fter weeks of "I'd like to move up north." talk, after I got to know and especially after I visited Malaya for the first time, she officially invited me to come live with her in mid-June, 2003. I first announced this long-imagined happiness in the June 19th blog, and an excerpt from that blog kicks off this page. It is followed by numerous other blogs on the subject, culminating with the story about moving up there, much of which is devoted to the joys of rental trucks.

As such, this page reads chronologically, so just scroll down.

Well, I have returned home, after a week of joy with Malaya.

I hesitate to call it "home", but since this is where 99% of my possessions live, I guess I have to go with that definition, at least for now. But not for much longer!

"Why not?" you ask?  Well since it's now official, and I'm moving up to the Bay Area and moving in with Malaya, that's why.  Yes, I know, most of you reading this, who read these regularly, are going "Well duh." but hey, it's a big deal for me.  And for her.

True, we'd talked about maybe/possibly/probably moving in together for weeks or even months, but that was mostly in jest and hypothetical muttering, and we didn't really know if we'd ever do it.  After all, we first traded emails almost exactly five months ago, and first met face to face just about a month ago, so what are we doing planning on living together for what we hope will be the rest of our lives?

I'm asking rhetorically, of course, though I suspect I'll get a non-rhetorical version of this question from my dad in the immediate future, since he doesn't read this blog, hasn't heard much about Malaya from me, and will be finding out about this later today, I think.  My mom hasn't heard yet either, but she will tomorrow from my stepdad (she's at a retreat out of town and phone range, or I'd probably give her a call), who I talked about it with on the ride home from the airport (he picked me up late Wednesday night).  But I've talked at length to mom about Malaya, and she's very supportive of all developments thus far, so she'll be quite happy at the news, as was my step dad.

Anyway, I don't know why I'm going about this discussion in this backasswards way, running down when or if I'll be telling my parents, when none of you really give a damn about that aspect of things anyway. The meat of the matter is that we're more in love than ever before, we found that we could work together in her small condo with no major difficulties, and could stop cuddling and shopping and having sex long enough to actually get some work done. So things are all good, I guess.

The timetable is currently set to about three weeks, partially based on my projected working schedule at the stadium, but also assuming I'll need that much time to give my landlord notice and not get screwed on my damage deposit.  So we're planning now on me packing up and selling off possessions and snakes and such, giving a bunch of stuff away for the tax write off, me renting a trailer and attaching it to my car, and driving up there around July 10th.

That seems like a long time when I think about not seeing my sweetie for that long, but at the same time it's damn soon to be moving and disposing of the vast majority of my worldly possessions.

It might be absurdly optimistic, but Malaya and I are both looking at the current living arrangement; us both in her small condo, as temporary.  And we're expecting that in a couple of years we'll be moving to someplace larger/better, and renting out the condo.  Where we'll get the money for that is unclear, though she'll be earning a healthy salary starting in September of this year, and an even healthier one starting Sept of next year, at a job I can not disclose any additional information about.  The financial wildcard is me, since I could be bringing in virtually zero income from my "work" (writing) or I could have a best seller and be auctioning movie rights and buying us new cars and houses with cash payments.

Obviously the second option is the one we both prefer.  Because it would make me happy to be successful as a writer, her happy to have a successful writer for a husband boyfriend, and us both happy with the money, since that would let us travel and do all of the things we really want to do together.  And sweating over balancing a checkbook and making the electric payment is not one of the things we want to be doing as a happy couple, oddly enough.

June 20, 2003

Thursday's activity was actually sort of fun, mostly since it was easy and I didn't have to leave the house or make any phone calls to do it.  At least the part of it that I'm talking about right now.

All I did was root through my dresser and closet and pick out all of the old/ugly stuff that I don't like and haven't worn in years, or can't imagine wearing again. I rooted through and picked it out, and stuffed it into a big plastic Pier One bag, which I'm going to give to some charity and claim a tax deduction towards the imagined value of the crappy clothing I would just as soon throw away.

I cleared out about a dozen old t-shirts, half a dozen button up shirts, ten more old white work shirts, and quite a few pairs of old shorts and pants.  Basically everything I don't like and didn't want in the first place, plus stuff that was worn and old, or else just unwanted.   It was rather liberating, at least for a non-clothes whore like myself, and I like having so much space in my closet now, as well as totally empty drawers in my dresser.  The dresser itself is not going with me, nor is my bed, any of my sheets (twins won't fit Malaya's bigger bed), most of my towels, and so on. I'm not pitching those out yet since I need to use them for another three weeks here, but I am giddy at the prospect of throwing more crap away.

