Moving, the Total Collapse of the Economy and the Borg Cube

I don't like to appear egotistical or anything, but I'm pretty sure that the completion of my new house triggered the collapse of the global economy.

We've been working on remodelling a house for the last year and that whole time I've been joking with people who asked when it would be done. I'd tell them that the new house wouldn't be finished until the real estate market totally collapsed so that I wouldn't be able to sell the old house. I guess I should be more careful what I joke about. We moved on Saturday and on Monday the market plunged into the toilet. Maybe we'll rent the old place for a while.

Apart from triggering the total collapse of the world economy, I've been kind of unproductive lately--probably due to the frenzy of moving into a new house and dealing with the fact that everyone in my family got sick and we don't have phone service, Internet, mail or anything. I haven't been doing much writing--just surviving--but it's starting to make me feel a little listless. So I suppose I should get my butt in gear and start working on some things--like figuring out what move I can make to trigger the recovery of the economy. Maybe unpacking boxes in the basement? That's a frightening idea.

Our basement (a brand new basement that we had to lift up our house to build) is currently packed with everything that used to be in our old house. The bulk of it is in this giant 12 foot cube of packing boxes--what we've been fearfully referring to as the Borg Cube--you know, that big deadly cube-ship that the Borg used to fly around in on Star Trek the Next Generation. Anyway, somewhere in the Borg Cube, right near the back of the bottom row (the most inaccessible part) is an alarm clock. This particular alarm clock is shaped like a doggy drill Sergeant holding a bugle, and when it goes off it play reveille and shouts "WAKE UP!!! RISE AND SHINE!!!" at tremendous volume. It's an alarm that is impossible to sleep through--the very reason I bought the clock fifteen years ago and the same reason that I eventually stopped using it. It was just too harsh to wake up to.

Anyway, we know that the alarm clock is in the cube at the center of the bottom of the back because it goes off twice a day--at 5:30 PM and 5:30 AM--for a solid hour each time. Dinner time and just before the sun comes up. It is very annoying--particularly because we can't figure any way to get at it to shut it off short of actually unpacking all of the rest of the boxes. You'd think we could simply throw the other boxes aside to get at that one, Incredible-Hulk-style, but there's just no room to move the boxes. The rest of the basement is too full of other junk that is not in boxes. So, to turn off this clock, we actually have to get all of our stuff in order.

It feels kind of like a metaphor--the kind I hate.