, there's more! For example, we could watch TV... after we unload it from the truck. We could could cook delicious food... after we unload the kitchen stuff from the truck. We could look at nifty art... after we unload it from the truck. And, of course, you'll appreciate all of these things more after having hauled them up a flight of stairs!

If you can't make it, that's fine, but I'll tell you now that this is a hot ticket around Metro Boston. We're even considering hiring a bouncer to keep out the riff raff. (However, if you have friends that want to come, we'll put them on the VIP list. But only because we like you.)

The boxercize madness will start sometime around 9AM, and will go until the first ER visit. Don't miss out on what Men's Health magazine called "The U-Haul Miracle!" Respond today!

Amazon reviews as creative writing

I was looking up the cost of electric lawnmowers to try to figure out a fair asking price for the used one I'm about to sell. I stumbled across the following review on Amazon.com. It cracked me up.

Well ladies and gentlemen; it's that time of the year again. The time of the year where the grass grows faster than Vin Diesel's career. If your household works like mine then you will be the one who has to cut the lawn, while dad sits inside the nice air conditioned house watching sports highlights.

Over the last weekend, I was preparing to meet my friend Lyle at the local Cineplex to see the latest installment of what I can tell as the next big action franchise "XXX". This one features a great action star named Ice Cube (he was SWEET in Torque). Anywho, as I was getting ready, dad interrupted me and commanded that I cut the grass before I leave. I still had about an hour and half before the movie started so I was okay with it.

We have a decent size lot, so it takes a while to cut the lawn, plus my dad is pretty anal about how the lawn looks. He makes you cut the grass in a criss-cross pattern something like a golf course. Everything was going good, I was making good time. Then, it happened. While I was cutting next to the house I ran over the droppings of my dog Morris and due to the side discharge on the lawn mower, no joke, dog poop was flung all over the front of the house.

Dad came out and started yelling at me because a piece of Morris's offerings splattered on the window next to him. He made me clean-up the mess and after I finished cutting the grass. None-the-less I ended up missing the movie and had to reschedule for the next day.

In conclusion, The Black & Decker Lawn Hog (I love the name, Lawn Hog, it's so tough) has the capabilities to cut grass like any top of the line lawnmower, plus has the added feature of flinging poo like a primate. I have big plans for this thing when he leaves for work. I can mow trashbags on trash-day, flower-beds, pretty much anything. I'm also seriously considering going up to the baseball field at the school, so I can run the bases with the lawnmower to throw all of the gravel into the outfield. The possibilities of this thing are endless. I can do anything I want to with it, to anything. If dad is going to act like a slave-driver, then he can be responsible for whatever I do. It's his Lawn-Hog anyways. Later.

The review is by some guy named Howard Tuttleman, who has written dozens of other Amazon reviews and is expanding his media empire with a website featuring live radio broadcasts from his room.

A job, a dresser, messed up glasses, a movie, yadda, yadda

Things are happening so quickly I can barely keep up, let alone let y'all know about 'em. But here's a quick rundown of today:

• Free rent department: I'm on a quixotic quest to convince my landlords that they shouldn't charge me rent in January. (Would sure be helpful financially, since I've already paid January rent in Boston, and am paying an equivalent amount to rent a truck next week.) So far I've offered up my washer, dryer, and bunch of phone and home networking improvements to them as incentives. Don't know if they're biting.

  This morning they said they definitely don't want the appliances because these would then have to be maintained for the next tenant. But they might be willing to make allowances if I leave the complete home network. Some of it is probably going to stay anyway simply because it's impractical to tear out several hundred feet of under-floor Category-5 cable. But if they don't cut me a deal I'm certainly taking the router, modem, etc. So this morning I wrote a big manifesto (with photos) describing what I'd done and laying out how the stuff I installed would sell for almost $500 on the open market. We'll see what happens.

• Cat yakk department: Scheduled a pickup for my dining room rug to go to the cleaners. This is my cat's favorite place to deposit hairballs, dead mice, and other feline detritus. So it definitely needs help. Plus, if the cleaners bundle it up all pretty when they're done, it will be easier to move.

