A snow day from work makes for a fruitful day shut-up in my apartment. Accomplishments:

• Cleaned and degreased stovetop (note to self: next time working with undiluted ammonia, wear rubber gloves).
• Reorginized kitchen cabinets: made room for my new KitchenAid mixer; relocated my spices away from the stove; and established newspaper/cardboard recycling storage area under sink.
• Finally got Raul, my super, to fix my kitchen sink faucet (which he did after [apparently] fixing an unrelated sudden leak in my kitchen ceiling).
• Added-to and organized my binders full of recipes and restaurants to try.
• Labeled said binders.
• Tidied book-nook and reorganized bookshelves (in part to make room for said binders).
• Added recently purchased CDs to my alphabetized Case Logic binders (A through C only; I have many CDs).
• Logged recent purchases in my things-I-have-bought Excel document.
• Gathered and stored broken/obsolete electronic equipment (old cell phone, iPod, laptop, etc.) in my broken/obsolete electronic equipment Rubbermaid bin.

More apartment chores remain (clean bathroom, hang pictures, store sweaters/shoes/etc.) but this is a good start.

There’s a mouse in my house and he had the gall and impressive dexterity to lick the peanut butter from the trap I’d set without springing it. So I brought in the big guns and borrowed Paddington the Cat tonight from his mistress, Kelly. We’ll see if he can get the job done. . .with extreme prejudice.

Postscript: Although I have located no mouse carcass, I believe Paddington scared away the mouse. At least for a while. Paddy definitely knew there was a mouse afoot; I caught him at times crouching and staring intently into the crevice between my kitchen counter and wall where I’d imagined a mouse might hide.

It’s sort of embarrassing: I work in real estate but whenever anyone asks me how big my apartment is, I have no idea. It happened again last week and when I got home, I pulled out the tape measure, a pencil and paper, and a calculator and figured it out. My apartment is 550 square feet.

No, I’m not telling you how much my rent is.

I told my super several times to no avail in the past two weeks that my kitchen ceiling was leaking, leaking to the degree that water was pooling between the wall and the paint, resulting in sags like those under Fred Thompson’s eyes.

Jose finally stopped by last night, checked the ceiling, convinced himself I hadn’t imagined the leak, then left. A few minutes later, I heard scuffling and banging from the apartment room directly above my kitchen. Then he stopped back and told me the leak had originated from a pipe upstairs and that he’d fixed it. He’s giving the watery mess three days to dry, after which he says he’ll stop by to repair the water damage and repaint the wall. In the meantime, I look forward to inhaling countless potentially toxic mold spores.

Dana and I loaded our rented Chrysler Town & Country with the milk-crates of books and miscellaneous supplies that have been in storage in my parents’ house for years and drove off for New York City. It was overcast during the 7.5-hour drive with only spots of drizzle.

Midway through Pennsylvania, we encountered a drunk, stoned or distracted driver in a tan safari-like vehicle that frequently crept over the white lines. He’d also do confusing things like leave his left-hand blinker as he drove in the passing lane. We gave him a wide berth and then lost him when we stopped for lunch. Hours later, as we approached the George Washington Bridge just outside New York City, a massive backup of cars clogged the upper-deck tollbooths. Because it was around 5 p.m., we chalked it up to rush hour. But as the line of traffic moved a few hundred feet onto the bridge, we spotted the wayward driver in the tan safari-car who had gotten into an (apparently minor) accident and was blocking the left two of the four lanes at a rakish angle. Sweet, sweet just desserts.

Reaching my apartment building at last, we learned the elevator that had been out of commission for the two weeks before Christmas was still inoperable. We had to make about 10 trips up and down four flights of stairs with all my stuff. When it was over, we were out of breath and ached like old people, and still had a stressful drive ahead of us to return the car to LaGuardia before it turned back into a pumpkin.

I am slowly plotting a mini jungle of houseplants for my apartment. I’ve already been given a spider plant named Inigo to keep Phil, my philodendron, company. I’ve unequivocally been promised to receive, sometime after Christmas, a potted spear of aloe vera that I’m told will soon overtake my life and my kitchen with skin-soothing, ugly spike-leaved goodness.

You know what’s a pain? Turning a screw into a wall and finding out what you thought was concrete and/or brick is plaster. Although my apartment’s walls are nicely painted and appear rock-solid to the naked eye and knuckle, I am finding its materials of construction would appear to be 90% plaster and spackle. I’ve researched the issue and tried using those plastic insert screws but the problem I’m having is that either the hole I drill is too large for the insert to fit snugly/effectively. Or, if the hole is just short of being too large, the insert won’t fit at all. Then when I try to gently hammer it in, it buckles or warps so there’s no way a screw could ever fit into the insert. Certain walls of mine are now more scarred and pockmarked than Manuel Noriega’s face. On the plus side, for these inept acts of home improvement, I’ve borrowed Kelly’s drill, the innocent email exchanges for which smacked of unintended innuendo. (“I also have a zillion bits and a screwdriver kit with this nifty poseable extension socket, so you can screw or drill in an area you can’t really get your hands in.”)

I learned only recently that my apartment building has a laundry room! Other than location-location-location, an elevator, and maybe rent control, nothing lifts a New Yorker’s spirits more about his dwelling than on-site laundry facilities. Although the basement in which my laundry room is situated is slightly less comfortable than the basement of Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs. I’m serious. Through a maze of twisty passages, there are heavily padlocked doors, flickering lights, exposed wires, odd noises and so on. I will not be surprised to find a warm, Snuggle-fresh skull in a dryer.

