The great shift has begun, friends. We have our keys to the new, bigger, better, quieter, cooler apartment now and have started to move stuff in. We won't be actually for-real living there for at least another week, when we get the truck and some hapless friends to help us move all the big furniture. For now, just moving boxes of books (good lord, why why WHY so many books!??) and assorted junk. I'll send out the new address when we're actually checking mail there, not just yet.

About our new building: The freight elevator, which Geoffrey reserved for today and next Sunday, is very scary. It operates with a key and freaks my shit out, basically. I think I will spend as little time as possible in there. Really everything in the building deals with a key, which is nice and safe but kind of bad for me because I am terrible at keys. When I come in from the parking garage, for example, I enter the building's ground floor using a key to get in a set of glass doors, then summon the normal elevator with a key, then go up to my apartment, which is reached with a key (duh). I think soon some of the downstairs stuff is supposed to be accessible with an electric swipe card, so I hope that happens soon. Electric swipe cards I am good at.

We saw a couple of neighbors as we were putting stuff in the apartment this morning. One an old couple -- old in that too much lilac eye-shadow and perfectly coiffed but very thin hair and if you sneezed you would blow them to bits type of way. But they were nice, introduced themselves (shout-out to the Humphreys!), live at the end of the hall. Maybe they will come party with us. I hope they bring Doritos. I saw one neighbor right next-door to us. Old lady in the hair dyed appallingly bright red type of way. Didn't get a chance to talk to her. Hoping she's cool since she's our actual neighbor. There are lots of old biddies in the building, but also a decent amount of young people, so seems like a nice mix. Our porch kicks ass. It is huge (I think I could park my car on it. Twice.) and we have a purty view. Arranging furniture inside will be a challenge, but only because there is SO much space to fill -- and because the phone jacks and cable jack are in the wrong place for our grand design scheme. We will make do, though. We are wiring geniuses.

Emily and Ian are the proud new parents of the cutest puppy ever, little Boston terrier. She e-mailed me pictures of the lil' puddums that made me cry, he's so cute. Makes me want to get a dog, but that's a little tougher to do in the big mean city, so I'll have to wait 'til life takes me to the next place, I reckon. Until then, however, I will push to be the dog's aunt or godmother or something.

LISTENING TO: PAUL WESTERBERG/Stereo and Mono. Friend burned me a CD, oh man it's good. Want to hear more ...