scenes from the last couple weeks...

We got ourselves a U-Haul truck on the 22nd to move all our big ticket items to the new place. We ended up doing two trips with it to move all the furniture that wouldn't fit or collapse down to fit in my Saturn. We couldn't get a Comcast technician to the new place until the 31st, so, with work being as busy as it was, I decided to plan on being in the old place, wired and set up to work, until then. That meant that my bedroom was still pretty much unmoved after returning the truck. I was keeping my desk, futon, and tv set up until the end of August.

Here Rowan and In and I admire our very excellent U-Haul Tetris skills...

Gotta love warning signs...

The view outside the Cambridge U-Haul depot. Note James Tiberius in the front window. Judging by the sun-sapped desaturation of his typically robust complexion, he's been in the window a While. Why? He's James frickin Kirk! He doesn't need a reason!

On August 26, I finished up THE LONG GOODBYE. I'd read it once earlier in the year, but when I came across this particular copy of the book (Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe?! Wack! I'm gonna hafta watch that sometime), I ended up starting it up again. I picked it up at one of the random little Cambridge book drops I've encountered in the neighborhood. The one I like to call "the giving tree stump."

On the streets that cross from Harvard Street (or is it Road?) to Mass Ave are the remnants of trees. I suppose in their prime, they must've been growing into the roadway or causing some sort of trouble for public works or whatnot and needed to be cut down. Well, apparently the city got some artisans to do a bit of architectural and detail work on the stumps, carving out these really gorgeous chairs, or thrones, from what remained. They call to my mind the idea of a "high seat," a perch that affords a view of the entire cosmos for this Norse god or his Greek or Roman equivalent.

The Giving Tree Stump...

Anyhow, in my pedestrian commuter travels, I've discovered that Cambridge locals have taken to leaving giveaway items on these seats, usually books. THE LONG GOODBYE is the first one I ever picked up. Now I feel like I should return to one of these drops and leave a book, y'know? Circle of life, dude...

See the bookybooks?

The receipt for the book was tucked into its pages when I picked it up. It turns out the day I finished the book was one year to the day since the book was purchased at the Brattle Book Shop, which is just a block over from my office in Downtown Crossing. Kooky, no?

I'd been keeping a receipt from an order of chicken teriyaki, no vegetables, from Sakkio in the Corner Mall food court as my bookmark. I got that receipt on the day that I started GOODBYE. I was holding on to it as a record of when I began the book again. Unfortunately, I lost it to a gust of subway wind at the Park Street T stop a couple days before finishing the book, and so don't have it to help me figure how long it took me to polish off the black and white candy that is Raymond Chandler's LONG GOODBYE. Such delicious reading. =)

In the process of packing myself up, I managed to purge a few dozen videotapes out of my collection of Stuff. Many of them were recordings of TV shows or dupes of films and those went into the trash. A few were actual purchased VHS tapes of films and were still in very playable shape. I thought of making these a donation to the stump, but the particular days that I was sifting thru videos were a bit rainy and wet.

Sad, thinking of the books that get caught in the rain...

At the time I was doing a couple of last laundry loads of towels and such and realized that the laundry room in our apartment building had an unofficial book/magazine exchange going—I could leave my videos there!

And so...
I did.

That's QUICK CHANGE on the end there, which I *just* picked up on dvd. A damn smart little robbery picture. Some of Bill Murray's best work, and supported by a kickass cast of then-not-so-well-knowns, including Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub. It's like AFTER HOURS if it was a heist film.

Also in the collection is Regis's workout tape. I wonder who will pick that one up. Back when I was first looking for animation work in the early 90s, I went and bought short commercial VHS tapes at the dollar store to use for my short student reel. One short film, really, my final animation project, entitled, "Spanghew," which means to throw, esp. a frog, from the end of a stick. Anyhow, I'd tape over the copy protection tab and record over whatever was on the commercial tape with my dopey little film, then send or present this tape as my reel, complete with kitsch/fried packaging!

Also uncovered in the process of packing and moving... my @world Pippin! I won this disowned bastard child of Apple and Bandai in a giveaway by the Gadget Guru on AOL back in 1996. Frickin frackin a decade ago! Anyhow, I'd never once unpacked it and plugged it in. I just never got around to it. When I won it, I was living in a basement studio apartment in Back Bay and just didn't have the room to set it up in the bricked up fireplace with my TV. In the apartments I lived in after that, well, I moved it in its box, unopened, and it was just easier to keep it stored that way. It lived with me, undisturbed, in... Let's see... Coolidge Street, Haskell Street, Blake Street, Bolton Street, Broadway... six places. Wack.

Well, I'd mentioned that I had this freak of late 90s tech development to Applehead Jeff some years ago, and made a promise that he'd be able to play with it one day. Well, no day like Tuesday, right? I had some other bits of hardware that Jeff had generously lent to me as part of his lifesaving measures for my old Titanium, so I was planning on dropping by anyhow...

That's the Pippin giving Jeff the lowdown on its ancient (but damn prescient) console control pad. It comes with a 14.4 modem, an online account (sadly, 10 years defunct now) with @world, a 4x CD-ROM drive, a keyboard, a touchpad, and game controllers. Designfemme has a great blog entry covering the highlights of the opening this time capsule.

And speaking of historical Apple tech...

A snapshot of my Mac SE FD/HD sitting on top of the "pizza box" Performa 450 (equivalent to the LC III) in the downstairs off of our new place.

The weekend ended up being a washout for beaching, thanks to Ernesto's passive aggressive temper. But Labor Day itself, altho a bit schizophrenic about whether it wanted to rain or not, turned out to be pretty fine for some grass King & Queen vball action in Arlington...

*sigh*

Just there in the bottom left of the picture I think you can see the shadow of the hole that I stepped into and sprained my ankle in. Bleah. I'd just won my first game of the day (after four losses, bleah), with partner Jen, was walking back to my seat, cleaning off my glasses, when the ground disappeared under my right foot. As I tumbled forward, I muttered to myself, "Feckin super." I went as much as I could with the fall, to keep my weight off the foot, but I didn't catch myself soon enough. I heard-felt a definite *pop* Feck. And thusly was my ankle turned.

Of course, it didn't stop me from playing out the rest of the day, ankle wrapped in a brace (thanks to BK for letting me strongarm him into handing over the brace =).

Keep on keepin on~