Again...

It never ends.  By that I mean, the constant introduction of obstacles by the universe.  Some of them great, some of them minuscule and manageable.  I called my new landlady last night to let her know I'd be by to bring over a few small things and let her know our move in date while I was on the phone with her.

Now, a few days ago, Katrina and I were cleaning the new place when our landlady came huffing up the stairs frantically (as frantically as a woman in probably her 70s can) asking if we had been using any water.  The tenant downstairs had water coming from his ceiling and she wanted to know where it was coming from.  At first, I'm thinking, "great, this again."  It was even raining out at the time so I'm thinking it could be a leak from outside and here we go again.  But then I realized the good side of all this:   My landlady was there in seconds to respond to the problem.

However, this means that she has a plumber coming on Tuesday and until then there's no water in our bathroom…until he fixes the problem which might entail taking out a wall downstairs.  This is what she tells me when I called last night.  Now I feel like a real jerk for moving in early.  And I have yet to tell my cousin about it.

Good news is the apartment is pretty much packed up and we await the movers at 9 am tomorrow.  The actual brunt work of moving is actually the easy part (especially when you hire people and all you have to do is direct them). It's all the logistical bullshit from finding a broker who's not going to bait and switch you, to finding a place, to passing the credit check, to seizing it before anyone else does, to signing the lease, to finding respectable movers at a decent price (don't even get me started on having to find ones that'll move a piano properly and not charge an arm and a leg), to hiring said movers, to gathering together boxes because you threw all of the ones you had out because New York City apartments are tiny and then finally to packing every damned thing in your apartment into whatever boxes you can manage to scrounge up (and carry awkwardly on the train hopefully not during the evening rush hours).

It's a mess and every time I move into an apartment where I have some reservation, even the tiniest, about whether or not I'm going to like it still in a few months, I quail at the thought of having to do this all over again.  Especially with a piano.  I just found out that I have an 80 year old neighbor directly below me.  I'm going to have to make friends with him or having the piano at all is going to be moot.  And that will actually be a problem.  My process for fleshing out piano sketch no. 4 into a full on piano and electronics piece to be performed in February is going to involve sitting at said piano and playing…a lot.

We'll see how it goes.  So wish me luck.  I gotta finish my tea and head to work.  I'm sitting in 'Snice right now on 8th Avenue in the West Village soaking up their wi-fi and listening to one of my favorite Fleet Foxes songs that just came on their stereo.  So I'll probably hang out and listen to the rest of it.  Laters.