Pack-out day!

Although most of the readers of this blog are voyeurs (read but don't comment), I still hear about it in phone calls when I'm falling behind! I figured I'd post in pictures my excuse for not keeping up lately! This first picture is of my living room on any normal day (OK, after I've straightened up a bit anyway!).

I love my little house with the open living area and hardwood floors and the great pergola out back, but I just don't like the geography in which it sits. Not just the dead lawn, but the latitude! The crispness in the air and the fact that I woke up 3 times last night freezing all served to remind me why you see all my belongings in the second picture in boxes! My relocation to San Diego isn't only official, it's in progress!!! For the last few weeks, I've been purging my belongings and boxing up the items that have passed muster. Basically, I purged with one basic fact in the back of my mind: that I'll probably be moving from 1000 sq ft of living space to about 700 if I'm lucky. Square footage in San Diego ain't cheap!!!

So, on top of packing, I've been doing due diligence as a homeowner and making sure all the maintenance is up to date before I roll out. This last picture is my living room empty. I had everything packed up and ready to go for when the movers arrived at 10:00 a.m. Even after all that purging, I still ended up shipping just over 3000 lbs of goods. For those of you who have done military moves, you know that isn't a whole lot. In fact, it's about the same weight of stuff I shipped back from Spain! I guess I haven't collected all that much stuff in the last decade! I had to chuckle though as I approved the shipping documents- 1/2 of the boxes were filled with kitchen stuff and 1/4 were filled with photos, photo albums, and pictures of my travels that I had blown up and had hanging on the walls. Hmmmm, wonder what that says about me?!

I'm in town until Friday, then I head out to Los Angeles to work with beach volleyball again. I get back Sunday for a full week with a team in town, then I roll out on my Harley heading towards California on the 20th! Time is getting short and so is my window of snowless opportunity! Stay tuned for the road-trip saga!