This is my 100th post. I realized that I was delaying blogging today because I felt that I should say something momentous; that being silly, I've decided to fill this post with trivial details.
I've resumed my habit, developed in Cambodia last summer, of washing my feet when I come home. It's pleasant on a hot day, but really I do it because I wear flip-flops all summer and it's nice not to track so much dirt around. In Cambodia, the washing is a necessary act: American immune systems aren't equipped for the kind of thing that can get into a cut or a scratch out there. Back home, it's just sanitary.
I'm also having to do some extra vaccuuming these days--well, today--because it's windy, my windows are open, and my plants (I'm looking at you, Benjamin!*) are spewing dirt all over the place. Their dirt-spewing has the additional effect of getting me to water them more often, the passive-aggressive little so-and-sos.
(*Yes, I name my plants. Benjamin was a little puny ficus when I first got him; hence the name. Once I stopped trying to make him into a bonsai, he started doing well, and is now a sizeable little tree; however, a name's a name, and I'm not going to change it just because he's bigger. Besides, his breed is actually a ficus benjamina or something like that. Then there's Jenny, the ponytail fern, and Horace, the jade. Oh, and Baby Horace, whom, I just realized, needs a proper name. Baby Horace is a cutting from Horace--there were two cuttings, but we lost one to last year's sublettor. And finally, not to be forgotten, we have Marilla, the monster amaryllis who refuses--refuses!!--to go into dormancy. Her gigantic leaves are a little droopy right now, though, and I'm hoping that she falls asleep in time to be packed away into a paper bag for the big move.)
I've actually been getting some work done on my conference paper these last few days. I'm not really at the draft-writing stage yet, but I have a lot of notes, and I think I know the text and even the passages that I want to focus on. This makes me feel much better.
And my cold--for cold it was--is gone. Huzzah!
And that's the news from jb.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Careful what you ask for
So the other day I sort of implied, or suggested, that I'd like to be tagged for squadratomagico's Eight Wonderments meme, in which you're supposed to list eight things that you wonder about. And Medieval Woman subsequently tagged me. So here goes--sort of a mix between the semi-significant and the extremely insignificant. Enjoy!
1. Why is it that there isn't a more concerted, public effort to make significant changes in US policy and administration? Maybe there is, and I just can't see it from where I am, but as far as I know there hasn't been much in the way of rallies or marches since something like 2003 or '04. There's been a lot of online activism, obviously--as my frequent updates from MoveOn and PFAW remind me--but that's not the same. And so, a related wondering: Is online activism sort of replacing public action and activism? Online activism is obviously not a bad thing, but it's so much easier to sign an online petition and feel like you've "done something" than it is to actually show up at a public event. And while it is doing something, it's doing something in a fairly invisible way, and it's a mode of activism that is denied to a large segment of the population. So I wonder if a) it is the case that online activism is replacing public activism, and b) if there aren't some major drawbacks to that trend.
Of course, it could just be that I'm oblivious and there's plenty of public action going on; that's entirely possible.
2. Why is it that I put off or simply don't do tiny, slightly annoying things that would nonetheless save me significant annoyance in the long run? Like, for example, moving my box fan to the window of the room that I am in rather than always leaving it in the kitchen. True, it's kind of a pain to move the fan because I've got bars on the bedroom and living room windows, but once I've set it up and it's running in the room where I'm working my life is SO MUCH BETTER.
3. Will I ever get a second tattoo? I sometimes try to design them for myself, but I never come up with anything I'm willing to commit to. I got my first one when I was 19, without giving it a great deal of thought beforehand, and I'm glad I did it that way--I probably would've talked myself out of it otherwise. Of course, I also got it in a usually invisible location (the middle of my back), so that's gone a long way towards preventing regret.
4. Since when do children need to be entertained with electronic gadgetry every single minute of the day? I despise the whole DVD-player-in-the-back-of-the-SUV trend, and I promise you, the blogosphere, that I will never succumb to it, no matter how irritating my future children may be. You can hold me to that. Seriously, when I was a kid, we just stared out the windows on long car rides and daydreamed and stuff. I'm sure we whined plenty, too, but I still remember some of my daydreams from those days. I think that that's important. Kids need to learn to entertain themselves, don't they?