I have to place some classified ads and try to sell the snakes and aquariums off, since those have some resale value and I need the money, and I also hate to throw away something with some good use left in it.  The rats, unluckily for them, have no resale value, other than as reptile food, and since I'm not taking any of my pets with me to Malaya's, their days are numbered.

It's a happy time for them now, since in addition to the rats I have a ton of rat chow, both official (dry stuff in bags) and unofficial (cans of corn), and I'm pretty well letting them gorge themselves.  I am not carting 30 cans of corn up to SF with me, and I don't eat the stuff very often, so into the furry rodents it goes.

I feel a bit like that myself, since I'm trying to eat up all of the frozen stuff at least, and I have a 5lbs bag of frozen shrimp that's untouched in the freezer, as well as an almost-full jumbo pack of Garden Burgers.  Sure, I can just give them away to my mom or dad before I leave, but it's more fun to pretend I must eat it all, or bad things will befall all humanity. Or something like that.

Other things far less likely to be fun are staring me in the face from every direction. One thing I'm not dreading at all is work, oddly enough.  I have to work tonight and the next six days, and then after a week off I'm back on for six more games.  However since I know they are the last baseball games I'll ever vend crap at, I feel rather giddy about it all.  How well that will last past the 6th inning of another sparsely-attended Padres loss remains to be seen, but I'll let you know tomorrow.

June 26, 2003

Today is when the packing really begins.  I worked the last 6 days after being in SF with Malaya for the 8 days before that, and since we only decided that living together was really what we wanted to do the second to last day I was there, it's not like I've had a long time to think about just how I'll be doing this whole moving thing.

I am off work for the next week, and I want to get 95% of everything done in this time.  I then work five days in a row, and after that I'm pretty much done with San Diego for the foreseeable future.  I'll come back and visit sometime(s), but only because my parents live here; I don't feel any real connection to the city, other than sort of wanting to show Malaya around a bit at some point.  I've lived here since I was 13, so I know the area pretty well, despite the fact that I never go anywhere or do anything.  But knowing it and loving caring about it are different things, I'm finding, as I realize just how little I'll miss anything here once I'm living elsewhere.  I'll miss the lovely winter/spring weather, and my parents, but that's really about it.  And where I'm going has fall/winter/spring weather that's even more to my taste than the weather is here, I'll be living in a nicer place, and I will be quitting my mostly-hated job.  As I've been grinning about for a week; there's really no downside.

Of course the whole "moving in with the love of my life" aspect of things trumps all the rest, but I'm trying to give non-Malaya reasons, for once.  Obviously when you factor in living with her, I'd be pretty happy moving to Antarctica, if need be.

The complicating thing about packing is that I'm throwing away or selling most of my stuff, and only keeping a few things, the stuff I really want/like/use.  Malaya's condo isn't very big and it's all fully-furnished already (many of the furnishings things she and I bought together during my last two visits), so basically I'm taking my computer, some of my clothing, some electronics, some books, some knick-knacks, and that's about it.  No rats/snakes, less than half of my clothing, dunno about the houseplants, dunno about decorations, no room for the furniture even if I wanted to keep it, etc.

So I'm packing as much for storage and give away and trash as for taking with me.  Perhaps more.

Already I've sorted out about 1/3 of my clothing and put it into a big bag for Goodwill, and thrown out a closet full of boxes and assorted junk I was never really going to ever use again.  I've got two closets of that to go yet, I'm hoping for calls to my classified ads selling the snakes, and I've got to talk to my dad about the storage space I figure I'll be renting, and my mom about whether or not she wants my kitchen chairs and some other stuff that's too good to junk, but not good enough or not space enough to take with me.

One other odd thing is food.  If I were moving across town that wouldn't be an issue since I'd just use a couple of coolers and take perishables over from one fridge to the other.  If I were moving across the country I'd have to eat pretty much everything, and throw out the rest.  But since I'm moving like 600 miles, and to a condo that already has a bunch of food in the pantry and fridge, I'm not sure what I'm doing.  Other than trying to eat everything in the next two weeks, while not buying anything more.

