The major takeaway from this adventure seems to be: stick with WP roomie. He's kind, easygoing, and frankly, financially loaded. He leaves papers, including his lease, laying around (hence my incredulous discovery of the price of the WP high life) but that may be counted as his only fault. In a space of about five hours, dude rescued me from car camping and offered to set me up at his place, no questions asked. And he did it all from across the effing Atlantic.
I'm going to convert just so I can nominate this guy for sainthood. People of the world, take note: WPR is a god among men.
Here's how this miracle went down.
Thursday at work I get a short email from WPR just saying hey, asking what I've been up to. We've been messaging on and off since I left his place in June, so there's nothing odd about it. I mention I'm on a new adventure in Westchester (namely car camping), but kind of joke about it and go on to talk about other things. Within hours, he's posted onto my ad on the CS site begging someone to give me a couch, and sent me the phone number of his friend in a nearby town who has his apartment keys.
I contact the woman via phone, text, and carrier pigeon. In short, I hound her like a third grade nickname. She agrees to pass along the keys. I get a half tank of gas and wile away my last hours at the A&P as I wait for her to get home from work. I am pretty much vibrating with excitement at this point that I might have a place to stay. I roll into this woman's neighborhood around 10:30 p.m. (she must be southern, or at least not from Westchester, as she immediately hugs and offers to feed me), get the keys, and speed to White Plains, where the giant, empty, and blissfully immobile apartment was waiting for me.
So that's where I am now. WPR should be back tonight -- I offered to go get him, but trying to get from an airport in the city to the suburbs on a Friday at 5:30 seemed like too much of a suicide mission. I also offered to take a bullet for him if need be but hopefully it won't come to that. Already visited the Wal-mart Temple, got a parking ticket (oops -- I guess my fall from grace is nearly complete), and am currently soaking the river shoes and pillowcase because it smells like my car and gives me nightmares. I swept and cleaned up the kitchen today as well. I guess having a math Ph.D. doesn't guarantee good housekeeping skills after all.
The kitchen particularly was like a murder scene, or, more accurately, the ruins of Pompeii. Flour, crumbs, bowls and knives as far as the eye could see. It was like he'd been Raptured in the middle of baking bread. Maybe he'd just forgotten about his flight to Europe til the last minute, as these absentminded professors are apt to do. Whatever. I fixed it, and if he asks how the counters got so clean, I'll blame it on fairies. He's Irish, he won't argue.
While I was doing the dishes, a pot fell off the drying rack and cracked one of his fancy ceramic bowls right in my hands. Flower pattern, delicate fluting... these are the kind of bowls that can't even go in the microwave. I was horrified. Not so horrified that I told him, though. There's no way he will ever find out what happened, as I disposed of the evidence in a public trash can in another town. I counted the others in the cabinet: only ten! Since the set was already incomplete, maybe he won't notice. Five seconds later I found another one in the fridge. So much for that. But who needs twelve bowls anyway?
It is 80 freakin' degrees and smells like fall outside -- am I dreaming? How am I gonna go back to 95+ Nashville in a week? My brief bout of homesickness was a direct result of briefly not having a home, so now that that's resolved I feel fine taking up permanent residence in NY, especially in White Plains where the people are friendly (aka, normal). I don't know where the chocolate pretzels thing came from -- I literally never had those til I came here and started sneaking them from the boss's snack basket. The SNL craving was the result of my being disappointed in not having seen a taping whilst in NYC because the procedure and wait for getting standby tickets is reminiscent of Depression era breadlines or some Soviet bureaucratic nightmare. Ed Helms, you may be famous, but I can't line up at 3 a.m. to see you crack jokes at 8 that night. I just can't.
Last weekend in NY -- what am I doing hanging 'round?
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