• New job department: I've been pretty ambivalent about the fellowship I applied for in Boston. The good news was that it would hugely reduce my tuition and give me a (tiny) bit of actual income. The bad news was it has lousy hours and involves doing still more of the techie stuff I'm trying to escape by going back to school. However, a lot of my ambivalence evaporated when I got a $10,000 tuition bill over the holidays. Clearly I'm on a fast track to the bread line if I don't come up with some sort of get-solvent-quick scheme. So when the school called back today and offered me the job, I didn't hesitate too long before saying yes. Unfortunately, they want me to start two days after I arrive in Boston. So much for a leisurely transition.

• Brain dump department: Over the holidays I set up MediaWiki and started creating an encyclopedia of everything I know at my current job. This has turned into a grueling task because a) despite appearances, I actually seem to know quite a lot, and b) there is nothing more tedious than trying to write about boring stuff you already know. That said, I'm pushing on in hopes of cutting down on the frantic phone calls from Nashville after I'm gone. I spent a big chunk of today camped out at my favorite WiFi-equipped neighborhood coffee shop tapping away on this. The only good part is that I've gotten more familiar with how MediaWiki works, which should come in handy in the future.

• Furniture department: I have a dresser that my grandmother gave me when I moved to Nashville. It was pretty banged up when I got it, but is a solid piece of vintage furniture. About five years ago, I talked to a neighborhood furniture maker about fixing it up. Last month I finally got around to handing it over.

  He brought it back to my house earlier today. My wallet is now $125 lighter, but he transformed a dull hand-me-down into a pretty slick looking home furnishing. A good investment, I think. Add it to the shelf I finished repainting a few weeks ago and the clean rug, and I may not recognize my new place.

• Magical furniture department: Needed a stress reliever after driving to Green Hills to pick up my glasses only to find out that LensCrafters had screwed up the order. So I stopped at Wild Oats to grab dinner and then popped over to the movie theater to see the Narnia flick. I'm not normally a fan of fantasy movies, but I thought it was phenomenally good. Made me want to go back and reread the books, which I last looked at sometime in grade school.

• Evil empires from Redmond department: Now at work, where I popped in just after midnight to try to get some things ready for tomorrow. Thought I'd be here for maybe an hour and then perhaps go to the gym. It's been more than two hours now and I'm still digging around in e-mail looking for stuff. Outlook is a piece of crap when it comes to finding things you wrote six months ago. Microsoft could sure learn something from Gmail.

Apropos of nothing department: After seeing an exhibit at the airport the other day, I've decided that I really want to get one of these Anderson Thomas Nashville posters for my Boston apartment. Still waffling... Maybe this one, this one, or this one. I also really like this one, but I think I'd feel weird having it on my wall because I've never actually been to the Bluebird. Maybe I'll have to fit that in before I leave.

Belated Monday morning blues

Today isn't shaping up to be the greatest day.

• When I got home last night, my first tuition bill from Simmons was waiting. Suffice it to say, I am in severe sticker shock. I knew it would be bad, but somehow it hadn't percolated that it would be this bad. I'm suddenly more interested in that fellowship that would pay a big chunk of the tuition. Otherwise, I need to start applying for student loans real soon now.

  Part of the damage comes from getting slammed for Massachusetts-mandated health insurance. I think I need to investigate whether it would be cheaper to hang on to my current insurance under COBRA until this summer. Hmm.

• My Linux box (which was becoming my primary desktop computer) seems to have died a horrible death. It started out with much unexplained sluggishness. It then became clear that there was a problem with one of the drives in the RAID. When I rebooted the first time, the system attempted to reconstruct things and then froze. Now it can't even find a bootable partition. Argh. I don't have time for this right now.

