Coming Unmoored

Living with someone, even temporarily, is definitely the quick way to discover differences in idiosyncrasies.

Case in point… I needed to do my laundry a few days ago and offered to do some of Charlie’s at the same time. When it came time to put it away I was puzzled to discover Charlie had three separate sock drawers. I couldn’t figure out why one human being needed three drawers for socks. But he did have a massive bureau he wasn’t sharing with someone else. I figured the socks had simply expanded to fill the available space.

Upon closer study, there appeared to be one drawer of black socks, one of tan, and one of white. So, I put the clean pairs of socks in their respective drawers and thought nothing more about it until the following morning… when I woke to Charlie in a mild panic to get to a meeting and completely incapable of understanding the devastation that had been wrought upon his sock drawers since the day before.

Apparently the actual system is this–there is a drawer for “work socks”, one for “casual socks”, and one for “slummin’ around socks”. Somehow, I had managed to put every pair of socks I had washed in the incorrect drawer.

Charlie has since tried to explain to me in great detail what constitutes each of the three categories of socks. He might as well be speaking Latvian to me, for all I understand him.

Now, I would like you to know that I am trainable to a reasonable degree when it comes to cohabiting in a relationship. You want the toilet paper to hang a particular direction on the role? Fine. You don’t want me to kill the DSL in the house by plugging a fax machine into the wrong jack? Cool. I’ll move the machine. You’d rather I not use your first edition Iron Man comic book as a coaster for my morning green tea? Whoops. Sorry ’bout that. Won’t happen again.

But I’m afraid I’m never going to be able to adapt to Charlie’s sock classification system. In the future, any clean socks of his are going ON TOP of the bureau and he can sort them appropriately to his heart’s content.

Arriving in Albuquerque last week, I hit the end of my adrenaline spurt from closing up my Tucson home and multiple cross-country trips, and simply crashed. The first few days in Albuquerque, I was pretty much a slug on the couch, watching unhealthy amounts of Grey’s Anatomy on my laptop, bonding with my very clingy cat, and attempting to eat my weight in white cheddar popcorn.

After a few days of that, and tiring of Meredith Grey’s fictional drama over a guy for whom I fail to understand the appeal, I got a little more productive. I unpacked and organized my belongings which will be living at Charlie’s (all my historical reenactment gear and a surprising number of bladed weapons). I figured out how to successful operate the hot tub and get into and out of it without shocking Charlie’s retiree neighbor or arthritic dachshund, Wilbur. Then I turned my Virgo eye to the bachelor squalor in which Charlie and his invisible roommate Josh choose to live. (Josh spends 95% of his time at his girlfriend’s.)

Charlie has a very nice house in the foothills of Albuquerque. But two early-30-something guys have lived there for the last two years without a female presence or a maid. It shows. I understand why Josh’ girlfriend likes her own digs.

When I arrived at Charlie’s, there was nothing but a six-pack of RedBull and a lonely Guinness in the fridge. (Well, that is, if you discount everything in a bottle that had an expiration date later than 2006. There was also something a mottled grayish-blue I never did successfully identify.)

There was no sign of toilet paper in the house. One bathroom had a few sheets of paper towel sitting on top a dusty pile of magazines with titles like “Twisted Throttle” and “Motor Cycle: Ten-Nine-Eight ARRRGH!”

The pile of unwashed laundry in the corner of the master bedroom resembled Marjory, The Great Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock. Dust bunnies the size of Rumi caromed in herds across the red birch floors. (Charlie insists he vacuumed just before I arrived. If he’s telling the truth, God only knows the size of the ones he killed.)

Anyway, you probably get the idea. So, last weekend and most of this week I’ve been trying to clean and organize enough so that I don’t feel the need to renew my tetanus shot if I want to pad barefoot to the kitchen while still allowing Charlie a few bastions of masculinity. I’ve left his “man cave” upstairs (translation: den) completely alone. Even if I wasn’t trying to not disrupt his natural habitat too much, I’m too big a wuss to know where to even start on that chaos.

Charlie has accepted the disinfection and organization of his world with a surprising amount of equanimity. However, I suspect he’s going to be quietly grateful when things return to normal in his house at the end of this week.

The orientation for my new job starts next Monday in Dallas. I fly out Sunday evening. I’ll still be crashing at Charlie’s on the weekends when I’m not up in Portland.  Especially until the construction is finished on the boatwell.  But this should be the end of the full-time cohabitation for a while.

I’ve long had a tendency to collect gadgets like a magpie does shiny things to feather its nest. I blame it on my PhD engineer father who got me hooked on tech at an early age.

