November 01, 2007

9:20 a.m.

Fun Is in How You Look at It

Tuesday, Hallowe�en Eve, Home

Such action and excitement here last night!

We stayed in a hotel Sunday night, driving late because of a late start, and listening to the Sox game on an AM station. I caught the last three innings in the Motel 6. There are those who will say it wasn�t a very interesting series because the Sox swept the Rockies. But there were great plays on both sides, suspense, excitement... and I got to know the players a little. I went to bed happy, set the alarm for Early, and had many dreams.

It sounded like my bandmates were showering (in the room next door) when I left about a quarter to eight yesterday morning. I just wanted to be on my own, not following their car, not feeling like I had to keep up or converse on the walkie-talkie.

I drove the final 600 miles in this state of complete funk. I don�t mean that I forgot to shower. I was just wallowing in morosity like a pig in mud. Crying now and then. Brooding on old wrongs. Listening to old Joni Mitchell. My guts had been a little upset this whole trip � just a touch, but enough to put me out of sorts and wonder what I was repressing. Drove hungry for a few hours because I couldn�t decide what I wanted to eat, or couldn�t find it once I�d decided. Out of sorts and off center. Fought the Sleepies, the Weepies, the Boredoms, the Blues, and finally pulled into my little parking space and unloaded a car full of equipment: four trips up the stairs.

I�d had a message from Wes saying be prepared for the apartment to be in disarray from the heating contractors, so it was no surprise to find that some furniture was scattered, and plants any old where. Most of the kitchen furniture was in the bedroom. But the baseboards are in, and though they�re not hooked up yet, they�re new and gleaming and clean. I have a huge long one in the living room, a long one in the bathroom � never had heat there before, woohoo � and the bedroom and kitchen. Tired, a little shaky from the drive, I took delight in the changes and decided to pretend I�d just moved in and that�s why everything�s out of place. But, look, I thought! My dishes are already put away, my bed is set up, the office is functional. Pretty good for just having moved in. They come roughly at dawn tomorrow to put in thermostats etc. The second floor apartment has a problematic layout so that might take a little longer, and they won�t remove the big heaters (I�ve been fondly thinking of the behemoth in the kitchen as �Bessie�) until all the apartments are set up, so that we have heat right through. It�s hoped they�ll be done by Friday.

Friday; so there�s no point in trying to get things organized before then. I can live in chaos for a few days, fair enough, and I won�t be here much this week anyway.

But meanwhile I picked up the phone in the kitchen to call my mates and tell them I�d arrived � only to find that the phone had no dial tone.

Base was working; bedroom phone was working. After troubleshooting a few things I determined that the jack itself was dead.

The phone jack is on one of the walls onto which they had installed a baseboard.

I went downstairs and asked Ben, boyfriend of Sunny my new landlady (landlady, that sounds funny; she�s younger than I am), if he thought the heating guys might have disturbed a phone line in the wall. The short summary is that Ben came up and found a junction box that had been squeezed by a baseboard, and spent about half an hour fiddling with old, short, brittle wires, and got the dial tone working again. (�There it is. No � it�s gone again. Crackle � crackle � There�s the dial tone! DON�T MOVE!�) He taped the wires and went back downstairs, and a few minutes later I noticed that Bessie was no longer throwing heat. Dang it, the pilot had gone out and my old landlord used to have to come over with a little blow torch (I�m not kidding) to get it relit. I tried relighting it myself in the �approved� way, without much hope, and the little light died out like an old fart.

So I went downstairs and knocked again. Ben came up once more and, in the middle of that project, Wes arrived with homemade soup. The heater was finally relit (sans blowtorch), we all sat down for a glass of wine in the (relatively unchaotic) living room, had a fun chat, and then the gentlemen left me to my late supper and quiet chaos.

Ben had noticed that my toilet was once again malfunctioning and promised to come and fix that when the heating project was done. He also said he and Sunny had noted that my little stove had been there since about 1960, and they were thinking about getting me a new one, depending on what they�re going for nowadays.

I like this change in management.

So I�m back once again, with a list that will keep me busier than a one-legged fella in an ass-kicking contest. But today I make the annual Salem pilgrimage with Dar, where we will put candles on all the memorial stones of those hanged as witches. Tomorrow there is laundry at Rose and Marc�s, and the giving out of many tooth-decaying edibles. Then I have one day free for catch-up, before heading down to New Jersey for the next gig.

..at which I will very likely wear these boots:

Next entry: Hallowe�en Eve Playoffs in Salem, Massachusetts � ye Pagans vs. ye Fundamentalists; and Hallowe'en Itself, Spent with Death in Purple, the Corpse Bride, an Angry Villager with Pitchfork and a Hasidic Witch