YESTERDAY, I began to discuss hassles personally experienced while moving out of Belltown and into a Pike-Pine Corridor condo.
As we finished yesterday's installment, I'd been left overnight in a situation the opposite of homelessness. I had the keys to both the old space and the new space, but no possessions in either, save for the furniture-to-be-trashed remaining in the old apartment.
I somehow slept on the cruddy old mattress, a motel-surplus job with sharp springs bursting through a couple of holes. I awakened to a bathroom with no soap, no shaving facilities, and no toothpaste (at least there was toilet paper).
Got myself and some of the contents of the old space's refrigerator over to the new place.
The phone line was already running. (In 1984, I got my first solo phone line as the last customer on the last business day of the Bell System. This year, I managed to be one of the last people to order a new phone line from US West. By the time it was up and running, the company had been absorbed by the minor long-distance provider Qwest--same name as ex-Seattleite Quincy Jones's record label.)
The assemble-it-yourself loft bed was already waiting. All it needed, supposedly, was "a large Phillips-head screwdriver."
But before I had time to get such a tool, the DSL guy showed up. He immediately unscrewed my phone-plug cover, saw the dreaded Two Wires Instead Of Four, and declared I was s.o.l. hi-speed-Internet-wise. (A later call to Speakeasy confirmed they could indeed install DSL on a two-wire phone connection nowadays, but I would have to wait for another installation appointment.)
Then promptly at 6:30, my brother the naturopath and his pal showed up with the U-Haul van full of my stuff. Moving in was a lot easier than moving out was (for one thing, there's an elevator direct from the ground level to my floor; the old place had seven annoying steps down).
I'd religiously labeled each of my nearly 150 moving boxes. Unfortunately, when the brother and the brother's pal stacked them up in my new space, they paid no heed to which side was facing out. Therefore, several days would elapse before I had access to shoes, silverware, or pants other than the ones I was wearing.
The following morning, after sleeping on a sleeping bag and fold-up foam mattress, I obtained another small cache of groceries and attempted to start assembling all the assemble-it-yourself furniture.
The Cable Guy showed up promptly at 2 p.m., and turned out to be none other than John Rozich, creator of elegant chalk paintings as seen in Uptown Espresso and elsewhere. He efficiently hooked me up to the AT&T Digital Cable package, a full review of which will appear in this space shortly.
After that came the picking-up, in a borrowed station wagon, of a compact retro-modern couch/day-bed unit from Dingo Gallery in Belltown (during which I learned of the impossibility of parking in Belltown on an early Friday evening).
Thence followed five grueling days of unpacking, uncrating, furniture-assembling, thing-finding, and old-stuff-dumping.
I was severely tempted to trash most of my collection of obscure old magazines and newspapers (over 60 filing boxes' worth), until Nicholson Baker's piece in the current New Yorker, calling on libraries to stop throwing away old newspapers, convinced me to keep at least the rarest of them. (Where I'll put them, in this compact space of mine, is another matter.)
On the eighth day, the loft bed was finally fully assembled. (Instead of merely stating one needed a large Phillips-head screwdriver to put it together, the manufacturer should have called for at least two people and a power driver.) My arms aching and my wrists swollen and my fingers sore, I decided the last beautification work (including the attainment of more shelving and storage units) could wait.
This week's columns are the first written in the new place. I love it. I'll love it better when the DSL finally comes in, when the extra storage pieces get here, and when all the assorted change-O-address notices get sent out.
But, at least, at the age of 43 I feel I'm no longer living like an ex-college student.
TOMORROW: The new Pioneer Square?
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