Coming Unmoored

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’s 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.)

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.

Yesterday morning I received a phone call oh-god-early from a recruiting manager In Dallas to let me know I’ve got an offer pending for the consulting position for which I’ve spent the last few weeks interviewing.

I’m still waiting to hear the specific details, but I’ve been hoping that might happen. The work looks interesting. I really like the people in the department. Plus the job is extremely flexible about where I’m working when I’m not meeting with clients. If I want to be floating on the river in fuzzy feetie slippers that’s fine. If I want to be camped out for a week with Charlie in Albuquerque that should befine too. That’s perfect for my life right now.

Plus, with as much work as I still have pending on my new place, having an income stream is a GOOD THING.

What’s going to be a pain in the butt, though, is I have to go get drug-tested within three days of receiving the formal offer. Odds are good I may be on the road with a U-Haul on the way to Portland when that happens. I’m trying to do what I can to receive the official offer either before or after my trip. But there doesn’t seem to be much the company is willing to do to shift the timing of the offer. And, for whatever reason, my offer to simply go get tested immediately didn’t fly either. (I mean, what are they worried about? That I might go off and have a drunken celebratory cocaine binge AFTER the offer comes in when there’s been nothing ever before?)

Oh well. Worst case scenario, I have a feeling I’m going to end up with a highly entertaining blog entry out of the situation.

By the way, this is also probably about as close as you will get me talking about work on here. I just figured it might be worth explaining how I’m able to continue to afford remodeling efforts without you thinking I’m secretly running guns or something else colorful

I’ve been a little lax on entries lately because I’m in full-gear right now coordinating my move. This certainly won’t be an award-winning entry, but here’s a quick update on what I’ve been up to…

The Dumpster

For starters, I never really got fully unpacked from my move a year ago into the place I currently live in Tucson. I had to finish un-packing to figure out what I wanted to take with me. So I have a bunch of packing materials that aren’t reusable and just general junk it’s unlikely I’m going to be able to find a home for.

I’ve got more garbage than my regular bin can handle. Especially since my garbage man is a highly-sensitive old coot who refuses to touch my can if anything has remotely upset its fung shui. I’m lucky if he’ll empty thing one week in two and that’s when I’m minding my manners and not overloading it.

So I did a little research and discovered I can rent a larger trash receptacle from local Waste Management. What I’m renting is not big enough to be referred to as a “roll-off”. It’s more like an aspiring roll-off, but it’s the same general concept.

I now have a lot more room to toss stuff with impunity. Well, other than feeling guilty that it’s going to end up in a landfill, that is. Which is why I’m trying to give away whatever I’m not taking with me, first.

The Albuquerque Run

This is the part where I pulled a Captain Kirk and cheated on the downsizing. Thanks to my boyfriend Charlie’s incredibly generous nature–and 3,000+ square foot home, much of which is empty–I am going to be storing my camping and historical reenactment gear with him. I’m am enough of a geek that this constitutes a little under half of all the worldly possessions I intend to keep.

I rented a 10 foot U-Haul for this part of the move and it was roughly 2/3rds full with my lackadaisical packing skills. (It got more efficient the closer I got to the door because I got worried about whether I’d run out of room.)

Last weekend, I drove this stuff out and got it situated at Charlie’s. I was a little nervous at first about driving a vehicle that big. Especially without a rear-view mirror. However, the U-Haul actually has a better turn radius than my PT Cruiser and a quite a cushy interior. Equipped with my iPod loaded with books I’ve been wanting to get to, it really wasn’t bad. Well, other than sticker-shock when I filled up at the pump, anyway.

Rumi came with me so that Charlie could cat-sit him for the next two weeks. The kitty was getting too stressed-out with all the packing and I didn’t want to risk him being underfoot with student movers. (Not that the U-Haul ride did his nerves any good in the short run.)

As Charlie is the ultimate bachelor with one lone beer and a bunch of dead plants around his house, I make him put Rumi on the webcam every morning so I can confirm my child is still alive and well.

So far it’s Charlie who’s the worse for wear not the cat. Rumi seems to be amusing himself by doing his “Where the Wild Things Are” celebratory dance on Charlie’s stomach at 3 AM every morning.

