The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Editor’s Note: This post was written while I was on the airplane about 8 hours ago. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t post it then. I am now at AU, posting this from my dorm.

Well, I guess that I was going to post this yesterday, but yesterday turned out to be quite a hectic day that it didn’t work out. Instead, I’m actually writing this blog post on the plane. Guess it works out, since I do need something to occupy myself for the next few hours, right?

Fortunately, yesterday didn’t turn out to be a big all-packing all-day day. Maybe that would have reduced the evening stress a bit, but it did provide the opportunity for a nice chance to go around San Mateo one last time. My parents and I took our harp-flute-cello trio to the park one last time, and despite it being a little bit windy, we actually had a bit of an audience this time.

Unfortunately, yesterday wound up being the big room-cleaning that I had procrastinated on during the summer. In some ways, that might have been a good thing, because when you’re about to move away for four months, the pack-rat tendency is significantly mitigated. Essentially for all of the stuff that I’ve accumulated and has been sitting around making a mess in my room all these years for no reason, it can either come with me, get kept somewhere at home, passed along to my family, or get recycled. Because the first two have significant space limitations, you can bet that I doubled the size of our paper recycling pile yesterday. So now the room is nice and clean which is good since my brother has it to himself now. The downside: DUST! So yesterday and today I’ve got a bit of hay fever, though the plane ride has been helping to improve it a bit.

But let me abruptly jump back about ten days to the first part of Operation Uproot (my packing project). For obvious reasons, moving house requires the shipment of a LOT of stuff. The cheapest method of getting stuff there would be to check it into multiple suitcases, since Virgin America just charges a flat rate of $15 per bag, up to 10 bags, up to 70 pounds for the first bag and 50 pounds for the rest. Here’s the downside: no way can I manage that many suitcases! Especially when I’m going to be taking them on a bus and the Metro once I land. So then what?

Well, the solution in that case is to ship the stuff there. Hence why as early as last week, we ended up having to do like a “test run” of packing stuff in the suitcase and thus figuring out what goes in the suitcase, what goes in my carry-on, and what get shipped. The box ended up getting shipped out by USPS Parcel Post last Friday, and so hopefully the box will have arrived by the time I get there (or else it better arrive on Monday). Interestingly enough, we had a bit of fun dealing with the fact that a 24x24x18.5 or higher box costs over $100 to ship with Parcel Post, but a 24x24x18 box only costs $25-$35 to ship. Go figure.

So what wound up in there? In short: bulky stuff. There’s a new mattress pad, sheet set, pillow, pillowcase, multiple towels, a beautiful T-shirt quilt that my mom made for me, a portable laundry hamper/bag, a pair of thongs (to use as bath slippers), and half of my pairs of jeans (the other half I kept to wear this past week). It looks like a short list, but that pretty much filled a 24x24x18 box.

Of course, the amount of stuff that had to get squished into my suitcase grew quite a bit yesterday from what it was last week; I actually ended up stuffing one of my State PTA bags with some other supplies and made it my second checked bag. My suitcase weighed in at 66.4 pounds, plus that PTA bag which is around 10 pounds and my carry-on bag which is around 12 (the latter two are guesstimations). There’s not much particularly out-of-the-ordinary that’s coming with me, though there are a few keepsakes. For example, although I was able to spend some time going through about four years worth of PTa materials that I’ve collected, most of which got recycled or passed along to my mom (who may find folks who will find them useful), I did keep a couple of items for myself, which will be nice to have if I get involved with the DCPTA at all. My Easy button came along for the ride (just so that I can push it once I’ve moved in), as well as a few books that I’ve been meaning to read. All my tech is here: MacBook and charger (and my iKlear screen cleaner that I ought to use more often), cell phone and charger, noise-canceling headphones (which, for the record, really don’t cancel out very much airplane noise, though it’s better than nothing), the works. We were somehow able to squeeze in my cribbage board as well (yay).

I guess I never realized how much packing is like an art-form, but man my parents are so good at it that I might not want to unpack any of it.

Well, at this point in writing this, we’re passing over Pueblo, CO, with about 2400 miles to go. So I guess it’s about time to wind up this blog post and start working on editing some audio that I brought along. (I just can’t be persuaded to blow off $12.95 just so I can have internet access on a five-hour flight.) Stay tuned for plenty more posts on The Smorgasbord as I start getting settled in at AU…