Dual Reclining Love Seat – NOTHING GROSS ABOUT IT!!

Nice love seat with dual recliners. Reclines flat and straight out. Good brand (Got it from my mom, she paid around $800 for it, years ago, so its not a Bobs discount piece of crud). She never used it. I have very rarely used it and am moving now (into my car-seriously).

NO SMOKE//NO PETS-PET HAIR//NO FOOD-LIQUIDS//NO SEX///…etc…
Theres nothing gross about this….not asociated with any of the above, and obvioulsy you cant sleep on it, so no greasy hair or bed bugs……
(Believe me-I think used furniture is gross…this is ok though-Im anal about my stuff)

What else…it has a nice cubby in the center under the arm rest.

Thats it-its comfy, and for sale

In summary: Not cheap, but inexpensive love seat that has seen no action, but is hair grease and bed bug free.  Should be gone before midnight. 

I started foraging for boxes early on.  The mailroom at work is a steady source of clean, well shaped boxes.  Unfortunately it’s quite an effort to get them home.  Dragging awkwardly sized boxes onto a rush hour subway requires dexterity and diplomacy.  I do flatten them which helps.

Another good vein for cardboard is the sidewalk, especially on Sunday nights when the recycling is put out.  Collecting boxes from the sidewalk requires a strong sense of self as well as a keen eye.  Rummaging through trash is humbling business and it’s important to avoid boxes that have been visited by canines.   I find myself eyeing any pile of boxes now, even if I’m nowhere near home.  

Fresh Direct 
I am extremely partial to Fresh Direct boxes.  The upper west side is rife with people too lazy to go to the grocery store and these barely used beauties are abundant.  I briefly considered using only Fresh Direct boxes for my move but since I’ve procrastinated so badly, this type of challenge is unnecessary.  Size is a factor with Fresh Directs and here I go a little Goldilocks.  The smalls are too tiny, the larges–a tad too roomy.  I prefer the mediums.  They are perfect for books.

A Fresh Direct delivery truck parks on the corner of my block and every time I pass by I am tempted to ask for boxes. I have resisted this urge because somehow it seems like cheating.

Box Tally

• Street Sources
  • Fresh Direct: 19
  • Other: 8
• Mail room: 15
• Friends & Family: 8

I now find myself exactly 9 days from d-day with several untouched closets, full kitchen cabinets and I’m many boxes short of a complete move.

At least I’ve hired a mover.  Although I got a little nervous when the estimator more than once said, “You will be fully packed up, right?” and then, “I’m going to assume you will be completely packed.”  The words “fully” and “completely” are terrifying. 

I forgot how much packing for a move really stinks.  It’s boring, melancholy, dusty and annoying.  The only thing good about moving is all the pizza I allow myself to eat.  I just finished an entire small sausage, tomato and green pepper pizza.  Typically I would only eat half but I decided that a whole pizza would make packing much better.  I went to the pizza parlor, ordered it and waited while it cooked.  The pie was smoking hot when they slid it into the box.  But, while pizzas are great during a move, pizza boxes are useless.   Nothing can be packed into a pizza box.

But not this time.  After several moving fiascos and a couple of moving successes, I am attempting the perfect move.  I’ve encountered several guffaws and looks of incredulity when discussing this endeavor,  many have said I’m talkin’ crazy–but I am not swayed.   The Perfect Move is mine to be had.

The first step in this challenge is identifying what constitutes perfection.  Here is my list:

1. The movers arrive on time and finish early
2. The actual cost of the move is equal to or less than the estimate
3. Nothing is lost (i.e., no boxes are “left” on the truck)
   1. All furniture and boxes, at the time of the mover’s departure, are accurately accounted for
   2. The contents of each box are fully understood
4. Nothing is broken (i.e., no legs glued back onto coffee tables) 
5. The boxes on the move-in side are put in the correct rooms (i.e., pots and pans boxes aren’t in the masterbedroom)

A few other conditions also apply:

1. No boxes or packing material (excluding tape) will be purchased. (Buying boxes is reprehensible.)
2. No professtional packers will be hired. (I will be doing all the packing since friends run like cockroaches as soon as you mention “moving”.)
3. I will move a few items myself to reduce the risk of point 4 above.

Setting and Scale:

1. Moving out of a medium-sized 1 bedroom apartment in NYC

If all goes according to plan I have about 5 weeks to move.  I will be on vacation for one of those weeks, traveling on business a couple of days and I go skiing on most weekends so time is going to be a big factor.  Which means I better start packing!

From the NYTimes Science section: Happy Rats

“Since the spectacular success of Viagra and similar drugs, the pharmaceutical industry has been searching for the female equivalent of Viagra…

More recently, another potentially promising treatment for hypoactive desire has been making its way through clinical trials. The compound, called bremelanotide, is a synthetic version of a hormone involved in skin pigmentation…

But when male college students participating in early safety tests began reporting that the drug sometimes gave them erections, the company began exploring bremelanotide’s utility as a treatment for sexual disorders.

