Oh my, I'm exhausted! I now have a new address -- and a roommate!

Last week, out of the blue and in the midst of packing, I received an e-mail from some of my law school friends, married and both working for BIPC: Guess what! They trumpeted, We've gotten jobs and are moving there! And... might I know of anyone who had a temporary extra room for one of them until they sold their house and bought a new one here?

I got myself a roomie!

Yikes!

I haven't lived with anyone since 1996. Not since moving out from under the disintegrating confines of my relationship with J. Having made the offer to my friends, I immediately began dissecting how my living arrangements would look from the eyes of an outsider. And the results I collated weren't pretty.

I have no toaster. Ohmygosh, I realized, I have no toaster. I don't toast. I haven't toasted in years. Isn't that weird? What is my roommate going to think when he gets here and sees I don't have a toaster? So, even though worn out from a routine of packing, cleaning and painting, I bundled up in the frigid Ohio weather and sped over to the mall for the first time in long time. I found a toaster on sale.

My coffeemaker is pathetic! I bought it at Goodwill 3 years ago for $3. What is my roommate going to think when he sees the yellowed plastic, the permanently stained glass carafe, the cheapest-no-name-logo? I need a new coffeemaker! Into the shopping cart went a top brand name, with automatic everything and sleek 21st century styling.

I can't get cable! I can't get cable because my television is so old it doesn't have an 'input' screw. It's a 10" Magnavox my parents bought my sister when she went to college. At least it's in color. The duplex has cable, but I need a television that supports it. What else is this guy going to do when he's at my place? So, add a 13" RCA color TV to the purchases. Charge it please!

With my gleaming appliances unwrapped and ready for action, I greeted K, tired after a two day nearly-nonstop drive from the Rocky Mountains. "I don't drink coffee," he stated as I stood by my new programmable purchase. "I don't eat breakfast," he said as I motioned toward the toaster.

What are you, a freak?

Better luck in the Living Room, perhaps, where I had the TV user's manual spread on the floor, to figure out the programmable cable hookup. "Here, let me," said K, and within a minute, point-shoot point-click, he had programmed the channel-changer for all possible channels available on the (bootlegged) cable. HBO Here I come!

"Want to see what we can get?" I asked.
"Nah, I'm hungry. Know of a sports bar where I can watch the playoffs?"

After he had left, I unpacked my VCR. It had sat happily in a box for years. But it worked -- or at least at one time it did. I excitedly pulled out "From Russia With Love" from my stock of VCR Tapes, getting ready for an evening of classic Bond James Bond.

But even it eluded me. As I stabbed button after button, various program-y things flashed me. I learned, maybe for the first time, I could have programmed it to pre-record programs. Now I couldn't even set the time. I screwed it into the 'input video' on my sparkling new TV, and watched and waited and fiddled and pecked and.... nothing. 12:00 12:00 12:00, my VCR taunted. *sigh* Ejected and rejected.

With K still gone, I decided that I'd just pretend I never had a VCR to begin with. Back into the closet it went. DVD's are the things now, anyway. Right? At least that's what I'll tell K -- if he asks. And he will ask, right? Right?

And now, getting ready for an early bedtime, all that runs through my head is: Am I single because of my Luddite-like mastery of technology? Or, my ability to out Woody Allen Woody Allen?