• We had a grand plan where my brothers were coming down to help me move. Only problem is that they had booked their flights on the soon-to-be-defunct Independence Air. So my brother is now trying to book replacement tickets on Southwest (the cheap ones have already been snapped up), and we're trying to rearrange the plan to fit the new airline arrangements. (For any volunteers who may be reading this, the plan is still to load in Nashville on Sunday the 15th and unload in Somerville on Saturday the 21st.)

• Speaking of all that, I'm realizing how much I have to get done in the next two weeks, which is when I'm supposedly leaving Nashville. I started making a list on a sticky pad last night, and then decided it was going to take too many pages. Seemed like I had tons of time before Christmas. Now it seems like there's no way I'm going to get it all done.

Have to go walk to work now, because my car is still being held hostage at the body shop. The door was starting to fall off, which should have been covered under the CarMax warranty. But the CarMax people said they couldn't do it and to take it to a body shop. Then the body shop people said they couldn't deal with the CarMax warranty people. Much telephone hillarity ensued last week. Supposedly it's all worked out now, but I guess I'll find out later today.

Midnight

New Years in DC

Rejected

As part of the big cleaning and packing drive, I lugged the massive pile of coins on my dresser over to a local coinstar machine. I'd been lured by the promise of no-fee Amazon gift certificates. Unfortunately, however, this appears to be a bait and switch, since none of the machines in Nashville will actually do it. Having already schlepped many tons of coins over to Kroger, I went ahead and paid the fee to have them counted. To my astonishment, I discovered that I had almost $250 in change sitting around my bedroom. Even with the fee, I still cleared around $220, which isn't bad for 20 minutes work!

It was also fun to look at what the machine kicked back. Besides some severely-mutilated US coinage, there were things with a more interesting history. To wit:

1. Deutschmark, probably left over from the exchange program trip I took to Germany in Summer, 1992. Perhaps a collectors item now, since Deutschmarks no longer exist!

2. 50 Pfenig coin. Another collector's item.

3. Random token with no cash value. Probably from Chuck-e-Cheese or somwhere of its ilk.

4. Token from Buttons Arcade in Syracuse, NY. In college, I took a course called "Literature and the Working Class." To begin a discussion about class in America, the professor divided us up into groups and sent us out into the community to observe people and take notes. Our group decided to go to Buttons, an arcade in a seedy dying mall in North Syracuse. Pretty sure this token came from that trip.

5. MBTA T token from the Boston subway. From one of my many trips to Boston. I should hang onto this to use in a few weeks when I arrive in Boston.

6. 1776 coin. Don't know where this came from. I think it might have been part of a solicitation for some magazine published by the History Channel.

7. 100 Pesos from Argentina. My dad's sister used to be married to a guy from Argentina. After living in Montana during the 1970s, they moved to Argentina during the early 1980s, and lived there for the rest of the decade. (Which is why my cousins all speak fluent Spanish.) This coin probably came from one of my grandmother's trips to visit them. Interestingly, XE.com claims that 100 Pesos are worth roughly $33 US dollars. But I suspect that the currency has been revalued since the 1980s, so I doubt this little coin is really worth that much. Maybe one day I'll get to go to Argentina and find out.

8. 2 Mexican Pesos. Left over from my trip to Mexico in Spring, 2004. This side shows the eagle on the cactus eating a snake, which is the Mexican national symbol. The other side has nifty little prehistoric-looking heiroglyphs around the edges.

9. Another German 50 Pfenig piece.

Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray

I'm in a foul mood today. Not entirely sure why, but here's one possibility:

I keep trying to actually finish projects and check them off my neverending to-do list at work. Lately, every time I take what I've done to someone, they come up with five more questions or action items that I simply must take care of before I can make the thing go away.

I just want to yell "Don't you know that I'm out of here in three weeks? Can't you let me just finish something for god's sake?"

Did I mention I'm in a foul mood?

Also, I had a phone interview for a graduate fellowship/assistantship in Boston this morning. I'm not even sure I want the danged thing. It has lousy hours, doesn't pay real well (although it does pay for a big chunk of tuition), and requires doing more of the frontline techy stuff I'm trying to escape. At the same time, I'm totally qualified and will probably be crushed if they don't offer it to me.