Kelly and I were talking recently about how there are always those handful of bullet point items you overlook when looking for a new apartment. Such as: Does the building provide cockroach-extermination services? And if so, in what manner? It’s always different and a good thing to know in advance. At my old apartment, the exterminator would hit every apartment the first Saturday morning of each month. Andie’s place has a sign-up sheet in order to schedule a time. And Kelly’s bug-buster only seems around in the early afternoon weekdays, when normal people need to be at work.

I thought it wise and helpful for the future to list some of these questions and points of consideration. Let me know what I’m missing.

General

• Is it an elevator building? A walk-up? Is the stairway wide enough to move furniture easily?
• Top-floor apartments are generally quieter but less convenient. Ground-floor apartments are generally noisier but more convenient.
• Is the apartment located near a potentially noisy stairwell or elevator?
• Are there security bars on the windows that have fire escapes?
• How many electric outlets are there per room and where are they positioned?
• What’s outside the windows? (e.g. parking lot, fire station, busy street, brick wall, peace & quiet, etc.)
• Positioning of windows: Will there be regular sun and is that something you’d want in a given room?
• Rap on the walls: Are they drywall, plaster or concrete? Good to know for noise transmission and hanging stuff.
• Try the faucets and the shower, and flush the toilet: gauge the building’s water pressure.
• What is the number of closets and space inside? Will your wardrobe and other stuff fit in there?
• Are there laundry facilities on the premises? If not, where’s the nearest Laundromat?
• Do the closet doors and others open and close property (e.g. they don’t stick or close completely)?
• Try to visit the apartment at least twice, during different times of the day, to gauge noise levels, light, etc.

Outside

• Where do you dump your trash? Check out this place: Is it neat and clean? If it is, this is a sign of a good super.
• Is there graffiti on the walls of the building or on nearby buildings? If so, it perhaps indicates the level of neighborhood thuggery/annoying teens.
• What is the apartment building’s proximity to subway/bus stops? Proximity to grocery shopping, restaurants, bars and other places you’d attend frequently? Walk around the neighborhood and check it out.
• Parking (even if you don’t have a car, it could be good to know this for guests who may have one): Is there a garage, meters, free spots on the street, etc.?

Kitchen

• Will a kitchen table actually fit in there?
• Are kitchen faucets mounted high enough to accommodate big pots and water pitchers?
• Are the shelves in the cupboards a proper height for whatever you’re going to store in there?
• Is there enough countertop space for food preparation?
• Is the fridge door mounted on the preferable side?

Bedroom

• Will your queen-size bed actually fit in the bedroom with room to walk?
• Will it be quiet, regarding its position to other apartments and the outdoors?

Kelly swung by my old apartment tonight to help clean, so that I might get at least a fraction of my security deposit back. She scoured the stove, rangetop and kitchen counter, while I swept, and cleaned the fridge, kitchen tile and bathroom floor. Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls makes great apartment-cleaning music.

For my move I opted for FlatRate Movers and I have mostly good things to say about their pricing and the move itself. They showed up much later than I wagered. Instead of arriving in the scheduled span of 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. they rolled up at 4:45 p.m. To be fair, they did call to keep me appraised (“We’re stuck in traffic in SoHo!”) but I don’t think they’d ever allotted enough time earlier in their day to reach me by 2:00 or 3:00 p.m.

I stayed out of their way and for most of the 2.5-hour move-out time attacked my shower grout mold with Windex and an old toothbrush.

Because my new building has an elevator, the move-in took only an hour. Moving guys live for elevator buildings.

The only damage I’ve yet to spot is that the top-left corner of one of my Billy bookcases got chipped, but nothing a little love and wood glue can’t fix.

And I discovered later that one of the three guys had taken a massive dump in my toilet without flushing. And I thought movers weren’t supposed to leave anything behind.

As a youth, I read the series The Three Investigators, the biggest Hardy Boys rip-off ever. But awesome nonetheless because the chums’ hideout was located in a junkyard. A concealed corrugated drainage pipe passed under a mountain of stray auto parts and emerged into a buried trailer which the Investigators had refurbished inside as their clubhouse/workshop/crime lab.

I’m signing a lease on a new apartment tomorrow, still in my current Inwood neighborhood but with a better layout and amenities like a bedroom door. It shall become my new hideout, a secret oasis in the junkyard tip of Manhattan. I don’t enter it through a pipe but I do have an elevator. Stop over sometime after my lease starts November 1st, why don’t you?

Taking out my trash this afternoon, I came upon Rodolfo, the building’s super, sitting out back on the patio with two roosters. A friendly fellow with a shaved head and omnipresent cigar, Rodolfo explained that he ran into some friends in the park who asked if he wanted the roosters and he thought, why not. So now they bunk in the building’s basement adjoining his apartment. He feeds them corn and sometimes bread, lets them roam around in the garden, and hoses them down when it’s hot and sunny like today.

The young one is two months old and spends most of his time flopped on the ground, as if still exhausted from the rigors of birth. But when I tried to pick him up, he came alive and darted around in annoyance, then stood just out of reach to bob his head and train a beady eye on me to gauge the possibility of further encroachment.

The older one is six months old and already the archetype rooster, with regal red comb, a frisson of earth-tone feathers covering his neck, wings and bulbous body, and sticklike yellow legs ending in feet with curiously elastic toes. He seems to spend most of his time preening and investigating bits of gravel and cigarette butts as potential food sources.

I asked Rodolfo, who’s from the Dominican Republic and whose English isn’t great but a dictionary better than my Spanish, if the older rooster was crowing yet. He didn’t understand my verb, so I said, “Is he, you know—cock-a-doodle-doo!”

Rodolfo laughed and said not yet, confirming that the onomatopoeia is different in Spanish: “In my country, every day at 5 a.m., quiquiriquí!”

