Tag Archives: packing

Taking down the tech…

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After finishing what was left of the packing in the garage, I grudgingly turned my attention this evening to the tech. The cinema screen monitor is safely tucked in its box. The printer is surrounded by packing peanuts. The wires are unstrung and zip-tied. The office is pretty much down to a desk and a laptop – which is the bare bones requirement to make it through the rest of the week. I don’t have it in me to disconnect the cable modem just yet, though. I’ll need the high speed right up to the bitter end. Some things a civilized person just shouldn’t be expected to live without. One more step down on the long road home. Now it’s down to the kitchen, the dog’s room (yes, they have their own room). Pull the sheets off the bed, disconnect the living room TV and it’s showtime.

I’ve got to admit that this whole moving things is harder than I remember it being. Nothing goes as quickly as I think it should. Something I need is always in another room or requires one more trip to pick up more boxes, or tape, or packing paper. Then again, the last time I did it, I was leaving a one bedroom apartment. Is it Monday yet? I’ll feel better when all this gear is on a truck and headed east.

Things I should be doing…

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There are something like a million and a half things I should be doing rather than sitting here tapping out an update. The nice men are coming with a big truck on Monday to cart away everything that I can’t jam in my own truck for the 900 mile drive east. The good news is the checklist is turning green at a nice pace. The bad news, of course, is that the big ticket items are still red or just barely amber. Not time to hit the panic button yet, but definitely time for some moderat spazzing out. I’d probably feel better if there was a little less stuff sitting around waiting to go into boxes. Of course the down side is that it’s the things I’m still using that are sitting around waiting to get put into boxes. I mean I still have to live here for another week, right? How does one resolve the OCD need to have everything nicely packed before noon on Sunday with the need to not spend the next five day sitting quietly with my hands folded waiting for Monday?

I’ve got some good leads on potential places to live, but have decided the better plan at the moment is to obsess needlessly about one thing at a time… and at the moment, that one thing is closing the loop on whatever I need to do to get outta Dodge on time.

Stuff…

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I’m not a horder. I’m a neat freak (thanks for passing on that family trait, mom). Knowing that I have a place for everything and everything is generally in its place begs the question, where did the boxes and boxes of stuff now filling every room in the house come from? Seriously. If there’s a flat surface in the house, it’s got boxes stacked on top of it. And the worst is yet to come. I still haven’t attached the kitchen in anything like a meaningful way. My closet and bathroom and still pretty solidly intact. And I haven’t even contemplated bringing down the vast grid that networks my TV to my computer to my phone. The cabling alone will probably needs its own box… with everything zip-tied and neatly labeled, of course, so I can reconstitute the network right out of the box as soon as I actually find a place to live. So yeah, food, bathroom, and network, those are the things I have deemed essential to life and those that will be the last to find their way into the growing mountain of boxes and crates (remember the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Arc?).

The last time I moved, I had enough “stuff” to nominally fill a one bedroom apartment. I think it’s safe to say that I could probably make life livable in several of those now. I know that at some point I’ve had to hand carry all of this stuff into the house, but I can’t for the life of me remember where most of it came from. I suppose knowing where it’s going is really the important part.

Boxing day…

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No, it’s not December 26th, but it’s officially the day I’ve decided to go all in with the assumption that my time in Memphis is drawing to an end and that it is going to do so with great rapidity in the next couple of weeks. The fact is the more I can do now, before the crush of having an officially designated D-day, the better I’ll feel. There will be enough to do to keep two or three people gainfully employed once the actual paperwork hits my desk. As it stands now, the kitchen is the only room on the house that doesn’t have boxes stacked halfway to the ceiling. The obvious question is where all this stuff came from, as I certainly didn’t bring it all here with me (I ran out of those boxes very early in the process). Regardless, it’s all finding its way into temporary quarters safely tucked away surrounded by newsprint and bubble wrap. It helps that I’ve been slowly sneaking things into boxes since January, but now it’s getting real because we’re getting into the items that I’m actually missing now that they’re gone. The electronics are still all up and running. The kitchen is still fully functional. But in almost every other respect, this place is 75-80% ready for check out time.

When the word comes down from on high, who’s going to be ready? That’s right. This guy.  it won’t take long to pack out the clothes and few key odds and ends that I’ll be carrying myself. I moved here with a Mustang packed to the roof and I suppose I’ll leave in a pickup truck looking a bit like the Clampetts, but the important thing is I’ll be leaving… assuming (as always) that the paperwork gets done. I don’t know that I’ll ever get use to knowing, but not knowing. It’s damnably frustrating to spend so much time working from hints and allegations, but in the absence of clear guidance, I’ve elected to create my own based on my read of the situation and reports from well placed sources.

