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MetalHare by Ralph Niese.

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It's past midnight, and I'm packing up the last of my belongings before I ditch the Upper East Side for Murray Hill in the afternnoon. While I survey the colossal mess, the piles of boxes, and mounds of dust gathering in the corners of my apartment, I reflect on how different this move is from the last one. August 30, 2005. I’ll never forget that day – the day I moved from Vancouver, Canada, to New York with nothing more than a suitcase and two boxes full of clothes, books, and a few personal belongings. That day, my apartment seemed so bleak, with its bare white walls and a single mattress on the floor (the few pieces of furniture I had purchased had yet to arrive). Homesickness, loneliness, and regret hit me immediately. I didn’t know anyone in Manhattan, I missed my family, and I couldn’t stand the noise of the city. The idea that I was going to have to live here for next two years terrified me. What the hell had I gotten myself into? Who in their right mind would even want to leave Vancouver? I wanted to turn around and take the earliest flight back to Canada. Four and a half years later, I am still in Manhattan, and it seems inconceivable that I once hated the city. Shortly before I left Vancouver, my brother-in-law predicted that the NYC would harden me. Perhaps it has, but I think more importantly, it has made me the person I am today – better, stronger, and more confident. Some moves are simply a change in one’s dwelling place (like my upcoming one), but others can change a person for better or for worse.

Email us your moving story: mystory@rabbitmovers.com

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Thanks for the great shot! #RabbitMovers #FrankApe #Repost @are_jay_are with @repostapp ・・・ 🚛

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Farewell familiar Earth, I am no longer prone To Earthly gravity which weighs down frail flesh and bone; My soul is lighter than the feather which on the scales of justice lies, And now I dance on sunbeams beyond Earth's cloud-studded azure skies. A far more sad farewell I bid to those who loved me well, For while I dance light-pawed in paradise, my absence brings them hell, Do not prolong your sadness, for I know that ere too long we'll meet again, And you can rest assured that I'm gone far beyond all suffering or pain. Do not feel guilty, or think that I have felt betrayed, Because you had to lend a helping had to ease me towards my grave, And do not feel that you betray me when you take a new cat to your heart, You will need mortal feline company to fill the time while we remain apart. Farewell familiar Earth, I am no longer prone, To the pain of age, and cancers which in my flesh had grown, Now I dance on sunbeams beyond those broad cerulean skies, And betimes I will gaze down upon you, with gentle, loving, emerald eyes. • • • #Dolly #CatAngel #OfficeCat #RIP #SLSmith

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Today's move is the culmination of several: a long, protracted process that began in October. We undertook a gut renovation of our house and construction began in the middle of that month. Since it was a gut restoration, we had to vacate the premises for an extended period. That period lasted 5 months. After an involved and somewhat lengthy search, we found a sublet right under our noses: one of our architect's tenants' had suffered a family emergency and had to hightail out of NYC for an unspecified period of time. It might seem cruel to say, but their family drama dovetailed nicely with our needs. Furthermore, the apartment was 11 blocks from our home and between the same cross streets so it seemed easy. Moving is never easy. Moving always sucks. I rented a truck and hired 3 of the guys from my work to pack up and assist. What was needed at the apartment (it was furnished) went over there in several trips in my car. The rest went into a self-storage unit 4 blocks from our house. We stayed in the apartment until mid-February. We then moved into friends' house while they were on a skiing holiday. Their block was between the same cross streets but only 3 blocks from our house. We kept creeping closer and closer to home on the same axis. Again, many cars trips to and from the sublet to the house-sit accomplished this move. We had to do it all over again at the end of that week. By then the top two floors of our house were deemed habitable. Another round of car trips, this time from the house-sit to our home, ensued. I also rented a U-Haul van and enlisted my cousin to assist me in moving some of our more essential furniture from the self-storage unit to our house. We set up camp in our living room and toughed it out there for three more weeks. This week, the ground floor of our house was completed and unveiled. The time had come to move everything back into the house and truly set up our home. I think it more than understandable that I've had my fill of moving myself. That's why I called Rabbit.

