New Relationship

There's a new attachment in my life now. Hopefully you all will like her as much as I do.

She's well put together and has tantalizingly sleek curves, although I haven't exactly figured out how to press all of her buttons.

Here's a good picture of her...

What? Did you think I was talking about something else???

Anyway, I got the new phone, and it's definitely been a significant upgrade so far. I love getting email on my phone (although honestly, it doesn't deliver it fast enough for me). For some reason, Yahoo! and other email systems take a pretty good amount of time before their messages get sent to the Blackberry. But GMail works ridiculously fast. Not sure exactly why that is, but from now on i'll probably be doing most of my personal emailing through Google.

But back to the Curve. I've already sent in the $100 rebate because even with an upgrade, phones are freaking expensive.

The whole rebate thing is also similar to my ongoing quest to find a surcharge free ATM.

The search continues, after striking out at US Bank, Bank of America, Lake Shore Bank, and a bunch of other places (even one called the Five-Thirds Bank, for the life of me I can't figure out why you'd name your financial instituion that).

Of course, after running low, I did manage to get cash from another source...selling my body on the street.

Kidding (maybe), I started using my debit card and getting cash back at the register. Take that banking institutions.

People talk about being carbon-neutral, I want to be commerce-neutral. I don't want any store or business to make any margin or profit from my business. I want to be every company's WORST customer. (As an example, some analyst at MBNA [now Bank of America] probably hates me because I never carry a balance, I never respond favorably to their upsell pitches, and I always use my reward dollars....suckers)

Anway, the whole cash back thing it's honestly much better in theory than in practice. Bed Bath & Beyond will only let you max out at $40, and the cashier only had $5's and $1's. At least I'm ready in the event I accidentally wander into a strip club.

Furniture at last!

Yesterday marked the official christening of my new apartment as an actual living space.

For over a week, I had a set of walls, running water, and cable, but none of that stuff to tie the room together.

You know, furniture.

I got some last weekend, but thanks to my building's ridiculous freight elevator schedule, couldn't get anything delivered until yesterday. But now it's here, and now I sit on my couch rather than lying on the floor. I feel so much more civilized. Since I told people I'd post pictures of the new apartment, and since I only recently noticed I can include pictures here, I've done so.

The living room: Before Furniture

I was really going for the whole 'transient' look...It went well with the hobo beard

The living room: After Furniture


A significant upgrade I'd say.

With my furniture in place, I set about putting the finishing touch on my place. I had just the signature art piece to tie the whole place together, and today I finally got a frame and happily displayed it...


Marvelous!

Remember that Whole Moving Thing?

In one of my previous posts I talked about UPS' great work at mangling my boxes and lots of my earthly possessions.

The boxes were kind of heavy, but still, I really don't think that gives UPS an excuse to beat the hell out of them.

Again, nothing was damaged, but below are a couple snapshots of their handiwork, you think I should've stamped them 'Fragile' ?

See that blue thing? That's my shirt.

Part of me thinks I should fight them on it and try to get compenstated. But then again, nothing is really broken or missing. Even in the busted-up condition, the stuff arrived on-time and they haven't made any effort to charge me more for mis-weighing them. So I think I'm just going to call it even.

Negative Beard

When I left my job at the end of June, I made the executive decision to stop shaving. I figured, with weeks off and nothing to do, and no real obligation to look presentable, why not let it go and see what happens?

Weeks later, I had myself a beard.

Whether it looked good or not is clearly inconsequential, and regardless, I won't have that opportunity until I become wealthy or powerful enough to tell everyone else to screw off.

Of course, when I made the decision to shave, I didn't realize it would take so long.

I'll put the pictures up on Facebook, but as I went through the process, I snapped some photos of other facial hair styles I could've gone with. (In hindsight, maybe I should've chosen the six inch mutton chops)

Anyway, I'm clean shaven now, so don't let anyone say I'm unwilling to sell out my principals to conform to the standard idealized corporate image.

Et Tu, WaMu?

Why does every bank insist on screwing people that aren't its customers???