Studies in rodents demonstrated that the drug not only gave male rats spontaneous erections, but also fomented sexual excitement in female rats, prompting them to wiggle their ears, hop excitedly, rub noses with males and otherwise display unmistakable hallmarks of rodent arousal.”

Let’s be honest, is it really a huge leap from horny a male college student to rodent arousal? But, score one (or more) for the female rats…literally. 

From the NYTimes Metro section: Hungry Rats

The city’s Health Department is revamping the way it inspects restaurants for potential rodent infestation after a review prompted by a widely seen news video of rats swarming in a KFC/Taco Bell in Greenwich Village, officials said yesterday.

First of all…watch the video…on an empty stomach.  If you watch really closely you can see one of the rats saying “Taco, Taco”.

Secondly, perhaps the understatement of the year…”Officials of the Department of Investigation said the inspector may have performed a shoddy inspection”.  May have? How bad does it have to be before a qualifier is removed?  The agent reported 76 to 87 rat droppings.  I think she missed a few.  From the video it seems like that’s about one drop per rat! 

Truth be told, though, I’d hate to have my job performance evaluated on my ability to accurately count rat poop. 

Now, which rat would you rather be?  The Hungry Rat of course.  He and all his family members have a hit video on You Tube!

It’s quite an entertaining read and far too much to cover here.  However, I am packing my bags for Brazil after digesting the survey on enjoying sex– apparently geography matters.

From a sex-satisfaction survey of people in 29 countries regarding the importance of sex,  in the US 37% of the men and 28% of the women rated it important. 

Only FOUR other countries rated sex lower in terms of importance (China, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand).  Brazil was the highest at 75%. 

Even Britain rated sex higher than the US.  Britain?  Really?  I’m highly suspicious of the Americans they interviewed for this survey.  Highly suspicious.

From the NYTimes: For Fruit Flies, Sharp Turns

“If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, why do fruit flies flit around? You’d think they’d want to conserve energy.  But they make turns on their own, seemingly spontaneously,” said Mark A. Frye of the University of California, Los Angeles. They fly straight for a distance, he said, then make a right-angle turn and fly straight again, repeating this pattern over and over….The fly is executing a search strategy that optimizes the chances of finding food.”

A related study revealed similar human behaviors around all-you-can-eat buffets.  Unlike the right angle turns of the fruit fly’s pattern, however, the human search strategy involved repetitions of increasingly smaller circles.

What is McDonald’s thinking? I hope this doesn’t mean my dollar menu is going up to $1.01.  

“McDonald’s Corp. agreed Monday to pay a penny more per pound for its Florida-grown tomatoes to help boost wages for the migrant workers who harvest them, following a two-year campaign by an advocacy group that called for the increase.“

A whole penny a pound?  The migrant workers won’t know what to do with their new found wealth.   Think of the boost to the economy all this extra cash will be!  It’s high times for fruit pickers all over Florida.

An interesting tid bit to note:

“The deal involves payments for round tomatoes that go on McDonald’s sandwiches.”

Does this mean there are not-so-round tomatoes that McDonald’s uses that won’t get the penny-per-pound increase?  Will there be controls in place ensuring McDonald’s standard of “roundness”? 

“The announcement was made by the nonprofit Coalition of Immokalee Workers…The coalition had previously won similar concessions from Taco Bell after a four-year boycott against restaurant chain, which is part of Yum Brands Inc.”

Two years to get a penny a pound increase from McDonald’s and four years to get a penny-a-pound increase from Taco Bell?  That is a ridiculously long time for a penny.  What the hell are they using that money for anyway?  It certainly isn’t to keep E. Coli and rats out of their food. 

Leave no stone unturned, no excrement unexamined.

“When archaeologists try to understand ancient civilizations, they look for the smallest of clues. Residues scraped from cooking vessels offer hints about diet; bits of charcoal speak of the role of fire; even pollen grains can give an idea of how the land was used.

Researchers now have another tiny tool in their arsenal: millimeter-long, dung-eating mites….by counting mites in sediment cores in a lake in the Peruvian Andes, they have been able to track socioeconomic changes in the Inca civilization over centuries.”

In the distant future will someone be piecing together the history of our civilization from a pile of dung-mites?  All this work, all this effort reduced to the interpretation of a poop parasites?  Seems surprisingly fitting.

From the NY Times: Rock with out lock

Let me get this straight.  For only twenty more cents a song on iTunes,  I can buy a higher quality version AND email it to all my friends?  Why the hell didn’t they think of this sooner?  

The honor system.  I love it.  

In fact, I think we should take the locks off everything.  Let’s start with ATMs.  I promise I won’t take anymore money than I said I took.  Honestly,  you can trust me.   Prisons – unlock ’em.  Cars, houses, shopping malls – leave the doors wide open.   

Content wants to be free and now it actually is.