The drive is 8+ hours, unless I go late night and keep it floored the whole way, and that's too long for frozen stuff to safely stay frozen.  Fridge stuff is fine in a cooler for that time, but frozen things ruin when they thaw.  Not to mention taking up a bunch of space with packaging.  Obviously none of the food is really a big deal, I mean if I have to throw out $50 worth of frozen pizzas and veggie burgers and shrimp and such, it's no big deal in the bigger picture.  But I feel a perfectionist's desire to not waste things if I don't have to waste them, and I'd feel stupid throwing things away here, and then buying them again 3 days later with Malaya.

I'm also debating the time of day I want to leave/drive up there.  There is really bad traffic leaving SD to the North in the morning, there is bad traffic in every direction from LA in the morning or evening rush hour, and there is traffic through San Jose and Oakland and in the area of Malaya's place in the evening as well.

Again, being stuck in a bit of traffic is a pretty minor issue in the larger scheme of things, but I want the drive to be as easy as possible, and since I can basically leave at any time of the day or night that I want to leave at, my only consideration is wanting to arrive there in the daylight (for ease of finding my way there) and when she'll be awake, so she can welcome me and help me unpack.

I'll have to go over road maps and plot the route up there this week, and figure what the best/easiest time to drive up would be.  That way when I actually am about ready to leave and get distracted with a bunch of unforeseen last minute things and don't get underway until 2 or 3 or 4 hours later, I'll have something more to curse about when I'm sitting in gridlock on some freeway somewhere.

See, I have it all planned out.

June 27, 2003

With the move to Malaya's condo, up yonder in Northern California, coming up in less than two weeks (Christ is time flying), I'm getting actively into the physical preparation for the move. I enjoy that aspect much more than the mental stuff, by which I mean calling around to cancel cable and utilities, submitting change of address forms to my credit cards and other financial providers, and other such record-keeping crap.

The physical preparations provide much more immediate gratification, and involve much less looking through files or waiting on hold.

A few days ago I rooted through all of my clothing and picked out about half of it; the old, ugly, never-wear-it-anymore half.  All of those garments, and a bunch of others that were on the borderline got stuffed into big plastic bags, and were joined by another dozen shirts on hangers and various old sweaters, a jacket, house shoes, boots, towels and washcloths, bed sheets, and much more. Yesterday I took all of those over to dad's house, where he will itemize them and give them to charity, taking a reasonable tax deduction in the process, and passing the $avings along to me.

I'd do all of that myself, but I don't really make enough money or have a real enough job to bother with all of that itemizing deductions stuff.  And more over, I just can't be arsed.  I'd burn the shit rather than sort through it all and write down what all of it was, and keep a note of that until next year's taxes are due.

Well, "burn" is an overstatement. I'd just throw it in the dumpster, which is what I did with about half a ton of other crap Thursday, long before I took the clothing over to dad's house before we went out and had fish and chips.

I spent a couple of hours during the hot Thursday afternoon picking through closets and piling up things to throw away.  I had accumulated an amazing amount of empty boxes, most of them bearing words like "video card" or "cd-rom drive" or "goddamned hippy natural keyboard".  All of those empty boxes were stacked up and taken out to the dumpster, where they went into the metal receptacle in gaily-colored rectangular stacks.

Joining them not much later were about a dozen bags of misc junk; old posters and decorations that have never been hung in this apartment, old toys and broken computer parts, two old towers with obsolete motherboards and cd-rom drives, a bunch of empty video game boxes, old plastic glasses I hadn't used in years, dozens of empty jars and bottles I'd saved on the top kitchen shelf "just in case", and innumerable other pieces of shit.  Literally, in a few rat-related cases.

I don't much enjoy that sort of sorting and ordering (hence the half-dumpster full of junk now that it's come to the "move it or loose it" stage) but it wasn't so bad this time.  I did like seeing things become clean and clear and uncluttered; my hall closet is now clear enough to see the desiccated corpses of the half dozen Jehovah's Witnesses rotting away in there, for instance.

They were there when I moved in, I assure you.

I also have an almost-entirely cleaned out hall closet, and the little storage room is empty of all but the never-used vacuum and seldom-wielded broom and mop, along with a bag of potting soil and another of vermiculite.

Even the overhead storage shelf in the bedroom closet is cleared off of everything but my suitcase and a couple of smaller bags; the accumulation of worn out clothing has all gone, as has the old car stereo, broken CD-player, etc, etc.  I even sorted and threw out 90% of the boxes of junk I had brought over from my last apartment, and then never touched for the five years I've lived here.

