Here is my semi-photo documentary of the move.

Goodbye old house!

Hello new house!

So (relatively) clean.

Nice.

But empty.

Let’s shake that up a bit, shall we?

Everything came from here, after 3 flights of stairs.

And it went there…

And there…

Over here too.

Yes, I suppose this counts as all that and the kitchen table.

Oops. Found a bit more hiding around the corner.

It’s probably a good thing the place has built in bookcases, at this rate.

Here’s the rest of the place.

Apparently the kitchen went unscathed.

And - a little bathroom surprise (not a bad one!).
This was painted inside of the medicine cabinet.

Overall, everything went really well. A few humorous moments (Greg singly carrying a mattress up all three stories; afterward, we declared that he should have also been wearing Hulk Hands), and a few slightly hair-pulling moments (still packing a few boxes the morning of the move). We were out of Toledo by 11 AM, and done moving in by 3 or 4 PM, with some help in each location. After that? Well… we went to Ikea, and that is a post for another day.

We’ve been shopping online for some new furniture, and have been trying to figure out what works, versus what won’t work in the new place. When moving in the past, I’ve often sketched up a floor plan, then added furniture into various spots, guesstimating best fit for items in the room and various layout options. I generated the model below based on the measurements for our living room.

Since I’ve used AutoCad in the past, I decided that this would be a really good time to take it to the next level and demo the free version of Google SketchUp. The program is definitely worth using on its own, not to mention the downloadable content available via 3D Warehouse. A lot of the furniture we had been looking at was available to download and place into models. There are a few things I would tweak with the program, but it’s hard to make a serious call on it as a whole without using the Pro version.

Click and drag your mouse on the image below to view some snazzy angles on the new place!

On a similar note, I’m in search of a subleaser for my current apartment. If you want to live in Toledo’s Old West End, drop me a line and I’ll send all the details on. The location is ideal - close to I-75 and the downtown area. Check this post for images.

Any thoughts on this?

Also, I was a bit of a fool, and moved my images folder around to the default. If I had my thinking cap on, I would have done this differently. It may call for a double-redo, as I have remapped the locations of most images here once already.

In short, if you link to this site or are borrowing images, give me a shout to see what changed, or check the links yourself!

It’s a classic house in the Old West End of Toledo, Ohio that may or may not be questionably maintained. It has been split into 5 apartments, and I have one on the first floor, occupying the original kitchen and dining room. Anyhow, here is a virtual tour.

Living room, with funky lamp. I saw lamps like this in NYC for $450 - $800. I got mine for $5 at a local garage sale. <3 These pictures were actually snapped in late September, which is why the windows are open.

That gigantic television set injured my father. By gigantic, I mean really heavy.
Additionaly, that is a moose rug on the floor.

A classic sled now lives in this corner. More on that later. That lamp does not normally live on the floor.

This apartment gets really sunny! It’s pretty great. That painting in progress is not.

In fact, I don’t really think that painting can be referred to as “in-progress” any more. In other news, the sofa lives where a buffet cabinet once would have.

Welcome to the kitchen. The countertop was laid with white hexagontal tiles. Pretty neat!

My grandma gifted me this table and microwave hutch. Thank you, thank you. I was using a card table and chairs before! I really do appreciate it.

I do lots of cooking here. Last night I made apple dumplings (and promptly shoved them into the freezer for some other time). Not pictured are the canisters from my Aunt Betty. They’re really nice though, and feature catch phrases such as “GreenLeaf Tea - It’s nice ‘n’ spicy!”

I’ve been here for three and a half months, living by myself. Everything seems comfortable. Some of the time I ride my bicycle to the library. I make tea some evenings. It has actually been quite pleasant.

I didn’t include photos of my bedroom or the bathroom. It’s really not necessary. Family members: I promise you that these areas are clean as well.

I’ve been working on recovering after the College Music Journal (CMJ) Music Marathon in Manhattan this past week. I’ve been working on said recovery for a couple of days now. I had a variety of reasons to be exhausted, the first of which was running into someone at a concert on my last night in the city that I had known for years. I stayed out so late catching up that it didn’t make any sense to sleep before my flight back to Ohio. They’re living in Brooklyn now. The whole ordeal was pretty uncanny. More on the trip later. Selected show reviews will be located on Green Clothes Music. Really.

I couldn’t decide on the angle for this shot, but I like the view down the alley. Do you?

Toledo isn’t all bad. Downtown is rather empty, that’s all. I’ve heard exaggerated claims that 70% of the downtown area is now vacant.

Here’s what Toledo does have. It does have an award-winning library (second in the nation to New York City’s public library system) and supposedly the third best city art museum in the nation. Sorry, I can’t find web links to back either up! I’ve read the first comment in person at the library, on a few different small foam-core style signs. The second comment has been mentioned in a few of my art history course textbooks, and reinforced by instructors. There’s a pretty nice zoo too (go see the hippoquarium).

David Hasselhoff has an autobiography. Its chosen title quite plainly is “Don’t Hassel the Hoff: The Autobiography“. Amazon.com has a wonderful feature called “Search Inside!”, which allows an individual browsing the web to also flip through portions of a book, as one often would do in a physical book store. This wonder led me to the following discovery.

The text quite literally states:

ONE OF TV’S MOST POWERFUL STARS
THE KING OF THE INTERNET
BABE MAGNET
“THE HOFF”

For the truly adventurous, I’m certain that you can pick up this literary delight at your local public library. I know - that’s where this gem of a photo op occurred!

As the review on Amazon states: “Long live ‘The Hoff’.”

I’m plugging this event because I’ve got a couple friends exhibiting. View the flyer here (.pdf).

Rachel Greenfield, my cohort from Marce Dupay’s collage class and a couple of select Art History courses worked with a group on a book project titled “Toledo Remanufactured”. A paperback copy of the book is available for purchase online, as well as a more affordable downloadable version of the text. View it here.

Additionally, my friend Sean P. Morrissey has a portion of the exhibition to himself as well.

For more information about Artomatic 419, visit their website.

And finally: some bad photographs of possibly good documentaries.
Photographs taken at Video Spectrum in Bowling Green, Ohio.
If you haven’t visited Video Spectrum and you like offbeat flicks, give them a shot. I highly recommend it. Make sure to browse the employee picks.

Moog.

No, perhaps nobody does.

My lips are sealed.

By rights, this should be pretty good - but it’s hard to say.

Bad photograph. Good group.

Just do it.

I think I’m going to borrow this one from a friend.

In the meantime, I fussed around with Adobe Photoshop today, and I came up with the following image.

The round space would handle any page content, and should the content be larger than that space (let’s face it, most of it will be), it should expand vertically, making the visible space an oval instead of a circle.

I think this looks pretty crisp, yet interesting. I have a couple tweaks in mind, but that’s the basic layout. Ajax might be fun instead of a static navigation bar.

In the meantime, I know how to use .css, and edit .php files/databases, but I have no idea how to *make* a .php page. I think it’s time to do a little bit of research. Similarly, if I want an animated image for the entry page of my website, I might need to move over to flash, instead of having the janky .gif animations running (I have received compliments on the animation, but I would really like to clean the image/animation up).

Feedback?