Saturday, September 29, 2007 Update: I heard a rooster crow for the first time today. It happened at 11 a.m. Let’s hope it stays that way.

I like this weather: the coming chill. I leave my windows open and before bed, I put on my stocking cap, long-sleeved T-shirt and pajama-like pants, and roll up in my tan comforter like a corndog until my alarm goes off and I don’t want to leave the comfort. We’ll see how let quaint this gets when the snow and the ice arrive.

With great satisfaction, I completed assembly today of my Ikea bookcases. After reorganizing the furniture in my apartment, I lined them up against the wall in the nook of my long front hallway, previously underutilized and really not useful for much other than shelves. The three of them together measure approximately 6.6 feet tall and long by 11 inches deep, a cozy space.

I think bookcases are an important step in my development as a New Yorker because in general they count as nonessential furniture and indicate that one means to stick around the city for awhile. The shelves are mostly barren now although I’ve moved my collection of roughly 125 DVDs to a pair-and-a-half of the shelves to make it look fuller, like those professional seat fillers at the Oscars. Eventually of course I want to stock the shelves with books, but the remainder of my collection currently resides in milk crates stacked in an upstairs closet of my parents’ house in Ohio. I’ll eventually get around to moving them, moreso now that I have a home for them.

Until I read a recent New Yorker profile of clothing designer Karl Lagerfeld tonight, I thought I had a fairly decent-sized collection, somewhere in the low-hundreds and just enough to be cumbersome and curse-worthy in a move. But get a load of Karl’s collection:

Some years ago, he bought a mansion in Biarritz, where, he says, he spent millions of dollars refurbishing it, staffed it with servants, and stocked it with a hundred and fifty thousand of his books. In 2006, after realizing that he had not visited the place in two years, he sold it.

Good lord. I think that’s more volumes than most libraries own. And unlike my lowly particle-board shelving, Karl probably had, like, solid leather bookcases emblazoned with diamond-encrusted Chanel logos.

A few weeks back I spotted a cockroach perched near the edge of a shelf on my newly assembled bookcase, so I whomped it with a beefy rolled-up issue of Vanity Fair. It crumpled like an aluminum can and none of its appendages twitched, which satisfied me that it wouldn’t be going anywhere just then other than hell.

I stepped away to grab the trashcan and when I turned back to the bookcase to dispose of the corpse IT WAS GONE. It had not fallen to the floor. It had not staggered off to die fully behind a David Foster Wallace hardcover. It was not to be found anywhere, which was eerie and a total horror movie setup. I thought I would turn my head very slowly and see the cockroach lounging on my love seat, uninjured and grown as large and surly as Orson Welles. Or the script would read: "Later that night as Jason sleeps, vengeful cockroaches swarm into his orifices and snack on his organs, much to his consternation."

Anyway, I was reminded of this today when I read a recent Scientific American article on zombie cockroaches, which do exist. Hardy little fuckers. I will now be unsurprised yet still very, very disappointed if I find that mangled bug hiding out in my Raisin Bran.

I temporarily solved my lack of a bedroom door by putting up a tension rod in the doorframe from which I hung a red velvet curtain. It sounds like I’m decorating the dormroom, but I think it looks kinda classy. There’s something dramatic about parting such a heavy fabric for entry and egress. It’s functional, too: I’ve found it’s thick enough to trap heat in the bedroom and to block assorted dripping faucet, ticking clock and refrigerator motor noises from other rooms of the apartment. Now I just need to trick out my bedroom with a bordello theme and I’m all set.

Someone parked this violent-red child’s desk in the lobby of my apartment building. Affixed to the lid was a Post-it note advertising a diabetes medication on which someone had written “Yours Free.”

It’s mine now! It is the same height as the arms of my love seat so I am pressing it into service as a funky end-table. It also offsets the blue of that furniture in a perky way. Plus, I just like red.

After much consideration, I renewed my lease today for another year on my apartment in Inwood. If a few of the key Pro items were Cons, I’d have put much more weight into moving; that’s the stuff I really care about.

Pros:

• The building and neighborhood are very quiet. Neighbors in adjacent buildings do play loud music sometimes in the early evening, but on worknights, it’s shut off by an hour appropriate for early-morning rising.
• Rent for a spacious one-bedroom in Manhattan couldn’t be much cheaper.
• Groceries in the neighborhood are cheap.
• I’ve yet to spot mice, rats or cockroaches in the building.
• My street and the neighborhood in general seem friendly and family oriented.
• My apartment is convenient to the A and 1 subway trains, and by car, directly off the Henry Hudson and the Harlem River Drive.
• The super recently planted shrubs and flowers flanking the entrance to the building, which is a nice homey touch.

Cons:

• My rent rose slightly. But rents rose for all rent-stabilized apartments in the city.
• My bedroom doesn’t have a door. Is this really a problem?
• My bathroom door is busted. I’ve got to get the super to fix this. It doesn’t close all the way, which is only an embarrassment when I have company.
• I’m way uptown. But the A and 1 trains are reliable and the commute affords me valuable time to read or listen to music.
• My apartment’s up five flights of stairs. Justification: exercise.
• My building’s in a grubby neighborhood. But that’s New York; I can live with it.
• Water pressure (mostly the toilet and not the shower) is flaky at times. I think I can live with that.

You know how when you’ve been gone a long time and you return to notice the pleasant smell of the place you live in—maybe old wood and soap and a slight mustiness—that you never normally notice because it’s always there when you are? I like that.

The sun and rain conspired for a rainbow today, which I photographed as I walked from the subway home after work. The red, orange and yellow are clear, but my camera swallowed some of the spectrum; in reality it was a full seven-color marvel.