I’ve actually been quite proud of myself slowing down in my acquisition of bright, shiny, new tech-toys in the last few years. I’ve resisted the siren call of the Blackberry. My Mac laptop is more than two years old and has a seriously warped case from being dropped more than once during stormchasing (well, to be technical, during the running away from tornadoes that got too close). And I dumped the flatscreen TV several months back when I realized the only purpose it was serving was to justify the presence of the cable box that was Rumi’s favorite place to sleep on cold winter days.

But the Amazon Kindle was pure lust at first sight for me. So, when I seriously downsized my book collection I didn’t feel too guilty about using some of the trade-in cash to buy one.

The appeal of the Kindle for me doesn’t have that much to do with the packaging. While I love the rotating, wood-cut style artwork on the screensaver, I think Amazon has a way to go in both aesthetics and ergonomics. (The “clip” to hold the Kindle inside its cover has given me no end of headaches.) But with their electronic paper, Amazon has come up with the first eBook reader for which I’m willing to forgo the kinesthetic pleasure of flipping and scrawling on the pages of a book. It’s easy on my eyes and not a battery hog.

I travel enough that I love the thought any device that allows me to carry 200 or so books in a compact space and under a pound. And should I actually run out of reading material mid-trip–horror of horrors–I can simply download something new to read rather than dive into the nearest airport newsstand and select from the lesser of evils.

Charlie is another gadget freak. He keeps peering over my shoulder at my new toy. But, so far, he’s resisted the urge to get his own because he hates the fact he’d be required to “turn off” his book during take-off and landings. I figure that’s when I get to enjoy my trashy magazine (another vice of mine at airports) or make time to actually meditate for a couple of minutes.

A bigger negative for me where the Kindle is concerned is that I’d say roughly half the books I would like to read aren’t available on it yet. Right now Amazon seems to be focusing mainly on hardcover and popular releases. Most of those run $9.99 a book, which means they’re also more expensive that if I were to buy them used and ship them media rate. (Although, on the plus side, it also means I’m not adding weight and taking up space with a new title in my floating home.) Perhaps the biggest downside for me is that I like to share my books with friends, and that’s not easy to do with the Kindle unless I loan them the unit and that ain’t happening.

But, despite the downsides, I’m really enjoying being able to throw the equivalent of a small library in my purse in case I end up having to wait somewhere. I’m actually started to make some progress on my pile of “to be read” books. Even though I’m in the process of streamlining my life, this is one gadget I don’t regret buying.

Considering his book The 4-Hour Work Week is on the New York Times Bestseller list, I suspect half the planet knows who Tim Ferriss is right now. He’s definitely the business guru of the hour. I suspect it’s a slightly smaller subset of readers, however, who would like to bear the man’s love child. I am definitely a member of the later set.

Okay, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. I tend to be prone to those. But you know those theoretical questions along the lines of: “If you could invite two people from any period in time or history to dinner, who would you ask?” Well, I’m afraid George Sand just got ousted from the list in favor of Tim Ferriss. (Although, Sir Richard Francis Burton still makes the cut for the other slot. With my luck, though, Ferriss and Burton would spend the night arm-wrestling, comparing scars, and plotting the takeover of Apple Computer with nary a glance in my direction.)

I enjoyed Ferriss’ book. I like the way his mind works and felt he presented several thought-provoking ideas I want to spend some more time mulling over. It has also felt like there’s been a bit of synchronicity at work with the book appearing just when it did in my life, as I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to my personal life design.

Anyway, after reading the book on my spiffy new Kindle, I jumped over to Ferriss’ website to check out some of the supplementary information he hosts there and quickly became hooked on his blog.

I’ve always been a sucker for intelligent men with a predilection for dumping the status quo on its ass. Ferriss is clearly smart, driven, and well-read. He thinks in unconventional ways and has chosen to do unusual and interesting things with his life. He’s been fired often enough and broken enough rules to meet my bad-boy quotient. Yet he can talk intelligently about tech and modern culture. The fact that he’s heavily into martial arts is just icing on the cake.

OK. So his idea of a breakfast is microwaving egg whites and adding flaxseed oil. That’s awful enough to choke a rabid vulture. And he outsourced his online dating recently, which sounds like something my ex would come up with. A man’s gotta have a few flaws, right?

In all seriousness, though, if Tim Ferriss keeps going the way he has been, I suspect he may end up being my generation’s version of Ben Franklin. He’s unconventional and intelligent enough to come up with some radically innovative creations. I’m really interested to follow where he heads from here.

There’s more than an academic interest on my part, though, where Ferriss is concerned. He makes my little OCD, Virgo, cybergrrl heart go pitter-pat with his discussions of the Pareto principle, breakdancing, and Argentinian wine. And there’s been enough written about Ferriss, both by himself and others, to keep a Competitive Intelligence analyst with a burgeoning crush entertained for days.

