Sunday, October 23, 2011

The move...

Moving a piano is an art form and one that I enjoy observing as such.  I've witnessed the act enough times that, even when performed by four Polish guys, I can understand the untranslated dialogue because the whole time it's dawning on me that I've had these arguments before in English many times about which way to turn the piano and how to ease it down and heave it up the stairs.  I did have to look up the word "suka" though.  I was sure it was something profane.   

Anyway, my slightly uncouth movers were quick about the job and managed to accomplish everything in under four hours, for which I salute them.  And even despite my own unintentional unpreparedness (I think I may have blogged before about how one can't prepare for anything even if you do think you've prepared for everything).  I did the ol' set your alarm for PM instead of AM number and sprang out of bed not at the sound of my alarm at 7am but the sound of the movers buzzing the front door at 845am!  Not my best move all day.  I was intending to get the cat out of harm's way early, take a few small things over including the bike (yeah, I know it's not small) and pack up what was left laying around that we couldn't find boxes for, well before the movers got there.  Unfortunately, none of that happened.    

I let the movers up and started trying to frantically do some of that stuff but ultimately decided to take the cat over with her litter box first and get her set up.  She was fairly well behaved on the walk over (all 6 blocks of it), and even did her standard slinking around low to the ground maneuvering that she does whenever introduced to a new space.  Then, once she had settled on a spot to hideout until she was comfortable, she started to hack and heave as though she was about to leave me a hairball.  Her idea of christening the apartment I guess.  But after a second or two of watching her she seemed to be having a bit more trouble than just a hairball and I wondered if it was more serious.  She gave me quite a scare but ultimately calmed down and when I returned later on with the next batch of small stuff she seemed fine.  

In my absence, though, the movers had begun to box things using all the extra materials that they brought and that we found out they'd be charging us for (see, no matter how much you prepare, there's always something that you didn't prepare for…they charged us for tape, too, so they could double wrap all the boxes we had packed…plus they wanted me to take all of my clothes out of the dresser so they could just wrap it in and carry it in one piece and that took extra time).  The good thing was they were making awesome time even doing all this.  Before I knew it we were finishing up at the old place and I was trying to beat the truck over to the new place on foot.  

The piano went up the stairs a whole lot easier than I thought it would.  At the old apartment they took off the legs, wrapped it in moving blankets and plastic and slid it onto a cushioned board with rope handles, ran two straps through holes in the bottom of it and dragged it down the stairs with relative ease.  

At the new place, they quailed at the sight of the first flight of stairs and we joked a little about the task ahead.  One asked if I was sure I wanted it upstairs.  It wasn't long, though, before they were sliding it in the front door and into my bedroom where we each played a few triumphant chords on the thing upon unwrapping it.  It felt good.  


After everything else was in and we paid the guys, Katrina and I took off down the street to a small restaurant on 5th Avenue called Korzo.  They had an amazing looking brunch menu that even offered all you can drink Mimosas and Bloody Marys.  I dug into a German omelette with a side of grilled sausage and Katrina had their potato latke with a poached egg on top.  All the food was amazing and our server actually was gluten free savvy and realized without my having to tell him that the sweet potato fries would be no good for me because they were fried in the same fryer with all the breaded foods.  That was a little hard because I wanted to devour everything on my plate since it was the first food besides dried figs and peanuts I'd had all morning.  

Upon sobering up from my two mimosa buzz, we set to work on getting the last few items at the old apartment over to the new place and I eventually began unpacking what little I needed to to be comfortable enough in my new room to take a nap.  A nap which never materialized because my mind is completely full right now.  So here I sit having just devoured my dinner in the breakroom at work and contemplating how I'm going to stay up for almost 24 hours straight yet again.  

Hopefully, once we are completely done with the old apartment, place cleaned and keys turned in, I'll get a little rest and can get to work on this piano and electronics piece.  I need to make it a longer piece and organize the structure of it, then Tania and I need to get together at some point so I can work out the electronics part and everything…but right now, I'm too unsettled to do anything creative.  Even though I did take a little break from supervising the move to improvise on the piano for a good five minutes while the movers kept on moving.  It's good to have a new place with a piano in it.      

No comments:

Post a Comment