A New Year
It’s been a hectic few weeks for me.
From December 11 to December 19, my life was a blur of boxes and U-Hauls and trips back and forth between People’s Republic and DeVos’ Dominion. On December 20, Mr. EW and I left our apartment still packed high with boxes and drove back to People’s Republic, this time to stay not at our house, but at a Clarion Inn that seems to be stuck in the Swinging (and I do mean swinging) Seventies about a mile away. Woke up the next morning, sold our house for about $700 more than we owed and 35% less than we paid for it, dropped Mr. EW off at the airport for a flight to a frozen Dublin, then drove 9 hours with McCaffrey the MilleniaLab as my co-pilot to PA. After a week of family and shuttling family members around to weather delayed planes–including fetching Mr. EW after his 48-hour trip back from a still frozen-over Dublin–Mr. EW and I got back in the car and drove 12 hours to return to DeVos’ Dominion. After all the driving, I was so tuckered out I fell asleep long before the New Year.
Thing is, it feels like a New Year around here. I’m going to spend the weekend cramming the contents of the boxes into our temporary apartment (though Mr. EW, in a bid to keep the box fort he’s built up around his desk–that’s it in the picture–has informed me Congress has extended the PATRIOT Act for him and with it the imperative to maintain his fort). Maybe I’ll even ask Mr. EW to put a picture or two on the wall. We’re still looking for a more permanent place to live, though in an era where banks continue to treat property rights like toilet paper, it feels good to have no home.
And finally selling the house and returning home from the holidays means I should have far more time to immerse myself in weedy documents, something I’ve been missing for the last while.
So in spite of the fact that 2011 will feature all the same challenges that 2010 did, I definitely feel like it’s a new year.
Let’s hope we find a way to make it a happy one.
Happy New Year, Marcy. You do amazing work with all that going on. If you get back to “the people’s republic” one of these days and have a minute, I’d still love to get together for a cup of coffee…let’s hope it’s a better year for all of us.
Will do!
Btw, you know that Clarion Inn by the exit from Jackson road onto 94 East?
Boy is it weird. It’s sort of turned inside out, which is great cause it cuts down noise from the freeway. But it also meant that some of the rooms (ours, which I suspect was one of the nicest in the joint) have indoor front porches that overlook the banquet area and, sort of, the pool (which isn’t off in its own glassed of area but in the middle of the hotel), along with full windows that open out onto that banquet area. And mirrors, lots of mirrors. And the breakfast room is the very red bar, which seems to do no bar business.
Weird.
Happy New Year EW. I can’t imagine what my life would be, without your posts and diaries. You are a national treasure, in my humble opinion and the world is a better place because of your contributions. If I had a boat load of money, I would send it to you!
Happy new year EW, Mr. EW & McCaffery!
We saw Lizz WInstead last night. She was as hilarious and cutting as ever. Lizz sends her greetings to you.
Happy new year to all, and may it be more to our liking than the last few!
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EW, I have sympathy for you. I have boxes that haven’t been unpacked in years (no room). And, just to make life interesting, Friday afternoon the movers show up at work, to shift us to a temporary location (one floor down) while our building space gets renovated. (Everyone will have it done, we’re just in the first group.)
Happy New Year, EW!
You ARE the national treasure! Words can’t express enough appreciation for your brilliance
and commitment!
Happy New Year, EW, Mr. Wheel, and McCaffery!
First of all, congratulations on getting out from under the mortgage. While it sucks to have the transaction play out with the numbers you describe, I think you’ll find and agree when I opine this is a good time to own no real estate. That’s my experience since selling out from under my foreclosure. We have not yet hit the bottom of this mess and there will be a lot more pain for those who are trying to hold on.
Second, keep up the good work.
Third, we need some trash talking. I’ve been cooped up in an office >50 hours a week for the last month plus but, hey, the checks clear so I’m not complaining. Just noting I need to sling some mud.
Finally, can anyone tell me why sending Janet Napolitano to visit Karzai makes any sense? Unless we intend to annex Afghanistan and make it part of her jurisdiction rather than the jurisdiction of State and Defense…. Anyone? Any ideas?
Well, if you recall, Obama went to visit his good buddy Hamid, and Hamid basically told Obama to go fuck himself and refused to see him. So then Obama tried to turn it into a video conference call between Obama and Karzai even though Obama was right there, and Karzai refused that too. Although the insipid American press did not cover it for squat, Karzai humiliated Obama. Maybe Janet was the only one Karzai would see, who knows?
