WWWW16: What Was Wrong With '16

Remember Disco?  Remember how it was around for awhile and then the grown-ups thought it was cool and started doing it and then it died? Why CAN'T THAT HAPPEN TO TWEETING!!??

Astronomical "events" that are not really events, but just juxtapositions of some sort that happen regularly, but no so often that we remember it, like "super moons" and various alignments, are not really events. A comet crashing into a planet would be an event, but a full moon that happened to occur when the moon was at one of its closest cycles to Earth is really not. Also, the fact that something is not going to happen again for 87 years does not make it important. If you think about it, something that happens every two hours or once a day, or whatever, is actually much more important to us. Because, duh. Like, hey, the sun is going to come up tomorrow!! Yay! This is important.

You know how when you think you're a nice person but you're rude to clerks in stores actually makes you an asshole, even though you don't really think you are?  Stupid misleading headlines designed to get your attention and click on something are actually part of the story, so if they are lies, then the article is untrue, and the publication should issue a retraction and an apology.

CNN crawl still riddled with grammatical and spelling errors.

I will give 2016 credit, though, for some things. For example, I think people have finally quit worrying about how many spaces other people leave after periods.

epochs

The tendency is to think there is a magic number--a magic date, some meaningful duration of time, as if there is a formula to which we may refer to gauge our progress. Not true, but when the round numbers like New Years roll around, we like to think so anyway. It's certainly been an abrupt, well-defined year for me, with no time for evolution or adaptation, as if I was simply tossed into 2016 with no real regard for how I might emerge from the sea of time and events on the other side.

Then again, if I may swim into a metaphor and walk out, like that little fish a billion years ago who thought he'd see what that other pond over there was like, you just put one foot in front of the other, careful not to look back for too long at a time, lest you start floundering.

So when I say "happy new year," it's with a bit more sincerity than usual. The dinosaurs are coming, but that's another story.

The View From My Windows

front

rear

Very gritty, no? I love it.

Merry Christmas

There are a few small things left to do at the house. I just couldn't get everything out of there. I moved a table out to the garage, where it now sits next to a ladder. But the inside of the house is completely bare and all cleaned up and shiny thanks to Taylor, the cleaning lady who did an absolutely awesome job.

The buyers did their walk-through last night. I assume they liked what they saw. The house is probably cleaner now than it's ever been. Back when we moved in, the person who had lived there did some cleaning, but it was still pretty bad. After we moved all our stuff in there, it became impossible to really clean everything like it needed.  Not impossible, but, you know, improbable.

I left there last night after stopping by to check that they turned out all the lights and didn't set the thermostat to 83 or anything. There was a moment when I was sad to leave--especially now that it is really really a very very nice house with everything all fixed and then all cleaned up--but the future has a stronger pull.

I had dinner at Cancun Fiesta Fresh, a Mexican restaurant in Westport. I believe "hole in the wall" is the phrase. It is possibly the most unassuming place I've ever eaten at. The food is pretty good, except often when they bring it out and it's not very hot. The people there are very nice. Not sure why they don't heat their plates up like every other Mexican restaurant.

I don't have a lot of energy to spare for ambition. I placed the stereo components where I think they should go, but I didn't hook anything up. I was going to get the TV set working, but I don't care enough about it to go through that procedure right now. Plus, I'm not sure I'll be able to find my new digital antenna.

Yesterday I discovered that my apartment doesn't have enough closets. It has one closet. I used to have all my clothes in three closets. Not that I wore all of them all the time. Seasonal. I need to figure out what to do. How do people live with one closet? I'm not even a snappy dresser. I'm a poor excuse for a dresser, as a matter of fact. I dress exactly like I did when I first got out of high school, back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Pretty much. I have no sense of fashion, and I am still wearing shirts that I've owned for decades. In some cases, I suppose, even I realize I need to do something here--I no longer wear extra-large, but now have to find larges that are cut slightly big. Extra larges kind of drape off of me. Even as I write this I'm not sure if that's OK. Like I said, I have no fashion sense whatsoever. Maybe I only deserve one closet.

That's about it. I woke up this morning kind of refreshed. Today I go to the title company and do my end of the paperwork for the house sale. Mentally, I am already quite out of there. I accomplished one of my goals of selling and leaving my house in good condition so as not to do to "my" buyers what my seller did to me and I still made a small profit, and my cats are adjusting nicely. I'm a lucky man, actually.

