Monday, October 24, 2005

Cold Front + High Altitude = White Halloween

I've been staring at the National Weather Service website quite a lot lately.
First I was worried about this hurricane, worried that as it peters out across the NE US it would dump rain on us. More specifically, that it would dump rain on my move. Well, it looks like I'll dodge that bullet, since the rain should be past by Wednesday. Just for fun I typed in my new zipcode to see what the weekend holds in store, since I'll be there this weekend. I was greeted with this:
Winter Storm Watch
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE STATE COLLEGE PA1118 AM EDT MON OCT 24 2005...
SIGNIFICANT SNOWFALL POSSIBLE IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS TONIGHT
AND TUESDAY....A STORM SYSTEM WILL DEVELOP OVERHEAD TONIGHT...COOLING THE AIR AND CREATING SNOW OVER THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS...AND A RAIN/SNOW MIX IN THE VALLEYS. MCKEAN-POTTER-ELK-CAMERON-NORTHERN CLINTON-CLEARFIELD-NORTHERN CENTRE-CAMBRIA-SOMERSET-TIOGA-NORTHERN LYCOMING-SULLIVAN-SOUTHERN LYCOMING-COLUMBIA
-1118 AM EDT MON OCT 24 2005...
WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM EDT THIS
EVENING THROUGH TUESDAY EVENING FOR ELEVATIONS ABOVE 1400 FEET...

A ha ha, I said to myself, I'm not above 1400 feet where I'm going. WRONG!! A quick check

Monday, October 17, 2005

Anywhere but Here

Another Monday.
Another week started. I squint at the page-a-day calendar on my desk as if its a clock, with hands I can will to move faster. Had a minor meltdown at lunchtime as I realized my dispatcher hasn't actually 'assigned' my move to a driver yet, when I asked him about it he said, 'Oh, I never schedule local stuff this far in advance. Don't worry about it'.
I fought a very irrational but very strong desire to dump him out of his chair and start kicking him. Its NINE DAYS OFF, Al. NINE DAYS. In NINE DAYS I'd better have a truck in this driveway and a crew loading all this crap in it or I will go completely, completely insane.
Thursday is the PA Real Estate boards and I am probably going to employ my 'jam and skate' method, which worked so well in college-- jam the material, skate through the test. I need to get the hell out of here. My apartment echoes, its a tower of boxes, and I'm losing my mind. The same people ask me every other day, "So, when's the big day?" Not soon enough, believe me. Now I know why my customers are so schizo when they call me. When you begin to dismantle what was home, but you are not yet in what is home, you are nowhere. Every minute of the work day irritates me right now.
So I had better go and do something productive right now; pack a few more boxes and clean out the refrigerator and try hard not to be pissed off at nothing and everything.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Sunday Shopping

Preparations continue unabated. I had hoped to do some packing this weekend but neglected to get some more boxes and paper from work. I could have bought some from the UPS store, but it seemed wrong, somehow, and I had this irrational fear that my crew when coming to load would see them and say, why did you buy boxes? Its enough pressure to pack cartons and try to make sure they are each perfectly balanced and no more than 50 pounds each so they aren’t grumbling about my lousy pack job. I already know they will mock my furniture. Sometimes working for a moving company is complicated.
As I had a gift certificate from Bed, Bath, and Beyond burning a hole in my pocket I went there to get some things for the new place. Seemed to be three themes going on there; stuff we actually needed, silly stuff, and expensive stuff. As I was poking around I came upon a young woman wrestling with a piece of serving china and an awkward, hand-held laser scanner. No red golf shirt or nametag, so I realized she was a bride-to-be, walking around the store tagging her ‘wish list’. She looked at me and smiled. I raised my hands and said, “Whoo-hoo!”.
We never bothered with the bridal registry, Bryan and I. I wasn’t really comfortable with saying, “Here’s what y’all should buy us and here’s where you should go to get it,” especially when our friends and family were all so far-flung. Considering that we owned next to nothing between us we figured whatever we ended up with would be fine. In the end there was only one duplicate set of silverware we traded in for a new pair of Hush Puppies.

I think about my own early beginning as a married person and I feel the same way about it that I do about high school; I’m glad its over and I don’t have to do it again. Figuring stuff out, figuring each other out. We received dire warnings about ‘the first year being the toughest’. I don’t know about that. We were awkward, we made mistakes, we felt foolish and frustrated and pissed off sometimes, but underneath it was the knowledge that we were in it together and that was not going to change. I think of climbers snaking their way up sheer faces of rock hand over hand, always with the safety line attached at various points along the way, all the complicated equipment and harnesses that may not necessarily save them from injury, but that will save them from catastrophe.
Sixteen days to go until the truck comes….I’m eyeing the next ascent, but I know who is at the other end of the rope.