It takes a village to get Da moved, 3

My village has three new transient members: Greg, Dominic, and Dennis. These amazing men loaded all my earthly possessions onto their backs and had them out of my squalid second-floor walk-up in under 45 minutes. Getting them into my new place took all of fifteen minutes longer because (1) an elevator was involved; (2) they had to move the truck at least once; (3) they were offloading four extra pieces, which took extra care because they were gen-u-wine Chinee an-ti-cues.

I tipped them $30 and a beer apiece. They earned it.

monshu was taken aback by how much interest the youngest, Dominic, showed in the cabinet. He admired the broken ice pattern and asked about the place where I'd bought it. Yes, people, now that I've got it home I can say that it really is THAT NICE. All in all, I forgave these guys for arriving more than an hour early, even though it left me a frantic wreck unfit for further activity today.

Tomorrow, my village really arrives in force. Village headwoman e, is picking up paint, mollpeartree, and princeofcairo and getting all Martha on my semi-gloss white walls. This is how I will now I am really an adult with my own place: I will wake up Sunday with walls around me that are actually a colour and it won't be because I was out tricking the night before.

Before any of that, though, I have to toss the rubbish out of the studio, scrub the floors, and hand the keys over to my engineer--if I can find him. If not, I plan to document my handiwork so there's no way my heinous landlords can screw me out of my security deposit without a fight. On top of the interest, they owe hush money: Twice I've had people tour my unit and managed not to scream "Get...out! at them in a haunted wail. Besides, these innocents have their own lessons to learn, just as I did four years ago.