must.have.needle.for.record.player.soon.

Best laid plans.

Anybody know how to get a queen size boxspring up some stairs with a low overhang and a support post blocking the way?

Anyone?

After about 2 1/2 hours, much swearing, non-support posts being ripped out and one stair removed we gave up. That would be the very first thing we attempted to move. We then ended up having to disassemble the futon, move it up, and put it back together again. There was foul language, but that bitch went back together and we're currently sleeping on it. AND almost everything else big is up there. Except the record cabinet. And the big bookcases. And the table formerly known as the liquor table. And, of course, my desk. It's almost like we live there. Last night we sat in the reading nook surrounded by our books: the Han Solo trilogy (not mine) nestled next to The Bhagavad Gita (also not mine), up against the Norton Anthology (I wish that were mine) on shelves next to The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld (oh so mine), 2 copies of Ulysses (staring at me until my 40th birthday), and so many books I haven't read but have always meant to.

Grace has moved gracefully. Though if she doesn't either knock over wine glasses from the upper shelves or manage to fall about 15 feet onto the stairs below it'll be a miracle. She zips up the stairs and very cautiously creeps down. She keeps looking at Peter and I wondering if and when we're going to yell at her for being in a wrong place. If the indent is any indication it appears as if she spent her first day sleeping on Peter's pillow. And she spent last night sleeping on him. Which is typical Grace behavior.

This morning I scrubbed the watercloset. I've taken to calling the room-with-the-toilet the watercloset for obvious romantic reasons. And now my hands are aching from the vigorous scrubbing I gave the floor. And because that wasn't enough I scrubbed the kitchen sink too. The caulking may happen tomorrow night depending upon my ability to scrub out the tub which will depend on the state of my arthritic feeling fingers after checking people out all day. It will also depend on the state I'm in after coming back from picking up a reimbursement check from the alcoholic caretaker. If I get out there without having scotch with her it will be a miracle.

A brief recap of yesterday: Acres of Thrift, moved some stuff, went to Black River and talked to a roomful of highschool students about editing poetry with Peter who talked about writing poetry and remembered just how happy I am that I'm not in highschool but still had a splendid time, voted, ate a very quick supper, felt pretty calm about the inevitable DVD Release Party chaos until the DVD player wouldn't play the brand new Ratatouille DVD we had just bought and then wouldn't play a second brand new copy we managed to get ahold of in about 5 minutes meanwhile 140 people are crammed up against the doors anxiously awaiting said movie and we somehow managed to get to the movie through the chapters instead of the play movie option only to have it freeze and skip about half way through forcing us to jump a chapter to get past it.

And then I went home and drank a coupla beers to recover.

I was faced with the task this afternoon of trying to discover whether it was a player or a DVD problem. First DVD I tried (another brand new one I might add) and the DVD went into the player and never came out.

We're getting a new DVD player next Tuesday.

It's a little soon to get excited about the weekend as I still have 2 very long days of work without my compandre, but I can't help it.

I'm gonna sit in a replica of the Millennium Falcon, yo.