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Bubble Wrap was Originally Meant to Be Used as Wallpaper

Bubble Wrap was invented by two engineers Al Fielding and Swiss inventor Marc Chavannes in Hawthorne, N.J. in 1957.  The two were not, however, trying to make a product to be used as packaging material. Rather, they were trying to create a textured wallpaper.  They started out by sealing two shower curtains together in such a way that it would capture air bubbles which would make the textured appearance for their wallpaper.  Needless to say, this wallpaper idea didn’t sell too well.

Not to be deterred, they then set about finding another use for their product.  The alternate use they came up with was to use it as greenhouse insulation.  While bubble wrap by itself does create somewhat of an insulating effect, this idea didn’t pan out popularly either.

It was three years after the initial creation of Bubble Wrap that Frederick W. Bowers, a marketer at Sealed Air, which makes Bubble Wrap, finally came up with the perfect use for their product.  On October the 5, 1959, IBM announced their new 1401 variable word length computer.  Bowers got the idea that Bubble Wrap could be used as a good packaging material to protect the computer while it was being shipped.  He then pitched the idea to IBM and demonstrated Bubble Wrap’s protective abilities.  His demonstration went over well and IBM began purchasing Bubble Wrap to protect their 1401 and other fragile product they sold and shipped.

From those humble beginnings, the company has grown to annual sales of around $4 billion with a net profit of around $255 million.  For reference, about 10% of Sealed Air’s revenue comes from Bubble Wrap, so around $400 million worth of Bubble Wrap is sold annually.

Bonus Facts:

One common misconception about Bubble Wrap is that it is created using machinery that inflates and then seals each and every bubble.  In fact, it’s made by trapping air bubbles in between two sheets of plastic as they are heated and passed between rollers.

In its lifetime, the IBM managed to sell or lease about double the number of 1401’s it projected, a whopping 10,000 units, 5,000 of which were sold or leased in its first five weeks on the market.  This might not sound like much, but by the mid-1960s about half of all the computers in the world were the IBM 1401. This computer leased for $2,500 a month (about $18,000 a month today).

One of the more interesting aspects of the 1401 was that it was a decimal based computer, rather than binary like most all computers today.

One of the downsides to Bubble Wrap has always been how much space it takes up during shipping and storage, for customers who are just buying the Bubble Wrap.  In order to get around this problem, one of the dreams of the original inventors was that they’d some day be able to create a Bubble Wrap that customers could self inflate, as needed.  So that when they purchased it from the manufacturer, it could be shipped as thin flat sheets of plastic, without the bubbles.  Once they assigned some engineers to the problem in the early 1990s, it took about a decade to finally work out the kinks, but Sealed Air now offers such a Bubble Wrap product.  The method they came up with was to extrude tiny pellets of polyethylene into sheets, which are then heated.  The tiny beads of polyethylene then flatten to form extremely strong polymer sheets with rows of un-inflated bubbles which are connected in lines.  Customers can then lease a special machine ($500 per year) from Sealed Air which connect to one end of the sheets and inflate all the lines and then seal off the opening.

This new customer inflatable Bubble Wrap is about 40 times cheaper than the traditional bubble wrap in terms of shipping costs to the customers buying the Bubble Wrap.

You can tell if some of the Bubble Wrap you have uses these inflatable Bubble Wrap sheets if you can’t pop individual bubbles on the sheets.  Popping one bubble will just pop all the bubbles on a line.

While originally being used primarily for packaging for electronics equipment, today the vast majority of Bubble Wrap made is used for food packaging.

Sealed Air continually does extreme demonstrations showing how much better Bubble Wrap performs at protecting fragile items. In one such demonstration, they dropped an 815 pound pumpkin from a height of 35 feet onto layers of Bubble Wrap.  The pumpkin survived the fall without a scratch.