I've been trying to find a nice surcharge-free ATM around my apartment, one that won't nail me for a couple bucks every time I try to get some cash. I hadn't made much progress when I finally got my hopes up.

There's a Washington Mutual ATM a couple blocks from my building.

Great right? Washington Mutual was the first (that I know of) bank to widely publicize a big 'No-Surcharge' policy.

"Come use our ATM's even if you aren't our customer! Be our guest!"

Apparently they've abandoned all that, and now it's just $2 for everyone without the benefit of a WaMu account.

Bastards.

It must really cost them a lot of money to not royally screw the cash-poor.

But I'm not giving up, since I have no job and nothing to do until Costa Rica, rest assured, I will find a free ATM!

And thus, the era of HDTV was born

I'm not sure I've ever been as nervous as when I was transporting my new 47" LCD television, without the box and protective padding, in the backseat of a rental car.

Every intersection represented potential disaster, every oncoming car an inbound missle.

The reason the TV was out of it's packaging is because the freaking huge box wouldn't fit in the car trunk or backseat, even with the cushion ripped out.

So the driving between the Costco (one of the only stores to actually sell this model) and my apartment building was tense indeed.

After getting it in the apartment, I then set out to build the TV stand so I could put the TV on something and turn it on.

The TV stand was just one of about a million things I assembled in the last 24 hours, including a bookshelf, three lamps, vacuum cleaner, etc.

The TV stand wasn't hard to put together, but the entire process involved me rationalizing putting a really expensive TV on top of a $150 dollar TV stand.

But I did, and then with the HDMI cable I ordered last week, hooked it up to my cable box.

Wow....amazing

As a point of reference, my last TV was a cheap Philips TV I bought around 2001. That TV never really worked right, the buttons sometimes switched functions, and the closed captioning kind of went off and on automatically, but didn't really have the words right.

So this was definitely an upgrade.

I can't really describe how awesome it is to watch HDTV and I don't even watch that many TV shows. Now I just need RCN, my cable company, to drop these Chicago sports teams and hook up a feed from Philadelphia. That and some furniture, but for now the TV is just fine.

Sweet Home Chicago???

So now I live in Chicago.

It’s definitely going to be a long process to get fully comfortable, but part of that is the complete lack of furniture.

I flew into Midway yesterday around 1pm and after collecting my giant checked bag took a cab up to my apartment building. The cab driver got lost, twice. An auspicious beginning for sure (Also, why is it that even if the cab driver gets lost, you still owe him the fare on the meter and all he has to do is apologize? Why didn’t he get lost back to Pennsylvania?)

Anyway, I got in, and after going through the move-in process and receiving about a dozen keys and a dozen forms, finally set foot in my new one-bedroom apartment.

Nice, clean, and completely empty.

So I went down to pick up my UPS shipment. I had shipped five extra large boxes to my building with a lot of my stuff in it. No furniture, but most of my clothes and personal stuff.

Apparently UPS routed the boxes to Chicago by way of Afghanistan. Every box looked like it had been beaten to death by a group of angry thugs. I’m putting the pictures up on Facebook, so everyone can see if they want, but it looked pretty bad.

Fortunately, all my stuff was there with only a few casualties. My dvd player now has a nice dent in it (but its functional, phew), and my Buddha came detached from his base. He’s still smiling though, so I’m guessing he’s cool with it.

So I unpacked the boxes and spent the last 24 hours trying to get situated.

To finish up my last post, the cable guy did come this morning and worked real well despite the handicap of not having a TV. So for now my cable box is a really expensive digital clock, but I should have the TV soon (crossing fingers). I also got my internet hooked up, although it doesn’t seem to be working as well as the Wi-Fi network I was leeching off of yesterday.

Even with all this running around, I managed to find time to catch the Phillies-Cubs game at a bar near the apartment. Stupid Phillies bullpen.

This weekend I’m hoping to get the bed and furniture settled (if not delivered). Maybe by this time next week, I’ll have a furnished apartment.