Disgust

I had seen a few news blurbs about the recent gang attack on a gay man in New York, but only this morning did I read a full article about it - only to realize that it happened around the corner from the school I taught at in the Bronx.  Makes me worry about my old students, one in particular, who would be particularly susceptible to that type of victimization. I always hoped all my students would be able to make it out of that neighborhood okay, but now I hope hope hope that particular kid (who was afraid to apply to a specialized theater high school for fear of appearing gay) gets out first. Ugh.

The Latest Excitement

Our most recent fascinating project as new homeowners is getting a new toilet, since ours is apparently broken beyond repair. Anyway, it turns out there are an infinite number of toilet features and combinations thereof, and while trying to figure out which is the best for people who just want a regular toilet I came across this awesome video:



(You can also watch it in its natural habitat here.)

I don't even know which part I like best - the gently falling feathers and soothing music, the promise to "promote neatness and good habits," or the fact that it's on the "What Women Want" section of the toilet company's webpage.

Gentlemen, if you're looking for a present to impress your lady this Valentine's Day, why not give her what every woman really wants - a set of Easy•Close™ toilet seat hinges!

I'm famous!

Okay guys, one of the things I do in my new job is send out a weekly "email blast" to all the Philly corps members, to tell them about current TFA goings on. I was pretty excited to learn about this part of my job, since for the whole two years I was in the corps I always wondered about the mysterious person who sent out the blasts and who, as far as I could tell, existed only in my inbox.

Fast forward to today, when a corps member had to come into the office to make photocopies or something, saw my name on my cube, and said "wait, are you the Caroline who sends out the email blasts?!"

Yes!! I am finally famous!

New Standards of Excitement

Remember when I wrote about getting really excited over new overhead transparencies, and then sort of depressed that I was at a point in life where overhead transparencies were exciting? Well, being a new homeowner is like that times a million. Things I have actually been super-excited, and then retroactively somewhat embarrassed about in the past week include:

• Getting an appointment with a good plumber
• Installing new light switch plates
• Finding a coupon for blindstogo.com
• Looking at various closet doors online (who knew there were so many varieties?)

I sound lame even to myself. And because of a birthday gift I received in the mail the other day (which I do like, but probably wouldn't have actually bought... yet), we sort of have a catalog living situation going on over here:

Excuse the exposed sockets, I forgot to get those plates at the hardware store.

Don't judge me.

Epiphany

All the managers at my new job have company Amex cards they use for making purchases, and one of my duties is submitting their receipts to document they are spending money on work-related things. I've been doing this for over two months now, and actually using various people's Amex cards to make purchases multiple times a week, and only today did I realize that "Amex" stands for AMerican EXpress. Even then, I didn't independently figure it out, I saw it written out in an article. I am an idiot.

Anyway, I somewhat abashedly confessed my incredibly belated epiphany to some office friends at lunch, and a few hours later I received this in my inbox:

      You are...

     Amazing
     Maiden
     Exemplary
     Xylophonist

I feel special. In more ways than one.

Birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday, and my parents drove up from Maryland with this awesome cake for the occasion:

You can't really tell in this picture, but that weird dusty stuff on it is actually sparkles!

 This other picture shows its colors better since the flash isn't washing it out, and you can also see our pretty new walls and floor:

We're not usually this messy, we just haven't completely unpacked yet.

It was an extremely awesome birthday, consisting of a trip to Ikea for a table (and meatballs!), walking around Center City, and delicious dinner at a great restaurant recommended to me by a coworker. Also, as a birthday/housewarming present, my parents got us the most beautiful mezuzah I've ever seen:

(This picture is from the company's website.)

The real birthday treat was that Ben got a snake and cleaned out the tub drain, since after about five minutes in the shower the water would be up to your ankles. I think this is the grossest household chore there is, what with all the disgusting wads of hair and soap scum involved, which is why it was so nice for Ben to do it. Among the typical gross drain junk, he actually pulled up a dime. Wonder what those old owners did in there...

The Big Move!

After our somewhat disastrous move from NYC to Philly (the movers straight up didn't show), I was very diligent about researching potential movers this time around. I picked a company that had excellent ratings, and in the process of making the moving arrangements with them I was very impressed by their customer service. So I was pretty annoyed when they ended up sucking pretty much as bad as the last guys.

The first problem was that they didn't have an actual moving truck, they just had a big van. Meaning all our stuff couldn't fit in it, so we had to do multiple trips. This was a problem for two reasons: first, we were paying them by the hour and more trips means more money. Second, our new condo building has pretty strict rules about when you're allowed to move in - you have to be done by 4:30, or finish the next day. Since we scheduled our move for 10:00 am we didn't think we would come anywhere close to 4:30, but we ended up almost not making it. When I called the moving company's office to register my discontent, the guy said, "I don't know what you want me to do, that's the vehicle we have." I convinced him to send an extra guy to help speed things up, which he reluctantly agreed to do - after telling me it would cost an extra $15/hour.

The other, and I would argue bigger, problem is that I'm pretty sure the guys who showed up weren't actually movers. They were scrawny kids that looked like they had just been plucked from some college campus with an offer of free pizza (one of them was even wearing skinny jeans!), and obviously didn't really know how to move stuff. On multiple occasions I had to direct them on how to fit stuff through doorways/onto elevators, after they claimed they couldn't do it (despite the fact that everything on our apartment was moved in there three months ago by us, and in fact did not magically appear there after bypassing the elevator and door).

They were also just incredibly slow; it took them two and a half hours just to load the van the first time. Part of this was because they kept taking breaks to smoke, talk on their cell phones, etc... I finally got so frustrated that I started moving stuff, and I think I ended up moving more than they did. I think my favorite moment from the whole move, and the one that sums it up the best, was when all three guys went in the elevator with a load of stuff (don't ask me why it took three of them to go in the elevator), and during the time they were gone I single-handedly moved the entire rest of the contents of our apartment (which was not a trivial amount of stuff at that point) to the area by the elevator. When they finally came back up and saw me waiting there with all our stuff, they said, "wow, you're fast!"

My other favorite moment was when I saw one of them awkwardly struggling to carry a table we have that has casters on it. I told him it had wheels and he could push it, and he said, "Um, not anymore" and produced one of the wheels from his pocket. That thing's casters were drilled into it; I have no idea how he managed to rip one off - I'm almost impressed. Almost.


The whole time this mess was unfolding, I was mentally fuming but forcing myself to stay calm because I didn't want to piss them off when they were in the middle of holding all our earthly possessions. I was also steeling myself for the mighty conflict I envisioned happening at the end of the move, when I would refuse to pay them full price. So I was quite delighted when their own incompetence took care of the payment issue for me - I guess the office guy didn't pass the memo on to the moving guys that they were supposed to up the hourly rate because of the third person, so they didn't. They also displayed a spectacular inability to do math, and flat out incorrectly multiplied the hours by the rate. So they ended up charging me the amount that I was planning on paying them initially, which I was happy to pay without argument!

The whole thing ended up taking six full hours, which is pretty ridiculous compared to the seven hours it took us to move here from NYC (once we found real movers to show up). We haven't acquired any new possessions in the three months in between moves so we were moving literally the exact same set of objects, but it took basically the same amount of time for these guys to go 30 blocks as it did for real movers to go 110 miles. Amazing.