I won't know how I did until January when they make a decision. But talking about myself for 45 minutes to complete strangers has a way of pumping a healthy dose of self-doubt into my bloodstream.

Did I mention I'm in a foul mood?

Oh, yeah, and it's freakin' sub-zero in my office right now. I can't feel my fingers. I feel like I'm in a Jack London story.

Move update

Yeah, umm, well, that whole decorating thing hasn't really happened. Somehow in the last week it finally hit me that I really only have two full weekends between now and when I'm packing the truck. (I am flying up to DC next Saturday, and am going to stay there all week, telecommuting part of the time. After that, back to Nashville for two weeks, and then off to Boston.)

I now have most of my books and assorted other things packed up in boxes, and am slowly working through the rest of a long to-do list. I got glasses made. (Mandated by the fact that my old decrepit ones finally broke.) I keep bringing home new loads of personal papers and junk from my office at work, then trying to sort through them. I made cookies for the office party. I sent an obsolete U-matic video tape from college off to be transposed to MiniDV. I painted a shelf that I started stripping in 2000 and then never finished. I ordered bubble wrap and other packing stuff online. I inquired about my dental benefits and verified that I can make a dentist appointment after I leave in January. I arranged for the replacement of the malfunctioning computer monitor. I returned one poorly-fitting pair of shoes that had been sitting around for months. (I highly recommend Zappos.com for shoe purchases -- they have tons of shoes for hard to fit feet, and a easy return policy.) I returned another pair that had begun unraveling after hard use in Spain, and Propet is going to replace them for free. (Also highly-reccomend Propet shoes. While I had trouble with this pair after hiking around Spain, I have another pair of sneakers that has been great. And all their shoes have a "thousand mile guarantee," and good customer service to back it up.)

That's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head. There are a million more things that have to happen between now and February 1. Ack!

Despite all that, sometime before I leave I'm hoping to find time to go down to Murfreesboro and learn how to print photos. While I've been an amateur photographer for years and have recently spent more time and effort improving my skills and equipment, I've still never actually done old-school printing. (I was introduced to darkroom work while in college, but only got as far as developing. There was less need to print at that point because we were already able to scan from negatives.)

I ran into a old friend/retired photojournalist at a party recently, and she offered to teach me the process in her home darkroom. She still remembers the first time she saw an image materializing out of nothingness on phoograhphic paper, and wants to share the experience. I really hope I can find time to do this. (Admittedly, printing photos this way is quickly becoming an anachronism, but it's still appealing to me.)

Just started reading "Better Off by Eric Brende, a meditation on a life with less technology. The author, an MIT grad student, conducts an experiment in simple living by spending 18 months in a (sort of) Mennonite community with no electricity. Very interesting -- may have more thoughts on this later.

Seeing red

I've been on a kick to get rid of stuff so that I don't have to pack it. Currently an entire corner of my dining room is piled up with things I think I can live without. Novels I'm never going to read again. Obscure literary theory readers from college. A blender with a missing blade. The Kermit the Frog that my friends won for me at Jillians years ago. A new garden hose, never used. Two obsolete computers. Pants that no longer fit due to the fitness regimen. And so forth. I have no idea what I'm going to do with all this stuff, but it's pretty liberating to get rid of it.

Along the same lines, last week I decided to get rid of my massive CRT monitor and instead buy a new LCD flat panel. I figured it would be a lot easier to lug to Boston, and would also give me tons more desk space. The good news is that the new monitor arrived today. It's big and flat and beautiful. Except for the fact that within its first hour colors went all loopy and tiny red stripes appeared all over the screen. So looks like I'm going to be on the phone with Samsung and/or Amazon tomorrow trying to get this straightened out. Yuck.

My boss finally officially announced my departure last week. It was pretty anticlimactic, since just about everyone knew I was a short timer anyway. But it somehow made the whole thing more official.

