is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Everything is more difficult in NYC. But it�s NYC!
Well, here I am. I am a resident of Brooklyn, NY! And it feels good. Except that everything is more difficult in New York City. I knew that before I moved here, and had been steeling myself for it. But the last day or so has been a practical lesson in the truth of it. Woke up this morning, moved the car for street cleaning, went to Brooklyn Heights to go to Keyspan to get my gas turned on. For some reason gas and electric are separate in my neighborhood, though they aren�t in Linda�s neighborhood, which is just a few blocks away? Anyway, I remembered to bring my lease, my ID, and a copy of a bill from a former address. The guy on the phone had said they would turn on the gas on the same day or the next day. Turns out, the gas won�t get turned on until next Wednesday, so until then no cooking for Jill. Went to the store and bought lots of food that doesn�t have to be cooked, lugged it back home on the subway.
While in Brooklyn Heights I sat down on a bench and called Verizon, because my cellphone only works intermittently inside my apartment, and I couldn�t get a decent signal in my neighborhood in general this morning. I spent 20 minutes on the phone being passed from person to person, and each time I had to re-explain that I had already ordered phone service, had been given a phone number, and needed a technician to come out and install a phone jack. Each time I was told that my name was not in the system, that the phone number I had been given belonged to someone else, blah blah, so I�d give the person my confirmation number and/or ask what I had to do to get phone service. Everyone kept using the weirdest reasoning, like assuming that I really wanted to keep the phone number I�ve never yet used, or that I was mistaken and I hadn�t actually set up phone service yet. Finally a nice lady helped me and stayed on the phone for some time figuring out the problem. Then she told me it would cost at least $150 to get a phone jack put in. At that point I told her I thought that after three years of disappointment I needed to break up with Verizon finally.
Later that afternoon another person from Verizon called to ask when I wanted my service turned on. He even made me explain the whole situation again, which for some reason I did.
Then I went out on the stoop, where people tend to sit around here, and where I get phone service, and started trying to find a cable company that would come and install cable, phone, and internet together in a package. Except that no one covers my area yet. Not Comcast, not RCN, not Cablevision. Time Warner covers my area but didn�t have my building in its database yet, so they have to go through some sort of voodoo ritual that takes two weeks and then they can have a representative call me about coming out for installation. By the beard of Zeus!
In the meantime it seems I can steal wireless from one of my neighbors (though that means I can�t do any online bill paying or the like because stolen wireless is a security risk!) and use my cellphone out on the stoop. It�s like camping, but without all the natural beauty.
There is, however, a whole colony of cute squirrels living in the vines growing on the power lines outside my back window.
My building super originally told me he would install a phone jack but then just handed me a jack and told me I had to have the phone company come and drill a hole through the building. I think he was being lazy but what can you do? He did jump right into action and remove the door to my apartment when my desk wouldn�t fit in the door, so he�s not all bad. Plus he has that charming francophone African accent. To me it is clearly a much larger problem not to get my desk in the door than it is not to have phone service, so at least he jumped to action at the right moment.
However it was annoying last night when I wanted to call a bunch of people and could not do so because I felt really unpresentable (moving, no showering for a couple of days) and knew that I would not be alone out on the front stoop. I finally got a signal for a short period of time in the back of my apartment, and got to say hi to Gus, who opined that Lead Pipe would be a good name for a cat blues singer. He doesn�t mean a person who sings the blues about cats, but a cat who sings the blues.
I�m not all that mad about the lack of phone jack, because it is going to make me finally break up with Verizon. Their level of service to me in my years at Amherst and in QB was so unforgivably bad, and so laden with anger and frustration on my end, that I can�t believe I was about to stick with them out of laziness.
(Talk to me in a couple of weeks if I find out that Time Warner won�t bring cable to my building.)
At least I have electricity.
In other news, I totally jammed my right small toe into a box, which hurt a lot, more than the average jamming-of-toe (not to be confused with toe jam) because I once broke that toe and, as you may know, there�s not much to be done with a broken small toe, so you just let it heal and it remains forever slightly mangled. And then when you hit it again, as you inevitably will, it just hurts a LOT. (The level of pain is amazing, like you've been betrayed by a good friend or something. Total "et tu, bru-toe?!") So as I was hobbling around looking for ice, and realizing I had no ice because I had not yet found the ice cube trays, I stepped on a shard of glass at the precise moment I was pivoting around a corner, so the shard got all jammed up into the sole of my left foot. So now both feet were hurt, and one was bleeding profusely. I looked in the freezer and all I saw was Malibu rum, Tanqueray Sterling gin, and Stolichnaya vodka (I moved the liquor, but not the ice cream, etc., for what I hope are obvious reasons). I decided to soak my toe in some Stoli. I also dabbed some on my bleeding wound before digging around in the sole of my foot with tweezers to extract the glass. Then I found a band-aid with My Little Pony on it, but it kept falling off my foot, so I used packing tape to hold the bandage to my foot. That�s where we are right now. I am surrounded by boxes to an overwhelming degree, it is almost four, and all I�ve accomplished today so far is what I just described to you. As Simon Critchley might say, very little� almost nothing.
3:50 p.m. - June 05, 2007
John de 413 - 2007-06-08 21:30:18
Oh my, that is beleaguering. I was just in the 718 last week! Hot, humid, but I had phone service. Moving just sucks. No way around it, I fear. Always beleaguers me.
I am now friends (one real, one virtual) with two of your friends. That's just spiffy. I also have lost both big toenails over the past two years due to crushing blows. We have so much in common. We're almost related, even.
Get your shit together, girl. I'm totally going to drop in on you over the next month or so...
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