Bye-bye, Tivo.

When I moved to my new hood, I decided to cancel my Tivo service. Don't get me wrong, I assured the customer service rep who was desperately trying to change my mind, I love my Tivo! I'm one of those freaky-ass Tivo-philes who gushes about my Tivo-love with my Tivo-having friends. But an upstart competitor who shall remain nameless* was offering me a FREE 100-hour DVR, with the ability to record two shows at once (always a bone of contention with my old-skool 40-hour Tivo box), plus FREE service for a year, and only $5.99 a month after that instead of Tivo's $12.95, plus $10 off my bill for 15 months, PLUS a free portable DVD player. In the battle between brand loyalty and the bottom line, filthy lucre won out.

So what am I recording on my shiny new DVR? What merits a season pass? What counts as no-appointment-necessary television?

Rome: I am totally hooked. Titus Pullo, Lucius Vorenus, Servilia, Brutus, Octavia and Octavian: these people and their world are utterly real and compelling to me. Someone said this second season will be the last. Please, say it ain't so!
House and Bones: old, good friends.
the L word: I talk back to my TV more during this show than any other. I jeer, I groan, I roll my eyes – and then there's a hilarious, hot, scandalous and gorgeously shot episode like this week's, which redeems it all.
Heroes: don't tell me, don't tell me – I haven't seen this week's episode yet.
American Idol: they're back and better than ever.
The Closer and Saved: when they come back, they'll be at the top of the list.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of Brothers & Sisters, a show I really want to love. I'm checking out Rescue Me and Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy and Medium, and a little Everybody Hates Chris because one of my new neighbors is on it.

To my shock and horror, for the first time in umpteen years I missed the Golden Globes – even after telling my dad how it's the best awards show because everyone's totally wasted – but the glorious Kyra Sedgwick won for The Closer, so all is (briefly, politics and global warming aside) right with the world.

*Unless you need me to hook you up, in which case I'll tell you.

I love Los Feliz.

Today I went home at lunch and lay on our new brown and cream zebra-striped rug, with its new woolly smell, in fat stripes of sunlight. I love being on the second floor with its views of sky, trees and rooftops, nothing to block the light streaming through the windows. The neighborhood was silent. Silent! No screaming, no horns playing La Cuca-fucking-racha. Only birds and breezes. My dog sighed and settled down beside me, and my cat rolled on her back and stretched in the sun on the porch outside the open door.

New year, new apartment.

Mere minutes after arriving home from my vacation, I resumed a frantic box-packing marathon that lasted late into the next night (despite all my pre-holiday efforts – dang!), and then for a few more hours the following morning before I absolutely had to go pick up my U-Haul truck or lose my reservation. Last time I moved, I hired three guys, day workers, to help with the heavy lifting, and my plan was to do the same this time around. I’d had a heinous experience with a professional moving company the time before that (they’d held my piano hostage in the pelting rain while extorting more money out of me; I later looked them up in the Better Business Bureau and found that they had a long history of consumer complaints. Lesson learned.)

So on my way to pick up the truck, I thought I’d swing by Home Depot, where I’d heard the day laborers were to be found. A block away, I noticed dozens of guys, who surged toward me in a body as soon as they noticed – almost before I noticed – that I was slowing down. They swarmed around my car, yanking the doors open and sliding in before I could even think. Here I’d thought it would be a sane, measured procedure: I’d find out who knew how to drive, who was experienced at moving. But there they were, three grinning guys in my car and more struggling to squeeze in, knocking on my window with pleading faces. I held up three fingers and shrugged helplessly: Solamente tres.

Hours of delays, frustration, and back-breaking labor ensued (though there were also a couple of angels who swooped in to help in my hour of panic). I valiantly resisted shrill screams of utter desperation. Sweat flew freely, especially when all three Guatemalan guys – and me – wrestled my giant sofabed up a steep, narrow flight of steps, almost toppling it over the railing to the pavement below.

Today I’m bone-tired and I ache in every muscle, including my hands and feet, and I have hundreds of boxes to unpack. But when I opened my door this morning in my beautiful new Los Feliz neighborhood, I heard birdsong and smelled the delicate fragance of the flowers that twine up that very same railing.

Moving takes forever. I went back to the old place at lunch to clean and deal with all the leftover stuff: framed pictures, curtains, curtain rods, all the random detritus that we abandoned yesterday when the truck got full. I’ll be back there tonight loading my car and doing one last, nostalgic load of laundry in my trusty old washer and dryer. (There’s nowhere to put them at the new place. Hello, laundromat.)

P.S. The water pressure in my new shower is amazing.