Benedictions: "and the shadows of things that might be?"

The merriest, sunniest of winter festivals to all.

Domicile Tour Extravaganza 2006 continues

This morning I find myself with quite a lot of time and an interdiction against making a noisy pest of myself. For somehow I woke up about three hours on the clock earlier than usual. This spate of temporal gratuity left me questing for things-to-do, and the fact of my seeing the family later today gave me a hint.

Something... I'd neglected. Something I'd forgotten. Willfully? Nolens, volens? I'm no six-o'clock-in-the-morning-philosopher, which surely lessens my prospects for escaping from Elba Island should I find myself banished by a vengeful, fearful Europe, so I'll skip right past the Chairman Kaga impersonation to the narrative crutch -- I mean, the object of interest around which I have to spin a cohering net.

First, for reference, let us go anachron a little ways, so that I can demonstrate I was planning ahead. The date is 9th September 2006. I had arrived in Princeton the previous night.

As you enter the suite and, well, walk about two-thirds in and look right and back you see this view. The fireplace is not operational (the chimney is sealed) and that's a carbon monoxide detector in the socket. It's not the only carbon monoxide detector in the suite. In fact, it's not the only carbon monoxide detector in the room. Redundancy -- saving lives since the dawn of man.

Here's my desk. This view is from the middle of the room; you can see the bedroom through the door on the right. The desk is too small -- you'll see what I mean in a minute -- and the desk-chair is quite inferior to the type they have in the New Graduate College rooms. Those chairs, as you can see with careful inspection, are actually of a rocking variety. Their paleolithic counterparts are orthogonally built of rigid wood in inhuman proportions, the sort of inplastic thing which I cannot believe is ergonomically sound.

Anyway, there's nothing of especial interest here. I just thought it seemed a bucolic scene.

Speaking of pastoral New Jersey, here's the summertime view from the window in the room we were just in. The suite is situated on the west wall of the North Courtyard, half of which you see here. If you go up those steps in the back, under a short archway, right twenty paces or so, and turn left, you'll see something like this, except without the snow. So that's where I am in the complex.

Naturally (naturally!) I was concerned about my boxes. Long-time readers and, umm, blood-relatives will need no wordsmithery on this occasion to conjure a sense of the scene, which is good, because it would probably just come out as a bunch of mixed metaphors. Yes, after my little-blogged-about struggle with Moving & Storage, the student-run, well, moving-and-storage concern, I was touched nervous. In fact at this time I couldn't even confirm that my things had been in storage. However, being made of stern stuff, I was not even close to panicking when it happened on this lovely Saturday afternoon that I heard some boxy noises thump-thump-thumping outside my chamber door. Engrossed in my business, I had time only to turn and see several large people retreating along the stone path.

Yes, indeed, I was about ready to forgive. Not only had they apparently in fact picked up and stored my boxes -- without, as I would shortly find out, even any water damage (phew!) -- but they had managed to deliver them directly to my door, on the second floor, in the residence that a university-politics war was fought to keep past the edge of campus. Someone anonymous had not, as I would also shortly find out, gotten the message about not picking them up by the handles, but this minor fault I am eager to wink at, for after all I have done the same now and then.

Especially observant long-time readers will note, however, two interesting facts about this picture. First, that the door is propped open with a chair. (You will all be delighted to learn that I locked myself out not once all term.) Second, that something is missing. Not to turn this into an obnoxious "what's wrong with this picture?" problem, but compare an earlier portrait of The Thirteen.

Hmm.

(Preternaturally observant readers will note a third thing, namely that I have adopted a different file-naming convention. Good-bye, room_0.jpg; hello, window.jpg.)

Not to keep you in suspense for too long: as evidenced by how you're only hearing this tale now, three months later, instead of at gruesome, abusive length before, things concluded happily an hour or so later:

After another thump-thump-thump I checked the hall, to be greeted by this wonderful tableau. Hosanna in excelsis! Thanks be to Moving & Storage for their timely aversion of the rending of garments and full-throated curses in Cerberus' name under the next full moon.

Now let us away, friends, to a moment closer to the present one. Just two days ago, here was the state of things.

The bookshelf, which holds some of my books. It's a little small. There was some overflow. Here, and... elsewhere. In case you're wondering, I'm pretty sure that kettle is fire-safety-inspector-approved. I guess I'll find out during the spring inspection. The click-through is just small enough that you can't really read the titles on most volumes unless you already know them. Sorry. Anyway, I'm a little disappointed with this shelf, to be frank. It feels like something just stuck on the wall; whereas last year's integrated desk-shelf combination made for a quite nice picture.

On the plus slate, you can see some empty floor space, which was lacking in the quite-easy-to-vacuum previous apartment.

Before we move to the back room, here's the desk, circa today. Not much to see here. The strange, ugly green thing on the left is a towel over the small table (same model as last year). Said table is so small about the only functional thing I could manage with it was to turn it into a poor-student's Ottoman. (There's a sitting chair left, off-camera.) More books on the desk. You can't really see the second tier, a small mess of papers, behind them. That's a little bottle of honey on the right end of the window ledge, if you were wondering what was up.

So... it's another bookshelf. This is the view if you're leaning back on the foot of the bed and, well, staring at the bookshelf. There's Sha-naqba-umuru with the textbooks, and that curious blotch of colour in front of the compact discs is the Phantom of the Opera table accent.

I saved the most boring shot for last. Think of it as a sad, wistful denouement, because otherwise it was just a pothole in the narrative road. There's, umm, a picture frame behind the open book.

* * *

The squirrels are stirring outside. The world is waking up. Airplane pictures (I'm sure you can't wait) later.