Ferriss definitely hits the high end of my “Yummy!” scale. But I’ve also learned that when I’m this obsessively smitten over someone it’s rarely just about the person. More often than not my “crush” is an strong indicator that there’s something about the person’s life or conduct that I long to emulate in my own. That’s certainly true with Ferriss. I watch the YouTube of him tangoing with some scrumptious young thing in South America and think to myself: That looks like great fun. I listen to him rattle off four different book titles in an answer to an interview question and I think: I want to spend more time with my “To be read” stack.

I don’t just want to do Tim Ferriss. I want to do what Tim Ferriss is doing, if at least in the abstract sense. I admire his decision to live a consciously-chosen life.

I ask you–what more could a girl want? Eye candy, food for thought, and inspiration.

And just in case you have no idea who I’m talking about. Here’s a copy of his recent fireside chat at Google:

(Editor’s note for the benefit of my mother: yes, I am still happily dating Charlie. If he can coo over Cary-Ann Moss, I can swoon over Ferriss.)

Please bear with me, guys. There may be some weirdness with this blog over the next few days. I’m in the process of converting it from Typepad to Wordpress and incorporating a new theme in the process.

Trust me–it’s frustrating on my end, too. The dust should settle shortly.

While I was up in Portland I had the opportunity to check on how things were going with the float rebuild.

The new plumbing was complete. Most of the electrical work is done but they’re still sorting out the rat’s nest of wiring splices in one of the interior walls.

The day I was there, my contractor, Randy, was putting the new insulation into the floor. The next step is to put the flooring back down and finish the new outside decks.

Once the float rebuild is complete, the next major project is to do the rest of the work to finish off the boatwell. While not expensive compared to the float rebuild, it’s going to be dramatic during the demolition. The back wall of the house and roof are going to need to be torn out. (I don’t plan to visit much during the demolition phase unless someone writes me a script for some pretty good drugs.)

The garage door will be replaced with three large windows. There are leaks in the roof deck portion of the roof. At Randy’s recommendation, they’re going to tear out the whole roof deck and expand/rebuild it over the boat well.

It’s going to be pretty ugly looking during the work. But I’ll end up with a roof that doesn’t leak and a bigger roof deck when they’re done.

Randy also broke it to me that sometime soon I’m going to want to redo the siding and other four windows in the house. The siding and window seams are both shot. That’s not going to be a cheap project. Although, on the plus side, it means I can put in more energy efficient windows and pick the exterior colors for my house.

This last project is probably going to wait until I’m up there full-time, however. As long as it gets done before winter, I should be okay.

Just as one last side-note, I was amused to see that Randy and the other workers have switched from cheap beer to Mai Tais as the drink of choice while on the job. I haven’t figured out what the electrican drinks, yet.

My apologies for the lapse in entries recently. It was a bit of whirlwind closing down my place in Tucson and getting my possessions that survived The Great Purge to their respective locations in either Oregon or New Mexico. I’ve calculated that I’ve driven 3,000 miles in the past 10 days or so, which may explain why I really am not interested in seeing the inside of a car again anytime soon.

The drive to Portland was uneventful. U-Haul definitely builds their vans for comfort and adds lots of idiot-proof signs along the dash about things like parking brakes to save you from yourself. I split the 1,500 mile drive into three days and spent my time OD-ing on audiobooks. It took me a full day to drive through California but, with the orange and mandarin groves being in bloom, it was scenic and smelled divine. Things just got prettier and prettier in terms of scenery once I hit the Oregon border. Oregon is a beautiful state. I am really looking forward to living there.

The movers I booked in Portland through eMove.com didn’t have their act quite as together at the ones in Tucson. For starters, they tried to squeak in another move before mine oh-god-early Sunday morning. Then it turned out the woman had seriously underestimated how much stuff she had. We ended up having to push unloading my truck back by several hours.

On the plus side, though, they got done with my U-Haul in just under an hour. Both of the movers were hardcore jocks who literally RAN between the van and the storage unit with loads. And, my, were they pretty to look at. One of them is going off to play college football somewhere in California after the summer. Everything turned out okay in the end. My things are safely locked away in a storage unit two miles from the house.

I checked on progress of construction on my house, spoke with the contractors about the next phase of reconstruction, and then flew home the next day.

I had a week to say goodbye to friends, get rid of the rest of my furniture/art supplies, and to clean and close-up the place I’ve been renting in Tucson. Then I drove me and my remaining belongings out to stay at Charlie’s in New Mexico by way of Laughlin to say goodbye to friends at an event we had this weekend.

The plan is that I will be crashing at Charlie’s in Albuquerque until my own place is habitable. My job starts a week from Monday so I have a little downtime, now, to catch my breath. This is a Very Good Thing.

Rumi was profoundly (and LOUDLY) happy to see me. He’s still bouncing off walls two days later. Charlie swears the kitten was quiet and well-behaved while I was gone. I remain skeptical of this assertion.