5. Is there even a remote chance that I'll finish a draft of my conference paper before the fall semester begins?
6. Why is this kind of thing, that I'm doing right now, called a "meme"? My understanding of memes (which were explained to me a couple of years ago, in a different context) doesn't explain it to my satisfaction. Hence, I will label this post ""meme"", rather than "meme."
7. When did "different than" become an acceptable phrase? And how can I stop its creeping into my own speech?? I try to use only "from," but sometimes "than" just jumps out of my mouth. Curses!
8. What would life have been like if I had gone into the Peace Corps after college, as I originally planned? I got pretty far along in the application process, but there was some holdup with my medical records (nothing wrong with me medically; they just didn't look at my records until more than 6 months after I'd sent them in, at which point they were all expired and needed to be redone, and by then I'd found a job and an apartment and all that). I sometimes regret not sticking with it and going off to Africa, which was where I was headed, but then I certainly wouldn't be exactly here, right now. I'd probably be somewhere equally good (or so I like to think), but I can't even imagine where, or what I'd be doing. Maybe I would've had a much more exciting life. But would I really trade in what I have right now on that kind of gamble? No, I don't think so. Which raises another wondering: Why do we regret anything, if we're happy with our current lives? It's incoherent to want to have done something differently when the only way we can get to our current position is by doing everything exactly the way that we did it, and yet regret seems perfectly natural, in some contexts. Just further evidence of the irrationality of our brains, I guess.
Hmm.... Whom to tag? I think that the following people occasionally read this blog and weren't in the original tagging: Sisyphus, Bardiac, Dr. Virago, and Another Damned Medievalist. Anyone else?
1. Why is it that there isn't a more concerted, public effort to make significant changes in US policy and administration? Maybe there is, and I just can't see it from where I am, but as far as I know there hasn't been much in the way of rallies or marches since something like 2003 or '04. There's been a lot of online activism, obviously--as my frequent updates from MoveOn and PFAW remind me--but that's not the same. And so, a related wondering: Is online activism sort of replacing public action and activism? Online activism is obviously not a bad thing, but it's so much easier to sign an online petition and feel like you've "done something" than it is to actually show up at a public event. And while it is doing something, it's doing something in a fairly invisible way, and it's a mode of activism that is denied to a large segment of the population. So I wonder if a) it is the case that online activism is replacing public activism, and b) if there aren't some major drawbacks to that trend.
Of course, it could just be that I'm oblivious and there's plenty of public action going on; that's entirely possible.
2. Why is it that I put off or simply don't do tiny, slightly annoying things that would nonetheless save me significant annoyance in the long run? Like, for example, moving my box fan to the window of the room that I am in rather than always leaving it in the kitchen. True, it's kind of a pain to move the fan because I've got bars on the bedroom and living room windows, but once I've set it up and it's running in the room where I'm working my life is SO MUCH BETTER.
3. Will I ever get a second tattoo? I sometimes try to design them for myself, but I never come up with anything I'm willing to commit to. I got my first one when I was 19, without giving it a great deal of thought beforehand, and I'm glad I did it that way--I probably would've talked myself out of it otherwise. Of course, I also got it in a usually invisible location (the middle of my back), so that's gone a long way towards preventing regret.
4. Since when do children need to be entertained with electronic gadgetry every single minute of the day? I despise the whole DVD-player-in-the-back-of-the-SUV trend, and I promise you, the blogosphere, that I will never succumb to it, no matter how irritating my future children may be. You can hold me to that. Seriously, when I was a kid, we just stared out the windows on long car rides and daydreamed and stuff. I'm sure we whined plenty, too, but I still remember some of my daydreams from those days. I think that that's important. Kids need to learn to entertain themselves, don't they?
5. Is there even a remote chance that I'll finish a draft of my conference paper before the fall semester begins?
6. Why is this kind of thing, that I'm doing right now, called a "meme"? My understanding of memes (which were explained to me a couple of years ago, in a different context) doesn't explain it to my satisfaction. Hence, I will label this post ""meme"", rather than "meme."
7. When did "different than" become an acceptable phrase? And how can I stop its creeping into my own speech?? I try to use only "from," but sometimes "than" just jumps out of my mouth. Curses!
