Sunday, November 02, 2003

Yesterday was a crazy day.

Not only did I pull my regular 9-to-5 shift here at Widener Circulation, but afterwards I was enlisted by my brother-in-law George, who was moving from his current apartment to more reasonably priced digs in Somerville, in order to help him ferry a mattress and box spring from our public storage unit in Peabody down to his new apartment. This involved a lot of rope, a little bit of trial and error, and the indignity of crawling in and out of the car through the windows when we realized you're supposed to open the doors of your car before you start threading any lines through them. Ah, well. Then in order not to tempt Fate we eschewed the direct path of 128 and Route One in favor of the back roads that wind through Salem, Lynn, Revere, and Everett before slipping across the Mystic River into first Boston, then Somerville, unfortunately in the process transforming a thirty minute drive into an hour-long slog through downtown everywhere. It was probably worth the aggravation, however, as both mattress and boxspring arrived at their intended destination without incident.

But a word about this new apartment. George's roommate is somewhat of a collector. The walls of the place are lined with bookshelves that are positively crammed with Star Wars toys and memorabilia as well as a disturbingly large assortment of Simpsons action figures and dioramas/playsets that I didn't even know existed! But the Star Wars merchandise - good lord! It was like being transported to the Paradise of my childhood, only having that nirvana being shoehorned into a dumpy Somerville two-and-a-half bedroom. Something was definitely lost in translation, but still I couldn't help but poke around and look at all of those Christmas and birthday presents that never were...

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