I had been entertaining the idea of getting a storage space and socking away various things in it; some boxes of books, old computer monitors, unused aquariums, the big bookshelf in my bedroom, my big computer desk, and so on.  Tragically, that idea died a pretty quick death when I looked around for various storage options on the Internet.

It's not that there's any lack of storage options online; I found at least a dozen big companies running dozens of storage facilities in the San Diego area.  The problem is that none of them were cheaper than about $50 for a closet-like 5x5 storage space, and most of them cost a good deal more than that.  I'm not eager to spend $600 a year for at least two years to store $500 worth of crap I can just as easily purchase again once I (we) are living in a larger house/condo and can fetch it from storage.

At the time I was looking up the storage options Malaya was online, and after ranting to her about how obscene it is that a goddamned cinder block warehouse of closets costs nearly as much to rent, by the square foot, than an actual apartment.  Being as storage facilities are just big cement closets that cost next to nothing to build, while apartments require electricity, plumbing, maintenance, windows, carpets, landscaping, and so on, and storage facilities are stuck in undesirable squares of land under freeways, in industrial parks, between warehouses, and in other places that no one wants to live, where the land is really cheap... well it's no longer a mystery to me why there are so damn many self storage places around.  One with even 25% occupancy must be a goddamned goldmine to own.

Anyway, my point was that since I was ranting to Malaya about that at the time I was reading it, hours ago, I've gotten it out of my system and won't go off on a jag about it again. Aren't you glad I didn't?  *cough*

So, with the storage space option apparently gone, and my dad not happy with the (small, aside from the Gauntlet 2 arcade game in his garage) amount of space my stored stuff is taking up at his house now, I'm looking into selling off or giving/throwing away even more stuff, and whittling down the amount of things I take with me still further. At this point, if I can't see using it at least a few times in the next couple of years, it's gone.

Adding to my "travel lightly" motto are the estimated prices to rent a trailer.  I had been planning on renting one of those little two-wheeled U-Haul thingies that you bolt to the rear of your car.  At least I was planning on that until I hunted up some prices online. Now I'm planning on just throwing away everything I own other than the electronic object I'm typing these words on, since it would be so much cheaper to buy new stuff in SF than rent a trailer and drive it up there.

Well, not really, it's cheaper to sell my car and buy a truck.

Well not really, but renting a trailer and buying and installing the trailer hitch it requires costs a LOT more than I thought it would.  I'm sort of considering the option of driving up there with all I can carry in one load, staying for a week, and then flying back down in time to work another 4 or 5 days here.  I'd then rent a big car or SUV someplace for like $50 with unlimited miles, and would take everything else up in that, and turn it in in the SF area.

It would be a rather half-assed technique, and separate me from my sweetie for several more days, and would make me waste the better part of another day driving up there a second time, but it would save me hundreds of dollars, plus the hundreds more I could earn here working another weekend+, and for that reason I'm not yet entirely ruling it out.  Especially seeing as my apartment manager looks to be trying to scalp me for 10 days of rent after I leave, since I gave them 20 days notice, rather than 30. Bleh.

I'll probably go a few more days of cleaning stuff up here and seeing just how much I'm taking with me, and how much more space I need to port it all, before I make any sort of final decision.  Looking for cheaper trailer rentals wouldn't be a bad way to spend some time either. U-Haul's U-Pay Too Much pricing plan is discouraging.

I think I'll post a fresh blog for Tuesday, and possibly for Wednesday, but Thursday and Friday are doubtful, though I hope to be settled into Malaya's condo by the weekend.  Which might be just in time for my new "five updates a week" schedule to start up, and the five days might be Mon-Fri, with Sat and Sun off.  I can't be more guarantee'ing since I'm looking at a lot of packing and errands and such, and a 9-12 hour drive up to Malaya's place, and I'm not even sure yet when I'll be making that.

The initial thought was that I'd leave Thursday morning, after rush hour (5 North from San Diego towards LA backs up forever from 6-9am) and get through LA by noon, hopefully avoiding most of the "hell-A" traffic that can never be avoided short of 4am on Christmas Morning. I'd then hit traffic around rush hour up in Northern California, going past the San Jose area, and probably have a lot of slow and go once I was nearing Malaya's location, NE of Oakland.

