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… and I guess we just live here now, or something.
By briantologist | June 7, 2006
So right. We moved to Chicago recently. Would you like to hear about it? Good.
The drive was okay. I drove the truck, with Trucky riding shotgun, as one might expect, foreshadowing being what it is. I spent much of my sub-speed limit trek upward across the great Midwest thinking about how totally worth it it would’ve been to pay extra for a full-service move. E and Dame Judy were in the car, the former driving, the latter running interference with Gus, Smudge, and (mainly) Henry.
The cats were in various states of catatonia, if you’ll pardon the expression, by the time we got here. They spent an evening in the St. Louis, MO, garage of Maxxxx Power and Chesty LaRue, which let me just tell you did nothing to assuage their general feline existential shock and horror, something they’re generally not short on even when their persons are not moving them halfway across the country. Gus spent the entire move crouching in a corner, and only emerged to take a massive, horrifying dump on Dame Judy’s AeroBed a day after we arrived, signifying, I suppose, that everything would be just fine.
I learned something important about I-94 through Chicago. That something reads like this: NEVER TRAVEL ON I-94 THROUGH CHICAGO, FOR ANY REASON, AT ANY TIME, EVER, EVER, AND EVER, EVER. ever. Traffic on I-94 is like fat on a type 2 diabetic: there. It is there. Always and forever. Like my love for Tom Petty. Period.
I learned something else about a certain part of Chicago, the part where we live now: Our address, as I stated it to every single creditor and debtor associated with either E or myself, is actually about three blocks south of where we actually live. See, the funny thing about numbers is that apparently, people who are, how you say, “mildly retarded” (see also: “me”), can get them fucked up in their tiny primate brains, and then become absolutely convinced of the rightness of the wrong numbers. Much as I myself did. Ho, ho! Did the movers ever think that was funny! They thought it was almost as funny as the time I kept them waiting for an hour and a half on a Friday night while I was stuck in traffic and then lost on West Foster! Ho, ho!
I learned yet another thing about moving vans, too! Two things, actually. First, I learned that a 16-foot moving van is not, in fact, large enough to transport the contents of a two-bedroom home, regardless of what Budget’s rent-a-truck guidelines state! Ho, ho! Who needs a TV stand or a desk, anyway? Second, I learned that when you’re parallel-parking such a truck, and you cut the wheel to the left too soon, it can cause humorous side effects, such as ripping off a significant portion of the front end of your brand-new neighbor’s car! Ho, ho! Those crazy moving trucks! I am retarded!
Still, despite all this, we are here, E started work Monday, and I fucking love this place in a way I never thought I could love a place. Everyone should leave home, I learned twelve years after the fact. Just to figure out if home is where you think it is. More on this soon; for now, I’ve got a neighborhood bar to locate.
Topics: Baffled Mutterings, good times., Hoo! | 22 Comments »
June 7th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
You are so right about sacking up and moving away. When I first set foot in Broken Arrow after a harrowing 20-minute drive from midtown Tulsa … it was like being drunk with freedom.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
Oh, are you gonna have a great summer! Almost exactly 11 years after I moved away from Chicago, and I am bitterly jealous of you two. Chicago rocks. Enjoy, for me.
June 7th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
yay for houses!
it sounds great, brian.
you are not really a retard. you just have retarded tendancies…..
June 7th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
I haven’t even read past the first paragraph but I had to stop and comment about how CRAZY worth it the full service move is.
VERY FUCKING WORTH IT. My family moved from Gulf Breeze to Phoenix on The Company’s dime, and we had no less than 15 people in the house a week before the move packing up our crap. Like, the JUNK DRAWERS and shit. It was almost 20 years ago but it’s still the apex of fucking extravagance in my life.
June 8th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Welcome to Chicago! It sounds like you’re in the neighborhood of several of my good friends. Drop me a line and I’ll give you the skinny on the good bars – I’d love to buy you and E a beer sometime.
June 8th, 2006 at 6:33 am
Perhaps the reason you couldn’t fit everything into the truck is that you didn’t use my method for moving preparation, which is to spend three weeks prior to the move incessantly playing Tetris.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:00 am
Dammit! I knew I forgot something crucial! Christ, I’m not even sure where my Game Boy is; I thinkt that’s the last viable copy of Tetris I’ve got.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:17 am
Welcome to Chicago! May your unpacking go more smoothly than your parking attempts.
And neighborhood bars aplenty.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Dude! I told EVERYBODY for weeks when we moved to Stilly that we were at 5211, when in fact, we are at 5122! The elderly couple in said 5211 were a bit weirded out when all the inspectors showed up on the same day.
June 8th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Lotta “ho, ho’s” in there. Congrats on the move!
June 8th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Oh yes, those trucks magically shrink. The only thing worse than packing up junk drawers yourself is unpacking them and figuring out where to put all your junk, um, valuable possessions.
June 8th, 2006 at 9:30 am
Introducing yourself to your new neighbor by telling them you’ve just smashed up their car is a great ice-breaker. How could you fail to make a positive first impression with that kind of behavior?
Glad you all made it in one piece.
June 8th, 2006 at 9:48 am
I would swear from that photo that you’re living on the street that I used to live on. I must highly recommend a bar called the Hopleaf on N. Clark. Every beer you could ever want, but it’s gone very trixie in the last couple of years and is now full of wealthy, upwardly mobile investment banker-types. The Old Town Ale House is a great place but farther away; full of regular drunks and no fancy ‘atmosphere’.
June 8th, 2006 at 10:40 am
God I hate moving.
June 8th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Moving is the only reason I have not been buried alive in mountains of my own stuff. It’s the only way I know how to clean out a closet.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:34 am
sounds like a trip to hopleaf is in order (foster and Clark) and guess what? What is the best summer festival in the city of perpetual summer festivals? MID SOMMER FEST — up in Andersonville — this weekend, note the spelling of SOMMER — it’s a SWEDISH FESTIVAL!!!
OMG I can’t wait.
June 8th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Dude! now I want to pack up all my shit and move somewhere else. I’ve been feeling that itch lately anyway, but now I really want it. DAMNIT!
June 8th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
welcome to chicago! If you need tips on locating a good neighborhood bar, I can help — I pretty mcuh know them all!
June 8th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Awesome. You haven’t had the three months later homesick feeling kick in though. You don’t think it’ll hit you, but after moving a very long distance from the only home you’ve ever known, you’re gonna get this feeling of dread, like you don’t belong there. It’s weird, but it’s happened to everyone I know who’s moved out of state. Just keep telling yourself that you’ve got two homes now. The “where the heart is” home of your family and the “where I live to keep from slitting my wrists” home that you’ve settled in.
June 9th, 2006 at 8:36 am
As I told Doug Amos before he left for SF: JUST DON’T COME BACK NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO! You run out of money? Find a job, goddammit. You miss home? Come home to visit but for the love of angels & precious moments DO NOT MOVE BACK!
I’m engaged to be married, by the way. Just wanted to let everyone know. :)
June 9th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Congrats! I’m going to be in the Chicagoland area visiting my family over the 4th of July, and you are more than welcome to come over to my sister’s house in the ‘burbs for my mom’s 75th birthday party! No one parties like the Larson ladies!
Actually, your time would be much better spent locating that bar… :)
June 12th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
And being able to buy wine and booze and 6 point beer at the Jewel or Dominic’s………so so nice.