Among its many uses, Bubble Wrap can be used as a cheap burglar alarm  by placing large bubbled bubble wrap on the floor in front of your door.  Another zany use, used by teenage girls the word over, is as a good stuffing for one’s bra.

The amount of Bubble Wrap produced by Sealed Air annually is enough to wrap the entire Earth (at the equator) with Bubble Wrap about ten times.

One major competitor to Bubble Wrap in the packaging industry popped up around five years after Bubble Wrap, “packing peanuts”.  These are typically made from pure polystyrene resin.

The color of packaging peanuts usually indicates what it is exactly made of.  Green, for instance, indicates that it’s made from recycled polystyrene.  Pink means that it is an anti-static version of packaging peanuts.  White means that it’s at least 70% virgin polystyrene resin.

A new kind of packaging peanut has come on the market in the last couple decades which is actually edible.  These are made from organic based materials, such as corn starch, rather than petroleum based.  They are also completely biodegradable and can’t retain an electrostatic charge, which can be useful in shipping electronics equipment.

This article was originally posted on Today I Found Out.

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Where To Get Free Moving Boxes

Can’t afford moving boxes? Here are some places where you can get them for free:

Friends/Family

Freecycle

Craigslist

ReuseNYC

Supermarkets

Local Stores

Liquor Stores

Bars

Schools

Copy Centers

Recycling Centers

Local fast food chains/restaurants

Make sure the boxes are clean and dry before taking them home. Dirty boxes can ruin your items or prevent the tape from sticking. (Imagine you packed your finest glasses and the tape just falls off the box.) Wet boxes can make the box weaker and prone to falling apart.

Do not use boxes that held food for anything being stored. The smell can attract rodents/pests.

Get sturdy boxes. You want to be sure that the box can support whatever your packing.

Not sure about what size box you need?

Use small boxes for books, fragile items, or heavy items.

Use medium boxes for clothes, shoes, or electronics.

Use large boxes for bedding, large cookware, or light items.

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The Village Move Getting home from teaching at the local primary school one day, I arrived at my house nestled in the middle of a coastal village in Tonga. The chief of the village and his wife were sitting in my living room when I opened the door. Some of their furniture had already been moved into my house and it looked like they were moving in with me. I found this strange, but hey it’s Tonga, and I did not want to ruin my ties with them, so I just asked them how they were and then sat down. They proceeded to ask me if I was happy in Tonga, I mean I had been there a little over a year as a Peace Corps volunteer in their village and I spoke the language, taught English at their schools and worked with the youth on projects. I was one of the more positive volunteers always trying to keep myself busy and out in the village. The chief went on to tell me that he and his wife would be moving back into my house and that I would need to move to the city. The city was over an hour away and definitely not where I wanted to be since we had youth projects going on out in the village that took awhile to get started up in the first place, and I only had eight months left in Tonga. Why didn’t the chief understand that? We had never seen eye to eye on much and so I knew arguing with him would not solve the problem I found a couple of suitcases and boxes and packed up a few things and left for the city with a friend who picked me up. That was the first time I really felt lost when I was in Tonga. I always had close Tongan friends around me in the village, but now I was out in the city without a plan or a home. A couple of nights passed and I began getting calls from the youth out in my village telling me that they stood up to the chief and they wanted me to come back. They said they would provide me with a house and that they were painting it and getting it all set up for me. A few days later I moved into the house and back into the village. You could tell the youth had renovated the house Tongan style. I had a kitchen table but it was more like a slab of wood being held up loosely by four wooden sticks. Also, the bed they had moved in for me sunk in about a foot deep in the middle of the mattress so that took some skill to sleep on. It was the rats, mice and cockroaches in this new place that drove me a little crazy, and laying out poison for them just didn’t do the trick. I didn’t have the luxury of a shower, I had to go out back and collect the rain water from a tank and shower using a cup. I actually got used to all of these new changes in my life though, and really learned how to live like a Tongan.. Tongans were never afraid of mice, rats or cochroaches, and none of them had the luxury of a shower, or firm bed to sleep on. We were equal now. The chief of the village ended up being kicked out of office a few months later when it was discovered that he had been stealing money from the village bank account. The youth grew and I was happier in Tonga then I could have ever imagined in my ‘new’ home. I was accepted by the Tongans in a different way now, it wasn’t a false acceptance anymore, it was real. Looking back on it I am so glad the chief decided to kick me out of my ‘Peace Corps house’… I wouldn’t have really known Tonga if he hadn’t made that move.