Discussion of that plan with parental types encountered skepticism about just how long it would take to make the drive in a U-Haul pulling my car on a trailer, with them thinking it would take a lot longer than the 7 hours Yahoo Maps estimated.  I had been thinking 8 or 9, given that there is always more traffic than you expect, and I'll allow that it might be longer than I optimistically-considered, but I'm not going to buy into dad's "You might plan on staying overnight somewhere." pessimism.

So my newer plan is to maybe leave around midnight Wednesday, drive on emptier roads through the traffic nightmares that LA and SD are, and arrive at Malaya's in the morning around the time she'd normally be waking up. Her comment was that the real issue was me getting a decent amount of sleep so that I could make the drive awake and aware.  She's got a point; I mean nodding off and dying in a fireball of twisted metal would sort of defeat the whole purpose of moving up there.  But since leaving at a good time to avoid traffic could (easily) save me 3 or 4 hours of driving time, thus making it far easier to stay awake the entire time, I think we'll factor that in also.  Plus we both want to arrive when we'll each be awake enough to help me unload the truck and get things moved inside, and then vanish into the bedroom for about two hours, the instant the last box is hurriedly stacked up in the living room.

To talk, I mean.

We've both spent an inordinate amount of time wondering and worrying about when I may/will/should arrive, considering that the time table for my stay is currently set towards, "the rest of our lives," but we seem to be good at worrying about that, so I suspect we'll continue for at least another day or three.  Perhaps it helps keep us from worrying more about other bigger issues?

Anyway, this is going far afield, but the point is that I'm busy with work and RL moving stuff, and don't know quite when I'll be leaving to drive up there, or if I'll even have the time to blog the day(s) before and/or afterwards.

Life is filled by such uncertainties, so I apologize for bringing you another one.  But it's the only way you'll learn.

July 7, 2003

I have been feeling really good lately.  Ebullient, even.  I'm a little stressed about having so much yet to do, when I'm planning on moving far away within 3 days, but the worries are buried deeply beneath lots of enthusiasm and eagerness to get going on things.

"Happy" doesn't begin to cover my feelings about most of the following items, but I'll just use it to be consistent and not drag out the adjective-selection process too greatly.

• I'm happy to be going to live with Malaya.

• I'm happy to be quitting a job I've wanted to quit for about the last six years.

• I'm happy to be moving to the Bay Area, since I've wanted to live up there (or other places even further north) for many years.

• I'm happy to be cutting back on stupid RL work and time-consuming online website work, thus freeing up time for much much more fiction writing.

• I'm happy to be moving out of an apartment I don't like, located in an area I don't have any attachment to.

• I'm happy to be making so many major changes in my life now by choice and desire, rather than being forced into them by some inexorable and unpleasant circumstance.

I could go on and on, but these are representative of my feelings at this time.  I do have some regrets... well actually that's a lie.  Aside from worrying about the money (since I'm quitting my hated disliked job) aspect of things, I will miss my parents, and by all recent evidence, they will miss me.  Dad especially has been sorta mopey of late, verbalizing his occasional thoughts about being lonely, and mother hasn't been far behind.  She's just a therapist and is therefore more thought out on her emotions/feelings, and doesn't let them slip out in idle remarks.  Rather, she comes out and says exactly what they are.

I think both parents are overstating things, since I saw dad about once a week, and mom less often than that, and there is very little we did that can't be easily-replicated by phone conversation.  Plus it's not like I'm moving into orbit; I'll be in the same state still, and am planning on visiting once or twice during the rest of this year, if not more often than that.

My thought process had gotten about this far earlier, long before I began doing any typing on this blog update, when I got off the phone with Malaya and read some email and talked to Elly some about the needed v1.10 D2 site updates, and then with that squared away, I thought I'd check Malaya's blog to see what/if she posted Monday.   And she had, and while reading it my smile just got wider and wider.  And after reading it, all of my thoughts about what to write sort of went away, and I just wanted to hold her in my arms and feel her heart beating against my chest, and her arms around my waist.

And I will, in less than 72 hours.

July 16, 2003

I'm here!

There has not been a fresh blog for several days, due to me being busy packing up everything I own, and driving it 500 miles to the north, moving my permanent place of residence from the San Diego area to the San Francisco area.  Rather than detailing the biographical events of the last few days in a normal, logical, chronological, step by step, boring fashion, I will instead tell you about how I ended up sitting on the kitchen floor of Malaya's our condo at 2 in the morning, alone, eating shrimp chips.

Moving sucks.  Most of you know that, the rest of you will learn it soon enough.

