This has been my home for the past two and a half years, and I am moving out at the end of August. I'll be moving into a house that is just a few blocks away.

The street number is 442, and if you drop one of the fours that may have some significance, or maybe not. I am on the second floor. As you walk in, you will likely smell boiled cabbage, which the people downstairs cook three or four times a week. His name is Lou, and her name I do not know. They moved in a year ago, and in all that time I have been unable to get them to tell me what her name is. I've glanced at the addresses of the mail sticking out of their mailbox, but all the letters are addressed to Lou. I've given up trying. Lou once offered to arrange a marriage for me with her daughter, who is a pediatrician in the Ukraine. I suppose if I had accepted, I would have found out her name eventually. I don't know the daughter's name either.

Upstairs

Walk up the ugly wooden stairs to a three foot landing that leads to another set of stairs leading right back down again, causing everyone who sees them to say, "be careful when you come home drunk!" My door is on this landing. It opens to a large, L-shaped living room, dining room, and kitchen, with the kitchen in the smaller part of the L and the dining table in the intersection. The dining table I bought when I moved in. It is a dark cherry, fairly plain, but I think attractive. There are matching chairs with white upholstery. The longer part of the L has my mother's old sofa and high-backed chair. They are showing their age, and are extremely uncomfortable as well. I'll bring them with me to the new house, but quickly replace them with furniture that I like.

Straight back is the bedroom and the bath. Nothing remarkable here. The bedroom furniture I bought when I moved in, more dark cherry, and I think it will look good in the new house. Before I lived here, I was in a series of furnished apartments, which is why all of the significant furniture is fairly new or hand-me-down. I still don't have a coffee table in the living room. I use an old milk crate instead¹. That's got to go.

Make yourself at home. Push last week's Sunday New York Times off of the couch and try to sit comfortably (it's hard to do, I know). Put your feet up on the milk crate. Grab one of the Harper's that are lying around, a book off of one of the shelves, or if you want there's a collection of movies on DVD, and CDs. And a Mac Powerbook for internet access. It's always on, and always connected. If the weather is nice, the balcony is a nice place to sit too.

And if you are around on the August 31, you can help me move.