Radio Flyer

More on moving preparations:

In addition to trekking over to City Hall, paying the fees (see previous post) and hanging up cardboard signs, I also have to distribute flyers on the cars parked on my street. This is to inform my idiot neighbors that there will be a large truck coming and that they should think about parking elsewhere on that day because they will be blocked in. Not only is our street very narrow, but it is also a dead end.

In the five years I have lived in Boston, I have rarely seen many people pay even the smallest attention to these flyers. Inevitably, the moving truck arrives and they begin loading it up. About half way through, rude-inconsiderate-neighbor-person (RINP) will appear and will tell you in no certain terms that, “I have to get out!” This means that the poor moving guys will have to close up their truck and try to maneuver it so that RINP can get by. This operation can take upwards to thirty minutes. And seeing that I am paying them by the hour, it will end up costing me money. Did I mention I hurt my ankle?

You can’t fight City Hall.

As we hit the one-week mark until “Operation: move all of our crap,” I was tasked with going to Boston City Hall to obtain a moving permit. No, they do not charge you to move in and out of Boston…wait a minute, yes they do! This permit is for the moving company we hired to block a portion of our street in order to park their truck.

Arriving at 9am this morning and heading up to room 721 I was greeted by, you guessed it, no one. There were several people in the office that appeared to work there, but after many years working for the city, they have learned the fine art of never making eye contact with anyone from the outside world. Finally, at 9:20 a guy shows up (we will call him "Sunshine") with his city-issued Dunkin Donuts coffee and his pissy attitude and grunts, “Who’s first?”

Here is the deal. You go see Sunshine. You must show him that your moving company is bonded with the city. Then you need to give him a check for $8 for two signs. No cash. No credit cards. A check. For $8.

Sunshine does something with his computer and sends you to another office down the hall to get the permit. Mind you, I do not have the signs yet; I have to come back for them. I go to the other office and they want $20 for the permit. They take cash, cards, checks, Best Buy Bucks, whatever. I get some paperwork from these people and then go back to the original starting point. I take a seat.

Sunshine sees me and says (no lie) “You’re back already?”

When I was kid my brother and me used to read MAD magazine. They had this feature that was called “Stupid Answers to Stupid Questions.” My mind raced.

I chickened out. “Ya,” I said, “you told me to come back and get the signs.” Is it just me or do city and state workers always make you feel as though you are 10 years old?

In true bureaucratic fashion, the printer that made the signs was not working, so Sunshine wrote them out by hand. I grabbed them and beat it out of there. On the way out I also twisted my ankle pretty badly. Good times.

Dinner update

Things have not been too bad during the early going.

*Baked Tilapia with corn and black beans and rice

I bought a big bag of Tilapia fillets at Costco a while ago and it has served us well. You can basically do anything (within the law, of course) with Tilapia. Perfect for grilling as well.

*Bacon and eggs

A no-brainer, but very good.

Create a custom screen saver using Flickr

Using Flickr (www.flickr.com), search for pictures of whatever you are interested in.

For mine, I wanted cool pics of Tokyo at night. Make sure you search only for pictures that have a Creative Commons license(creativecommons.org). This allows you the right to use the images for non-commercial uses, and to download the high-res images from Flickr. As you find images you like download them into a local folder. Using your OS's preferences, set up your screen saver to run a slide show using that folder. You can also use this to set your desktop image as well.

This may seem time consuming, but if you are looking to see some really cool photos and need to kill an hour at work, this is perfect project.

Are you dead?

Have you ever been scanning radio stations in the car and hear the same artist being played on several stations at the same time? Do you immediately think that they have died?

Hot-diggity-dog

Steamed hot dogs with some chips and semi-frozen salsa.

This meal started as a BBQ, as I still have some gas left in my grill bottle. I was going to cook what appeared to be a burger as well, but it was very suspect. By the time I made the descision to nix the mystery meat it was too dark to grill.

We are now out of ketchup.

24

That is how many days there are until we move. For the next series of postings, I will be describing what we have been eating for dinner. Why, you ask, will I be describing what we are eating for dinner?

We have decided not to go grocery shopping until after we move. It is our goal to use up as much stuff as we can before 29 OCT.

There is no way we have enough food to provide 24 meals, but we will give it a shot. This is not a test of will power as so much it is pure laziness, so there will be the occasional pizza thrown in. It also does not cover items such as milk. So, please join me in this culinary journey where in two weeks I may be using coconut syrup that someone gave us as a side dish.

DAY 1 (5 OCT)
Being the first day, it was not a bad meal overall. Baked chicken with some Stove Top stuffing that may or may not have been opened in the 90's. We "marinated" the chicken with Parmesan peppercorn salad dressing. Why? My wife wanted to get rid of it.

Yum.