It's not so bad moving when you're a kid; sure you have all of the issues with being the new kid in school and leaving behind all of your friends, and having to throw away a lot of your old toys away to save on moving space, and your parents screaming at each other about whose fault it is that mommy left the directions in a box that's now been packed and trucked off to somewhere in the southern Oklahoma area (Answer: Your fault, you little bastard.)  But at least you don't have to pack, or make change of address arrangements, or drive a U-haul with a balky trailer, or carry about 50x your body weight out to and into a truck that's parked down 2 flights of stairs from your shitty apartment and back up 2.5 flights of stairs into your new place.  (And while you don't believe it when you're 10, you will make new friends, and you'll be just as happy living somewhere new, once you get used to it.  If it weren't true, all of the kids there would be miserable, and desperately hoping daddy would get transferred to wherever you are moving from.  Right?)

I moved several times as a kid, and then a couple of times as an adult, but none of them were a big deal. The last time, five years ago, I rented a U-Haul truck and had a friend help me fill it with with the 20 or so boxes I had full of books and games and clothing and stuff, along with a couple of non-waterproof aquariums and a desk and table and some chairs.  We drove about 10 miles across town (from one small and crappy apt to a slighter larger and less-crappy apt), and he helped me carry all the stuff in.  Took about two hours to load and an hour to unload, as best I recall. I don't remember spending more than a day or so pre-move packing stuff up, if that long.

This time I was moving into someone else's place, and therefore I had a lot less room for my stuff, but also a lot less need to take stuff.  It seemed like it would be easy, and during various pre-move blog fantasies, I had envisioned being able to move in the back of a pick up, or an SUV, only needing a few things, etc.

Ah-ha...ha...ha...hah.

Funny how just sorting and packing those "few things" into boxes and getting them into the truck took something like eight hours a day for three straight days, and on the second day my mom and stepdad came over and helped me pack the majority of that stuff, carry out furniture that I dropped off at their house or my dad's house, and in the middle of that my mom even made a run back to the U-Haul place to buy a bunch of boxes and get packing tape.  On day three I even got the fun of postponing my departure for last minute packing, highlights of which included driving out to buy a cooler to transport the content of my fridge (I didn't want to, but figured it was worth $14 for a cooler vs. throwing away $50 or so worth of food), as well as making all of the calls to cancel my account with the phone, cable, and electric companies, turning in a change of address card at the post office, and several other things I should have done weeks before, but didn't get around to until the very last minute.

I do get some bonus points for thinking ahead of time and grabbing about 25lbs of dry ice from work Tuesday night, as well as buying a cooler from Wal-Mart that night, on my way home.  I put the ice in it, and in addition to the fun of seeing the condensed water running off of the cooler and freezing it to the floor, it worked quite well, keeping the frozen shrimp and veggie burgers and small rodents rock hard all the way to Malaya's freezer.  The pre-move cooler was funny, since water kept condensing on it since it was so cold, running down the sides, and then actually turning to ice on the carpet.  I'd go over and pick the cooler up every few hours, an action which was accompanied by a ripping sound as actual visible white frost cracked and yanked out bits of carpet when I tore the rimy cooler free.

Unfortunately, those are about the only bonus points I earned in this endeavor, with most everything else taking place hours or days late, and in a very disorganized fashion.

What I still can't quite figure out is what the hell all of the shit in those damn boxes was.  I filled them up, packed them very tightly, and I had all of my books and clothing and most of the food set, gave away most of my pots and pans and tupperware and other such stuff, and had about 8 medium-sized boxes full of stuff, with just some furniture left to disassemble and other stuff I was taking over to my mom's and dad's houses, to drop off or install there.  Yet when it came time to pack up the living room and get everything left into the truck, it took all day Wednesday, and about 10 off the boxes that mom dashed off to U-Haul to get with the $40 I gave her after she took one look inside the mess of junk in my apartment and decreed in entirely accurate fashion, "You need a lot more boxes."

And even after packing them myself there, and unloading them here, I still don't know what it all was.  I had various knick-knacks, and several boxes were needed for my CDs, DVDs, video tapes, and the electronic equipment required to turn those objects into shiny entertainment. But what was in the other 7 or 8 boxes?  I didn't even have any boxes full of sheets or blankets; a common space-consumer.  I brought up a few towels and one quilt and one pillow.  Other pillows were used in the truck as padding devices, mostly around my monitor and computer tower.  I didn't need any of that stuff since 1) my sheets were all for a much smaller bed than the one I'm now sharing with Malaya, 2) my sheets and towels and such were all ragged shit I would hardly dry a dog with, much less wrap around the pleasantly-scented body of my beloved.