Boy will I be pissed if this thing falls apart now.

That’s progress…

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I had a vague hope for most of the day that the powers that be would intercede and pass the word before close of business. It would have been nice to spend the weekend in something other than a state of definite maybe. That might over-state the situation a bit, but the clock is running and almost everything involved in this process is time sensitive. The longer it takes to square things away here, the more of a headache it’s going to be to start getting things lined up on the other end. Until they officially put a mark on the wall, I’ll remain stuck somewhere between reality and happy illusion – and there’ll be a hard limit on how far I can and can’t prepare. Can I pack every stick of stuff in the house? Sure. But I don’t know if that means I’m going to spend the next two days or two months surrounded by boxes and making dinner every night in the one saucepan that I didn’t pack. I can’t make any definitive plans to get a house full of boxes from here to there. Maybe more difficult is that I can’t start making any decisions about where I’ll be unpacking all those boxes once they get to wherever they’re going. I’m getting visions of way too many nights hanging out in a not quite mid-grade extended stay hotel. It won’t take me long to close out on this end. That’s the beauty of planning your exit for the better part of the year. The issues that are bedeviling me tonight are all about what happens after the Mayflower truck pulls away from Memphis. I know I can torch that bridge when I get to it, but for someone who lives his life by a plan, it’s the kind of uncertainty that can keep a guy up at night. If there’s any up side, it’s that I seem to have gone from being paranoid about the job itself to only being paranoid about what it’s going to take to get from here to there. That’s progress.

Who’s down with OCD?

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Yeah, you know me. One of the perks of having mild OCD and a pervacive impatience streak is that when the issue is pressed, I will find something for myself to do to stay occupied. Things not going great at home? Launch myself into a new project at the office. Things not going well at the office, lay down stone edging around every flower bed in the yard. You get the idea. Tonight’s overpowering need to do something in the face of not yet being able to do what I really want to do has conveniently led to mowing the grass, starting the laundry, pondering what to blog about while I washed dishes, spot cleaning the kitchen, and a brief game of fetch. Not necessarily in that order. Now, of course, I’m doing the actual blogging. So if nothing else, at least more waiting has led to increased productivity. Still, I’d be happier with less productivity and more packing.  That’s not to be this weekend… which is probably just as well since half of everything in the house is pretty much still sitting in boxes from my false alarm back in January. I haven’t had the heart to unpack it just to turn around and pack it back again. This hasn’t been the way I planned to spend my Friday night, but I’m thankful for any distraction my slightly addled mind can come up with at the moment.

And don’t call me Shirley…

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To be perfectly honest with you, I’m just killing a few hours before I need to head to the airport this morning. I’m back in the home of the blues for a few more weeks before Christmas. In retrospect, I wish I would have driven down again this time. I would have been just getting to Harrisonburg if I would have left at my normal time. One of the great annoyances of flying is having absolutely no control of your schedule. That annoys me almost as much as not being able to see out the front of the airplane. They should put in some kind of monitors on the bulkheads and simulate a “windshield” view, but I digress.

I’m leaving a half packed apartment and I can’t say that it upsets me all that much. I need a reprieve from packing for a while. I am always surprised that the sheer amount of junk one person is able to accumulate in a small space over the course of three or four years. As much fun as the great purge has been, I’m ready for a few days of something more normal… And yes, I do note that I am talking about living in a hotel for three weeks as “more normal” without a hint of irony.

It’s time for a fresh cup of coffee and a smoke, so the next time ya’ll hear from me, I should be safely delivered. See you all then.

Getting real…

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The fact that I will soon be closing out the current chapter of my life is been something of an academic exercise up to this point. Even house hunting, as damned frustrating as it can be at times, can be reduced to cold logic. The packing process is something, however, that is altogether different. It requires you to take account each individual item and make a conscious decision of what to keep, what to lose, and what needs to be kept available to the very last minute. I’ve never been accused of being a minimalist and it’s no surprise that what I absolutely need to survive is apparently a considerable amount of “stuff.” Although I suspect that if in a pinch, I could get by with the coffee pot, cigarettes, and the laptop.

At any rate, I’m in the throws of packing these last few days with plans to have everything moved by the end of the year. If actually working, living on the road, squeezing in grad school and occasionally trying to go do something fun isn’t sufficient, I suppose moving is something small to add into the mix for a little flavor. It’s a lot of things around here, but it’s never slow.