I also rented a truck. I really had no idea how much truck I would need. I settled on 24 feet, which might be utterly huge. But I figured it was better to have too much space than too little. The plan is to move the third week in January. I've convinced two brothers to come help, and volunteers at both ends have also stepped forward. So hopefully the whole thing will be pretty painless.

Right now I'm seriously considering decorating the house for Christmas. I figure that if I cover everything with greens I can go ahead and pack lots of stuff without making the place look totally depressing. Plus if I get really organized maybe I'll get arount to having some sort of Christmas/going away party. That could be fun.

First amendment center founder?

A new article by John Seigenthaler, Sr. (A false Wikipedia 'biography') has been floating around at work and on library listservs today.

I just sent the following response to several colleagues:

I agree with the fundamental thrust of the article, which is that you should never take anything for granted from Wikipedia without checking against conventional sources as well.

But I have mixed feelings about the larger issue. On the one hand, it's obviously not a good thing that false information was published about Mr. Seigenthaler. But the main thrust of his argument seems to raise quite a few first amendment issues. He seems to feel that he should be able to sue BellSouth for libel or defamation, or that BellSouth should be obligated to hand over the identities of its customers anytime someone else claims to have been defamed.

Let's say that the offending text were in an anonymous pamphlet rather than an anonymous web page. And let's say that, by analyzing the paper it was printed on he was able to determine that it was photocopied at a Kinkos in Nashville on paper made by the Acme paper company. Should he then be able to sucessfully sue Acme paper company for libel? Or sue the Kinkos where the pamphlet was xeroxed? Or sue the electric company for providing the electricity to do the copying? Or demand that Kinkos turn over the identity of every customer who shopped there for the last six months?

This is really no different. If service providers (be they copy centers or ISPs) are held responsible for the content of their customers' speech, then they will be forced to hire censors to monitor the creative output of every customer. Is the benefit of preventing occasional character defamation really worth the cost of creating an army of private censors empowered to stifle speech that someone might object to?

Even if they are only asked to retroactively identify customers who allegedly defame someone, this means that they must keep detailed records on every customer, what they posted/copied, and how to contact them. It would no longer be possible to publish anything anonymously. It's a safe bet that under this sort of legal restriction, many of today's most exciting communications developments (blogs, for example), would never have come about. Do we really want to stifle the next Thomas Paine to prevent someone from writing falsehoods about a public figure?

The current system provides recourse in the form of anonymous lawsuits. It forces the complainant to demonstrate to a court that there is actually a credible legal case in need of resolution before asking a service provider to violate the privacy of its customers. This seems like a fairly reasonable position to me.

Sorry for the minor rant, but I was somewhat surprised to read this article coming from the founder of the First Amendment Center.

Big steps

Sometimes when I disappear from the blogosphere for a while, it's because nothing interesting is happening in my life. Lately, however, it has been quite the opposite. In fact, I've probably haven't had more big changes underway in a single month since I graduated from college 8 years ago. To wit:

Turning 30

This happened, with almost no fanfare, on Nov. 3. I spent the day -- from dawn to dusk and beyond -- working on one of several huge projects we've had going down at work. (Part of my penance for the three-week trip to Spain, I figure.) So I've basically avoided any serious ruminations about aging and the meaning of life. Probably a good thing. Although I have begun to notice some scalp peeking through when I see pictures of myself from behind. Yikes! (Unfortunately, this may be destiny at work. My mother's brother, cousin, and grandfather were all follically challenged.)

Leaving Nashville

This is a long-term work in progress (some would say 7 years in the making.) But it started to feel real this month, beginning with the fact that the entire office basically knows I'm leaving -- even though it has yet to be officially announced. When I first told the big boss earlier this year, he wanted to keep it under wraps, probably to avoid blunting my supposed "managerial effectivness." However, nothing spreads faster than a good secret, and enough people knew that word began to creep around the office. Within the last few weeks I've answered numerous queries about it, and found very few people who didn't already have an inkling of my imminent departure. My assistant has already begun dropping hints to the bosses about how great he'd be for my position. (As well he should, since he rocks -- go you, J!)

