Pad

Outside the window, snow is falling on Philadelphia and I am settled, finally warm, in my new residence.

I am purely tickled with this place. It’s very high up. The downstairs neighbors leave their shoes in the hallway. And I have to park on the street. The advantages vastly outweigh these minor disturbances.

I have a washer and dryer. I cannot express how supremely delighted I am to have a washer and dryer. It really is the little things in life that make it worth living. Like not having to rochambeau itinerant hispanics for my turn at the soap choked pay washer.

This place is on a third floor which in most buildings would be somewhere around the 5th. This enables me to look down on the world. As that is my natural position even at ground level I am delirious with joy.

I have a bay window. From which to look down upon the world.

Five blocks to the east is the Delaware River. One block to the north my street dead ends at a purveyor of alcoholic slurpees. Five blocks over and less than two up I can get a full Irish breakfast on the weekends with a pot of very bad tea and a pint of very good cider. And proper football is usually on.

I am about to fix myself a gin and tonic using gin and tonic and my faithful gin and tonic glass that haven’t been touched since I left Gettysburg in May 2008. These are the small comforts of domesticity.