Let me point out one thing, my dear Amal.
I am not now,
Nor have I ever been…
A Las Vegas showgirl.
I am a headliner.

—Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

Just for giggles, I’ve turned off the captchas and wiped out my EE blacklist. I want to see how many comments I get on my blog over the weekend that are spam. If it gets bad, I’ll put everything back in place.

I’m all connected at the new place. Comcast was here this morning to hook up my cable and cable modem. After that, I plugged in the wireless router to the cable modem and I’m all set.

When the cable guy tried to hook up my cable box, which came from the old place, it wouldn’t work. He asked when I used it last. I told him I disconnected it yesterday morning. But I did point out that I had been in a different neighborhood. That wouldn’t work, he told me. It appears that certain cable boxes won’t work in certain neighborhoods. I have a new cable box, and it’s smaller than the cable modem. I’m going to have to buy the TiVo serial cable now because there is no way the TiVo IR ports are going to work with this.

I have a new challenge for Iron Chef Bobby Flay. Try moving into your apartment and having dinner a few hours later. Granted, this was my idea, but I wanted to cook dinner for Beth and Paul when they brought Reggie back. Granted, we had to navigate the maze of boxes. But dinner was surprisingly good. I had picked up some cube steaks at the grocery store today as well as some asparagus and some avocados. I broiled the steaks and roasted the asparagus. I made an avocado mash that was really good. All I did was mash the avocado, added some minced onion, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It was that easy. And it was good. The steaks weren’t bad. And how hard is it to screw up roasted asparagus unless you overcook it? But the avocado mash was the highlight.

Reggie is still pretty excited, but he’ll settle in eventually. He’s barking at the cars that drive past, but that will pass eventually. He’s just really wound up since he’s in a new place.

I’ve had a long day, and I’m exhausted. I’ll write more tomorrow.

There is an unsecured network in my neighborhood, and it’s wide open. I’ll only use it until tomorrow when Comcast installs my cable modem.

Beth and Paul should be here shortly with Reggie. I’m cooking dinner. That’s right, my kitchen isn’t even unpacked yet, and I’m cooking dinner. It was my idea. Yeah, I’m a bit stupid in that sense.

All of my stuff has been moved into the new place. EVERYTHING is still in boxes, though, so I can’t really say I’m moved. The upstairs neighbors (right above me, Jamie and John) seem nice and the guy beside me (the super) seems really nice. I don’t know about the woman above him other than she has two cats. The people above me have a dog as does the guy beside me. I understand the people below me have mean dogs. We’ll find out.

The one thing missing right now is Reggie. Either I’ll go get him this evening, or maybe Beth and Paul will come see the new place, such as it is.

Comcast will be here tomorrow to hook me up.

I’m told that I shouldn’t refer to East Boston as E. Bo. It sounds too much like a bad disease, anyway.

I miss Reggie something fierce. But tomorrow at this time, we’ll be curled up on my bed in the new place. I do miss the little shit. But I’m sure he’s having a great time with his cousins.

In less than 12 hours, my ass will be out of this fucking ghetto. You have no idea how exciting this is. Living here has really brought out some undesirable racial feelings in me. It’s not good.

Top Chef—well, the episode isn’t over yet, but it will be interesting.

I bought a six pack of Mike’s Hard Crisp Apple. It’s okay, not great, but okay.

I went over to my new place tonight to take a few pictures.  Here is the visual tour of the apartment. It’s a little smaller than I remember, but that’s okay. It’s still better than where I am now.  Keep in mind that these are bare walls and floors. I haven’t done ANYTHING yet.

This is the view when you walk in the “back” door, or the door that comes in from the back deck/steps.  The door you see is the “front” door. The stove is to the left of the door. You’ll see that shortly. Notice the nice, big cabinet above the fridge. To the right is the doorway that leads to the living room.

When you enter the back door, the sink is to the left. You’ll see there is a counter that was added to the right of the sink.

Yeah, that counter is a little out of place but look at all of the storage that comes with it.

This is a brand new microwave and there is even storage above it. Are you seeing a pattern here with the storage in the kitchen?

As you walk into the living room, you’ll see the door leading into the bedroom. To the far left is a little cove where the TV will go.

This is the little cove I was talking about.

As you stand in the cove, you see a door that leads to a nice big living room closet. I’m going to try putting the table in front of that window. My concern is that Reggie will jump up on the table so he can see out the window.

Lets take a walk into the bedroom. It’s what sold me on the place… This is what you see in the bedroom as you walk in. The bed will be on the wall to the left in this picture. Notice the closet in the back left. If I really wanted, I could put a shower curtain bar in the big doorway and have one HUGE closet. Not yet, though. To the far right in the picture, you’ll see corner the bay window.  The bay window overlooks Trenton Street.

There is also a window on the wall opposite the closet. 

As you stand in the closet, this is the view of the bay window . The door on the right is the one that leads back into the living room.

The new place isn’t huge. But it’s bigger than what I have now. More importantly, it has closet space and kitchen storage. I’m not saying it has more closet space, I’m saying it has closet and kitchen storage, period.  I can’t wait to see Reggie come in and do a pugtona through the place.

I’ve been watching the Real Housewives of Orange County while I’m packing up. Oh, my. It’s hard to watch these women without using the phrase “box of rocks.” Some of the women have obviously had way too much Botox.

I could find myself getting sucked into this one.

I just got my tax refund! God bless America!

In all seriousness, this money has already been spent. Ironically, part of it is going back to the US Government for my student loans.