(via

rabbitmovers

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The Village Move Getting home from teaching at the local primary school one day, I arrived at my house nestled in the middle of a coastal village in Tonga. The chief of the village and his wife were sitting in my living room when I opened the door. Some of their furniture had already been moved into my house and it looked like they were moving in with me. I found this strange, but hey it’s Tonga, and I did not want to ruin my ties with them, so I just asked them how they were and then sat down. They proceeded to ask me if I was happy in Tonga, I mean I had been there a little over a year as a Peace Corps volunteer in their village and I spoke the language, taught English at their schools and worked with the youth on projects. I was one of the more positive volunteers always trying to keep myself busy and out in the village. The chief went on to tell me that he and his wife would be moving back into my house and that I would need to move to the city. The city was over an hour away and definitely not where I wanted to be since we had youth projects going on out in the village that took awhile to get started up in the first place, and I only had eight months left in Tonga. Why didn’t the chief understand that? We had never seen eye to eye on much and so I knew arguing with him would not solve the problem I found a couple of suitcases and boxes and packed up a few things and left for the city with a friend who picked me up. That was the first time I really felt lost when I was in Tonga. I always had close Tongan friends around me in the village, but now I was out in the city without a plan or a home. A couple of nights passed and I began getting calls from the youth out in my village telling me that they stood up to the chief and they wanted me to come back. They said they would provide me with a house and that they were painting it and getting it all set up for me. A few days later I moved into the house and back into the village. You could tell the youth had renovated the house Tongan style. I had a kitchen table but it was more like a slab of wood being held up loosely by four wooden sticks. Also, the bed they had moved in for me sunk in about a foot deep in the middle of the mattress so that took some skill to sleep on. It was the rats, mice and cockroaches in this new place that drove me a little crazy, and laying out poison for them just didn’t do the trick. I didn’t have the luxury of a shower, I had to go out back and collect the rain water from a tank and shower using a cup. I actually got used to all of these new changes in my life though, and really learned how to live like a Tongan.. Tongans were never afraid of mice, rats or cochroaches, and none of them had the luxury of a shower, or firm bed to sleep on. We were equal now. The chief of the village ended up being kicked out of office a few months later when it was discovered that he had been stealing money from the village bank account. The youth grew and I was happier in Tonga then I could have ever imagined in my ‘new’ home. I was accepted by the Tongans in a different way now, it wasn’t a false acceptance anymore, it was real. Looking back on it I am so glad the chief decided to kick me out of my ‘Peace Corps house’… I wouldn’t have really known Tonga if he hadn’t made that move.

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Photo by Serge Cashman

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The History of the Cardboard Box

The cardboard box goes largely unappreciated. Yet, it is indispensable to our daily living. It holds all of our knick-knacks and personal mementos when we move or have things shipped. It holds our breakfast cereal. It has been used for countless children’s art projects; fashioned into a robot head or a horse’s body. Heck, it is even in the International Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, New York. As with a lot of things that have become commonplace, hardly any thought has been put into how and why it is was invented and by whom. In fact, the history of the cardboard box, besides rarely being talked about, isn’t particularly well documented either. However, cobbled together through several sources,  patents, and old forgotten texts, we can start to piece together the story of the ubiquitous cardboard box.

It seems the beginnings of cardboard dates back to China, about three or four thousand years ago. During the first and second century B.C., the Chinese of the Han Dynasty would use sheets of treated Mulberry tree bark (the name used for many trees in the genus Moras) to wrap and preserve foods. This fact is unsurprising considering the Chinese are credited with the invention of paper during the Han Dynasty, perhaps even around the same time (the earliest paper ever discovered was an inscription of a map found at Fangmatan in the Gansu province).