And all that was just a prelude to the last few days. In which the following happened:

Friday - Flew from Nashville to Syracuse after an all-nighter on the afforementioned huge work project. Despite 3 hours of sleep, managed to stay up until 4 AM chatting with college buddies. Talked about topics like mortgages, kids, potential engagements, and other weighty topics that show an almost scary level of maturity for a group whose crowning achievement during our Syracuse glory days may have been stealing the "No Sledding" sign from Thornden Park at midnight! (If the Syracuse Police Department is reading this, the preceding is most certainly a joke, and should in no way imply criminal activity. Especially criminal activity that might have taken place at 901 Ackerman in 1996.)

Saturday - woke up late, and after more friends arrived we took a nostalgic trip to the Dinosaur Barbeque, Syracuse's very own "honky-tonk rib joint." Since we also nostalgically stood in line, the trip ate up a good chunk of the afternoon. The weather was unchacterisically balmy, so the wait outside was not all that nostalgic. We got over it.

We then took another nostalgic trip, this time to the Super Wegmans in DeWitt. If you have never been to the Super Wegmans in DeWitt, then let me just say you have not experienced grocery shopping as it was meant to be. We're talking wider and more diverse selection than I think I've seen in any other grocery store, ever. The 24-hour store was a staple of late-night food and beer runs in college. This time, we focused mainly on ingredients for homemade pizza (Jay even devised a recipe for whole wheat squash pizza, which turned out to be remarkably good!) Just for old times sake, though, we threw in a 24-pack of PBR and a 12 pack of Genny Cream.

After the Wegmans trip the rest of the evening was a blur of freezing cold Beer Pong, lots of homemade pizza, out of tune singing, and various other drunken silliness interspersed with a bit of interpersonal drama. Some things never change.

Sunday - we again woke up late (staying up 'til 4 AM playing cards will do that to you). A local friend brought over her 2(!) very cute kids, so we spent a while playing with them. I was presented with a belated birthday cake (not so surprising since I was there when it was purchased.) We then split up, and after the requisite hugs and goodbyes half of us went up to campus to relive our glory days. We (nostalgically) parked illegally near the security office and nostalgically wandered across the quad (and found Aaron's funraising brick in the new "Orange Grove"). We visited the old APO APO office in Schine, and were happily amazed to discover that a moistened gummy bear propelled toward a concrete ceiling at a high velocity will stay there for at least 9 years. (Don't let it be said that we didn't make our mark on SU!)

We then nostalgically snuck out through the service entrance of Schine, nostalgically purchased greasy food on M-Street while perusing the The Daily Orange, and nostalgically bought sweatshirts at Shirtworld.

At the same time, though, a lot of things had changed. The creative problem-solving program where I worked and spent a good portion of my junior and senior years has been shut down after being run into the ground by its somewhat clueless director. The communications school where I spent another big chunk of my time just broke ground on a major expansion. There is an entirely new management school building where we used to horse around behind the Catholic Center after APO meetings. But most of all, the students all look so... young! A few years ago when we went back we pretty much blended in with everyone else. Now we're starting to look like those roving groups of homesick alumni that show up on homecoming. Wierd.

After all the campus nostalgia we could handle, I joined the Boston contingent in a very packed car for the next phase of my journey. Which brings me to...

Boston

Unless you're new to this blog, you already know about my plans to move to Boston and go to school for a dual Masters degree in Archives/History. But this week was really the first time I've taken a more-or-less irreversable step toward this goal.

To start with, I stopped by the college on Monday and registered for classes. Despite a scary diatribe I overheard in the student lounge (about how the school was lying when they said the program could be completed in a year -- something that I was never promised anyway), I remain super-impressed by how up-close and personal Simmons seems. Maybe it's just because I did my undergrad and first masters at large schools, but I am still bowled over by the fact that the heads of the History and Archives programs recognized me from my brief visit 8 months ago, and both immediately whisked me to the appropriate authorities to ensure that my registration was taken care of. The head of the history program even offered to help with my apartment search. I like the fact that I'm more than just a student number. We'll see if the honeymoon lasts, but so far I have a good feeling about this.

