begin rant

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate moving?

For the last several days, my life has been compartmentalized into a series of boxes - some of which I will take with me, and some of which will go into storage. It is difficult to let go of things to which you have become attached, particularly when those things are comforable furniture, or the bookshelves that you would like to put your recreational reading material or DVD library upon. That said, there have been a few bright moments.

My friend Sheri had her brother in town on vacation, and he was kind enough to volunteer the back of his rented convertible Mitsubishi Eclipse to carry some of my shelves off to storage. It really does not look normal to see something that big crammed into something that small.

My fish are now living in a bucket. I made them a promise once: stay alive, and I'll take you with me wherever I go in life. Three of them have made a voyage of greater distance in this fashion before, and the prognosis for their survival is good. I hope they make it. While I may laugh and call them a primitive form of ultra-realistic and high-resolution HDTV, I have become quite attached to them. Like some of my furniture, they have always been there with me - reliable through turmoil and joy. I only hope that I can return the favor.

Last and not least, I remain amazed by the volume of stuff that one can comfortably cram into the 2002 Toyota Camry, and still be able to see out your rear-view windows. That said, I did manage to come uncomfortably close to obscuring all of my blind-spots. When planning out my packing strategy, I had forgotten to include the fishtank for the aforementioned fish, and found it occupying a surprising and irregular volume in the backseat of my car.

I had not realized just how much stuff I really do own. Given that I've tried to shake the load lighter on at least two occasions now, and that I will be moving into much smaller accomodations, I wonder if the next packing trip is going to be as bad?