The unpacking here is pretty much all finished, save for a few odds and ends (I'm feeling a need for a desk with actual storage drawers; this one has just a little cubbyhole for the tower and an unprotected alcove above that), and we (I) haven't completely wrecked Malaya's nice decorating scheme.  It seems like I was packing to get ready to leave for weeks, and like I've been here for days, but in reality I've been here for just over 48 hours, as of late Saturday night, when I'm typing this.  When this will be posted is less easily-ascertained, since we don't have the cable modem set up here yet, and my new tower, which I'm now using, doesn't have any way to get online with a phone.

My old tower has a phone input, but it's such an old card that it's ISA, from about 8 years ago when I last was living without high speed Internet access, and the older motherboard in my old tower supports that.  My new tower (which is over a year old, and therefore in computer years, only "new" in comparison to its predecessor) has no ISA ports on the motherboard, so I can't remove the old one modem card and stick it into the new(er) tower, and I while I'd like to update my blog and check my emails (neither of which I've been able to do since Tuesday) I don't want to do them enough to write up the blog on this machine, save it to a floppy, transfer that to the old tower, switch around the keyboard, mouse, monitor, power supply, etc, and get that one online.  Especially not when we're getting the cable modem service this week (I think) and I will at least be buying a PCI phone modem card Sunday. I figure they're about $8, so hardly a major expense.

I got two ethernet cards for this machine early last year for $10 a pop, which is where I get my price guideline.  I would check it on the Internet, but as I just said, I can't get online until I get the card and install it. That's also why you won't be seeing very many/any links in this update, though I suppose I could fire up Malaya's laptop and surf with it, and then transcribe those Internet addresses into this blog.  A really fun proposition, given how many sites are now all set into a script or programming language and have URLs with more numbers and random characters than a bowl of multi-lingual alphabet soup.

One thing that helped on the moving task was the stuff Malaya already had. During my two recent visits we had done a lot of shopping, mostly for housewares type stuff, pots and pans, dishes, glasses, furniture, small appliances, etc.  Malaya had just moved into her condo before my first visit in late May, so she needed better-quality items than the various parental hand me downs and leftovers from her college years. So while we weren't explicitly shopping for stuff for "us", the stuff we bought together during my two one-week visits served well as a foundation for things "we" are going to use as a "couple" in our "condo" while we "burn" vegetables for "dinner".

I only brought a few pans, a few dishes, hardly any drinking glasses, just my favorite knives and utensils, and so on.  And no, I am no closer to explaining the dozen boxes it took me than I was half a dozen paragraphs ago. Wait until you move and see how many more boxes you fill than you expected to, despite your parents throwing out tons of stuff you'll forever hate them for so callously-discarding. Not that you'll be able to explain the amount of boxes it takes you either, but at least you'll identify with me.  Better do it soon though, since I'm going to be working hard to forget all about the difficulties of this move so I can quickly get back to feeling superior when I read/hear about other people's moves and how much trouble they had.

Moving is easy for me, you know. I travel light and could probably move in the back of a pick up, if I wanted to.

I left SD Thursday, after initially wanting to get out Wednesday night late, or at worst right after the morning rush hour end Thursday.  After the last minute shopping and packing and carrying with already-Jello'ed arms, getting my car into the car-trailer behind the rental truck, and driving across town to make stops at mom's and dad's to drop off furniture, I didn't get out of San Diego until Thursday afternoon.  Left at a perfect time to make the 2+ hour drive to LA and arrive there just as rush hour traffic was in full swing. I'll talk more about the truck and trailer and the whole drive up some other day (or not) but suffice to say, my travel up here was not much fun, but not horrible either.

I arrived here around 1am Friday morning, and since Malaya waited up for me and was game, we double-parked the U-Haul on a busy street where we could never have parked it during the day, and were able to unload everything in about two hours.  Most of the boxes went right to her back patio, but we still had plenty left to clog up her entire living room and most of the bedroom as well, much to her delight, after my frequent boasting of how few things I was bringing, and how easily I could fit into her tight little space. *cough*

Friday was a day of rest and unpacking, with a few errands and lunch at a Chinese place.  We had prawns, which I'll mention later, in relation to the introduction to this blog entry, the topic of which you have no doubt entirely forgotten by now.  I, fortunately for the already-dragging pacing, have not.