Paper, printing, and cardboard slowly made its way west thanks to the silk road and trade among the empires of Europe and China. While cardboard likely ended up in Europe much earlier than the 17th century, the first mention of it comes from a printing manual entitled Mechanick Exercises, which was written by Theodore Low De Vinne (well-known scholarly author of typography) and Joseph Mixon (a printer of math books and maps, while also believing, rather bizarrely, that the Arctic was devoid of ice because there was sunlight there 24 hours a day). In the manual, it reads:

Scabbord is an old spelling of scabbard or scale-board, which was once a thin strip or scale of sawed wood…. The scabbards mentioned in printers’ grammars of the last century were of cardboard or millboard.

Through this description, it is inferred that cardboard was used as printing material and to be written on, rather than in box form and for storage.

The first documented instance a cardboard box being used was in 1817 for a German board game called “The Game of Besieging,” a popular war strategy game. Some point to an English industrialist named Malcolm Thornhill being the first to make a single-sheet cardboard box, but there is scant evidence of who he was or what he stored in the cardboard box. It would be another forty years before another innovation rocked the cardboard world.

In 1856, Edward Allen and Edward Healey were in the business of selling tall hats. They wanted a material that could act as a linear and keep the shape of the hat, while providing warmth and give. So, they invented corrugated (or pleated) paper. Corrugated paper is a material typically made with unbleached wood fibers with a fluted sheet attached to one or two linear boards. They apparently patented it in England that same year, though English patents from prior 1890 are notoriously difficult to find and most have yet to be digitized, so we weren’t able to read over the patent as we normally would while researching.

Who knows if Albert Jones of New York ever encountered an Allen/Healey tall English hat, but the next fold in the cardboard story belongs to Mr. Jones. In December of 1871, Albert Jones was awarded a patent in the United States for “improvement in paper for packing.” In the patent, he describes a new way of packing that provides easier transportation and prevents breakage of bottles and vials. Says the patent,

The object of this invention is to provide means for securely packing vials and bottles with a single thickness of the packing material between the surface of the article packed; and it consists in paper, card-board, or other suitable material, which is corrugated, crimped, or bossed, so as to present an elastic surface… a protection to the vial, and more effective to prevent breaking than many thicknesses of the same material would be if in a smooth state like ordinary packing-paper.

The patent goes on to make clear that this new packing method isn’t just relegated to vials and bottles, pointing out it could be used for other items, as well as not limited “to any particular material or substance, as there are many substances besides paper or pasteboard which can be corrugated for this purpose.”

A few years after this, the cardboard box that we know and love finally, quite literally, took shape. The Scottish-born Robert Gair owned a paper bag factory in Brooklyn. In 1879, a pressman at his factory didn’t see that the press rule was too high and it reportedly cut through thousands of small seed bags, instead of creasing them, ruining them all before production was stopped and the problem fixed.

Gair looked at this and realized if sharp cutting blades were set a tad higher than creasing blades, they could crease and cut in the same step on the press. While this may seem like an obvious thing, it’s not something any package maker had thought of before. Switching to cardboard, instead of paper, this would revolutionize the making of foldable cardboard boxes. You see, in the old way, to make a single sheet folding box, box makers would first score the sheets using a press, then make the necessary cuts with a guillotine knife by hand.  Needless to say, this made mass producing foldable boxes prohibitively expensive.

In Gair’s new process, he simply made dies for his press such that the cutting and creasing were accomplished all in one step. With this modification, he was able to cut about 750 sheets in an hour on his press, producing about the same amount in two and a half hours on one single press as his entire factory used to be capable of producing in a day.

