May 2003


uncategorized30 May 2003 08:29 pm

My coteacher threw me a going away party this afternoon. It was actually really nice– a bunch of teachers talking teaching (and other things, but mostly teaching) and drinking wine and eating cake.

She lives in Algodones, about 30 minutes north of Albuquerque. The town is situated along the Rio Grande. The cottonwoods are seeding right now, and little balls of cotton fluff fell from the trees outside and settled in the grass. It was very sweet and dreamy. They also fell and settled in my car because I left the windows open. That was not so sweet and dreamy.

My parents and my brother are at the rehearsal dinner for a wedding that's happening tomorrow afternoon. I didn't really want to go anyway, but they'd left by the time I got home, so I didn't have to convince anyone that an evening with my brother's friends is not my idea of a good time. Plenty of that tomorrow at the wedding, which should be fun and at the very least will give me an opportunity to wear the gorgeous shirt I got at Dorothy Perkins in London.

My mom is having a brainstorm about storing my stuff. I was just going to get a storage unit, like any normal person. I wanted to do that like a month ago, so that I could move things a little at a time. But my mother, the maker of all decisions, thinks a storage unit it too expensive. Sooo, she talked about getting a Tuff Shed and setting it up in their yard. That was also deemed too expensive. The new brainstorm is that I will store everything I'm not taking (I got rid of almost all of the furniture, so it's just books and tchotchkes and teaching materials and things) in those big Rubbermaid storage tubs and put it in the crawl space. What is a crawl space? It is like a mini basement cellar thing, only ickier. The only access is through a trap door thingy outside, and it's about 4 feet high in there, with no lights or ventilation. It will be hard to put things there and hard to retrieve them. My parents are insane. Aren't everyone's, though?

Eh.

BTW- Lost and Found is on TV tonight!

newsy29 May 2003 10:01 pm

Alas, I am now a loser living at home. Just for a couple of weeks, though.

You may have some questions about what I am doing and where I am going. Or, you may not. In either case, I will attempt to clarify.

I am moving to Fairbanks, Alaska. Hopefully I will work at camp again, though the new director has been a bit slow in processing the paperwork. She all but hired me over the phone, but I've yet to receive confirmation. But I digress. Assuming that I get officially hired for the camp job I will leave here round about the middle of June. I am selling my car and driving from Albuquerque to Fairbanks in my parents' old minivan. It will take 2 weeks to get there. I will stop and camp at Yellowstone and Glacier National Park and various other places. I am going alone. I am looking forward to it immensely. I am not afraid to travel by myself. OK, maybe a little, but not much.

In Fairbanks I will work at camp again and then probably sub during the school year, though I think I have a good chance of getting a full-time teaching job. I don't know yet about housing, but I've talked with last year's camp director about finding a place together. There's not a lot of cheap housing to be had in Fairbanks, and a lot of places have no running water because of the permafrost. I think I draw the line there, though. I'll live in a hovel, but I have to have water.

So, things are a bit up in the air right now, which is a little scary for me. This is not how I usually do things, but since this is my first experience moving across the continent I don't really have anything to compare it to. And it will be great.

No moving stories to relate. Well, one. Today we moved out the last of the stuff (it's currently in a monstrous pile on my parents' porch), and I finished cleaning up the apartment. The vacuum wasn't working too well, so I went to pull out the bag. Below the bag was, I am not making this up, a dead shriveled lizard carcass. Ewww. I wish I had an arch enemy– I could put it in their mailbox or something. Next time.

Nothing else to report, other than that my mom is following me around and turning off the lights as soon as I leave the room. Even if I just get up to get something. But it's not bothering me at all, really.

newsy27 May 2003 11:28 am

OK, this is it for me for a while. I usually take the computer apart last, but I want to have it done with. It will keep me from wasting time online instead of packing. Speaking of packing, I have the kitchen, living room, and bedroom completely packed (except for my bed, but I do have to sleep somewhere tonight.) I am working on the study (holy crap, there's a lot of stuff in here) right now. I'm trying to do this room by room so that I don't start on one thing and then another and then another so that I have 500 things begun and none finished. Whee, fun with ADD.

Where was I? (Fun with ADD indeed.) So, no computer for me for a while here. I'll probably be able to update from my parents' house after the move. You already know what I'm going to say, though: I moved everything, it was heavy, it was hot out, blah blah blah. I'll refer you to last year's post-move entry.

No moving injuries yet this year! I'm sure I'll acquire some. Expect stories about that in the next few days.

All for now.

uncategorized26 May 2003 05:32 pm

Ick, I'm sticky and dirty and ready for a long shower. I went to the laundromat this morning. (My parents usurped my washer and dryer, which is fine. I doubt they would have fit in the minivan.) I've been sorting and boxing clothes since then. I have 6 boxes to donate or sell. I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to have a yard sale. How desperately do I need that $100? I'll mull it over some more. Then I'll do whatever my mom tells me to do, because that's just how it works.

Before I go, here's that BBC top 100 book list with the ones I've read in bold.

Continue Reading »

uncategorized25 May 2003 10:49 pm

I've found all of the things I had lost, and lost all of the things I had found. Something like that. I finished with my classroom this morning and spent the rest of the day packing up the apartment. Because I'm anal organized I'm sorting everything into 3 piles, (Alaska, storage, and donate/sell), and labeling the boxes accordingly. I'm planning on doing most of the moving on Wednesday. My brother and his friends are helping. They don't know it yet. I'll buy them pizza or something.

My mom has been really nice and understanding, which surprised me even though it probably shouldn't. She's called twice to make sure I'm not too frazzled and to ask if I need help with anything. The sorting is probably best done alone, though. I'm the only one who really knows what I want.

Speaking of which, it's been much easier than I thought to put things in the donate/sell pile. I've always thought of myself as a pack rat, but if my house burned down tomorrow there's very little I'd actually miss. When I took the Greyhound trip last summer we mailed all of our stuff home from Seattle, keeping just a backpack with some essentials. I walked around the city that day with a literal weight lifted from my shoulders and realized that that little backpack was all I wanted or needed. I hope that all of this sorting and labeling and purging will leave me with the same feeling. I need to learn that my possessions are not me, and I am not created by their gain or by their loss.

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