Ahhhh... moving.

I’ve had more than my fair share of bouncing around from apartment to crappy apartment. I was fed up with money-grubbing bastard landlords who would take $200 out of my security deposit to replace a single toilet seat. I was through with lugging boxes, furniture, and my human torso collection down three flights of stairs, squeezing everything into a Sentra, and unpacking in another room the size of a shoebox (size 11 Men’s -- a decent-sized shoebox, certainly... but hardly worth $600 a month) halfway across town.

So, in the Spring of 2003, I caved and bought a house.

Two years and change later, I don’t regret the decision.

I haven’t even thought of moving.

Okay, I might have once or twice.

One of the benefits (wait... probably the ONLY benefit) of apartment living is that you don’t have to worry about landscaping or shovelling snow or any of that happy horseshit. Each complex I stayed in (briefly) had a staff that... mowed the lawn, for example.

I moved to Newark in late May, a time when the Mid-Atlantic region was repeatedly bitch-slapped by Mother Nature. After three weeks of intense rainfall, the grass around my new abode had grown ridiculously tall. Some patches of turf were up to my pubic hair. No lie.

Couple this with the fact that I live on a corner lot. The front, back, and side yards together are about the same square-footage as Houston. While attempting to trim waist-high grass with the motor of the John Deere smoking, I admit that I kind of missed the old apartment.

Since that day, however, I’ve been very happy here. Settled. Content. For at least a good few years, I shouldn’t be moving again.

Unfortunately, many of my friends have decided to move over the past couple of years, and I’m generally among the first to get the dreaded call.

One such call came in April, when Sweeny asked me to help him move a piece of furniture called an armoire.

Armoire, for those who haven’t studied French, is a word that means “heavy as shit.”

I’m always a great person to ask for aid in moving armoires, due in part to my rippling muscle-bound physique.

I’m so lying.

The heaviest thing I’d lifted in the months leading up to the armoire incident was a pint glass. My biceps have completely atrophied since my days as a steroid-addled power lifter. (I’m lying about that, too -- the power lifting part, not the muscle atrophy part.)

So, there I was with Sweeny, carrying a piece of furniture the size of my car (and it probably would have been easier lifting the car, since it isn’t made of oak!). We’d count to three, lift, take two steps, set it down, wipe the blood from our ruptured eyeballs onto our sleeves, and grab a beer.

Three beers later, we’d moved that thing 19 feet.

Well, I hope Sweeny’s happy in his new home. If not, he can find someone else to help him move that fucking armoire when he goes.