At first, Gair’s mass-produced foldable boxes were mostly used for small items, like tea, tobacco, toothpaste, and cosmetics. In fact, some of Gair’s first clients were the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Colgate, Ponds, and tobacco manufacturer P. Lorillard. However, in 1896, Gair got his biggest client yet for his pre-cut, pre-creased cardboard box – the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco, with a two million unit order. With this leap in product packaging, now customers could purchase pre-portioned crackers in a wax-paper lined box that kept the crackers fresh and unbroken. Before this, when buying these crackers, they’d have a store clerk get them from a less moisture and vermin controlled cracker barrel.

From here, sales of such boxes exploded and by the turn of the century, the cardboard box was here to stay. So next time you are loading your closet with cardboard boxes full of old clothes, buying something off of Amazon, or just opening a box of saltine crackers, you can thank a German board game for first commercially using a cardboard box and one of Robert Gair’s employees slipping up, inspiring a small but momentous tweak that made mass-produced, foldable cardboard boxes possible.

Bonus Fact:

Legend has it that Robert Gair’s son, George, named the biscuits that Nabisco were putting in Gair’s cardboard boxes. According to the book Cartons, Crates and Corrugated Board, by Diana Twede, Susan E.M. Selke, Donatien-Pascal Kamdem, and David Shires, Gair’s son told the executives that the biscuits “need a name.” This, supposedly, inspired them to call them “Uneeda Biscuits.”

This article was originally posted on Today I Found Out.

Did you know we sell supplies and can even deliver the supplies before your move date?

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@mblackbk thanks for this great shot! #RabbitMovers #Repost ・・・ I see you @chrisrwk and I LOVE @robotswillkill !!! #chinatown #nyc #robots #robotswillkill #streetlife #streetart #bowery #trucksofart

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5 Places to Go Ice Skating this Winter

Photo by petercruise

1. The Rink at Rockefeller Center

“In the heart of Midtown, steps from Times Square and the Theater District, The Rink at Rockefeller Center is a New York City tradition that everyone can enjoy. Whether you’re looking for a classic NYC ice skating session or reservations for one of our exclusive wintertime experiences, you are assured magical memories that you will cherish for years to come.”

Open daily through April 16, 2017. (See website for hours)

Take the B/D/F/M to 47-50 Streets - Rockefeller Center; N/R/W to 49th Street; E/M to  5th Av/53rd St.

2. Bank of America Winter Village at Bryant Park

“The Rink is the centerpiece of Bank of America Winter Village at Bryant Park. The 170' x 100' rink features free admission ice skating, in addition to high quality rental skates, skating shows, special events, and activities.“

Open daily through March 5, 2017. (See website for hours)

Take the B/D/F/M to 42nd Street - Bryant Park; 7 to 5th Av.

3. Wollman Rink in Central Park

“It's New York magic at its best - to glide gracefully across the ice under a star-encrusted sky while surrounded by the splendor of Manhattan.Central Park's Wollman Rink is the perfect place to create such enchantment.The skating rink, open from late October to early April, is less than a five-minute walk from the south entrance of W. 59th Street and 6th Avenue. The rink opens daily at 10:00 AM and closing times vary (see below).Skaters who admit to being a bit klutzy are always welcome at the rink. For those wanting to improve their skills the rink offers a skating school seven days a week. Classes for all ages range from parents and toddlers to basic skills for adults. Other classes available are adult/youth figure and synchronized skating and hockey. Skate and lock rentals are also available.”

Open daily. (See website for hours)

Take the A/B/C/D/1 to 59th St.- Columbus Circle; N/Q/R to 5th Av/59th St; F to 57th St. 

4. LeFrak Center at Lakeside

“Lakeside is the largest and most ambitious project in Prospect Park since its creation nearly 150 years ago. Spanning 26 acres, this $74 million restoration by the Prospect Park Alliance transforms the southeast corner of the Park into a popular scenic and recreational destination. The Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Center at Lakeside provides seasonal ice skating, roller skating, biking, boating and water play. The Bluestone Cafe at the Chase Pavilion provides light fare and beverages year round.”