8. What would life have been like if I had gone into the Peace Corps after college, as I originally planned? I got pretty far along in the application process, but there was some holdup with my medical records (nothing wrong with me medically; they just didn't look at my records until more than 6 months after I'd sent them in, at which point they were all expired and needed to be redone, and by then I'd found a job and an apartment and all that). I sometimes regret not sticking with it and going off to Africa, which was where I was headed, but then I certainly wouldn't be exactly here, right now. I'd probably be somewhere equally good (or so I like to think), but I can't even imagine where, or what I'd be doing. Maybe I would've had a much more exciting life. But would I really trade in what I have right now on that kind of gamble? No, I don't think so. Which raises another wondering: Why do we regret anything, if we're happy with our current lives? It's incoherent to want to have done something differently when the only way we can get to our current position is by doing everything exactly the way that we did it, and yet regret seems perfectly natural, in some contexts. Just further evidence of the irrationality of our brains, I guess.
Hmm.... Whom to tag? I think that the following people occasionally read this blog and weren't in the original tagging: Sisyphus, Bardiac, Dr. Virago, and Another Damned Medievalist. Anyone else?
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Maybe it wasn't the loud bar after all
That sore throat I had from talking over the music on Friday night? Well, it seems to be spiralling out of control (--if you'll permit me to use such a phrase in reference to a sore throat).
I've been plagued by an irritated spot in my throat for four days now. I could just have a cold, but I feel pretty much fine otherwise. Is it possible that I developed some kind of raw spot on my epiglottis, or whatever, and that it's still healing?
It's not a hugely big deal most of the time. I just need to swallow and clear my throat a lot. But when I try to sleep, it's a whole other story--because you don't swallow when you sleep, of course. So I'll start to doze off, and then there'll be this horrible tickle, and I'll wake up choking and coughing and spluttering.
The only way I've managed to sleep for the last two nights has been by taking Sudafed (after lying awake for an hour or two, of course). Either the Sudafed reduces whatever minimal congestion is causing the throat-tickle, or it just knocks me out.
If it's the latter, this really can't go on.... But what are my options, here?
I've been plagued by an irritated spot in my throat for four days now. I could just have a cold, but I feel pretty much fine otherwise. Is it possible that I developed some kind of raw spot on my epiglottis, or whatever, and that it's still healing?
It's not a hugely big deal most of the time. I just need to swallow and clear my throat a lot. But when I try to sleep, it's a whole other story--because you don't swallow when you sleep, of course. So I'll start to doze off, and then there'll be this horrible tickle, and I'll wake up choking and coughing and spluttering.
The only way I've managed to sleep for the last two nights has been by taking Sudafed (after lying awake for an hour or two, of course). Either the Sudafed reduces whatever minimal congestion is causing the throat-tickle, or it just knocks me out.
If it's the latter, this really can't go on.... But what are my options, here?
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Things Seem to be Proceeding Apace
Not a lot to report this week. I've been visiting the boyfriend down in the Metropole, so I haven't been able to make any headway on moving stuff--that's probably for the best. It's been good to take some time off from staring at my books and thinking, "Do I really need you? or you? How would I feel without The Mill on the Floss? What if I need to recollect some essential fact about Maggie Tulliver? What will its absence do to Middlemarch, which will then be the lone Eliot on the shelf (Silas Marner having already received the axe)? Oh god, oh god, I don't know if I can give it up!"
For the record, I plan to keep The Mill on the Floss.
The car-purchasing frenzy has also sort of died down. I may still buy my friend's car, but I haven't test-driven it yet, and I'm leaving tomorrow, so that'll have to wait for my next visit. In the meantime, I'm going to look into the possibility of renting a car for an occasional weekend (thanks to Hilaire and Sisyphus for that suggestion!). Once I Crunch the Numbers, I'll have a better sense of whether paying for a car + insurance will really be a good idea.