Missed that Karzai pulled a Blankfein on Barry. Kinda lame to be treated like shit by your putative client state’s head, no?
But, hey, not like he hasn’t been inviting it, having spent the last two years sucking hind teat over at McConnell’s and Boehner’s houses, not to mention with Wall Street.
And now he’s calling for more accountability, as in he wants us to hold people to account for their actions (or inactions).
Haven’t we been trying to do just that for years? And they’d rather punch hippies instead of being held to account?
Ut oh, here I was assuming bmaz would be sleeping in when I was writing the trash talk you demanded.
You go girl. Anyway, I’m working on a shitty post…..
I was hoping you’d be working on a pro football post for tomorrow. But instead you’re posting about Janet’s winter vacation in Kabul?
The Square. It is getting unveiled for the New Year! Unfortunately, he/it is not very eloquent and is having a hard time figuring out how to express himself.
Not much for the square to really say, but to lay out his/its extensive winning record already.
To insult him back. O is saying, “You ever want to talk to me, you’ll have to go through a woman now.”
Well, obviously, her success at sealing the border with Mexico has built so much confidence in our border states that Obama decided to give her a try at the pesky AfPak border situation…
Bob in AZ
A good new year to you EW, and to all. I usually try to start new things after New Years, and one of the things I want to do is change my user name. Could you or someone advise as to how this can be done? I suppose I could unsubscibe and then re-up, but that would cause a change in passwords, and that’s a no-no.
===modnote: you can change your display name by clicking on your name here in the comment, that will take you to your Account page, click on Profile and change Display Name there.===
Mod.
Thanks for your response to my inquirey @ 10, regarding altering my screen name. I got to the profile page and upon selecting the option to change the profile, I was connected to the Saturday Art page. What now?
EW,
You have had so much going on. It is amazing you even found time to post anything.
I hope you holiday season allows you to catch a breath of relaxation despite all you have had going on in the last few months.
Take care.
Tell Mr. EW I like his fort and so does my youngest, who loves to build cardboard box forts!
Marcy, Happy New Year and thank you very much for sacrificing so much for all of us lake dwellers.
Some of us worry about you (and Jane and everybody else, too) burning the candle at both ends and so forth. They say one of the top five most stressful things in life is moving out of a home, so be good to yourself.
This is so totally true, take it from me, a life-long renter, and I hope you wrap that good feeling of freedom around you:
One of the priceless discoveries of moving cartons of belongings for me has become the relative joy of leaving most of the containers full, as is. Even guests become accustomed to the strange indoor appearance of an essay at comfort amid the attic-ish appearance of stacks of boxes, as if life had morphed with a kind of finality once again; although computers have become the first choice place for literature in a clutter. Kudos to the canine copilot. Good luck in the acclimitization, and in the New Year.
My commiserations on your moving saga. Let me suggest writing an expiration date on each box, and then agreeing to throw them out when they get 5 years old…
I have boxes that have not been unpacked for at least 10 years. I have some sifting and winnowing to do…
Bob in AZ
Very best of wishes in your new home, dear.
Nothing like a box fort to bring out the inner boy. You could set up a tea party for your dog and dollies immediately outside the fort; nothing lures a boy out like cookies.
Hope you stay below Xe’s radar there, if that’s possible. Happy New Year to your and yours.
To the EWs: Happy settling in, and New Year.
To McCaffrey: Woof!
Very late to the New Year’s Party – but having some experience living with boxes, in “temporary” apartments…let me just suggest going ahead and putting up pictures, setting out the “good china” (if such you have), and generally living as though you expect to be there awhile, even if there are still un-unpacked boxes.
Much like Bob in AZ, I have been intending to sift and winnow for some time; today I threw out a bunch of stuff and opened the last unopened box. I still have no place to put the china that was my grandmother’s contained in it, but at least I now know what’s in it.
And while I never make resolutions on New Year’s because I never keep them, the fact that I’ve started means, I hope, that I will possess much less stuff by next New Year’s.
And, good gawd, woman – I echo the amazement of others that you kept posting while all this was going on. I was astonished then, seeing new posts every day, all of which seemed pretty weedy to me. But hearing your schedule, I am even more amazed.
A good New Year to you, bmaz, and all the other denizens of this wheelhouse.
Happy New Year to you and Mr. EW and the Lab. Long life, health, peace, prosperity, and many thanks to you.