T minus 66 hours...
...and counting.
Sometime early Friday morning, I will climb into my beat-to-hell 1996 Dodge Ram, loaded down with two computers and some other miscellaneous stuph, point it eastbound down Interstate 20, and put Columbia, South Carolina in my rear-view mirror for the final time. I will head east, then north on Interstate 95, pausing only to snap a long, slow, formal salute of good-bye in the general direction of the Holy Neon Sombrero at South of the Border.
Six hours later, give or take, I'll pull into a parking lot 350 miles away in Richmond, Virginia, give a large check to a rental company, and get the keys to a new apartment and a new life for me and the Wife Unit.
Excuse me if I'm freaking.
It's not the big things that get you on a move like this. The apartment is reserved. The utilities are scheduled (no broadband Internet until the 11th at the earliest...I'm fine, really I am). Assuming that my new employer comes through with the relocation assistance money today, the movers can be scheduled on time. If not, then we are in Really Deep Shit...but nothing to be done about that now. We're paid up at our old place through the 23rd, the soonest we could get out of the lease. My job orientation is scheduled for 4 pm Friday.
No, it's the 5,509,511,507 little things that run you ragged. Call the dentist and cancel all upcoming appointments. Throw out yet more bags of trash. Pack up all the miscellaneous computer crap. Wonder what this AC adapter goes to. Cancel membership in about one beeeelion e-mail lists. Change address on another beeelion bills. Stock up on cat litter and hope that Fat Bastard's diahrrea gets better before this weekend. Find yet more shit that needs yet another box (we're going to end up with about 33 boxes labeled "miscellaneous odds and ends"). You get the idea. Anybody who's ever done an interstate move knows what I'm talking about.
I've been second-guessing the hell out of myself ever since I turned in my notice at work. Am I doing the right thing? Was my old job really that bad that I had to uproot us and take a headfirst flying bellyflop into the unknown? Is it worth wrecking our finances even further, totally reaming Wife Unit's 2005 show schedule, moving her six hours further from her family and friends?
I guess we'll find out. In the meantime...oh, look, more books to pack. Joy.
Sometime early Friday morning, I will climb into my beat-to-hell 1996 Dodge Ram, loaded down with two computers and some other miscellaneous stuph, point it eastbound down Interstate 20, and put Columbia, South Carolina in my rear-view mirror for the final time. I will head east, then north on Interstate 95, pausing only to snap a long, slow, formal salute of good-bye in the general direction of the Holy Neon Sombrero at South of the Border.
Six hours later, give or take, I'll pull into a parking lot 350 miles away in Richmond, Virginia, give a large check to a rental company, and get the keys to a new apartment and a new life for me and the Wife Unit.
Excuse me if I'm freaking.
It's not the big things that get you on a move like this. The apartment is reserved. The utilities are scheduled (no broadband Internet until the 11th at the earliest...I'm fine, really I am). Assuming that my new employer comes through with the relocation assistance money today, the movers can be scheduled on time. If not, then we are in Really Deep Shit...but nothing to be done about that now. We're paid up at our old place through the 23rd, the soonest we could get out of the lease. My job orientation is scheduled for 4 pm Friday.
No, it's the 5,509,511,507 little things that run you ragged. Call the dentist and cancel all upcoming appointments. Throw out yet more bags of trash. Pack up all the miscellaneous computer crap. Wonder what this AC adapter goes to. Cancel membership in about one beeeelion e-mail lists. Change address on another beeelion bills. Stock up on cat litter and hope that Fat Bastard's diahrrea gets better before this weekend. Find yet more shit that needs yet another box (we're going to end up with about 33 boxes labeled "miscellaneous odds and ends"). You get the idea. Anybody who's ever done an interstate move knows what I'm talking about.
I've been second-guessing the hell out of myself ever since I turned in my notice at work. Am I doing the right thing? Was my old job really that bad that I had to uproot us and take a headfirst flying bellyflop into the unknown? Is it worth wrecking our finances even further, totally reaming Wife Unit's 2005 show schedule, moving her six hours further from her family and friends?
I guess we'll find out. In the meantime...oh, look, more books to pack. Joy.