Dear Monkeys,

I can barely move my arms today but it feels good. I did some serious moving last night, after my last meeting of the day, two large, very heavy bookcases. One of the bookcases was able to be dismantled and carried out as boards and planks. The other one, though, was one very large unit, long beautiful boards with maple caps, 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide. It had a base of solid wood and the total weight ended up close to 200lbs. That was the case I was taking home, the case that belonged to my recently deceased advisor.

I had two volunteers to help me move it downstairs, out of the office building, and to the curb, where another friend was going to come with a pickup truck.

We struggled to get it out of his old office. The thing was significantly heavier than I anticipated, but at least there was an elevator to handle the 6 double-tall floors.

We slogged it along, inches at a time to the elevator doors and…

… there was no way it was going to fit. Way too tall, way too wide. Everyone’s question at that point was: what the hell do we do now? But my question was:how the hell did Frank get this thing up 6 double-tall floors to his office?

There was only one option, as I saw it: carry it down the stairs. No one liked the idea, but sometimes you just have to go for it. I convinced everyone it was possible and gave them a pep talk. It would be fairly epic to carry such a massive thing down 6 flights of stairs. Also, Frank would have enjoyed it.

So step by step we went, sweating and grunting and toiling and straining, people giving us crazy looks, especially the Deans as they headed home. After about a solid hour of brutal lifting and straining, we were down. One more staircase to go to the curb. We took a 5 minute break along the way.

Eventually my friend showed up with the rental pickup and we got everything in the bed. I sat in the back and held things with my arm out of the little sliding window. It brought back memories– I’m not sure what or why, but I know I’ve done that a few times before, back in NH.

When we got to my place, it was clear the problems were only just beginning. If it didn’t fit in my work building’s massive elevator, it certainly wasn’t going to fit in my residential building’s dinky one. Oh, we tried, but even that was weird. It was very obviously too big, but when you’ve come so far, you want to try everything possible.

It was also too big to fit into the stairwell. So, I was fucked. Me and one other guy. The only solution was to saw it in half. I went with the guy who rented the truck back to his place on 83rd and Amsterdam and helped him move the boards and planks from the other bookshelf into his place, and then he drove me back to my place with a giant rotary saw I could borrow.

I moved the whole thing back outside onto the sidewalk and began scheming for the cutting. How do you safely cut something 6ft across and 8ft high?

The more I looked at it, the more heartbreaking it seemed to cut it up. The whole purpose and beauty of the thing was that it was made of long, natural, thick pieces of wood– the expensive kind people don’t use anymore. Cutting it seemed somehow sacrilege.

Long story short: we went for the stairwell. Inch by inch, and actually cm by cm, we maneuvered the giant, 200lb thing up the stairs, adjusting its angle, its pitch, its tilt, and rotating it within millimeters of the walls, the corners, the angled ceilings and the pipes, and sprinkler systems and flood lights and walls.

Somehow, miraculously, it ended up in my place. It took two hours of careful stair climbing. It was ultra-rough on the shoulders and I won’t be training today, just in case. Once in the room its entire size seemed to change, as if once it made it to is final location it could assume its true form, and it practically filled the room up, dwarfing every other piece of furniture I have.

But it’ll be great. It goes almost to my ceiling, is old, dark wood, is 6 feet long, and only about 1 book deep, so it doesn’t really take up any floor space. It’s exactly what I’ve wanted for years. That it came from Frank, is just extraordinary. I’ll have it forever.

Now I just have to find a place to put it.

Have a great Day o’ Frig, hope you’re up to interesting things this weekend and these days. Fall is a good time for everything, so hope you can go do it all.

Duck