Dolls, Dogs, Dutch

I type this post from the confines of a York College writing lab which, due to its lack of windows, causes me to lose track of most any concept of time. With that said, I can say with confidence that my presence here is a much welcomed dose of nostalgia rather than the symbol of fast approaching deadlines of all kinds it was when I was a student here. I took the ride down to do some visiting, only to find that break started today. The day was a solid one nonetheless, as I caught friends intermittently throughout the day, but it has left me with pockets of downtime like this as I wait to meet up with some friends from the wrestling team. We workout together, no big deal.

The move to Pennsylvania is at last complete. With the exception of having to find a local Wal-Mart equivalent and start the actual job that bid me to leave to beach combed land of Long Island's north shore, things have pretty well settled down and I may even find some time to scribe a long overdue opinion piece on Jeremy Lin's rise to superstrardom, which excites me enough for both of us, so don't worry if you're underwhelmed by that news.

As I said, the move is complete, but a great deal of things went down in short succession that led up to this point. I'll do my best to cover the ins and outs without over doing it on the word count front.

I'm living in the historic district of Lancaster, a stone's throw from a lot of things, but most notably, I guess, at this point, the stadium for the Lancaster Barnstormers of Atlantic League fame. I find it incredibly interesting that for a guy who, no offense, never cared very much for baseball (especially after the Chi-Sox won the series) can have a lot of the eras of his life kind of defined by this minor league baseball program. My family used to have season tickets for the Long Island Ducks when I was high school-ish age, Rhapsody was heavily involved with the York Revolution, and now I live close enough to the Barnstormers to have to keep my head on a swivel should a ball ever leave the park.

Anyway, the speed of life has definitely picked up in a positive way. A couple of weeks ago, I took the drive out to PA to check out some perspective domiciles and really did get lucky since the second place I checked out wound up being the place I settled on. However, the day did not start out on such a positive note. I initially checked out a place in Centerville in a more rural area of Lancaster and my hopes were pretty high for the place, initially. The woman had four dogs that she admitted were rambunctious, but small. I admit I'm not exactly a pet person, but I also don't really mind them too much either. I figured even if the dogs bark a bit and crowd your knees some, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. For awhile, I sat inside and spoke with the owner as the dogs played outside. I was a little relieved because she wasn't lying about the dogs being small and they weren't going wild or anything outside. I figured I was, more or less, in the clear and the woman was just being cautious in warning me about the animals. She then opened the door and everything changed. Now, I expected these dogs to bark and jump at my legs until they got to know me and get settled, but I was literally fending off projectile dogs as they launched themselves at my chest. I'm trying to play it cool, but it gets to a point where I'm literally throwing these dogs off me and fighting my natural instincts and clench my fists. I know that a few animal lover friends likely disapprove, but I swear I was under attack.

The woman eventually corrals the beasts and locks them away in another room, where they continue to throw themselves at the door, making a terrible thud-noise. Now, at that point, I'm rattled, I admit. However, this woman's rent was the cheapest to be found and while I had already concluded that my time in this place was going to be MUCH more short-term than I had anticipated, I still didn't want unequivocally rule the place out just yet. Plus, I came all this way so why not at least see the room? The room itself is furnished, has an independent bathroom, nice tile flooring, and even a variety of books to peruse. Sounds pretty solid, right? I neglected to mention that the room is filled with at least 30 different baby dolls of all kinds, surrounding the room. At this point I'm briefly considering that this is an elaborate hoax set up by Sean Taylor to make up for the cash register incident. It was not. At that point my gut feeling was confirmed and I thanked the woman for her time and moved on.

Actually, I'm going to split this time into a few posts to avoid writing a novel and over skimming the time. The next post will concern a surprise party that, thanks to Sean Taylor, almost wasn't.

Song of the Day: Out Of The Blue-George Harrison
Jazz Song of the Day: Orange Was The Color Of Her Dress-Charles Mingus