For pretty much 19Thoughts entire life, I've come from you from my bedroom in Somerville. Sure, there were a few Amesbury and one Brookline dateline, but this is the first one from the spare bedroom in the new 19Thoughts Mansion.
If some of you can't remember, or were wondering why the heck I wasn't around, it's because I've been moving. Actually, Aly AND I have moved. It's one step closer to being married and to be honest, it's actually pretty cool. Gone are the days when Aly and I have to add an extra hour to whatever we were doing so that we can travel to one or the other's home to get clothes for the next day.
That's just awesome.
And the place is pretty cool too. It's a basement apartment, which originally didn't sound too appealing, but there are some pluses in living underground. For one, there aren't many stairs to climb. Just about every place I've lived in, I've lived on the second floor (at least). Here it's just one flight down. That made moving a freaking breeze (or in the very least, easier).
So, the scorecard goes like this: (since college) Amesbury to Winthrop to Amesbury to Danvers to Wakefield to Amesbury to Somerville to Brookline. Before that it was Lawrence to Amesbury to North Andover (Andover). From three moves in 21 years to eight in nine years. I feel like a military brat.
Even brats have friends. Last weekend, a bunch of people helped Aly and I out and without them, I'd still be moving boxes from Somerville to Brookline. It all began last Thursday when I moved some stuff from Aly's place here. The following day I took off from work and moved Aly's entire room, which took about three hours of loading and unloading my car. Then it was off to Somerville when I made a trip with my books (which weighed a freaking ton) and other crap that I've collected over here as well.
Friday night, we stayed in Franklin, where we got a 16-foot truck that we loaded up with engagement party booty and some furniture from Bob and Lauren's place. We made it to Somerville around 11:00 and started to unload it all. The one sucky thing is that the couch that we were given wouldn't fit into the house. That blew.
Then Skaus, Jay and Connolly joined Bob and I in getting the rest of my crap out of my room. For a guy with one bedroom, I shoved a lot of shit in there. I mean, A LOT of crap in there. Just loading it into the truck took about three hours. Then we went to Aly's where it took us ten minutes to load her stuff in there. The guys were awesome, better and more efficient than a moving company ... and worked for less cash (pizza, beer and Anna's Taqueria).
While we were moving, our families were helping Aly get everything unpacked and situated. Jackie, Lauren and mom cleaned the rooms from top to bottom, while my dad and Roy put together a few pieces of furniture. We finally got everything in and returned the truck to Franklin. By the time we got home it was 8:00, we were asleep by 9:15.
The next day we woke up and just started to go to town on the place; unpacking, setting up the stereo and TV, hooking up the computer (but no internet), making sure stuff was where we wanted it to be. Since we went to bed early, we were up even earlier. Al and I worked a good 12 hours, but by the time we went to sleep most of our stuff was in the right place.
During the week, we would do a little bit more: making sure the bathroom was set up ok, we bought a futon (which was a pain to set up), got the phone up and ringing, stuff like that.
As much as I like living here, there are a few things that are sort of tough:
1. Parking. This is fascist Brookline, so the Fueher will not let you park on the street. This means that I have to park in a lot or in my case a garage. This is the most difficult adjustment I've had to make because in all of the other places I've lived parking was free and my car was always outside my house. Here, it's $90 a month (which is actually pretty low) but the garage is at least a mile away from Casa de Magrane.
There a few silver linings to this dark cloud though: a. it's covered, so I don't have to dig it out of the snow and b. I am trying to lose a bit of weight so walking two miles and hitting the gym every night should allow me to shed a few lbs. The reason why I want to lose weight? I was showing Aly some pics of me and Debbie (she had never seen her and was curious as to what she looked like) and I looked really thin. I'd like to be that thin again.
2. The light. Where we put our bed is across from a street light that shines right in my eyes. Consequently, the first week of sleep have seen me wake up at least four times a night. I am a notoriously light sleeper and any little noise or change in light wakes me up. This puts me in quite a shitty mood. The obvious solution is to get dark curtains, which we will.
3. The smoke alarm. Every time we use the stove, the smoke alarm goes off. It is one of those really high pierced beeps and drives me up a tree. Tuesday was the first day it happened and I was in a bad mood. I tried to disable it, no dice. Finally I got so pissed I punched it. Hard. This didn't break it, though it did break a lot of the plaster around the detector. Also, it left my hand bloody. Not smart.
Despite those three things, I really am enjoying the new pad and especially living with Aly.
This weekend was pretty fun. Friday night we just chilled out, we went for Indian food at a restaurant called Rani. I don't usually eat Indian food, but I love it. Hopefully, this will become more of an every day thing. The meal was very good and I can see us making this our place. It's on Beacon Street near Coolidge Corner.
After that we got "Twisted" with Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson and Andy Garcia. It wasn't very good, in fact I'd say that it almost sucked. There were so many plot holes that it made the movie a pain to watch. Most of the time you were saying to yourself, "Wait a second wasn't that guy the ... ?" Judd is hot and everything but she hasn't played any other roles other than the one that she plays here. Skip this.
Saturday was Jackie's birthday and we had the entire Manasso brood over for brunch in Brookline Village followed by cake at our place. Everyone was there, including her brother (who came up for the day from Atlanta) and Grandma Connie who took a train from New York City for the occasion. It was a lot of fun. Good food, good company and all around good time.
That night we went to Johanna and Brian's engagement party. I like Jo and Brian, we hung out with them last year in Washington DC, and it sort of sucks that they live there because otherwise I guarantee we'd be good "couple friends". The party was cool, held at her parents' place in Andover (near Phillips Andover, where her dad is a minister) and I got to meet a bunch of Aly's American University friends.
Another good time. The only thing that sucked is that we were beat from entertaining all day, so we left early and crashed hard.
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