Open daily through March 26, 2017. (See website for hours)

Take the Q to Parkside Av; B/S/Q to Prospect Park.

5. Abe Stark Rink

“A favorite of schools, leagues and community members of all ages, this rink, which opened in 1970, is a Coney Island winter staple. Open only on the weekends during cold weather months, the rink offers private skating classes as well as public skating, a nice alternative to riding the Wonder Wheel in the summertime. Who is Abe Stark, you ask? A three-term Brooklyn borough president who served in the '50s and '60s and was so revered, he became known as ‘Mr. Brooklyn.’“

Open daily through March. (See website for hours)

Take the D/F/N/Q to Coney Island - Stillwell Av.

Are you ready to move to NYC yet?

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I moved to Brooklyn in 1999 and fell in love with it. I came here for grad school and I can’t imagine what would tear me away. But, trust me, it hasn’t been easy. I was here to witness the gentrification of Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy; I witnessed September 11th first hand; I watched the slow, polarizing destruction of Coney Island and await it’s revival; I was here before there was an Ikea or a Trader Joe’s. I’m no veteran, but I’ve seen a lot in my ten+ years here. The most strenuous thing for me has been the number of times I’ve moved. This will be my 12th move in ten years. So more than a story, I wanted to write my Brooklyn Provenance, as it were, since 1999 that has landed me to this move into a home I now own. In 1999, I moved here to go to school and lived in the dorms (that’s 1). In 2000, I moved from the 16th floor of the dorm building to the 17th and got a new roommate who I hoped was less sketchy than the first one I had (that’s 2). In 2001 I moved to an apartment on Willoughby and Kent (that’s 3). I loved that apartment. Small, but cheap; those never last. I then moved in with a boyfriend (who soon became an ex) on Bedford Ave (that’s 4) in Bed-Stuy and stayed there for a few months. The economic uncertainty after 9/11 made finding a job after grad school a bit of a challenge. I made it through the break up and the job freezes, but not without moving all my stuff out of that apartment and into a storage unit over on Park under the BQE (that’s 5). I then surfed couches for a few months. I finally got a job later that same year and moved my stuff out of storage and into a place in Windsor Terrace (that’s 6) and lived with a roommate who loved too much booze and too many candles. I left willingly before an accidental fire drove me out. I had a couple of friends in Kensington and in 2002 moved into the cheapest room I’ve ever lived in in NYC - $300 a month (that’s 7). Like I said, those never last. My roommate’s family decided to move to NYC and needed a place to live. I got the boot since she happened to be the nanny for the landlords and her family moved in and took over. That was 2004 and I moved into an apartment not far from there - my first studio with a giant kitchen and lots of space (that’s 8). I lived there for 2 years until my landlords had another baby and decided to expand their space on the first floor to include mine in the basement. In 2006, I moved to Bed-Stuy to a place I found on Craig’s List (that’s 9). Needless to say that only lasted a few months until I moved into another place way out in Bed-Stuy near where Malcom X blvd. turns into Utica Ave (that’s 10). I lived there for 1 year and was harassed every day for being the only white girl on the block. In 2007, I moved to where I live now - Flatbush near East 18th and Church (that’s 11). A West Indian neighborhood that turned me on to Roti and Doubles. I’ve lived here nearly 3 years and in this time, a death in the family made it possible for me to have a down payment on an apartment. That leads me to my move tomorrow (thanks in advance, Rabbit). I bought a Condo in Bed-Stuy (That’s 12). It’s a small duplex that my dog, Millie, and I will make a home in. I’ll have space to have a studio (I’m an artist), live in a neighborhood I love, and have a dishwasher in my kitchen. Most of my friends are jealous of that last one the most. What it will really mean is that I can freely paint the walls a color I want, I can really get to know my neighbors, and most importantly, I can start to buy books again without worrying about my next move!

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Clinical studies show that even a single massage session can significantly lower your heart rate, cortisol levels and insulin levels ~ all of which explain why massage therapy and stress relief go hand-in-hand.

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