Saturday saw my sweetie far away from me, since she and some friends are holding a long-planned yard sale at her parent's house on Sunday.  This is actually pretty cool, in terms of timing, since it enabled me to bring up a lot of stuff I would have otherwise had to throw/give away.  (Ahh yeah, junk for the yard sale is worth about two or three of the mystery boxes...) It sucks in terms of time though, since Malaya was gone doing planning and delivery and other things for that most of the day Saturday, and she'll be over there yard selling all morning and afternoon Sunday.

Hopefully we'll clear some coin for stuff; perhaps even enough to pay for the crap we'll be buying from other people.  Malaya is already in for $65 for a cool sword her best friend/fellow yard-seller/martial arts master was going to unload at the sale.  But since she's buying it as a gift for me, I can hardly complain. At least not audibly. Or sincerely.  I'm not making an appearance at the yard sale, for several reasons I'm not going into here (none of them involving lack of desire on my part to help out there) which is lucky for me being able to chide her for spending the profits on presents.  There are apparently loads of DVDs and shiny knives and other such things being offered by another friend of hers; all objects that I have a decided weakness for.

Since she was gone all day Saturday I was left to my own devices, and aside from a bit of unpacking and making an accurate count of the total number of our shared DVDs/CDs/video tapes, since we need to know to know how many storage shelves we're getting from Ikea, I didn't have much to do.  I hooked up this computer and monitor and checked into the modem card issue, and then since it was hot in the afternoon and I was alone and hadn't slept well the night before (too much hot sex, no doubt), I laid down for a nap that ran about an hour longer than expected.

That evening, Malaya was tired after being out all day and not getting home until after dark, and after we talked some and had a big fruit snack and put away my two bulging suitcases full of clothing, and watched a cheesy reality TV show called Cheaters (imagine I can get on the Internet now and there is a link there), she was pretty well done for.  I tucked her in and snuggled a bit, and came back out here to write some.  But before I got started on any typing, I had to put away some dirty dishes and look for some sort of a crunchy snack.  The fruit was tasty, we had an apple, 2 plums, a nectarine, 2 apricots, and a banana, but I wanted something with crunch.  And a lot of salt and grease and artificial flavor, with any luck.

The dry and canned food here lives on a lower shelf to the right of the sink, and while Malaya, who is built lower to the ground than I, can squat down and peruse the sundries pretty well, I can't.  I remembered that I had left half a bag of Trader Joe's Hawaiian Hot Mustard potato chips here last visit, and while I figured they'd be staler than granny's Xmas fruit cake by now, I had to look since I love them so.  This required me to get down on my knees, and while I didn't find the chips, I did spot half a bag of Shrimp Chips.  I've never had those before, but had always wondered what they tasted like.  These are a Korean brand, which I would look up online and link to if I could.  It's not like you would have clicked the link anyway, so just pretend there were golden letters in the last sentence.

The bag was half-open (our vastly-varying degrees of personal satisfaction towards resealed food containers is one ongoing issue Malaya and I have yet to achieve harmony on) and expecting that they'd be sort of icky, I sat back against the stove and sampled a few of the "chips".

My review? They're damn tasty.

I didn't expect they would be, I mean come on, who wants shrimp flavor in anything that's not um... shrimp?  Or possibly Ramen noodles.  They are a crustacean (or bug or something); shrimp aren't like cheese; you don't grate shrimp and sprinkle them over eggs and toast and tomato sauce. At least not in my country. And yet the shrimp chips are damn tasty.

They are far from chips, by the way.  These are little puffed wheat things that look like crinkle-cut French fries, made in some sort of mold and then baked.  They actually remind me most of Bugles, in terms of crunch and lightness. Sort of like lighter-Cheetos. The ingredients are scary, with things like palm oil and a very substantial portion of your daily required saturated fats and triglycerides. They also don't taste a whole lot like shrimp, though there is a vague, semi-crabby flavor. But I found them pretty tasty, nevertheless.

Which is how I found myself, alone, on the first night since Malaya and I have been together that we did not make love, sitting on the kitchen floor, eating shrimp chips right from the bag.

Things could have been more delightful, but what the hell, at least the experience gave me an introduction to my latest blog entry.  As well as a way to conclude it.

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