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Cutting off a withered tendril
Feb. 18th, 2009 03:36 pmI got back from five days away from home at 7 last night. Then my roommate and I booked up to Methuen and grabbed everything we could from my storage locker. The car was mostly full when I was done, and empty again when we found a convenient and willing dumpster a few hours later.
My roommate was reveling in smashing the CRT on his old Apple Lisa. Yes, he really had one! Yes, it had the maximum of two megabytes of RAM and a 10 MB hard drive. It also had a dead power supply and he never really wanted to see the beast again.
He felt very happy when the magical condensation rose from the glass. This led to a discussion of forensic science: how the big shards of glass shatter inward while the little ones bounce upward off the amorphous solid. Thus you can find a B&E culprit by putting a piece of tap on a suspect's clothing, pulling off the tape and looking for tiny reflections of light from the tiny shards of glass.
There are only four objects that remain in the storage locker: a 6U server, an empty metal filing cabinet, and two empty cardboard boxes. These will all be gone as well by Saturday. I plan to grab a gride and broom (my mom's Spoonerism for a dustpan -- think of "bride and groom") and sweep the remaining cobwebs and broken pottery from the locker. Then I will take off the lock, head to the storage office and tell them to inspect the locker and cancel automatic monthly deduction.
I will be saving $139 each month ($134 for the locker and $5 for insurance). I will also not need to think about the northernmost town in Massachusetts along Interstate 93 with a pang in my stomach. I won't have to say "oh yeah, I gotta fix that". I won't have a remote tendril in a place I've never lived but was cheaper than a storage locker in a closer town.
Perhaps I would have saved money over time, had I chosen a closer locker. I chose Public Storage because their web site let me see the exact rates and availability online, even back in late 2005 when I stashed everything. One hundred square and climate-controlled feet in Methuen, a town thirty miles from where I live now and only twenty-odd miles from my then apartment in Melrose, were cheaper than the same footsies in seven-mile-away Waltham by a long shot, so I took the deal. I figured I would only need the locker for a year.
I didn't think that I'd live in two other apartments after house-sitting in Lexington, which was why I put my stuff in storage in the first place. I didn't think I wouldn't finish unpacking in either apartment, that I'd still have boxes that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
graciana had packed very carefully for me in the fall of 2005 and I still haven't opened more than three years later. I didn't realize that my inability to sort the shit back then would mean finding a dumpster without a security camera near it. I didn't know that an $800 granite table would cost me an extra $3700 to store it for two and a quarter years after I'd set up its lighter, $50 cousin in the old Somlingford and again here in Brookline.
I paid five grand in total for the storage locker. That's about a year's worth of car payments. That's not counting the times I had to rent vans to haul stuff to the locker or back out of it. That's not counting the dinners I've paid for or still owe (tohakamadare, for example) to people that helped me. That's not counting the lost time driving up 93 to the Loop Connector, getting caught in traffic, winding up shopping in next-door Salem for things I probably didn't need. It's also not counting the bonding that rmcoburn and I had over helping me sort stuff up there. I miss her.
Now the economy is different. The same locker in Waltham is now $173 per month, but it's only $91 per month right next door in Brighton. Then again it's $84.55 for my exact locker in Methuen now, so I've been getting screwed. I suspect those are recent drops in rates, now that property is worth a lot less and the economy is in the toilet.
My economy is also very different. Even if I get a job soon, I don't live the same way I did in 2005. I'm not hanging onto every object I've ever touched simply because that's what people in my family have always done. I am releasing things, sometimes to new homes but often back onto the street. I want to break down my walls because I can finally see the person I will become once those walls are gone. I want the space more than the objects because the space is an opening for other people in my life.
I guess it took $1668 each year to understand this. That's only slightly cheaper than biweekly therapy without health insurance. It's more expensive than the cable television I don't watch anymore but which I will also be free of as of April Second. That's the day my twelve-month discount ends and I am allowed to return my DVR HD box. I am evolving, and soon I will have the cash to prove it.
