esme

Yesterday M and I helped a friend with a near-Sisyphean relocation. She was moving from one unit in hr building to another. Both were on the third floor, the back doors not more than twenty feet apart. Here's the catch: there was no hallway/porch/level surface between one door and the other. So it was a whole bunch of "walk up to the old place, pick something up, walk down, walk up, put the thing down, walk down, repeat." About a half hour into this we decided it was okay to break into the beer, so then it became "walk up to the old place, pick something up, walk down, have a drink, walk up, put the thing down, walk down, have a drink, repeat." An hour later we fired up the grill, and the breaks between the ups and downs got significantly longer.
M was such a trooper. He totally stepped up; he and this kid P just attacked all the big stuff, the couches and treasure chests and two-hundred pound pottery wheels. We got to drop a couch off the balcony. It made a very satisfying crunching noise. (They were getting rid of it. I swear.) We met a really cool girl, J, who's moving out to (a different part of ) California, too. She says she'll invite us to her dinner parties. Of course, she'll be living like five hours away, but, hey, dinner parties! She also has three scooters. I am superjealous.
Mmmmmm. Not much else to report that you don't already know about. What's for dinner?