The Great Giveaway

I have a lot of stuff that’s not going with me to either Portland or Albuquerque. I’m probably going to place the higher-priced furniture I don’t manage to sell on my own in a consignment shop. However, I’ve also come up with my own version of Freecyling in bulk–I’ve invited a bunch of local friends and college students to come by my place on three evenings and take whatever they want from the stuff that’s not coming with me.

In other words, I’m having a garage sale where everything is free. All people “pay” is the effort to come take the stuff away. I’ve got a bunch of craft supplies, camping gear, and old $20 bookshelves I’m hoping to get rid of through this tactic.

The first night of The Great Giveaway is tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Portland Run

Here’s the piece of the move that has my mother writing “WORRY!!!” in big red letters on multiple days of her calendar. (That is what she does whenever my brother or I choose to do something she considers woefully imprudent with the bodies she never hesitates to remind us she spent nine months growing. You know–things like shark diving, eating fugu at a questionable establishment, or driving across country as a single woman in a U-Haul.)

Tomorrow, I start driving a 17 foot U-Haul up to Portland with my worldly possessions that will be remaining with me in the floating home.

With all my past moves after the age of 20 I always hired someone to do the packing and transporting. This time, I really needed to do the packing myself because it was my chance to examine every item and decide what to eliminate. I got rid of a lot, but I have a feeling I’m still going to want to go through the same operation again on the other end when I’m unpacking. (Which is not to say I won’t also be buying some new smaller-scale furniture when I get there.)

Anyway, I’ve spent the last week packing up all my stuff in preparation for heading to Portland. That in itself was an adventure. See my notes on packing tape below.

Today, Aaron Brothers’ Moving is helping me load everything into the U-Haul. It turns out that the Aaron Brothers are, in fact, actually brothers. Young, polite, well-educated brothers who can intelligently discuss things like Mahler and Strad violins. Oh, and one of them was insightful enough to compliment my choice in hair color. I like these guys. They’re definitely a step up from Daryl and his John Deere moving cap who moved me a year ago and begrudged me one small chicken in the backyard. They even handled the crazy lady who wanted to photograph her loaded U-Haul with tact and grace.

Tomorrow morning I hit the road to Portland. It’s roughly 1500 miles between Tucson and Portland, so I’m breaking the trip into 500 miles a day. If everything stays on schedule, I’ll be unloading the truck Sunday. (Hopefully, I’ll get as lucky with the student movers on that end.) Everything is going into a storage unit until construction is done on the house. I meet with my contractor Sunday afternoon, drop off the truck, stay at one of the airport hotels, and fly home Monday. If need be, I can also push back my flight. I hate Southwest’s cattle-call loading but I love their flexibility on flights.

I have next week to finish cleaning up the place in Tucson and deal with my remaining possessions.

That should pretty much bring you up-to-date on things as they currently stand. Wish me luck.

And Now for a Brief Word from Your Sponsor on the Evils of Packing Tape…

Let me just say, that whatever gene it is that enables one to handle packing tape with any degree of deftness I don’t have it. Wherever this gene might be located on the chromosome, I suspect it’s next-door neighbors to the gene which allows people to unfurl cellophane and successfully cover food without trouble because I don’t have that one either.

Several of the articles of packing tips I read recommended not skimping when it comes to selecting your packing tape. None of these articles, however, mention how to assess the quality of said packing tape.

I ended up ordering all my packing supplies from an outfitter online. As all the other packing materials seemed fine, I was hoping the tape was, too. No such luck. The stuff was evil. It kept shredding and sticking to the roll. And when I did manage to tape a box, the tape would peel up by the next morning.
Finally, with much creative verbal expression, I pitched all the tape from the online outfitter, went to OfficeMax and picked up a box of the most expensive stuff on the shelf, gambling that the price-point might mean it was, in fact, better.

The new tape is indeed stronger and far more sticky. This, however, presents its own unique set of problems. I have managed to repeatedly tape myself to boxes. And, in one particularly sleepy moment, I managed to tape my hands TOGETHER. I had a brief instant of panic in which all I could see was the Tucson Star headline: “Women starves to death in central Tucson due to unfortunate packing tape accident” before I managed to wrest myself free.

And you don’t even want me to try to describe the catastrophe with the wardrobe boxes. I’m just grateful it happened in the privacy of my own home.

Long story short? Hire movers if there’s any way you can swing it.

My mom has discovered my blog through the Bob Vila story and is starting to send editorial suggestions. (To be fair, she’s also said very nice things about it.)

