You aren’t invited, you are expected.

Still haven’t found the camera to take pictures, so we are back on the cellphone.

It turns out that most of the things that I own require several items to work properly, TVs need remotes, video game systems need controllers, and tables need legs.  At some point during the unpacking of several boxes I became obsessed with the idea that there was one box, one magical container that had every single item that I needed to make everything work correctly again.  I even started to wander around the apartment quoting Tolkien and demanding one box rule all the other boxes.  I guess that being married means that your wife can and will randomly pick up on ones insanity and make it her own, which is pretty much what happened after a couple of days of me randomly opening boxes and finding nothing– then opening them again several hours later to be disappointed the contents hadn’t changed. Veronica even seemed to think that this was healthy as I was looking for the one box that would make the entire apartment come together instantly.

I think the one thing that really upset me the most about the entire unpacking experience, and considering it is less than half over I am sure other things will find a way of upsetting me just as much, is that there really was one box that did fix everything.  While it might seem like a good step of logic to pack all of the important things that make other things work into one box so that you know where they are, it also means that when that one box is misplaced in a series of other identical boxes that nothing works until it is fished out.  I would say that I am learning lessons about moving, but I am sure that most of these will be nullified in my mind in three years when we move again.

It seems rather odd that I have this blog all about the adventures that I take, but the moment that something uproots me and everything I own I get nervous.  Who knows, maybe it is the last couple of ounces of sanity left in my body trying to get me to think before I leap.

Speaking of that, this entire moving adventure started the moment Veronica decided that her best friend in the entire world needed to come home from Colorado.  Through several forms of luck and good will we managed to get a truck to move the stuff, and a plane ticket to get my wife out there.  The problems didn’t really start until she came back though.

Seeing as how she had made such good time on the trip back, and managed to have the truck for almost another week after she dropped her friend off the only logical conclusion was that it was clearly time for the both of us to move as well.  I believe I have officially lived with her too long because this seemed like the most logical thing in the world.

That is until the process started.

So I write about pretty much everything that happens to the two of us, be it good or weird.  The problem about that is it is hard to put these things up without two things, the internet and a camera to take interesting pictures with.  The camera, seeing as how it should just be grafted on my body at this point, was naturally the first thing to get packed.  This was quickly followed with the internet being turned off.  This is also my excuse for not updating in awhile, and as most of you know I will take any excuse I can.

Sadly because of the loss of the camera much of the saga of what happened after everything we own got packed is lost to the ages, and the ones we do have are poorly taken from my phone.  Mainly it was a bunch of my friends coming over and helping for a couple of hours, and Veronica and I complaining about how we seemingly owned everything in the entire Universe and how we should just throw it all away cause we hate it all.  Pretty much the same stitch I do every time we move.

Also there was an entire experience of trying to find any place in the capital area that even resembled something that one could live in.  There was one place that the landlord literally had to open the front door with a screwdriver to let Veronica in, one that was infested with cockroaches, one that hadn’t been worked on Jesus was around– but the landlord just decided it was fine to rent as is, and one that we were told to light candles to cover the smell.  If it wasn’t so funnily terrible I think my wife would have never of stopped crying.

The story of the above pictures is pretty much all about how I was told that we were moving to the city, and yet as a country boy I have never had to stop on a 55 mile an hour road to let cows cross.  Maybe that is just something that people in the city think are normal, but we from the country would simply claim those cows as our own (as the road is everyone’s land) and eat well that night.

But after all of this we did find a really nice place to live. Ok, Veronica found it I just sleep here.

How does an adventure start?

Wife: “Want to go to Long Island to visit my mom?  She is paying”

Me: “Duh”

If you can notice in this picture we are about to cross the George Washington Bridge.  Please take not that the traffic that you see is not during rush hour.  We did not drive during rush hour, yet I have three pictures on my camera from roughly the same spot taken about a minute apart.  I now know why Spider-Man never got his drivers license.

It turns out that Veronica’s mother lives next to an inlet that connects almost directly to the ocean.  In my mind that explains all of the humidity that we where forced to live through while there (I have experienced less swimming), although it does not explain the amount of heat.  When I tried to blame this heat on Kate, someone you will be introduced to later (who is a sort-of local) she tried to blame it on the entire lack of trees in NYC.  I still think that it is her fault though.

You would think that Veronica’s mother is happy to see us, but the truth of the matter is that we brought her good stuff.  The entire point of the trip was to bring her a sewing machine, which as insane as it sounds is truth.  Besides that I think that she wanted us down there so she could order Chinese and have someone else look up the number and make the call for her.  This also may sound insane but when half the experience is talking her down from ordering one of everything on the menu, most of which she won’t eat, you can sort of see the logic behind having a buffer between them and the person taking the order.

So this is Kate.  Most of you may not know this story, but it is a good one.  Several years ago Kate and I became friends because we were both massive geeks and we both worked at Best Buy.  We hung out a lot, watching terrible movies and playing video games.  One night when her boyfriend and her where over at my apartment Veronica called.  Veronica had driven from downstate all the way up to try and win me over again.  I hung up on her.  Through Kate’s advice I called Veronica back and told her where I lived.  It is thus Kate’s fault that I got married and everything that has ever happened since.

If you will notice in the background the signs on “The Saddest Mall in America” many of them aren’t even attempts at being creative.  One of them is literally called “Pancakes” and another is “Frame Art”.  I know that it is near the city and it is important to come up with a name that is different that others, but when you name your pancake place “Pancake” it is better if you just don’t open it.  The mall felt like the place that all stores go to when they refuse to admit that they have no customer base.  The hobby store there had dot matrix printouts advertising all kinds of terrible collectibles no one has been into for many years.  I also think it is the last place in the civilized world allowed to sell POGs.

The movie pit isn’t really anything new.  It is where stores throw all of the movies that they are trying to get ride of as cheaply as possible.  At 3 dollars a copy of Time Cop 4 almost sounds like a steal.  The only thing that really separates this pit from others of its kind is its location inside a Toy*R*Us.  That might not seem like a whole lot, as most of the pit is home to the most forgettable and terrible child based movies man has ever pressed on disc.  What is amazing is that scattered throughout are little R rated gems like “Highlander Endgame,” and “Major League” both movies that I remember having various forms of nudity in. Also Highlander is about cutting dudes heads off with a sword.

I think that God must have picked up on Veronica’s dislike of the downstairs neighbors and wanted to see if he could help her by flooding them out.  While it is always nice to know that the Big Man has your back on this stuff it made me wonder what our normally flooded basement must look like.  Also Veronica was sitting three feet away from the window and had no idea what was happening until I, the person who sits in a room with all windows closed and all light blocked out, came out to show her.  Somehow she claims I never know what is going on outside…

I mean, the flooding was pretty impressive.  Not like 300 word post impressive, but you know, picture impressive. Oh yeah, and that metal structure is a relay station for the area.  We somehow never lost power.