So what I've been doing, for the last few days at least, is reading some of the stuff on the very end of my survey syllabus. I recently bumped into a friendly acquaintance on campus who'd just finished teaching her first-ever course, and she said that in the future she planned to prepare her last classes of the semester well in advance--ideally before the semester even begins. Because by the end of the semester she found herself just too worn out to thoroughly prep her lectures. Now, I'm not going to go that far; it might turn out to be a waste of time, after all, because presumably the concerns etc. that I'll want to highlight in December will be shaped by what we've done in September through November. But the tail-end of the survey course--which is one of your typical lit surveys, running up to about 1800--is the end that I know least well, and I'd never actually read one of the longer texts that I want to assign. So it seemed highly sensible to take a look at them.
I must say that I'm enjoying this. It reminds me of reading for my comprehensive exams early in grad school, a process that I also much enjoyed. I came across that poem of, um, Cowper's, I think, that's quoted all over To the Lighthouse--you know, "We perished, each alone"--and it was just such a pleasure to finally see what it was that Mr. Ramsay was always mumbling to himself. [It is Cowper; I just checked.] One of the things that I really wanted to get out of grad school was breadth of knowledge, as well as depth; while the dissertation is excellent for promoting depth, breadth sort of gets lost in the shuffle, especially once coursework is over. And, in my grad program at least, I fear that increasing budget cuts will limit the opportunities for reading widely outside of one's stated field even more. Ideally, perhaps, one should see undergrad as the time for reading widely, and grad school as the time to focus; but this isn't terribly practical, I don't think, as I was still developing the critical reading skills that I needed to understand and appreciate a lot of this literature when I was an undergrad. Or rather, I would have understood and appreciated them differently at that time: not inadequately, necessarily, but differently, and in a way that possibly wouldn't have been useful to me in grad school or beyond.
But perhaps the same could be said of my reading now. That is, my understanding of the literature I read for my exams back in '02 or whenever it was might not be terribly useful to me now, and I really ought to go and reread Milton and Spenser and so forth in order to "get them" in a way that's appropriate to my current interests and--for lack of a better term--scholarly "level." And should read them again in another 5 years or so. It's kind of like how, at the end of college, I thought that I'd be better off if I could start it all over: I'd have taken a better range of classes and ultimately gotten more out of my education. But then I realized that, if I could have done so, at the end of Round 2 I very likely would have had the exact same feeling.
Luckily for me, however, I'll have to read bits of both Milton and Spenser for this very survey class. Maybe that's one good thing about teaching: returning to the same texts again and again can, in a funny way, keep you fresh.
I guess I'm thinking about this in part because I spent some time this spring re-reading favorite books from about 10 years ago, to see whether they were still good (and because I'd pretty much forgotten a lot of what happened in them). So I read Ullman's The Day on Fire, Nabokov's Ada, and Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. All three were, indeed, excellent, and it was a real pleasure to discover them anew.
****************
On a totally unrelated note:
Although I haven't formally been tagged for Squadratomagico's new meme, I do have one wonderment: Why on earth do bars equate "loud" with "fun"? We were out somewhere on Friday (for a free happy hour courtesy of boyfriend's workplace) where we had to speak so loudly to be heard over the music that my throat is still rough and I'm still a little hoarse two days later. Decidedly not fun, I assert.
For the record, I plan to keep The Mill on the Floss.
The car-purchasing frenzy has also sort of died down. I may still buy my friend's car, but I haven't test-driven it yet, and I'm leaving tomorrow, so that'll have to wait for my next visit. In the meantime, I'm going to look into the possibility of renting a car for an occasional weekend (thanks to Hilaire and Sisyphus for that suggestion!). Once I Crunch the Numbers, I'll have a better sense of whether paying for a car + insurance will really be a good idea.
So what I've been doing, for the last few days at least, is reading some of the stuff on the very end of my survey syllabus. I recently bumped into a friendly acquaintance on campus who'd just finished teaching her first-ever course, and she said that in the future she planned to prepare her last classes of the semester well in advance--ideally before the semester even begins. Because by the end of the semester she found herself just too worn out to thoroughly prep her lectures. Now, I'm not going to go that far; it might turn out to be a waste of time, after all, because presumably the concerns etc. that I'll want to highlight in December will be shaped by what we've done in September through November. But the tail-end of the survey course--which is one of your typical lit surveys, running up to about 1800--is the end that I know least well, and I'd never actually read one of the longer texts that I want to assign. So it seemed highly sensible to take a look at them.