Wonders Never Cease

Canon color rendition

Here we are at last with a picture of the sunrise as seen from my bay window on the second floor of the brownstone. I guess that technically this is the pre-sunrise view. This picture was taken with my Canon 7D, a DSLR that is a few years old--not the best one you could buy--and which does the best job, in my opinion, of getting the colors right. Cameras are smart nowadays; you might say too smart. As with humans, in real life, being too smart sometimes causes you to miss what is really going on, as one gets wrapped up in trying to figure everything out rather than just letting it be what it is supposed to be. At any rate, when I look at this picture on my monitor, the colors look about like they looked to me when I saw them with my own eyes.

Meanwhile we all continue to adapt to the new digs. The cats may be doing a better job than I am. The sheer amount of crap that I have moved into this medium sized apartment is overwhelming, if not staggering.

This is what it is like to move around in my apartment. 

I spent many weeks getting rid of stuff, and I really thought I had it right. Over the next several months my project will be to continue to get rid of stuff, and I will have to keep at it if I am to reach my imaginary goal of being capable of moving cross-country by this time next year. I certainly don't want a repeat of this latest move.

Gotta go. Things to do.

Nexus

It is all, or mostly, coming together tomorrow. The carpenter installed the handrail for the basement stairs today. It's a dandy. I should have done that sixteen years ago. I moved everything out of the house except a desk chair and a bucket with cleaning supplies in it--and all the trash and junk I intend to throw away. Someone is coming tomorrow to pick that up. The foundation repair crew is coming also to finish the last task of bracing one of the basement walls. Two people are coming to clean the house. Later in the afternoon the buyer is doing a "walk through," the purpose of which is unknown to me, but I suspect it's a psychological thing. At that point, as best I can tell, everything will be done but the paperwork. That will happen the 23rd and the 28th.

I am home. That means the apartment. I've hit the big time, as I am living on Broadway now. What can I say?  It's all very edgy.

While unloading my car a while ago, I met my downstairs neighbor and her boyfriend out in the parking lot. Her name is Allison, and her boyfriend's name is Darwin.  I was relieved to see how pleasant they were, and to learn that Allison gets up as early as I do and I won't bother her by walking around on the creaking floor above her head at six in the ayem.

Umal and L-bot, the unidentical twins, are roaming about the place, finding new things to jump up onto, various things to pull on and try to tip over, and generally moving ceaselessly like sharks. It's probably a good thing that they don't weigh enough to make the floor creak. While they are doing that I am trying to figure out how not to move, but I have to put some more stuff away before I could possibly get into bed.

Day 3 --the Return of L-Bot

Beautiful red sunrise visible through my front windows, but my cell phone camera successfully adjusts the white balance so that it comes out less red and more sickly yellow, so you'll just have to take my word for it. I'm surrounded by mostly two and three-story apartment buildings and condos, with the occasional moderate high-rise in the distance, so the horizon from here is a sort of castellated brickwork silhouette from which emanates the light, rosy glow that turns darker and bluer as you look upwards.

Uma the Watcher sits on the printer by the section of bay window that is facing southeast, but she is paying less attention to the sky and more, now, to the street below. I think this is because she regards any movement below, people walking, tiny gliding cars, as a sign of hapless prey.

I just realized that this morning, of all mornings, the sunrise is squarely in front of that window and will from here on move incrementally back toward the east facing bay window.

The only really new news is that L-Bot has emerged from whatever hiding place she had amongst the sea of boxes in the apartment. She has apparently made all necessary adjustments to the new environment and is back to her old tricks.

Life Without TV

This is day 2 in my new apartment. I finally found Lizzy the errant cat at the old place and coaxed her into the cat carrier using a mixture of guile and brute force, mostly brute force. Here's something you may or may not know (which, I suppose, could be said of just about anything.) If you are trying to install a cat in a cat carrier and meeting with too much resistance, the solution is to put the cat in the carrier ass-end first. I think this does two things: the cat doesn't see that she's being shoved into the carrier so she's not quite as worried and thus fights back with a little less vigor, and then I have always believed that stopping a cat is easier from the front. You almost can't stop a cat that is backing up. It's like they use a lower gear ratio for backing.

