Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Settling Into Place
Sunday
June 3, 2012
"Words can't express what we're all feeling at this very moment."
-Damon Killian in The Running Man
I'm all set up and moved into my new apartment in Huntington, a nice place located very close to Marshall University. It's a recently refurbished unit with plenty of space and first-floor access. I hit the jackpot on that, landing what is easily the best of the 12 units in the building from a location standpoint. Sometimes things work out well for me, and this was one of those times. The only annoyance is that the sound of my neighbors upstairs walking around is louder than I had expected, but if that's the worst problem I end up facing here, I'll be doing just fine.
As I knew it would be, yesterday was a moving marathon day. My parents were extraordinarily generous in helping me to get some household items that I desperately needed, most importantly a bed. We went to nearby South Point, OH to hit up the closest Sam's Club, which worked out well. Unfortunately, the queen-size mattress and box springs were too wide to fit into their rented minivan. But my Dad planned ahead, as he usually does, and he had enough ropes and string to secure the bedding on top of the minivan. So we took it easy on the drive over here, but luckily we made it over the Ohio River safely.
My Dad checked the back of the minivan before we moved the mattress and box springs to my new apartment.
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I'll admit it: I had visions of a strong wind gust sending the newly-purchased box springs and/or mattress off the minivan and over the side of the bridge, but luckily that didn't happen. I sustained a flat tire going over the Ohio River on my way to work at ABC 25 (from Evansville, IN to Henderson, KY) on my old Dodge Neon in 1999, but luckily we didn't face any such problems yesterday.
I slept in my new bed for the first time last night and, wow, it is very comfortable. My parents came through for me big-time, and my appreciation for them is immense.
Today provided me a chance to start unpacking things that had been in boxes or halfway loaded in boxes at Velvet's house, just enough unloaded so I could find everything I needed as best I could while doing a minimal amount of unpacking. But now that I'm at a place where I hope to be for some time, I can finally unpack in a real way. It will take more than one day to get everything set up, and I'm still McNulty-ing it up with the lack of some things you might expect to find in an apartment, like a sofa. Give me some time to work on it.
At least I have some places for people to sit if need be, not living a real-life version of "Norwegian Wood" by The Beatles. My Mom referred to the new apartment as a "Man Cave", which was laughable since it's the antithesis of a Man Cave with just one TV tucked away in the bedroom area, no real lounging area (save for the kitchen table chairs), the lack of a sofa, etc. That will change, and I'm thrilled with the place, but I have what I need to get by at this point, which is really all I need right now.
How great is it to have this setup? This morning I realized that I needed milk to make a proper frappe, so all I had to do was walk across the street to 7-Eleven, buy two gallons of milk, and then bring them back here. That will work quite well. Traffic on a Sunday morning with Marshall not in session was about as easy to handle as it's going to get, and while 3rd Avenue is a one-way street, it's five lanes wide. So when I need to cross the street, I'm not exactly going to be doing the Memphis Strut taking my time getting from one side to the other.
One really nice perk of going up to South Point is that I found Coke Vanilla Zero at the Walmart located next door to Sam's Club. I love that stuff, and for reasons that I don't understand they quit distributing it in the Nashville area a few years ago. Walmarts here in Huntington don't carry it either, but they do in South Point and over to the west in Ashland, KY at the two Walmart locations there.
You could imagine my jubilation at finally finding it again. It was all I could do to not start celebrating like mad as if I had won the bonus round on the old $100,000 Pyramid. Suffice it to say that I was extremely happy to find and later enjoy some Coke Vanilla Zero for the first time in a long time.
I would be remiss to make a game show reference and not make note of the passing of Richard Dawson, who hosted the game show Family Feud for years and also served as a panelist on the old Match Game series from the 1970s along with doing an amazing job in his supporting role as Damon Killian in the classic Arnold Schwarzenegger 1987 film The Running Man. One time a couple of years ago it came up in conversation with Stacy that I believed that Dawson was deceased. She adamantly disagreed, saying he was still alive, and a quick check of the internet proved her to be right.
It's jarring to watch classic episodes of Feud now and see Dawson kissing all of the female contestants on the show on the lips. You would never see that today, but much like Calvin Harris once sang, "It was acceptable in the 80s" -- at least if you had Dawson's swagger.
What awaits me here next week remains to be seen. For sure I have to switch the utilities over to my name tomorrow and also buy some things that might come in handy, like bread. Also, for the first time in more than five years, I'm living on my own again. And, at least at this point, it's so far, so good with that...
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