Da nuh NAH nuh, Da nuh NAH NAH NAH

The countdown to moving has begun. I am 9/10ths packed. I think I underestimated how many boxes I would have--it's looking to be more like 30 than 20. Ah well.

I am positively manic. I cannot clean the apartment for the sublettors until the boxes are out, and lemme tell you something: It is FILTHY. Historically I only clean my apartments twice: when I move in and when I move out. If a dish gets washed or the floor gets swept in between those two times, it's gravy. If I wipe dust off a surface that's NOT the TV screen with a cloth that is NOT the shirt I'm wearing, that's a major fucking triumph.

So I went out to Sunnyside to sign my lease last night and arrived at my management company's office to discover that their power had gone out. My landlord suggested that I use the fast-fading sunlight to look over my lease while he broke into the building next door, which he believed to be the culprit of the outage. Meanwhile, I sat in relative darkness, using my keychain penlight to peruse the lease, and chatted as amiably as I could with one of the neurotic realtors.

"So, ah, you're a realtor?"

"Yup. But also I'm an illustrator." He pointed to a framed drawing on his desk, right next to the unicorn pencil cup. "That's a children's book I drew."

"Really? How...neat," I replied, losing steam as I examined the picture closely. It was the "cover" for his "book," a lovely little tale about anthropomorphic pizza toppings and the pizza on which they live. One of the characters was broccoli. This would not have been *my* first- or even eighth-choice topping. "They, ah, live on a pizza?" I asked.

"Yeah."

The drawing made me nervous. It reminded me of schizophrenic art. There was nothing comforting or educational or cheerful about a story in which talking edibles live in a bubbling and hot cheese-encrusted world.

Meanwhile my landlord came back in and called the contractor for the building next door. "Yes, hi.....yeah, the power's out....ok, so you're sending over the....hmmm.....does the electrician speak English?"

The neurotic realtor put his head in his hands. "That's never a good sign."

Let's hope that wasn't an omen, shall we?