-spring cleaning a couple months early, Ps/d
My roommate was reveling in smashing the CRT on his old Apple Lisa. Yes, he really had one! Yes, it had the maximum of two megabytes of RAM and a 10 MB hard drive. It also had a dead power supply and he never really wanted to see the beast again.
He felt very happy when the magical condensation rose from the glass. This led to a discussion of forensic science: how the big shards of glass shatter inward while the little ones bounce upward off the amorphous solid. Thus you can find a B&E culprit by putting a piece of tap on a suspect's clothing, pulling off the tape and looking for tiny reflections of light from the tiny shards of glass.
There are only four objects that remain in the storage locker: a 6U server, an empty metal filing cabinet, and two empty cardboard boxes. These will all be gone as well by Saturday. I plan to grab a gride and broom (my mom's Spoonerism for a dustpan -- think of "bride and groom") and sweep the remaining cobwebs and broken pottery from the locker. Then I will take off the lock, head to the storage office and tell them to inspect the locker and cancel automatic monthly deduction.
I will be saving $139 each month ($134 for the locker and $5 for insurance). I will also not need to think about the northernmost town in Massachusetts along Interstate 93 with a pang in my stomach. I won't have to say "oh yeah, I gotta fix that". I won't have a remote tendril in a place I've never lived but was cheaper than a storage locker in a closer town.
Perhaps I would have saved money over time, had I chosen a closer locker. I chose Public Storage because their web site let me see the exact rates and availability online, even back in late 2005 when I stashed everything. One hundred square and climate-controlled feet in Methuen, a town thirty miles from where I live now and only twenty-odd miles from my then apartment in Melrose, were cheaper than the same footsies in seven-mile-away Waltham by a long shot, so I took the deal. I figured I would only need the locker for a year.
I didn't think that I'd live in two other apartments after house-sitting in Lexington, which was why I put my stuff in storage in the first place. I didn't think I wouldn't finish unpacking in either apartment, that I'd still have boxes that
graciana had packed very carefully for me in the fall of 2005 and I still haven't opened more than three years later. I didn't realize that my inability to sort the shit back then would mean finding a dumpster without a security camera near it. I didn't know that an $800 granite table would cost me an extra $3700 to store it for two and a quarter years after I'd set up its lighter, $50 cousin in the old Somlingford and again here in Brookline.I paid five grand in total for the storage locker. That's about a year's worth of car payments. That's not counting the times I had to rent vans to haul stuff to the locker or back out of it. That's not counting the dinners I've paid for or still owe (to
hakamadare, for example) to people that helped me. That's not counting the lost time driving up 93 to the Loop Connector, getting caught in traffic, winding up shopping in next-door Salem for things I probably didn't need. It's also not counting the bonding that rmcoburn and I had over helping me sort stuff up there. I miss her.Now the economy is different. The same locker in Waltham is now $173 per month, but it's only $91 per month right next door in Brighton. Then again it's $84.55 for my exact locker in Methuen now, so I've been getting screwed. I suspect those are recent drops in rates, now that property is worth a lot less and the economy is in the toilet.
My economy is also very different. Even if I get a job soon, I don't live the same way I did in 2005. I'm not hanging onto every object I've ever touched simply because that's what people in my family have always done. I am releasing things, sometimes to new homes but often back onto the street. I want to break down my walls because I can finally see the person I will become once those walls are gone. I want the space more than the objects because the space is an opening for other people in my life.
I guess it took $1668 each year to understand this. That's only slightly cheaper than biweekly therapy without health insurance. It's more expensive than the cable television I don't watch anymore but which I will also be free of as of April Second. That's the day my twelve-month discount ends and I am allowed to return my DVR HD box. I am evolving, and soon I will have the cash to prove it.
-spring cleaning a couple months early, Ps/d