I must say that I'm enjoying this. It reminds me of reading for my comprehensive exams early in grad school, a process that I also much enjoyed. I came across that poem of, um, Cowper's, I think, that's quoted all over To the Lighthouse--you know, "We perished, each alone"--and it was just such a pleasure to finally see what it was that Mr. Ramsay was always mumbling to himself. [It is Cowper; I just checked.] One of the things that I really wanted to get out of grad school was breadth of knowledge, as well as depth; while the dissertation is excellent for promoting depth, breadth sort of gets lost in the shuffle, especially once coursework is over. And, in my grad program at least, I fear that increasing budget cuts will limit the opportunities for reading widely outside of one's stated field even more. Ideally, perhaps, one should see undergrad as the time for reading widely, and grad school as the time to focus; but this isn't terribly practical, I don't think, as I was still developing the critical reading skills that I needed to understand and appreciate a lot of this literature when I was an undergrad. Or rather, I would have understood and appreciated them differently at that time: not inadequately, necessarily, but differently, and in a way that possibly wouldn't have been useful to me in grad school or beyond.
But perhaps the same could be said of my reading now. That is, my understanding of the literature I read for my exams back in '02 or whenever it was might not be terribly useful to me now, and I really ought to go and reread Milton and Spenser and so forth in order to "get them" in a way that's appropriate to my current interests and--for lack of a better term--scholarly "level." And should read them again in another 5 years or so. It's kind of like how, at the end of college, I thought that I'd be better off if I could start it all over: I'd have taken a better range of classes and ultimately gotten more out of my education. But then I realized that, if I could have done so, at the end of Round 2 I very likely would have had the exact same feeling.
Luckily for me, however, I'll have to read bits of both Milton and Spenser for this very survey class. Maybe that's one good thing about teaching: returning to the same texts again and again can, in a funny way, keep you fresh.
I guess I'm thinking about this in part because I spent some time this spring re-reading favorite books from about 10 years ago, to see whether they were still good (and because I'd pretty much forgotten a lot of what happened in them). So I read Ullman's The Day on Fire, Nabokov's Ada, and Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. All three were, indeed, excellent, and it was a real pleasure to discover them anew.
****************
On a totally unrelated note:
Although I haven't formally been tagged for Squadratomagico's new meme, I do have one wonderment: Why on earth do bars equate "loud" with "fun"? We were out somewhere on Friday (for a free happy hour courtesy of boyfriend's workplace) where we had to speak so loudly to be heard over the music that my throat is still rough and I'm still a little hoarse two days later. Decidedly not fun, I assert.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Is this really such a big deal?
So I'm thinking of buying a car.
I am, I confess, rather alarmed at this prospect.
Not only because I haven't driven in five years, or because I don't know how to buy a car (never having done it before)--these are scary factors, yes, but a) I'm going to have to drive to my new town anyway, and b) Boyfriend has promised to go with me to do all the car-checking-out stuff. (He's not particularly mechanically inclined, but he did buy a used car once, and he's also a generally calming person.) I'm also alarmed because not having a car has been sort of my thing for the better part of the last decade, and I kind of identify as a carless person. I didn't set out to develop a sense of self that had anything to do with car ownership, but as time went on I was increasingly glad that I didn't have the hassle of a car, of paying for insurance and gas, or of trying to park in extremely parking-unfriendly (but almost car-requiring) GradCity. And I really liked the fact that I was leaving a smaller environmental "footprint," as they're calling it these days. I don't contribute to traffic and I'm being slightly less detrimental to air quality and suchlike.
So why buy a car? Well, I will be living in the middle of a field, and while I'm only going to be about 2 blocks from my office and pretty close to a grocery store (I assume), it might be nice to get out of town now and again. For example, I'm not sure that there's a yoga studio in my town; I will in fact be surprised if there is one, particularly a good one. I'll also need to drive to the airport, and maybe to Big City to the North now and again.
And also a friend of mine is selling his car, which makes me feel less mistrustful.
I'm nervous, though. Is this a terrible decision? Or will it mark my entry into some kind of Land of the Grown-Ups? (Never mind that I did have a car--well, a family car--from the age of 20 until about 23. That was just a trial run; this will be adulthood for real.) (And really, at what age will I stop thinking of myself as somehow not quite an adult? My mother has frequently remarked that she still feels about the same as she felt at fourteen or sixteen or something. Perhaps I'm pursuing an illusory state of being. Of course, since I'm only jokingly pursuing it, I don't think that it matters; I'm as grown-up as I need to be, and really quite responsible. I swear!)
