Attached

When I move, and I have a few times over my long life, I usually try to streamline my things before I pack. It makes sense. Boxes and boxes of things go to resale shops rather than bundled up and moved across the country.

But for a variety of reasons I left LA in stages over two/three years and things just arrived in New York in waves. It probably cost me more in the long run but it was easier than arriving with piles of things and not know what to do with them.

So in a figurative sense there have been piles of things in my apartment for the past five years. The pile is diminishing but it's mostly finally gone and that makes me feel more and more as though I'm at home. I have to admit that I've gotten rid of a lot of clothes and a lot of books (there is a resale shop in a church a few blocks away) although I keep toting around a core group of books. They are reminders and anchors to the past and act as sort of surrogate family for me. Not such a bad thing really.

Anyway, one has to minimize one's possessions to live in New York because you really can't be a packrat and live here. Well, you can but then you're the scary guy who stacks newspapers to the ceiling and keeps alligators as pets and things like that.

When I moved in I sublet for a few months before I took over the lease and the previous tenants sold me their big wooden entertainment unit. It was a perfect size for my tv and although pricey, I had to figure in the fact that it was already there and I didn't have to do anything to get it there, it just was. Over the years it's sort of floated around the living room as I tried to figure out the best place for it in relation to a place to plug in the tv but it's always been this behemoth in the midst of everything.

When my new roommate moved in this summer he brought with him a big flatscreen and this wouldn't fit into the cabinet as my tv did and so we stuck up on top for the past couple months. But as both of us are tv and internet junkies, we've both found that we prefer to work and hang out in our bedrooms... and frankly it may be time to simply rid ourselves of this enormous illfit piece of furniture.

Unfortunately it doesnt come apart and I suspect that this is why the previous tenant wanted to sell it. Had I not been so grateful to get into a fantastic apartment, I might have noticed this and tried to lower the price .. but hey, hindsight, 20/20 and all.

Now we have a dilema, I've tried selling it on Craig's List but there were no takers and although I hate to simply leave it out on the sidewalk (or, worse, chop it up and put it in the trash) I'm at a loss to know what to do.

I guess with bailouts and elections and oil prices and people suspending their campaigns and causing all sorts of havoc, this is a pretty minor problem, but it's just one of those things that I'm thinking about today.