Packing Day

Today I find myself with a bit of spare time, sequestered in the downstairs bathroom of our old house while a group of people pack up the bulk of our worldly possessions for the move tomorrow. I always feel a bit awkward having a bunch of people around me busily working while I'm obviously not, so this is probably about the most comfortable place in the house, overall. Certainly not physically comfortable, but it's nicely out of sight while still letting me hear if they're asking questions about whether something should be packed or not. Outside would be nice except for not being able to see the screen.

One of the things I've noticed while packing is that what appeared to be a giant stack of paperwork that I've been dreading sorting through and organizing isn't really all that big on the scale of packing stuff up. It's still going to take quite a while, since I have to sort it page by page rather than as a stack, but hopefully once everything else comes together at the new house, which is likely to include a new filing system, maybe it'll be easier to work through.

I'm looking forward to leaving my old commute behind: the billboards in Lake City with advertisements for Dubai, the two doughnut shops that I haven't stopped at since moving back up here, and the long, long lines of cars winding around the north side of Lake Washington. It won't be all sunshine and daffodils, since we're leaving daffodils here, and I've seen traffic on Boyer at rush hour heading the opposite direction (which rules out one house where I really liked the pictures but was going to be nearly impossible for us to get in and out of in the evenings). I did manage to squeak over 18mpg out of my last tank of gas, which is better than what I was getting with the old car, even including the autocross weekend, which were usually good for upping my average by 0.2 to 0.3 mpg. I have no idea where I'll be filling up the car going forward, but that's just more encouragement to bike. At least our timing on that is good with this move. When we first moved up here, I hadn't been biking for too long before we got to September when gloves and rain gear started to become very important. This time, I'll have a good four months to prepare for that (and find where all the rain and snow gear got packed away).

There are a bunch of things we wanted to do with this house that we didn't get around to. I suppose that's for the best. We'll be downsizing our water feature, but at least the new one does have a pump. The pump isn't working right now, but it's a step in the right direction. The setup of the house isn't so great for using computer speakers for most applications so I expect big upgrades in audio quality as well, once I find the time to put together a plan for the electrician. That'll be top of the to-do list next week I suspect, after we know where the internet connection will come into the house. Something's definitely changed, since not only will we not have an internet connection ready to go before we move in, but the stereo won't be the first thing unpacked and set up. I guess this is what comes from growing up.

California Sun (Mostly)

My second solo trip with Moira went pretty well, in spite of presenting a new set of challenges. Waking up, getting breakfast, picking up something for lunch, getting her to daycare and getting to work on time is a challenge when dealing with a hotel. This is as close as I care to get to being a single parent. It's clear that trying this at home, or even having a kitchen, would make it a bit easier, but there still don't seem to be enough hours in the day. I think the closest we got to bedtime was an hour later than usual, and that was only because we were in a hotel with no bathtub, so bath was postponed for a day.

On the plus side, she did her own packing, which was somewhat questionable. For Thursday and Friday, I'd mentioned that we should probably have brought her shoes. The downpour we got Saturday morning, though, made her rain boots the perfect choice.

We closed on our new house on Friday. Moving is two weeks from now. In the meantime, there's a huge amount of stuff to get ready. It's also the beginning of a new quarter that includes the review for a round of promotions, so there's a huge amount of stuff to do at work as well. This week also includes Norwescon, and prep for a long gaming weekend in May. This would be one of the reasons for taking it easy on caffeine most of the time, so that during periods like this, there's a bit of reserve to dip into when I start trading sleep for an extra hour or two a day.