Housewarming

Jon moved to a new apartment in Manayunk this week. Manayunk, for those of you who aren't familiar with the geography of the Philadelphia region, is an old section of town that has, in recent years, become young, hip, and happening. Or something like that. It's only about 30 minutes away from me, which is better than the 45 minutes away that Jon's New Jersey apartment was. Plus, it's not in New Jersey.

Since I had moved about four times in the time that Jon had been living in his former apartment, I offered him my packing assistance a couple of times this week. And even though we were distracted quite a bit by Guitar Hero 2 and by his new 46-inch television, we did get a fair amount of packing done. At least enough to give him a boost for when his family and other friends who did not have to work on Saturday afternoon came to help him on the weekend.

So, the big move was on Saturday, and I had to work. Until 11:30 pm, which is still early if you're a hip, happening youth, right? So several of us decided that we would have a housewarming party at Jon's new apartment on Saturday night after I finished work. Jon agreed to this, somehow. I guess none of us were thinking too clearly.

And then I got lost on the way to Manayunk. Or rather, I didn't get lost, my directions were actually correct, but I second-guessed them and called Jon to confirm them. But he denied them. He misunderstood which direction I was going and sent me the wrong way. In his defense, he'd had a long day of moving, preceded by a long day of packing, and, I expect, a rather short night of sleeping. But once I got turned around and had completely no idea where I was, the battery on my cell phone died. I'm still getting used to this cell phone thing, and I expect it will be a while yet before I have a full understanding of the life expectancy of its battery.

Long story short, I eventually found Jon's apartment. Or at least, I found where I expected Jon's apartment ought to be, noticed the lack of available parking spaces at midnight on a Saturday night, right after the Eagles game had finished, and turned my attention to looking for a parking spot. Once I finally found one, not far from his apartment, as it turns out, I wondered loudly how I ever passed the parallel parking portion of my driver's test. But, I squeezed my car in eventually, and walked past Jon's apartment several times before I found the door, much to the amusement of several hip, happening, inebriated neighbors.

Jon's apartment, by the way, is awesome. It's the top floor of an older, store-front type building, and as such it has a sortof penthouse feel to it. It also has a huge porch or balcony or whatever you want to call it, big enough to pitch a tent on. We know this, because we pitched a tent on it.

But poor Jon, exhausted by his move, went to bed almost as soon as I got there. Which left the rest of us feeling a little bit bad that we were having a housewarming party without him, but, he assured us that he didn't mind, so we went ahead and continued our evening without him.

We didn't want to wake him up, so we moved out onto the porch. It was a gorgeous night - barely cold enough for April, let alone for January. It was however, raining. Just a tiny, little bit, though; not enough that you would say anything along the lines of, "Oh drat, it's raining, perhaps we ought to move indoors." At least not for a couple of hours, when someone might get up to go to the bathroom and comes back to discover that the cushion he or she had been sitting on was somewhat dry on one side, but completely soaked through on the other side where it had not been protected from the constant, misty rain by his or her buttocks. It was about then that we remembered the tent, and moved into the semi-indoors.

So, two firsts for me this weekend. I'm pretty sure I've never slept in a tent on a porch in the city before, and I'm pretty sure I've never slept in a tent in January before. It was such a fun evening, and staying up half the night talking about silly things with good friends felt like all the best parts of college all over again. (You know, the parts of college that didn't involve writing papers or going to classes.)

After church on Sunday, a few of us headed back to Jon's house to redeem our invasion of the evening before with a little bit of cleaning up and unpacking. We had tasty tomato pie, and I got a good portion of his kitchen put away for him, then watched part of a movie on his needlessly enormous television. Then I went home and took a nap. Because it might be fun to pretend I am still in college once in a while, but apparently, I am no longer 20 years old. In fact, I will be entering my last year of that particular decade in exactly one week's time. When did I get so old?

Epilogue:
My biggest frustration with my cell phone battery dying was that I didn't have a charger with me, and nobody else had one they could lend me. I grumbled and complained at my own stupidity, and vowed that I would put my extra cell phone charger in my bag the minute I got home (the phone came with two identical and interchangeable chargers - one for the phone, and one for the bluetooth, so one could easily be the "travel" charger). I looked all over for the extra charger, but couldn't for the life of me figure out where it was. I finally found it today - in the bottom of the very same backpack that I had with me the entire time. Sigh. They do say the memory is the first to go...