And mixed with the fear is a little bit of excitement.... Won't it be kind of nice to buy the groceries I actually want, instead of thinking about how much they weigh? The latter system--which I've used for so long now that it's second nature--results in pretty healthy purchasing; I can't buy ice cream if I'm going to buy pasta sauce and yogurt, and the latter are more practical, so the ice cream gets the axe. Vegetables are light and easy to transport. Etc. Not having a car also means not going to the mall (the only clothes-shopping venue in GradCity, more or less) and therefore spending less money on my wardrobe and other frivolous things. There are a million benefits to not having a car.
But of course, I've been living in an actual city, even if it is a rather modest one. FieldTown has a population of about 5,000 (and it really is in the middle of a field--it's very pretty, but isolated). While I'm sure that I could manage without a car--and a part of my hesitation in buying one is this kind of Spartan sensibility that I only adhere to at certain times but that causes me a great deal of anxiety and guilt at others--it might just be okay for me to have one.
Do other people go through this much anxiety and nonsense? About anything??
I am, I confess, rather alarmed at this prospect.
Not only because I haven't driven in five years, or because I don't know how to buy a car (never having done it before)--these are scary factors, yes, but a) I'm going to have to drive to my new town anyway, and b) Boyfriend has promised to go with me to do all the car-checking-out stuff. (He's not particularly mechanically inclined, but he did buy a used car once, and he's also a generally calming person.) I'm also alarmed because not having a car has been sort of my thing for the better part of the last decade, and I kind of identify as a carless person. I didn't set out to develop a sense of self that had anything to do with car ownership, but as time went on I was increasingly glad that I didn't have the hassle of a car, of paying for insurance and gas, or of trying to park in extremely parking-unfriendly (but almost car-requiring) GradCity. And I really liked the fact that I was leaving a smaller environmental "footprint," as they're calling it these days. I don't contribute to traffic and I'm being slightly less detrimental to air quality and suchlike.
So why buy a car? Well, I will be living in the middle of a field, and while I'm only going to be about 2 blocks from my office and pretty close to a grocery store (I assume), it might be nice to get out of town now and again. For example, I'm not sure that there's a yoga studio in my town; I will in fact be surprised if there is one, particularly a good one. I'll also need to drive to the airport, and maybe to Big City to the North now and again.
And also a friend of mine is selling his car, which makes me feel less mistrustful.
I'm nervous, though. Is this a terrible decision? Or will it mark my entry into some kind of Land of the Grown-Ups? (Never mind that I did have a car--well, a family car--from the age of 20 until about 23. That was just a trial run; this will be adulthood for real.) (And really, at what age will I stop thinking of myself as somehow not quite an adult? My mother has frequently remarked that she still feels about the same as she felt at fourteen or sixteen or something. Perhaps I'm pursuing an illusory state of being. Of course, since I'm only jokingly pursuing it, I don't think that it matters; I'm as grown-up as I need to be, and really quite responsible. I swear!)
And mixed with the fear is a little bit of excitement.... Won't it be kind of nice to buy the groceries I actually want, instead of thinking about how much they weigh? The latter system--which I've used for so long now that it's second nature--results in pretty healthy purchasing; I can't buy ice cream if I'm going to buy pasta sauce and yogurt, and the latter are more practical, so the ice cream gets the axe. Vegetables are light and easy to transport. Etc. Not having a car also means not going to the mall (the only clothes-shopping venue in GradCity, more or less) and therefore spending less money on my wardrobe and other frivolous things. There are a million benefits to not having a car.
But of course, I've been living in an actual city, even if it is a rather modest one. FieldTown has a population of about 5,000 (and it really is in the middle of a field--it's very pretty, but isolated). While I'm sure that I could manage without a car--and a part of my hesitation in buying one is this kind of Spartan sensibility that I only adhere to at certain times but that causes me a great deal of anxiety and guilt at others--it might just be okay for me to have one.