I have a sneaking suspicion this may end up being similar to when she first figured out email, got hold of my work email address, and started to send me daily notes asking if I was getting enough sleep and eating well-balanced meals. I mean, how the heck am I supposed to write about things like lesbian stewardesses when my mother is reading??

Ah well. I guess if I can share my weird little life with complete strangers, I can include a few family members, too.

I just don’t want to hear about it if I occasionally say snarky things about Bob Vila or HGTV, okay, guys?

(And, no, that’s not a picture of my mother. She’s actually prettier and more laid-back than that. But I think every 30-something American female has an internalized version of a disapproving mother and mine looks pretty close to this. I suspect mine is named “Mirnah”.)

I have to wonder whether it’s a bad sign or simply common sense to start hyperventilating in Lowe’s…

Charlie is in town for the weekend. After a lazy Saturday morning breakfast yesterday at Bobo’s, our favorite Tucson greasy spoon, I dragged him with me into Lowe’s. This was not terribly difficult in that Charlie has a Y chromosome and, as best as I can determine, Lowe’s is the Toys-R-Us for red-blooded American males over the age of about 25.

Having spent too many Sunday afternoons of my childhood inside a hardware store with my father, my general mode of operation inside any kind of home-improvement store is to get in, zero in on my target, and get out as quickly as possible like any good, high-powered, military retrieval operation or guy having to enter Victoria’s Secret for a birthday gift for his girlfriend.

My objective yesterday was to pick up a dolly to help with moving things into the floating home. (Even with floating things in, there’s going to be a lot of schlepping of boxes.) But, between all the upcoming remodeling projects I have and the ones Charlie has going on at his place in New Mexico, we ended up looking at: paint swatches, appliances, closet organizers, wood floors, bathrooms, and doors & windows.

Somewhere about the time of hitting the French door section, I hit overload. The enormity of everything I’m going to need to do eventually do with my little place hit me, and I started to hyperventilate.

I have to wonder if Lowe’s offers their employees training in how to handle panic attacks, because the very nice young man with asthma who’d been assigned to Garden in spite of his allergies calmly assessed the situation and offered me a hit off his inhaler.

After a couple of minutes I pulled things together, grabbed my dolly and Charlie, and got the heck out of the store. I then proceeded to spend the rest of my afternoon pretending that I’d bought a very new, fully-furnished condo with easy move-in access from the street. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

“Nothing motivates you more to clear the clutter from your home than boxing up all of your belongings.”

–Unclutterer.com

A lot of the decluttering manuals will encourage you to tackle small projects slowly over time so as not to get overwhelmed with the enormity of the task ahead. After all, you didn’t accumulate all this STUFF overnight, it’s probably not wise to induce cardiac arrest by trying to get rid of it overnight, either.

Unfortunately, the slow-and-easy plan works less well when you’re facing a one-month time frame to move yourself and your (hopefully reduced) belongings into living quarters less than half the size of where you are now. Drastic circumstances call for drastic measures and all that rot.

My apologies if my frequency of entries have been a little thin recently and continue to be so over the next few weeks. I’m having to work hard and creatively to divest myself of a lot of stuff in a short period of time. And, as mentioned already, I tend to move slower these days than in my hyper-ambitious youth.

But let me re-cap some of what I’ve accomplished so far in the last couple of weeks:

• I’ve sold $26,000 worth of furniture, musical instruments, and personal items.

• I’ve Freecycled almost as many low-dollar items.

• I’ve given a few cherished pieces of furniture and musical instruments to friends who I know will appreciate them.

• I turned in enough books and CD’s to the local used bookstore to have ended up with $1000 in credit. That’s a lot of freaking books to give away. Especially for someone who hoards books the way a dragon does treasure.

• I’ve donated fifteen garbage bags full of clothing, bedding, towels, and assorted linens to a local charity

• I took two full carloads of non-recyclable garbage to the dump.

Oh, and because I am much more talented at acquiring stuff than getting rid of it, I’ve created a photo album to document my progress. Completely geeky and probably uninteresting to anyone other than myself, I know.

Anyway, that was the first, easy pass at decluttering. I think it’s going to get rougher from here. If there happens to be a patron saint of declutterers and you’re feeling especially kindhearted, please say a prayer to him or her for me.