The move continues, and we are working in frantic spasms, like periodically salted slugs. We actually got the keys tonight, and wandered around the new place for a while, staring at its soon-to-be-ours features, such as the one orange-y wall in the dining area (WE HAVE A DINING AREA!) or the immense parking space in the secure garage (WE HAVE A PARKING SPOT IN A GARAGE!). We also have, by far, the crummiest car in there, which kind of makes me happy. I look forward to the first dirty look I get from some yuppie, so I can cheerfully pipe up, "It's a beaut, isn't it? You can hardly see the rust! I'll trade you straight across for your Lexus!" Then the yuppie, creeped out, will scamper to the elevator, wanting only to get to his apartment and to settle into a nice slice of Gouda, and the wife and I will chase him. "ONE OF US! ONE OF US!" we'll scream after him as he hunches crabwise into a waiting elevator. "WE'RE RUINING YOUR PROPERTY VALUES JUST BY BEING HERE!" You have to make your own fun if you're going to live amongst many people who all have much more money than yourself.

Yesterday I made the big sacrifice: I toted three huge bags of books down to the local cat-infested used bookstore to auction them off to the legendarily nutty (in a great way) proprietor. She asked me my name as she immediately attacked my miserable offerings. "My name's Skot," I replied. She stared at me as if I had said, "Hu-mans call me Klaatu!" But that's just her way: the woman is a champion starer, and you never quite know why. She fingered my ancient Dungeons & Dragons books from high school: "These are terrible, Steve. So old. I'll send them up the the University District store. The only people who buy these are the kids in black who mutter to themselves about the Lord of the Rings movies." She grabbed at my musty, horrible Piers Anthony paperbacks. "I guess I'll take these. They always sell. I don't know why. He sucks." I couldn't disagree. Also, I was taking a shine to being called "Steve."

It wasn't all tripe. I'm a book-buying nut, and over the years had developed a pretty big collection. In fact, on the whole, she seemed impressed by what I had brought, wretched crap aside. "So!" she crowed, holding up an improbable collection of New York Times Book Review pieces, "What did you do with all this education?" I fidgeted. "Let me guess. The arts." I surrendered. "Well, yeah, I'm an actor. I mean, that was my degree." She all but swooned: "I knew it! You have such a wonderful voice!" I shuffled nervously some more. "I have a cold. It makes me sound more resonant than usual." She blew me off and spun on the wife. "Do you ever just sit around and listen to him talk?" The wife, in what I imagine was a purely heroic effort, managed not to say, "Holy fuck, do you think I have a choice?"

It was very silly and embarrassing. Then she started telling me about her 21 pairs of Birkenstocks, and I'm afraid I had to kind of leave my body.

Anyway. She gave me an $80 store credit for all of my crap, and I'm pretty sure that at least $20 of that is going to go towards a t-shirt that they sell that says, "666 years of celebrating the Bubonic Plague."

In the soon-to-be-not-our-home, I was panicking earlier about being behind with the packing, but I think we're getting a handle on it. Plus I had forgotten that the wife is off for most of tomorrow, and will be able to get some more work done (and I'm taking Friday off, which will be the Uh Oh Am I Fucked Day? Because that's when I'll fearfully disconnect all the electronics with only a vanishing hope of being able to revive them again later). Move-panic also inspires some telling reactions in terms of your relationship with the items surrounding you in your home. "Honey? What about this leather bag with the broken strap?" "Ugh. Get rid of it." "What's this old bookshelf stereo system?" "I still have that? It's busted. To the dump." "Why are there four speakers in the closet when we have five around the apartment?" "Uh . . . all red-blooded males dream of a nonaphonic stereo system." "All right. What about this broken monkey-themed candleholder?" "Fuck it! Dump all of this shit!" "Even this solid bar of platinum?" "Gone!" "And this splinter from the One True Cross?" "Garbage!" "Oh, and here's a bottle of Bushmills. It has half an inch left in it." "Jesus Christ. Make sure to double-wrap that."

Hell, I'd keep even an empty bottle of Bushmills. Why? So I could loll around in the pool (WE HAVE A POOL! AND A PATIO!), decked out, say, in lime-green biker shorts, resting the empty whiskey bottle on my tummy. Then I'd wait for the fearful yuppies to creep out onto their balconies to look down at me with opprobrium and terror. And I'd scream at them, brandishing the bottle.

"ONE OF US! ONE OF US! SOMETIMES WE BUY OFF-BRAND MAYONNAISE!" The yuppies, terrified beyond lucidity, will scuttle back into their leatherette warrens, cowed into blank incomprehension by the dreadful invasion of Us.

And they haven't even met our friends yet. We're going to have a time.