Moving. Again.

By my count, in the 10 years since I graduated from college, I have lived in 9 different apartments or houses in 7 cities (6 if you equate Albany and Berkeley) in 3 states and one foreign land, with 15 different human roommates, 3 canine dogmates and two Spanish felines. I have moved from one side of the country to the other, with stays in Spain and Madison in between; have lived out of suitcases; taken advantage of the rent-free generosity of friends and relations; sold all my furniture; bought new furniture; and packed and unpacked at least 11 times. I remember most of my previous known addresses:

1. 2117 Chadbourne Ave. Madison. With the 'rents.
   
2. c/Divino Pastor, 28. 4^o exterior-izquierda. Malasaña. Madrid. On Adame's couch.
3. 12th St. and 3rd Ave. East Village. New York. In the 4-ft high loft of David and 'Arni's pad.
4. 78 Washington Place. West Village. New York. 4 bedroom basement apartment. First in the roach-infested room right next to the dumpster, then in the much nicer rear garden bedroom with the iron burn mark on the floor. Revolving door of roommates.
   
5. Peralta Ave. Albany, California. In the house with too much dog hair, Christel, and two strange law students.
6. Carrer de Valençia. L'Eixample. Barcelona. Short stint to learn Catalan while living with a Uruguayan woman and another American student. There was a nice hammock in this apartment.
   
7. 1323 Santa Fe Ave. Millbrae neighborhood. Berkeley. In the mini-house with Pam. Addison enjoyed catapulting herself off the deck into the big fenced-in yard.
8. 2700 Piedmont Ave, Apt. A. South of campus. Berkeley. My favorite apartment, and the first without roommates -- sunny, hardwood floors, awesome yellow-tiled kitchen, bohemian neighbors and a marxist landlady.
9. here: 415 S. Pleasant St. Amherst, MA. aka El Rancho Brenneis. Affords a beautiful view of the Mt. Holyoke Range, but I could do without the mold, the asbestos, the traffic, the termites, the broken fireplace and the constant freezing temperature.
10. Next up: 23 Orchard St., Northampton, MA!

OK, back to packing.

Sorry Joe, No Go.

I'm buying a new gas stove for my Noho condo, but it turns out that installing it is the hard part: the people who deliver it won't do it, the gas company won't do it... Only a licensed plumber can install my stove. Damn! Where to find a licensed plumber when you need one?

Not here.

Obama cleans up spilled ice cream. Do you?

Real Time Karma has posted a link to some very moving images of Barack Obama from one of the photographers who has been following the candidate on the campaign trail, and they're the perfect antidote to my 45 minutes spent in the Jiffy Lube waiting room. I sat there half-reading an OK! magazine and half-tuning out the rattle of CNN while overhearing two dudes laughing that Obama was going to reveal his anti-American sentiments and impose the "rule of Africa" on the U.S. once he's elected. Living in the liberal, academic Massachusetts bubble without cable news, I haven't encountered this kind of talk at all, so it was a bit sobering, and I sat there expecting worse.

Ojalá Obama's elected, but does that mean that every time we pop out of our bubbles we're going to hear racist comments about him, for the foreseeable future? These two guys were easily Obama supporters, by the way, who were just joking around. The ethicist in me wonders where a line gets crossed: when do I make my disgust known, and when do I just ignore what can be chalked up to two meatheads making a tasteless comment? It's a question that we all encounter in our daily lives over a variety of transgressions, no doubt. But transgressions that concern the first African-American president strike me as in a league of their own.

Now Addison is Six

Last weekend, while dl004d and the Grand Marnier were visiting and combing the 91 corridor with us, we stopped at Wentworth's, an ice cream joint in Hamden, CT. Long story short: the dog scored a bowl of K-9 Crunch, generously purchased for and spoon fed to her by ERD, because I would never indulge in such a thing.¹



I was, as you can see, skeptical. But she clearly loved it, and we decided to make the 11th her impromptu birthday, since she was born in October. And how appropriate that she should enjoy her birthday ice cream where I myself was born!<sup>2

1</sup> Buy a dog ice cream? Why not dress it in a pink sweater and carry it around in a handbag? Sheesh!
²No, not in an ice cream parlor; at the Yale/New Haven hospital. Close enough.

The Calm Before the Storm

Tonight, while I watch the 3rd presidential debate, I am going to make pumpkin/walnut/chocolate chip cookies, and attempt not to throw any of the dough at the television screen. I hope John McCain brought snausages for Mr. Puddles again.

On October 31st, I'll be moving to my new condo in Northampton. The seller was a monster, but I got the damn thing in the end. I still need to buy a stove. I've signed up for cable, begrudgingly, because I can't bear to be without The Daily Show (which, according to the cable people, has been available to me "as a fluke" up until now).

On November 4th, we'll elect a new president. Hopefully, it'll be the right one, that is, the one on the left.

For the last four weeks, I've had mono. There was a lot going on, and then suddenly I was sidelined. Running is verboten.

And the economy crashed. Just in time for me to buy a house. On the bright side, I snagged a lower interest rate.

Whew. No wonder I'm exhausted. Aren't we all?

Subject + Verb + Clause, Clause, Clause

Diagramming sentences, that lost pleasure of 7th grade English class, has been cropping up all over the place lately. I deal with decent sentence structure all the time, as I grade papers and either find sentences with breathless clause after clause after clause or curiously missing verbs or subjects that leave me desperately unfulfilled. If last night is any indication, Sarah Palin has never diagrammed a sentence in her life, or she would understand that they have to have both distinct starting and ending points. I don't think I've ever heard anyone embed a run-on inside of a run-on and then abruptly end both in a comma like she does. I've seen a couple of comments in the New York Times lamenting the difficultly of transcribing what Palin says, and the end result seems to involve a lot of em dashes, repeated "also"s and invented periods.

Just now, I got a note from the campus Writing Center advertising a 5-week course entitled "The Fine Art of Sentence Diagramming," in which glorious fall Friday afternoons will be spent diagramming sentences penned by Henry James. Apparently, Gertrude Stein once said, "I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences." I honestly loved diagramming sentences in middle school -- it was like geometry for words -- but then again, I'm apparently an egghead. Better that than a serial run-on rambler!