I am now signed up for three classes next semester -- a basic archives class that includes an internship, a "Information Organization" class, and a history seminar on Cold War Culture. Should be a pretty manageable schedule, and I'm looking forward to the work.

The other reason I came to Boston was to apartment hunt -- the idea was to finalize my housing plans in three days so that I could return to Nashville and know what I should move and what I should pitch. Apartment hunting in Boston is a daunting task, especially because anything you can find is bound to be 2-3 times more expensive than the same thing in Nashville. I spent much of the last two days driving around aimlessly, perusing CraigsList, and making unreturned phone calls to potential landlords. Thanks partly to the wonders of the Internet and digital photography, I only ended up looking at three apartments. Unfortunately, the first one I saw was so nice it basically spoiled me for anything else I came across.

The good news was that it was a massive apartment (almost as large as my current house, beautifully restored, and with a modern kitchen). The bad news was that it was about 75% more than my current rent -- and keep in mind that I'm quitting my relatively well-paid position as part of the whole 'moving to Boston' plan. So I was pretty freaked out about the cost. Furthermore, while many larger apartments have the option of roomates, it would be difficult in this one because the only bathroom adjoins one of the bedrooms. So a roomate would have to walk through the other roomate's room to get to the bathroom. Not ideal.

That said, I admit that I fell in love with this place -- and we're talking severe crush love. The truth is, while the cost was more than I'd like to pay, in the crazy Boston real-estate market it's actually a bargain given the space and amenities. So after looking at other places that were nearly as expensive and a lot less cool, I finally convinced myself that I could swing the payments -- at least until August when the lease will run out. So I went ahead and applied for the apartment.

The landlord wanted a copy of my credit report, which I happened to have on my laptop thanks to the "free credit report" law that went into effect earlier this year. So I stopped by the house to drop it off. When he wasn't there, I called him, and it turned out that he was tapping away on his laptop at the coffee shop around the corner. So I walked over and he promptly bought me a coffee and sat me down at a table while we chatted. He is a very interesting guy -- turns out that he's originally from Uruguay, and is now making a living as a contractor, partly by fixing up and renting old apartments. (He's in the middle of gutting and refurbishing the place above mine -- I got to step across rafters to look on Monday.) He's an avid traveler, and just seems like an all-around nice guy (again, we'll see how long the honeymoon lasts). After looking over my credit report and resume, he said he would take the matter to his wife tonight, and they would make a decision on whether to rent to me. (They'd already had another applicant.)

I went back to my friend's apartment, bought her some new printer paper and ink to replace what I had used, and then sat around. A little after 5 I got the call from the landlord, who told me that they wanted to rent me the apartment! So we're meeting first thing tomorrow to go over the lease, after which I will be the proud renter of a severely-overpriced but very cool apartment in the Powderhouse Square neighborhood of Somerville, MA.

I am still a little freaked out about the price, especially since I have no idea what my earning potential as a part timer/freelancer/student is going to be. That said, I should have sufficient savings to absorb the hit from now through August, by which time I should have a better idea on whether I'm living beyond my means. If necessary I can move again at that point after a more leisurely apartment hunt. (Although I can barely imagine the hell of having to move twice within a year!)

From the social angle, I'm already feeling really good about my decision to move to Boston. I've managed to go out with friends both nights I was here (something I rarely manage due to job commitments in Nashville.) I've already met several new people, including a fellow grad student at Simmons who has been doing bar trivia with my Syracuse friends for months. And I still love the brainy yet super-diverse vibe in Boston, something that Nashville is just starting to get in small pockets.

So after the big lease signing tomorrow, I'm off to DC for Thanksgiving, followed by a quick jaunt to visit the two brothers now cohabiting in Richmond, followed by a return to Nashville, where I have to figure out a plan for packing and moving all my stuff in the next 8 weeks. It's going to be a busy and stressful time, but I'm really looking forward to the change.