Do other people go through this much anxiety and nonsense? About anything??
Monday, July 2, 2007
Still More Boring Details
I may have figured out a way to move out on a Friday instead of a Saturday, thereby saving myself upwards of $100! Woo!
Okay, I do realize that discussing the details of my move is one of the most boring things that I could do. But it's really all that I think about lately. That's the problem with moving, for me: it essentially takes up six full weeks of brain-space.
The good part about the expense of the move (yep, here I go again) is that it's really motivating me to get rid of as much stuff as I possibly can. Those (out of my field) books that I'll maybe someday read, and have been carrying around for the better part of a decade? Out. That shirt that I keep thinking I'll want to wear, but that I always change out of before I leave the house? Bye! And that's a very satisfying feeling.
Okay, I do realize that discussing the details of my move is one of the most boring things that I could do. But it's really all that I think about lately. That's the problem with moving, for me: it essentially takes up six full weeks of brain-space.
The good part about the expense of the move (yep, here I go again) is that it's really motivating me to get rid of as much stuff as I possibly can. Those (out of my field) books that I'll maybe someday read, and have been carrying around for the better part of a decade? Out. That shirt that I keep thinking I'll want to wear, but that I always change out of before I leave the house? Bye! And that's a very satisfying feeling.
This Move is Going to Break the Bank
Did you know that movers charge extra to work on a Saturday?
Which is funny, because I'd think that most people would want to move on a Saturday.
Also, if you hire them to load a truck, many companies require a minimum of two hours' pay. So even though I only really need movers to deal with maybe 3 pieces of furniture, I might be out $300. (There's one company that might not have a minimum; I have to check. In which case, as long as they don't hit traffic coming to or going back from my house, I may manage to get their help for only $164. But they start the payment clock the minute they leave their headquarters, and don't end it until they get back! So even if I make sure that they only actually work for 30 minutes, if they loiter and take an extra 10 minutes to get back, I could end up paying $328! Good God! Why oh why do I have to keep this stupid heavy dresser that has to go out a window??) (I'll tell you why. Because it was my mother's when she was a little girl. And I got it into this building, so I have to get it out.)
Then there's the U-Haul: $164 (an odd coincidence) + gas.
Then there's the rental car to transport me from the storage unit near my mother's town to my new abode: approx. $500 + gas.
So we're talking, what, a minimum of about $900 + gas?
I guess that's not too bad; most of it will be reimbursed. But not all! Oh, why is life killing me?
No but actually things are pretty good. I've been very productive today, making lots of necessary phone calls and finishing a book that I've been meaning (and needing) to read for years. And my Scary Syllabus is almost done, thanks to Tiruncula's excellent advice! Also the weather is stunning and perfect and has been for the last 4 days. So, okay, my move will put me out a few hundred bucks; there are worse things, right?
Which is funny, because I'd think that most people would want to move on a Saturday.
Also, if you hire them to load a truck, many companies require a minimum of two hours' pay. So even though I only really need movers to deal with maybe 3 pieces of furniture, I might be out $300. (There's one company that might not have a minimum; I have to check. In which case, as long as they don't hit traffic coming to or going back from my house, I may manage to get their help for only $164. But they start the payment clock the minute they leave their headquarters, and don't end it until they get back! So even if I make sure that they only actually work for 30 minutes, if they loiter and take an extra 10 minutes to get back, I could end up paying $328! Good God! Why oh why do I have to keep this stupid heavy dresser that has to go out a window??) (I'll tell you why. Because it was my mother's when she was a little girl. And I got it into this building, so I have to get it out.)
Then there's the U-Haul: $164 (an odd coincidence) + gas.
Then there's the rental car to transport me from the storage unit near my mother's town to my new abode: approx. $500 + gas.
So we're talking, what, a minimum of about $900 + gas?
I guess that's not too bad; most of it will be reimbursed. But not all! Oh, why is life killing me?
No but actually things are pretty good. I've been very productive today, making lots of necessary phone calls and finishing a book that I've been meaning (and needing) to read for years. And my Scary Syllabus is almost done, thanks to Tiruncula's excellent advice! Also the weather is stunning and perfect and has been for the last 4 days. So, okay, my move will put me out a few hundred bucks; there are worse things, right?
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