Once at the new apartment, Lizzie disappeared again. This time, instead of zero hiding places in a bare, cleaned out house requiring the use of the cat-sized interdimensional portal to which she seems to have access, the cluttered new apartment has 2.3 million hiding places, not to mention probably several cat-sized interdimensional portals. I'm not even going to try. She probably knows where the food and water is, and, more importantly, the litter box.

Uma, on the other hand, has adapted quickly and, while she seemed a little worried at first, has found all the old spots and many new spots to sit and ponder the random nature of the universe, as she is often wont to do. A new favorite, which is an old favorite in a new spot, really, is atop the printer, once right next to a window and perfectly suited for the daily Squirrel Watch but which now affords a great view of the street two stories below. To her delight, she discovered that if she steps on the button on the left edge of the printer's lid, she can still make the printer light up and make noises. Life is good.

Oh yeah.  I still don't have the TV hooked up, as a matter of fact.

Still messing around at the old house, trying to finish moving, watching the foundation guys do their work, arranging for a hand rail for the basement stairs, hiring a house cleaning service. (Yep.) Closing day approaches.

Now I may go walk around and try to find Lizzie, which I won't, and then go to bed.

And That's the Name of That Tune

I guess today is a significant day. I am moving, finally, after living here for sixteen years. I'm in that weird mode where I notice everything I do because they are all "last times." Last time I write a blog post from this location, here in this room. Last time I take a shower, last time I sleep here. Last time I shovel snow from the driveway. (I wouldn't have done it but I wanted to make sure the movers wouldn't slip and fall as they carried my stuff to their truck.) Last time I use at least that particular snow shovel, because I'm throwing it away. It's the one I bought the first winter my wife and I lived in the first house we owned. It had a shiny yellow scoop on it, made of metal, and a nice wooden handle. Now the scoop is rusty and somewhat askew and about half worn away, eroded from 32 years of scraping it along concrete driveways and sidewalks. It is razor sharp along the leading edge.

The unnerving part is that the basement is still not completely repaired. The structural part of the work is complete, and there are now eight piers along the front of the foundation that are stabilizing the basement walls, having been pushed about fifteen feet down to bedrock.  But the crew has to return to backfill the holes and put concrete on them to restore the basement floor. They must be running behind because it iced and snowed a couple days ago, then turned cold. Like negative 5 degrees.

I'm moving anyway. I got the apartment starting the 15th, and I have until December 28th to vacate. I still have to move a few odds and ends I don't want the movers to move, and then clean the house. I hope the new owners don't expect me to clean the windows or finish raking up the leaves outside, which would be a little problematic at negative 5 degrees.

 But I don't care. I got Google Fiber at the new place. So what. I ordered the minimum 100Mb/s internet access, and a  $10/month telephone line to which I had my old landline number ported--so the technicians in India can still reach me to respond to pleas for help from my operating system. I did NOT get any TV channels. It is a grand experiment. I purchased a nifty digital antenna (digital antenna?  Really?) which may or may not be better at picking up the digital signal from the TV stations than the old analog rabbit ears. At any rate, I tried it out here and I get a couple dozen TV stations. They are mostly kind of weird little stations that I'll never watch, but it's possible that between the antenna and Netflix and Hulu Plus, my entertainment needs will be satisfied, and I will save $100 a month.

It's a shame, by the way, that we are no longer, apparently, going to have the term "rabbit ears" in the technical lexicon. That is such a fortuitous phrase.

It's also a shame that even though we think we are so smart now, we constantly fail to understand that nothing in the real world is digital, that everything is analog at least until the electronics in the black box say it is digital and then try to do something with it. I'm not sure why I'm bothering to think about that right now.

So, as I consider that each act sits precariously atop a mountain of events leading to it, I'm ending the last post from 78th Street, typing out the last complete sentence and ending it with the last period.

Work on the house progresses. On the one hand, once it is all finished--new roof, new 200 amp electrical service, newly shored up foundation--I may want to keep living here. On the other, I couldn't afford to. Luckily there is a third hand, where I sell and move, and that is the hand that claps for me right now.

So by the first of the year, I will no longer be in Kansas.  Nor Toto, or cats, as the case may be.

It's difficult to maintain one's sense of humor.

Later.