Lately I’ve been thinking about (and smelling) fresh colors in association with my apartment building. Perhaps emboldened by the city’s recently approved rent hikes, my superintendent has been making capital improvements, such as repaving the front steps and repainting the trim indoors. All week he’s been slopping violent red enamel-gloss over the previously brown surfaces of window frames, molding and banisters. Today, he went for the door exteriors on my floor, and as I turned the corner at the top of the stairs, I saw mine was the color of an evil candy apple and just as sticky.

It reminds me of a detail from this Guardian article about Stanley Kubrick’s quest to film the perfect red door for Eyes Wide Shut. During preproduction, he ordered scouts to canvass London and photograph cinematic red doors. The one included in the movie was simply built on a set at Pinewood Studios and only appears onscreen for a few seconds, as the character played by Tom Cruise is welcomed through it by a prostitute. And still, somewhere in Kubrick’s estate in Hertfordshire, among the storage boxes of obsessive research, correspondence and notes, are hundreds of snapshots of anonymous red doors.

Red is one of my favorite colors, so I like my door’s makeover. It’s fighting a winning battle with the walls in the building’s stairwells and hallways, which are the texture and color of sulphur. The combination may be as garish as a 1970s Fiestaware pattern or a McDonald’s in hell, but it’s better than the previous pairing with brown.

New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted last night to increase rents for the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments (including mine) 4.25% on one-year leases and 7.25% on two-year leases, according to an article in today’s New York Times (“Despite Protests, Rent Board Sets 7.25% Increase” by Janny Scott). The increases are the highest since 2003 and apply to leases renewed between this October and September 2007.

Building owners supporting the raise say they’re being pinched by fuel costs and a rise in real estate taxes. As for we poor tenants, researchers at New York University released a report this month finding that the number of apartments considered affordable to those of moderate-income households fell nearly a fifth from 2002 to 2005.

It’s quickly becoming even more of an island for rich people here.

There is additional internet network-naming nerdery going on within wi-fi distance of my home computer, referencing the four-armed Hindu god of wisdom. I’m Argo, as you will recall.

I called 311 for the first time earlier this week and I was pleasantly surprised that it worked for me. It’s a general-purpose, 24/7 New York City question line for people who need to discuss matters with a human, instead of fucking around with Google for half an hour to retrieve, say, a plain English explanation of how Alternate Side Parking works. The stereotypical 311 caller is peeking out from behind her blinds while speed-dialing about shady looking characters hanging about the block, garbage on the sidewalk or noise disturbances, all of which are legit reasons to call; 311 is often billed as the non-emergency 911. But the kindly operators are at the ready to help answer any NYC question.

I was calling because my apartment building came under new management effective April 20th, along with a notice that my rent was going up $53.20 a month. Although 311 wasn’t able to answer why, they gave me the direct number for the specifically named New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, Office of Rent Administration, helpfully adding that the office wouldn’t open until 9 a.m. There someone answered my question right away: owners of a rent-stabilized apartment like mine can’t raise rent during a lease unless it’s provided for in that document. Usually, those reasons are if the owner makes major capital improvements, but even then, the owner must obtain written consent from the tenant or get DHCR approval.

But the sharp fellow I spoke with at the DHCR correctly guessed where the increase was coming from: “Was the previous owner charging you preferential rent?” he asked, referring to the difference between the regulated rent and the actual rent paid, otherwise known as a rent concession. I was unsure. When I got a chance, I checked my lease. Why, that document is a treasure trove of information! For instance, did you know that at least 80% of the hardwood floor in my bedroom is supposed to be covered with rugs or carpeting? I sure didn’t. It also turns out I signed a rider to pay $53.20 less than the legal rent. I do vaguely recall discussing this with the landlord at the signing and I’m still not sure how I was able to swing a sweetheart deal (my charming self? my witty bons mots?). But unfortunately the rider states the concession is not only temporary, it doesn’t apply under successive owners. Hey, it was fun while it lasted.

I finally got around to hanging the fish mobiles my friend Joe got me for Christmas/Birthday 2005. They were thoughtful gifts because they’re meant to integrate with the “Under the Sea” theme of my bathroom I started with my fishy Target shower curtain.

The Ocean Mobiles, as they’re called, are from HQ Kites & Designs and are appropriate for damp environments because they’re made of sturdy nylon. Crisp, colorful designs, and they arrive fully assembled. Seven different sea creatures are available, including dolphins and sharks.

I like to think that not many people have lost a bag of Allen bolts in East Harlem, but New York being New York, it’s probably happened at least twice before and I’m only the latest of the Allen bolt casualties.

The bolts I lost were for assembling a pair of used iron chairs donated to me today by my friend Kelly, the author of the play about Ménière’s disease. Recently, she was moved by my plight of having little furniture. It’s a shame I’m getting furniture out of that line, because I like repeating it, repeating that the only furniture I have is a love seat and a bed. I don’t actually want to receive furniture; I usually bring it up at bars when I can’t think of anything else to say, which is often.

My reasoning is, and I think you will agree, that it’s uninteresting for someone to say to you, “Hey, I have a kitchen table with four chairs, a couch, a recliner, two end tables, a halogen lamp, an entertainment center that has my television, Tivo and Xbox in it, a desk with a chair, a computer stand, a bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and a hamper.” But you hear that all someone has is a love seat—unloved, apparently—and a bed—well, what’s with that guy? Tell me more, you would say. And I will. Sometimes, I add that I have constructed an end table out of three cardboard boxes, one stacked upon the other. The top box is the one my Calphalon came in. People want to hear that story. Or at least people in bars do, or pretend they do.

