Pbenjay's Blog

This is the saga of

THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING LAPTOP

Brian, the son of Susan and Jim, friends of mine, moved from New York City to Los Angeles where he and his wife went to further pursue their acting careers.  He needed a sub-let tenant for their co-op for about 6 months, not always an easy thing to do.  BUT, he found an actor who needed to be in New York for about 6 months.  Problem solved – actors stick together.

Soon after settling in L.A. , Brian decides to purchase a Mac laptop and offers his Dell laptop to his mother.  But how to get it from Los Angeles to New York City??  Enter stage right, another actor; Sam.  Sam is a longtime friend of Sharon, Brian’s wife.  It seems that Sam is headed for New York where he has a role waiting for him that should last a few months and he won’t have a computer when he  is there.   Actors stick together-problem solved. Sam can take the Dell with him to New York and use it for the time he is there.  When he is about to return to Los Angeles, Susan and Jim will pick it up on one of their trips to the City.  A time line is loosely in place.

The job in New York is extended, Sam is not about to return to L.A. and the trip to Manhattan by Susan and Jim came and went.  MMMmmmmm …well no big deal because Susan doesn’t need the computer imminently anyway.   Nobody knows exactly how long the job has been extended  and there is no immediate future trip to the City planned.  However, Susan has a back-up plan;  When Sam knows he is going to return to L.A. , Susan will ask Joe to help her out.  Joe, our mutual friend lives in Manhattan, has an office downtown and comes to the Jersey Shore on weekends.  Sam is staying farther downtown and so Joe’s office might be a convenient drop-off point.   NOT. Joe walks to work and back home and it is quite a distance to carry a laptop.  Problem solved-Joe lives in Midtown and if the computer makes it to his building, he will get it and bring it down to Ocean Grove.  Friends stick together.

A reasonable plan all around except for the fact that Sam got very short notice that he had to hastily return to L.A.  No time to get this computer uptown!  Besides he would need a visa to get beyond 14th Street.

Three thousand miles away, Brian is not acting, – he’s too busy being the production manager for the laptop’s return to the East Coast.  What to do, what to do?  Sam is about to leave New York and the computer is way downtown.  Problem solved: Brian calls one his groomsmen, Milo Bernstein, who owns a few designer consignment stores in Manhattan; INA, one of them being downtown.  He (Brian) asks his friend, Milo if it would be all right for Sam to drop the Dell laptop off with him (Milo) at his downtown store.   Problem solved – friends stick together. If Brian can arrange to get the laptop with Milo, then he can get it uptown so Plan C can be implemented.

Plan C: this is where Peter and I come in.  Milo has the laptop AND he lives fairly close to where  we live uptown.  At this point, Brian reluctantly agrees to have his mother impose on us to pick up the computer and bring it down to the shore on our next trip and deliver to it to her.    There weren’t any alternatives;  Milo could not keep the computer indefinitely and Susan and Jim did not have a trip to NYC planned in the near future.  Problem solved-friends stick together.

Next step was to have Peter arrange a pick-up time with Milo.  I left this detail to Peter since I was already jammed up with trying to make appointments to show some apartments on Thursday.

Happy Ending: Peter got the computer; we picked it up at Milo’s building on our way to the Shore and delivered it personally to Susan.  Brian could finally stop playing Chess Master, moving his pieces all around the board, the Queen Mother got the computer and all lived happily ever after.

Checkmate!