Susanna Wolff

Movin' on Up (Part Dos)

I just moved from a disgusting apartment to a far superior apartment and I’m pretty psyched about that, but I’ve got 2 big issues with the move:

1. The floors of my new apartment are sort of slanted, so when I’m in my bedroom I feel like I’m on a boat.

2. My sister hired this trio of Philippino guys with a truck whom she found on Craigslist to move our heavy furniture because we’re girls and can’t lift an armoire. We just can’t. My sister, who is practically an apartment nomad (but who never learned to pack light), has had success with Craigslist movers in the past, so we were surprised by the incompetence of “Joe” and his Spanish-speaking (why?) crew.
They broke a lot of hard-to-break furniture and took 5 hours to move our stuff 12 blocks. There was one particular guy with long hair who, the whole day, would only pick up the light chairs and lamps. Now, I get that moving heavy stuff is hard. I do. That’s why I don’t offer to move stuff for a living. But this wimp did. So, naturally, my sister would come up behind him carrying heavy bookshelves and tables saying, “You move like a girl!”
This sounds mean, but he didn’t speak English anyway—except that he, quite appropriately, kept singing, “There’s something in the way she moves…” while holding a wicker chair—and he really did move like a girl.

Also, sitting around in the moving truck was a 10 month-old baby named Sophia.

I Photoshopped Something!

It’s housing lottery season here at Columbia. That’s when everyone is randomly assigned a number and, starting from 1, that is the order in which they get to pick their dorm rooms for next year. This random process exists because of the openly acknowledged fact that most campus housing sucks. Exciting! While I don’t participate in this lottery (because I have  a modicum of pride), I find the idea that there is someone walking around campus with #1 in the lottery to be hilarious. Someone has to have it though. Unless the whole process is a sham. Whoa. Just blew my mind.

Anyway, check out my mad/adequate photoshop skillz. 

Excuse Me

I always thought that the onset of spring meant four things: iced coffee, flip-flops, finals, and trying to find a decent pair of $5 sunglasses. It turns out that I can add one more thing to that list: Korean people trying to get me to join a Bible study group.

Just me?

For the past week, every time I have stepped foot on the Columbia campus—whether to sit and study or to sprint across 116th street to hand in a term paper—I have been accosted by a demure Asian person with an agenda. Yesterday I was stopped, mid-sprint, by this girl who looked really lost and, hey, I had 4 minutes left to hand in my paper so I stopped when she said, “Excuse me.” I figured she would ask me where a building was and, frankly, I enjoy answering easy questions. Needless to say, when she continued with, “I was just trying to find student leaders who would be interesting in joining a Bible study group and spreading the word of God,” I was disappointed.

I think I cringed when I heard the word “Bible.” Not because I don’t like the Bible; I think it’s an interesting book, but I’m not going to, and I don’t want anyone else to do things and act a certain way just because a book says so. Good actions don’t become good because they are in the Bible. They are in the Bible because they are good.

You don’t need God to have Good. You only need it to spell good.

I didn’t say this to Bible Study Girl, though. I had to hand in an essay. Maybe I’ll mention this stuff next time I get trapped by an inconspicuous Bible-freak. But I’d much prefer it if they just started carrying super noticeable, Bibley clipboards. That way, when I saw one coming, I could just put my headphones on and cross to the other side of the street like I do when the Greenpeace people ask me if I have a “moment for the environment.”

Or maybe I should just start carrying my own clipboard.

Excuse me. Do you have a moment to stop strangers from talking to you?

Moving On Up

I am moving next Thursday. Thank god.

The peculiar thing about the month before moving, but after telling your landlord that you’re not sticking around, is that real estate brokers just show up at any and all times of the day to show strangers the apartment. Even if you’re still in it. In your pajamas. Writing a term paper.

Now, I get that the landlord wants to find new tenants, but this is not cool.

The awkwardness is aided by the fact that my apartment is in a prime off-campus-but-still-close-to-campus location so the only people who come to see it are Columbia kids. And I might not have a lot of friends at Columbia, but I know some people. And I don’t want to have to show my apartment to them when I’m in my pajamas, writing a paper.

My revenge? I don’t mention the impenetrable darkness, that sometimes the bathroom light turns off while you’re in the shower and scares the crap out of you, that the morbidly obese next door neighbor likes to walk the halls in his underwear calling for his cat, that that same neighbor has an odor like you wouldn’t believe, or that the apartment is directly next door to the football frat so you hear roaring renditions of “Living on a Prayer” day in and day out.

The next tenants can figure out that stuff on their own. As for me, I’m moving to a place with a dishwasher. And windows.