Perhaps that was the clincher for Kelly, who agreed to give me her unused chairs after hearing my sad tale. They had co-starring roles as props in her play and they’ve been lounging around her apartment ever since, disassembled in boxes that are taking up valuable space. The catch was that I had to go get ’em, which was fine by me.

Uninterested in taking the weekend-unreliable A train or performing the obnoxious backtrack-then-transfer business on the 1 that I’ll spare you the details of, I instead got off the 1 at West 125th Street and crossed all the way over to Kelly’s, which is a haul. It’s like, say, walking from my previous apartment on the Upper West Side through Central Park to the East Side. I haven’t done much walking in Harlem, and I can report that it still adheres closely to its trait of having a lot of black people in it. I can also tell you that Harlem smells like coconut and incense, particularly around the Apollo, although I’m unsure why. In addition, there is a Jimmy Jazz store.

Kelly’s building is a few blocks north off Lenox Avenue and there was a gentleman standing on the stoop as I arrived, casually smoking a joint. After getting buzzed in, I took the stairs up and noticed a hand-lettered sign taped to a wall of the top-floor landing that read, “Don’t Throw No Garbage In The Stairwell,” on which some William Safire-type had scribbled out the “No” with a ballpoint pen. It must have done the trick because the stairwell was litter-free.

Kelly has at least two roommates and Paddington, a friendly black cat with an eye infection. The chairs were boxed up near the door and ready to go, bound in twine and lashed to one of those collapsible metal wheelie-cart contraptions that the elderly and the obese use for hauling groceries. I insisted on just taking the boxes, grasping them by the bound twine and telling Kelly it would not be a problem. It wasn’t much of a problem, except that I skinned my fingers where they rubbed up against the cardboard and nearly blew out my flimsy arm muscles. Plus it started raining on the way back to the subway, which is when I noticed the bag of Allen bolts must have fallen out. At a crosswalk, I happened to glance down at one of the boxes and saw a suspicious bag-of-bolts sized hole as well as a pictogram of a crossed-out umbrella suggesting that I shouldn’t be getting the boxes wet.

When I arrived home, I opened the boxes and inventoried their contents, realizing that the bag of bolts I lost was for just one of the chairs. The other box included a full bag of bolts, so I have one potential chair to add to my love seat/bed/end table family. I don’t, however, have an Allen wrench, so after a trip to Home Depot for that and more bolts, I can get cracking on my chair assembly.

To herald the holidays and complement the Christmas lights and decorations many of my neighbors put up last week, the super placed a petite Christmas tree in the foyer of my apartment building while I was away.

As an even better holiday treat, he seems to have fixed my Phantom Toilet during my absense. It would occasionally flush itself and continue running. This wouldn’t usually be a huge issue, but the toilet is one of those vacuum-flush varieties, and to have it suddenly start running in the middle of the night would intercut my dreams with perilous whitewater rapids until I woke up to groggily jiggle the handle.

At the Kmart above Penn Station, I finally located some drapes in the appropriate size and the color I like (blue). Also, they were well priced at about $20 per two-pack. I bought two sets for the windows in my main living area and two light-dampening blind sets to replace the grungy ones in the bedroom.

In a sure sign I’m getting older, I laid down big money tonight for a Calphalon eight-piece set of nonstick aluminum pots and pans. Later, while walking around my neighborhood, I noticed someone was throwing out one of those yellow and black metal Fallout Shelter signs, which I’ve wanted since I was about 15, to the point of giving some thought to sneaking around at night and prying one off the brick wall of the local grade school. Surprisingly, I did not stop to retrieve this booty from the trash and take it home, for any shelter housing Calphalon is too upscale to feature ironic metal street signs nailed to its walls.

Paul, my mover, showed up at 8 a.m. sharp to haul all my belongings uptown. Because his bread-and-butter is hauling furniture, he only had an older Nissan flatbed truck, but was able to stack and pack everything densely and securely, like the Beverly Hillbillies jalopy. We made two trips on account of the loveseat, which did fit in the elevator of my old building, but wasn’t much fun to carry up the five flights of stairs in the new one. At several points, I thought surely I was suffering from heatstroke or heart arrhythmia, and I was breathing like Chubby Checker in a buffet line.

After the move, I headed out to Target again for a Brita water pitcher, some clothes hangers and other miscellany. On my way to the grocery, I checked out my neighborhood, passing a taco truck and a group of old men playing dominoes on a folding table they had set up on the sidewalk. I bought some basics: a block of cheese, generic Honey Nut Cheerios, Pringles, cranberry juice, Granny Smith apples and a coconut-flavored soda named Coco Rico. By the end of the day, I had finished most of the cleaning, which involved spraying-on Lysol and wiping every horizontal surface. I put away about half my stuff. I assembled the bed, hung my clothes and filled the closets. I still need to put together my modular shelving, store my DVDs and hook up the stereo, and there’s plenty more shopping to do, foremost for kitchen supplies and drapes for the main room and bedroom, as well as a cover for the light in the bedroom which someone made off with at some point.

While cleaning and storing, I found the usual stuff one finds laying around a recently vacated apartment: instructions for the radon detector, spare change, a stray screw. However, I also found porn.

Cleaning a high shelf in a closet, I spied rectangular black plastic that I assumed was part of a roach trap. Standing on a milk crate to extend my reach, I retrieved four VHS tapes with black-and-white laser-printed labels. Because I don’t have a VCR, I’ll offer some reviews based on the labels:

• Fuck Holes #31. That’s a lot of fuck holes! This one is a bit alarming as it uses the same typeface as Arabica, a popular chain of Cleveland coffeehouses, although I don’t think there’s any relation. Brought to you by a company called Legend Direct, this tape’s second feature is Disgusting Fat Girls #2, which reminds me of that dialogue from The Silence of the Lambs:

  Jame Gumb: Was she a great big fat person?
  Clarice Starling: Why, yes, she was a big girl, sir.

