amazing shift in tone from first to last paragraph

Valentines day, I pulled the old "flower delivery from 5,700 miles away" trick. It worked. Nobody else in Saori's office got flowers for Valentines day. So big points for me :)

Saori and I were able to chat a bit in the afternoon, but not too much because I was in the middle of taking loads of stuff over to the new house in the truck and Saori was going out to celebrate the departure of one of her closest friends in the office.

That night, mom, Larry and I got a pizza and watched the latest recorded episode of "Project Runway."

Saturday morning, I rolled out of bed, threw the bedding and duvet cover and pillows into a handy cardboard box and drove mom's car over to the new house to wait for the cable guy. Cable guy was scheduled to come over between 8 and 10 am so I sat back with the full expectation that we'd get a call around 10 and the guy would actually show closer to 11. I killed the time studying German, reading, and being mindful of the fact that I was lucky to avoid the last minute packing scramble at the cottage.

The cable guy, surprisingly, showed up at 9:50, a full ten minutes before his window expired. It was a good thing too: the house had never been hooked up to cable so he had to work that out. It turns out I also needed the extra ten minutes. The guy comes in, looks at where I've set up the TVs and cable boxes, and asks me "Can you show me where the smart panel is?" Granted, I am not a licensed architect. But I was embarrassed to have to admit that whatever the smart panel was, I was not going to be a member on it.

After much hunting around, I found a panel board in a closet filled with wiring and cables. Apparently, Smart Panels are the data rooms of houses these days. It's where the lines coming into the house get connected to the house, sort of the circuit breaker for data. It's also where all the data from the security sensors and cameras comes into one board so you can hook it up to the internet and connect to security companies.

The cable guy finally finished his work, and suddenly, the internet was back on. It was great. Although far too short lived because just as he was leaving, the moving truck pulled up.

The rest of the day was a whirl of furniture and large cardboard boxes. Mom bought us and the movers Mexican food from Los Dos Molinos and that was good and spicy. That night, ready to take showers and get cleaned up, we all discovered mom had forgotten to have the gas turned on, which is forgivable since she hasn't had gas for years.

Sunday morning, mom made breakfast of chorizo and eggs and then went back to the cottage to take showers. I stayed behind and waited for the buyers of the barstools to pick them up before heading back over to take a shower. After spending some time at the big house, the cottage just feels small and cramped.

This afternoon, I worked on our proposal for project rising and took mom's car to R's house north of the Biltmore. Yes, the car with manual transmission. I hate cars, but I despise driving stick. People tell me that when I get used to driving stick, it's second nature, and even preferable in the way that you have a finer hand at the performance of the machine. That would be great if you were operating a wood lathe or something that isn't essentially 2000 pounds of easily maneuvered metal moving at lethal speeds. I tense up driving automatics. Something about sitting down in the #5 killer of Americans does that to me. I think I am too familiar with statistics and the history of urban planning to ever enjoy driving.

Anyway, I stalled twice trying to turn onto a freeway on ramp, but nobody honked or anything. After the first time, they probably assumed I was just bad at this and gave me some space.

I guess I don't hate cars, not really. You can't hate cars anymore than you can hate Nazi Swastikas or guns. I hate the part of humans and our culture of which they are the manifestation. It is our slow death via the rat's pleasure lever. Cars will not destroy the world, but the human tendencies behind them probably will.