Over the past six weeks or so, I’ve been playing a very long, very slow game of chess with the founder of the company I work with. He has a chessboard in his office, you see, and while I was in his office one day talking to him, I moved p-k4. He responded a few days later.
He’s not usually in Atlanta. Typically, he spends four or five days up here and the res of his time down in Florida. For the past few weeks, he’s been making a move each time he comes up for a visit, and I’ve been answering after he leaves. I’m playing a very conservative game; I have no idea how strong a player he is, but his opening defense (Sicilian) shows that at the very least he has studied the game to some extent.
I fully expect him to well and truly kick my ass; the man is brilliant, and if he’s as good at chess as he is at everything else he’s studied, he will probably be a formidable player indeed. Time will tell.
Though I didn’t come here to talk about chess. I came here to talk about moving.
Yes, I am moving. I’ve found another apartment about ten minutes from my current one, which is the same size and considerably cheaper. It’s also laid out very differently–tiny bedroom (which is totally dominated by my enormous cast-iron king-sized canopy bed), huge living room. The huge living room is a nice feature. I have a loft, and until now my computer desk has been beneath the loft. The new living room is large enough for me to put the computer desk next to the loft, which opens the possibility of doing suspension bondage beneath the loft–something that joreth has been interested in pursuing lately.
But, during this move, I violated my own prime and hard-won lesson: I rented from U-Haul.
U-haul sucks. You know U-Haul sucks. I know U-Haul sucks. But planning is not in my nature, and when I found myself with a very short time in which to procure a truck, I chose the path of least resistance (hah!) and rented a truck from U-Haul.
Now, I’m used to U-Haul’s cumbersome rental procedures, their overpriced moving supplies, and their creaky and oft poorly-maintained trucks. What I was not prepared for, however, was the accelerator cable to snap off the gas pedal while I was backing the truck into the new apartment, nor for the screw holding the gas pedal to just kind of cease to do its job. One does not, gentle reader, normally expect to step on the gas in a motor vehicle and have the gas pedal just fall off beneath one’s foot and start flopping around in the footwell.
Of course, thanks to aforementioned inability to plan my way out of a paper bag, I was doing this at roughly midnight-thirty Eastern time, when (a) U-Haul is not readily and speedily available and (b) it’s dark. Nor did I have a flashlight handy, which meant that (a) I had to fix the truck myself (b) in the dark.
It’s a good thing I rock like a rocky thing, else I’d likely still be there.
I was not able to move everything from the old place to the new, though the big stuff requiring the use of a truck was finished. That means that I am looking pretty for actually finishing the move, as I have until Wednesday to be completely cleared out of the old place.
And that brings us back to chess.
I expect the company’s founder to make a move today r tomorrow, to answer the one I recently made. The reason I expect this is that all the company’s principles will be in Atlanta tomorrow, for a very large meeting with certain Unnamed Persons upon which, I am gravely told, The Future Of The Company May Rest. This meeting requires a great deal of work on my part, as I will be doing the materials which will be presented.
“Franklin,” I was told not half an hour ago, “eat lunch late tomorrow. For the rest of the week, be prepared to be at the office until Unreasonably Late.”
Which poses a bit of a dilemma, as you might imagine. You see, among the week’s activities must be Moving The Rest Of My Shit and Cleaning Of The Old Apartment. Which I will, apparently, be able to do only between the hours of O’Fuck Thirty and O’Fuck Forty in the AM, over the next couple of days.
You know what I like about Fate?
That’s not a rhetorical question. If anyone can think of a thing I like about Fate, I’d love to hear it, ’cause I’m kinda drawing a blank here.
I slept at the new apartment last night. This morning, I got up bright (hah!) and early this morning to find that the pilot light in my gas water heater had mysteriously been snuffed out, and I had no hot water.
It’s gonna be that kind of week. I want pie.