• The hygiene-challenged fatty fetish continues with Filthy Fat Fuckers #3. The only hint into the majesty of this one is a subhead on the label that reads, “Approximately 240 Min.” and a note that it’s produced by the sunny folks at Sunshine Films, Inc.
• Another hit of Sunshine is the more tamely named Latino Sexpots #4. Do people still use the word sexpot? I think “sexpot,” I think Vargas girls. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing from a porn standpoint, I suppose.
• Finally, a classic from Vivid Video has a title that makes me titter: Behind on My Mind. A label note helpfully suggests, “Adjust Tracking for Clearer Picture,” when it just as easily could have read, “For Clearer Picture, Buy a DVD Player, You Cheap, Horny Bastard.”

You never know how much stuff you truly own until you cram it into cardboard boxes. Most everything I have fit into one smallish room, but seemed never-ending while I was packing it up, using heavy duty Ingram and Barnes & Noble boxes donated by Eric and Andie, and my noisy new 3M tape gun. All told, it took one full day last weekend and most of today to sort and box everything. I’m not labeling any of the boxes because I like to be surprised, like at Christmas, plus it will force me to unpack them sooner as I don’t know what’s in which box.

To wind down, I had dinner with Jimi, the Man and their housemate Michael at the Dallas BBQ in Chelsea. Dallas is the workhorse of the NYC BBQ chains, probably the most heavily advertised, large and basic, with a fast table turnover. The grub is moderately inexpensive and plentiful. I got a heavy glass goblet containing 20 ounces of Budweiser for a mere $4.50 and my entree featured a full rack of barbecued baby back ribs (with a sweet sauce heavily reminiscent of the Open Pit I remember from barbecues of my childhood), a huge cube of cornbread and a pile of fries.

Dallas BBQ

• 261 8th Ave. (at West 23rd Street)
• (212) 462-0001
• Meal 30 of 52: 20-ounce goblet of Bud ($4.50) and barbecued baby back ribs platter ($10.99).

Did I mention why my new apartment came on the market so quickly? The previous tenant was evicted, as noted by the red-lettered Marshal’s Legal Possession notice taped to the front of my door. So thank you, Robert Lee Farley, wherever you are.

After work, I boarded the A train at Penn Station, which took precisely 30 minutes to arrive at my Dyckman Street stop, a 15-minute increase over my old commute, as I had predicted. I picked up the keys from the super, Rodolfo, and took some snapshots of the place.

I’m only now noticing in this view that the wood floor is a different style in the front hall than it is in the main room. Here it’s of a “bowling lane” school of cut and color. That’s a closet on the left; I was standing in the front doorway of the apartment when I took the photo.

In a closer view of the main room, shown above, you can see the floor is of “basketball court” model parquetry. The kitchen stuff is on the left-hand wall: gas range and oven, fridge, countertop, drawers and cabinet space. You’ll also recognize the de rigueur steam heater in the corner. There’s an air conditioner mounted in the right-hand window, but I didn’t test it. The view from the windows is of a large courtyard, a small garden area of which is accessible to people who live in my building.

Above is the nondescript bedroom.

In the bathroom, the super repaired and re-grouted the shower tiles. It previously looked as if a miniature Kool-Aid Man had attempted to burst through the wall. I like that there’s a window in here; it’s cracked open because the whole place was just painted. The arrangement of the showerhead and taps is quirky. They’re placed not at the head or foot of the tub, but on the facing wall in the middle.

There are some additional things I haven’t previously mentioned that I like about this place. First, the building has a name. Remember back when they chiseled the name of a building on a keystone centered high on its face or above the door? Mine is called Lucille.

Second, the apartment is on the top floor of the building, so there should be less noise, although I think it also means it’ll be hotter in the summer. It’s a tradeoff I can live with.

Third, there are a lot of Hispanics in my neighborhood. Judging by the after-work waves of people, it’s almost exclusively so. Two words: taco trucks. They’re like ice cream trucks, but with, you know, tacos and stuff. I saw several, parked at the curb, including one boasting a neon sign that read “Chalupas.” I think I’ll enjoy the neighborhood.

I signed the lease and a bunch of other paperwork today, so now the new apartment is officially mine. I can pick up the keys and photocopies of the paperwork after work tomorrow, by which time the superintendent said he’d be done painting the place and re-grouting some of that tile in the shower. I’ve already filed my new mailing address with the Postal Service, directed ConEd to activate the power and natural gas, and scheduled the mover for next Sunday, November 6, the earliest day he was available.

I’ve found an apartment! My application was fully approved today, I sign the lease Wednesday morning and I can move in November 1 or as early as this weekend.

It’s in Inwood, the northernmost tip of Manhattan, and my neighborhood is flanked to the west by Fort Tryon Park, home of the Cloisters, which I visited this summer, and to the east by High Bridge Park, where I toured the High Bridge Water Tower last October.

The apartment is a one-bedroom walkup on the fourth floor of a well-kept old building and my rent is more than $100 less per month than what I’m paying for my current place. I’ve got hardwood floors, a small hall at the entrance leading into a large main room with the kitchen area off to the side (“You could teach a dance class in here!” the hair-gelled broker kept blurting in his Long Island accent). The bedroom is at least as big as my current one and the bathroom has snaggle-toothed tile walls in the shower. In the two main rooms are windows overlooking the street, which is not a major thoroughfare and quiet. The building’s management is in the process of adding laundry services in the basement, which will be a nice bonus.

