Just For Fancy Musings of a self-proclaimed Fancy-Pants.

So, my genius brother puzzle-pieced all of my furniture and boxes and bags into a solid 5′ x8′ x 16′ block — not more than a half inch of space in there anywhere that might allow for shifting or banging in transit. My photos really don’t do justice to it. My mattress was last to go in on top of the last layer, meaning a hotel for that (Tuesday) and the following nights, to which we all looked forward if only for some serious air conditioning.

(I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned yet that, after weeks of the mildest summer I experienced in my whole time in LA, the weather had finally decided to kick into full gear that final week of July, and that the three of us had spent the last four days packing and lifting heavy objects my un-air-conditioned apartment (or more correctly, apartment-with-air-conditioning-too-weak-&-too-expensive-to-actually-use) while fat plops of sweat rolled down our faces and arms and bellies.)

We ended up at a “B&B” (I’ll explain those quotation marks in a minute) three blocks from the apartment — right on Fairfax in a house I had been passing literally every day for 8 years on my way to work. Without getting too ranty, I’ll just say that the Cinema Suites on Fairfax Ave was a disappointment so shocking that I don’t think we really understood how bad it was it until several days after we left. These Trip Advisor reviews pretty much say it all. In short, there was no air conditioning, a shared bathroom (unspecified in their online brochure), and the next day — no breakfast. So it was a B, not a B&B. And yes we stayed the second night there too, but was purely out of fatigue and lack of options.

ANYWAY… so brother’s off on his flight, I have a nice (but wistful) lunch with my old coworkers, and my mom valiantly stays behind in the sweltering apartment to do the last minute touch-uppy stuff like whiping the counters, vacuuming, checking closets to make sure nothing got left behind. After that, we drove down to my closest friends’ house for a home-cooked dinner and some last lovin’ before we hit the road. It was a beautiful last night, marred only by knowing that these two wonderful people and their gorgeous babies won’t be just down the road from me anymore.

Well, that, and the thought of returning to the B.

But the next day: ON THE ROAD!