Get outta town, eh?

So, today was the day. End of an era. We finally packed C. off back to Canadia, with his dad and two truckfuls of stuff stuffed into one full truck. Don't let the George Washington Bridge hit ya on the ass on the way out! (Sniff. I joke through my pain.)

Kool and the Gang (and by Kool I mean R.) showed up around 9:30 or so and we started hauling. L. had a bright idea -- station somebody on each landing and just hand off boxes one to another, so we wouldn't all have to run up and down all four flights of stairs with every box. And it was a bright idea, except for the fatal flaw that the lady Aretha sang so soulfully: "Every chain, has got a weak link." And the weak link in a chain of guys was, sadly, me. All the other boxes I could carry, but the book boxes were too heavy for me, and every time one of them came down the little pile on my landing grew. And there were a lot of book boxes. Literacy: scourge of a nation. Or at least the portion of the nation that helps you move. Plus my exercise-induced healthy glow (i.e. face shining as red as a neon beet) seemed to worry people. It's genetic, people -- I'm pale! Honestly, if I was about to stroke out (instead of just looking like it) I really would have said something. So anyway, they sent me upstairs to help haul stuff that I could lift out of the apartment, where I hogged the air conditioning and felt guilty about it for most of the morning.

C. & F., it's just as well y'all were moving out, cause with us hollering cheerful obscenities and random Pulp Fiction quotes to each other up and down your tile stairwell for three hours, you woulda got kicked out of this building if you weren't already leaving. You spend a morning with R., hauling cargo and sweating like a Sweathog, and see if you can help talking like a pimp for the rest of the day. (Kindly make sure that the video footage is not shown to anyone who still thinks well of me.)