I’m told the landlord, who I’ll meet at the lease signing, is a six-foot-six Greek named Paul. I recall the landlord Andrew and I had in Lakewood, Ohio, who was also Greek and despite that ancient warning about accepting gifts, bore bottles of wine and giant trays of baklava to his tenants at Christmas. Maybe this guy will give out some nice holiday gifts, too.

The main beef you’ll get from people about Inwood is that it’s way on up there, Manhattan-wise. As a reference for non New Yorkers, I currently live on W. 85th Street, whereas my new place is on the equivalent of W. 196th Street. I expect my work commute to be lengthened by at least 15 minutes each way. A strong positive, however, is that I’m a few blocks away from a station of the A, which is an express train, delivers me directly to Penn Station for work nearby and has a song written after it (“Take the ‘A’ Train,” made famous by Duke Ellington). I’ll also have the option of taking the leisurely local train, the 1, which I know well.

But in true Jason fashion, the aspect of this new place that I enjoy the most is that it’s on Sickles Street. I researched the origin and discovered it’s named in dubious honor of Daniel E. Sickles, New York State Legislator and Major General during the Civil War. He’s shown in the center of the below photo, taken in the 1860s.

Dan was born in the city in 1819, studied law at NYU and served as a New York State Senator and Representative in Congress. It wasn’t until he turned 40 that he made his name, dueling with and killing Francis Scott Key’s son, who was having an affair with Dan’s frisky, 22-year-old wife, Teresa. (Dan himself enjoyed philandering, but these were days of different standards.) At Gettysburg, he defied a direct order, resulting in the loss of an entire corps of Union soldiers, as well as his right leg, which was crushed by an artillery round, amputated and now stands proudly on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine among fragments of Lincoln’s skull and Paul Revere’s dental tools.

It is, you will agree, a more entertaining history than that of W. 85th Street.

I’ve been seeking a new apartment for the past few weeks. This weekend brought some promising prospects, but I’m not writing about anything I really like until I’m 100 percent on an application. What I’ve discovered is that if there’s one thing guaranteed by apartment hunting, it’s a heady combination of entertainment and crushing frustration.

It seems brokers don’t much care for apartment seekers looking for places in the $1,000/month range, which is a pittance for Manhattan rents, just as much so for brokers’ commissions, which likely explains at least some of their communication failure. I had a devil of a time getting them to even bother returning my calls in a timely fashion, if at all. “But Jason,” you say, grasping my shoulder gently, “You need to follow up with your broker constantly.” No, I don’t. Fuck that. When I give someone who is offering a service a directive to enact that service, I expect him to do it without me having to call him thrice daily. Brokers are those slug-like aquarium creatures that affix themselves to the glass, spending their days sucking algae and shitting. And as the great Steve Newman of Zachary Confections once told me, “You know what brokers are? Ninety percent bullshit, 10 percent commission.”

Instead, I’ve been relying heavily on Craigslist. I still have to deal with brokers or agents, of course, but it’s better for them because they don’t actually have to do anything other than lie to me and still get paid if I take a place.

The most fun game to play on any apartment listing service is, “What information is being left out of the description?” If no mention is made of an elevator, it’s a walkup. If the building is not described as “quiet,” it will be teeming with NYU students on Daddy’s dollar. If a listing looks too good to be true, it either is, or it really is that good, but someone else just took it.

I checked out a grand, 125-year-old building in my current neighborhood, off Columbus Avenue. It was previously a hotel and has marvelously high ceilings, tall doors, hardwood floors and claw-foot cast-iron tubs. The problem was that for the high $1,200 monthly rent, I would have had only a bedroom and shared access to a kitchen and bathroom. The girl who was renting the room told me on the phone she ran her massage therapy business from the apartment, which explained the tight quarters. But when I stopped by the place and asked to see “the rest” of the apartment, I saw she had a room for her massaging, a “sitting room” that was more like a full living room, a room for an office and a bedroom with her own bath. It was a great setup, but if I’d have had to live there, it would have driven me mad that all these great rooms were right there but completely unaccessable to me, particularly for that rape of a rent. On the positive side, she had a quiet and friendly wire-haired Jack Russell Terrier named Jigsaw, whose hobby was chasing in-shell macadamia nuts around the floor. A nice touch, but not enough for me to want to take the place.

Another apartment-hunting greatest-hit was a studio on Sullivan Street, which has got to be one of the quietest streets in the West Villiage, and it’s right by Washington Square Park. Amusingly, right across the street was Peanut Butter & Co., a sandwich shop that slathers its homemade peanut butter on pretty much everything. Sadly, it was not meant to be, as the place was tiny and grubby and, regardless, some NYU student had sprinted off to an ATM so he could put a deposit down on the digs right then and there.

The search continues.

You think you’re tough? Try bathing in icy cold water for a few days and we’ll see how tough you really are, chief.

On Thursday, a green paper notice from ConEd appeared taped to the foyer door of my apartment building, noting that because of an unsafe pressure reading, they had shut down the boiler as a precaution. Days later and still no word from our landlord on when he might be thinking of getting it fixed and turned back on.

Despite conventional wisdom, I’ve found my hair and at least most of my body really can get clean with cold water and soap, although there was a lot of gasping and uncontrollable shaking as my temperature dropped 10 degrees and I felt that perhaps I would have a heart attack. But as the old saw goes, nobody likes a greasy Jason, so I had to suck it up and bathe quickly with my body all contorted and atremble.

