telerib | My God, it's full of boxes

Firstly, many thanks to the Moving Crew,

cmccurry, Ruthie, Magda, and Dad. Even Sarah's mom alternated between helping Sarah and Steve (who were doing their own packing) and helping us. My dad is a Jedi Master of packing.

It was a pretty dang crazy morning, with two couples trying to get stuff packed up, out the door, and into two moving vans. Moe and I started at 8am; Magda showed up shortly thereafter, and everybody converged on the house at about 9:30 or so. By 11:15 or 11:30, Madga, Dad, Moe and I were on our way to Laurel. The timing was not quite perfect - Sarah and Steve expressed readiness to put their moving van in the parking spot at around 11 or so - but we didn't linger on too unduly.

I thought we'd take MD-295 up; my dad pulls up alongside in the moving van, shouting that he can't go on that road, since it's "No Trucks." A moving van is a truck? He goes on to the next light and pulls a U-turn; I U-turn also, but he doesn't want me to pull over so he can follow me. No, he'll get there on his own... Magda ended up on 295 by herself but had a GPS unit that eventually got her to the park. Dad got kinda lost but unlost himself and showed up not long after we got there by the backroads.

We got everything unloaded literally moments before it started to rain. Magda turned down the offer of lunch and just went home with our thanks and promises of empty boxes for her own move in August. We got the UHaul back 15min before it was due, although we couldn't find a place selling diesel to fill it up. We went back to the old house one last time to get some food out of the fridge, pick up my houseplants and vacuum the second story. Then it was off to Red, Hot and Blue for celebratory ribs.

Dad went over the inside and outside of the trailer with me, making up a list of all the things that still need fixing. He said that it was pretty nice, "better than [he] thought it would be." I didn't realize I'd wanted his approval on it until he gave it, which was nice in a couple of dimensions. :)

We unpacked. And unpacked. And unpacked. And cleaned and put down shelf paper and unpacked. And went grocery shopping and forgot things like soap and hit the Home Depot and Target for things like poison ivy killer and shower curtains and unpacked. We have not yet put up the track shelving, which means that Moe has nowhere to put his books yet, which means that there will be a lot of boxes left until we get the shelves up.

We saw Episode III on Monday. And unpacked. (Verdict: Ewan MacGregor and Ian McDiarmid very much worth watching. Spaceships and droids very cool with usual droid caveats. Hayden Christenson even pretty good as pouty impatient Anakin, not so much as pouty angsty Darth Vader; I blame the direction. Lucas must love the way the kid glowers.)

Today, I started my new commute. At 6am, there are still way too many cars on MD-295 S. And they drive way too close to each other, given that we were doing 55mph. But we were doing 55mph, which meant that I did get to work in about 30min. (Consider that I used to allow 30-40min to get from Old Place to work, and 20-30min from Old Place to New Place, and that they're all more or less along the same road.) I'll be able to leave at 3pm and hopefully beat most of the evening traffic home. So I can, you know, unpack.