I’ve found the one bathroom duty I just can’t or won’t do with cold water is shave. I have bristly, Instagrow facial hair that you can grate Parmesan with after a few days, and shaving in cold water with a beard like that—I might as well pull it from my face with duct tape. So I boiled a kettle of water and poured it in the sink for shaving, just like on Little House on the Prairie.

Hot water, I want you back in my life.

We conducted a massive cleansing of the apartment today, partly in anticipation of me moving out and partly because, let’s face it, the place was filthy. (If you haven’t been briefed on my apartment situation, Eric is officially moving in with Andie and I’m looking for a new place, aiming to find it as early as possible in October.)

Andie tidied her closet by corralling four giant bags of clothing that I will be shuttling via cab to work tomorrow for a special Salvation Army donation that’s being picked up next week and sent directly to folks affected by Hurricane Katrina.

I cleaned my room, which had been starting to resemble a landfill, and re-alphabetized my CD collection, always a Herculean task.

Eric scoured the kitchen, particularly the stovetop, refrigerator and floor, which had accumulated high levels of grime, with splotches of spilled food and beverages. He also tackled the bathroom tile, toilet and tub, installing a new mildew-free shower curtain for good measure.

Andie and Eric shuffled the living room furniture into a pleasing arrangement, relocating the couch against the wall by the window, allowing for a nice breeze and a Rear Window-style view into several of our neighbors’ apartments.

The symbolic finale to our cleaning efforts was celebrated by Andie squashing a frankfurter-sized cockroach scuttling up our wall, his restful existence likely disturbed by a combination of our activity and the rhythmic, somewhat sexual grunting emanating from the players on the U.S. Open broadcast we were watching.

For dinner, we ordered three pizzas from neighborhood favorite Celeste and watched Barton Fink on DVD, spooky and making about as much sense as it ever has.

Michael, who I’ve never seen before, was taping his sign to the inner door of my apartment building’s foyer when I arrived home from work. By 9:30 p.m., someone had already torn it down, and there was no evidence it had existed other than some sad corners of paper stuck to the glass.

I’m glad I photographed it. I’ve never seen the word balustrade in a handmade sign before, and the photo is so lovingly composed and framed, with the butts, bird crap and dead leaves. And I appreciate the specificity of Parliament cigarettes.

there is a huge pigeon on our air conditioner right now where our lovely little mourning dove used to hang. i wonder if he swallowed the dove— that is how enormous he is. he keeps pacing around and i can hear his tap/scratch against the a/c. he also keeps looking through the window like he’s casing out our apartment. should i be concerned about leaving him to his own devices?

Another urgent pigeon-related message from Andie this morning, via email

It’s always a bad sign for long holiday weekends when I do pretty much nothing but watch Law & Order reruns on TNT, even though I got out of work early today. On the positive side, Andie made some very tasty chocolate chocolate-chip-hazelnut cookies. I’m just not sure they alone will be able to hold my interest for the next three days.

Well, I cleaned my room today. We can’t all have excitement all the time, now can we?

But, man, did it really need to be cleaned. If I had wanted to, I could have planted some small-root vegetables in the debris that was stacked on the floor. And now that it’s clear, if I need to get up late at night to use the restroom, I’m not stumbling all over the place like a drunken zombie, blindly dodging stacks of paperwork, stray CDs and loose shoes.

Hooray, clean room.

The temperature hit the low 90s today and we’re grateful for our new air conditioner, which has been smacking down the heat demons in here all day to the tune of a Freon-breezy 70.

Eric, a co-worker and friend of Andie’s, stopped by to install it on Monday while I was at my latest interview. It’s a good thing he volunteered because it involved things like lifting, power drills, comprehending instruction manuals for Korean appliances, and other things I’m not good at but feel I should be.

I think my testosterone must be low because I am distinctly lacking in my ability to perform manly activities. For example, I am simply unable to change a car’s oil or tire, enjoy or care about sports, or fire a gun. When shaking hands, I have to really concentrate to offer anything but a limp-wristed, fishlike grip. I lack the most basic physical skills, hard pressed to bench-press anything or even golf to save my life. Last I checked, I couldn’t even correctly complete a somersault.

I like to imagine my superhuman abilities to, say, remember most of the lyrics to LL Cool J’s “Around The Way Girl,” or to craft web pages with nothing but my wits and a text editor are manly, but they’re just not as impressive as that other stuff. Plus, chicks don’t dig it, it doesn’t inspire the thirst for a crisp, cold beer, and it doesn’t really accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things.

I’m going to go drink a beer now and enjoy the air conditioning.

Called the air conditioner supplier this morning when it didn’t show up as promised by yesterday afternoon. With the classic “the warehouse is really backed-up” excuse, they revised the delivery date for Monday or Tuesday. At least the past few days have been cooler; we haven’t even had the window fan on.

Yay! I ordered the air conditioner this morning and it’s scheduled to arrive via UPS on Wednesday or Thursday.

Some NYC moments from this morning:

1. a small, sun-faded poster of Sade taped inside the back window of a Verizon truck on W. 86th Street
2. some guy flossing vigorously on the 1 train (he stepped briefly out the back train door to dispose the spent floss on the tracks)

It’s only in the high 70’s today, but the humidity is making it extra sticky and unpleasant. We’re determined to buy an air conditioner, which neither of us has done before, and it’s a confusing jumble of pricing, brands, features and BTUs. We have our eye on a Samsung 8,000 BTU unit from BestBuy.com, but I’m a bit concerned about installation since I have difficulty with anything the least bit mechanical. Andie, I think, is a bit better. At least she owns a screwdriver, although it is one of those ones that flips around and can be used as a flathead or Phillips.