Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

After working from the apartment this morning, we "struck the set" as best we could at the apartment in San Jose.

( Moving out, moving up )

I was able to bet the internet bridging from my mobile phone to work, although I did have to buy the full version of PDANet ($8, not too expensive) in order to also use it to bring up the Giants game. I have unlimited bandwidth on the mobile phone, so that's not a problem. Lisa chuckled over how much technology it took for me to listen to a baseball game being broadcast over the air; unfortunately, there's so much RF in this apartment that an AM radio just doesn't work.

So tonight is my final night in the Atrium Gardens apartment, after just slightly over one year here. I don't have a particular attachment to what is really just a glorified hotel room; however, it has served me decently for the past year and I have little to complain about. If I were expecting to be in the Bay Area more than I am, I'd renew the lease, but as it stands now, it will cost me less to rent cheap hotel rooms when I'm hear. (Or if any of my friends reading this have a spare bedroom they might consider renting, let me know and we can discuss it to our mutual benefit.)

Nothing much exciting today to talk about. I got some good feedback at Day Jobbe on a current project, then this evening packed more boxes for the planned trip to Fernley this weekend. It's getting increasingly difficult to pack what's left into boxes, because I'm now getting into the odd-sized stuff that doesn't box up that well. Consequently, after I lay in layers of boxes in the van, I end up putting loose items in as well. It's a pretty sloppy move, but I have the luxury of doing it this way since I've been in a slow-motion relocation for months now.

Somewhere along the line, I ended up with several more bankers boxes than bankers box tops, which is annoying since you can't stack open boxes.

I took about eight or ten boxes of papers and a filing cabinet up to my storage locker in Yuba City today, and also made a withdrawal: I got the rear seat of the van (which has been in the locker for years) out of the locker, thoroughly swept the dust and cobwebs (and black widow spider carcasses *shudder*) from it, and just barely managed to get it re-installed in the back of my van. That seat is heavy. I'm glad it wasn't busy at the storage place today, because I had to park right in the middle of the access road because the road slopes considerably from side to side, and if I parked anywhere else, one of the two rear doors of the van wouldn't stay open. I'll take the rear seat back out on my next trip to Fernley, because until I've found a new place to live and moved, I need cargo space more than I need extra seats in the van. Unfortunately, that chairmat I put in the back of the van is a little bit larger than the remaining available floor space after locking the rear seat into place. I hope I don't end up damaging that mat too much and that some of the curl in it will go back down after a while once I get it out on the next trip to Fernley.

Then it was out to my late grandfather's house in Sutter, where my mother has been trying to pack up all of the stuff that accumulated there over the years and find new homes for it. She pointed me and many boxes of mine that had finally reached a point where we could get at them. (Prior to now, the boxes, like my comic book collection, had been buried under layers of other stuff. I proceeded to carry all of the stuff out to the van, where it just barely seemed to fit what with the rear seat of the van taking up a bunch of space. Combined with the VHS video tapes I was given for Lisa last Monday at BASFA, I pretty much am already loaded for the next van-load of stuff to Fernley. That might not be for a while, though, as the current weather forecast for next weekend is pointing toward rain and snow in the mountains. We'll see as we get closer.

The round-trip from Fremont to Sutter and back is just about the same distance as the one-way trip between Fernley and Fremont.

The last time that my minivan was in Fernley, we removed the middle seat and stored it in the garage. (The rear bench seat has been in storage in Yuba City for years.) That maximizes the amount of cargo space. This week, I've been loading things into the van each evening. I have a couple of folding tables (one that I picked up from a pile of perfectly good-but-beat-up stuff that my office threw out when we last moved) that are going up on this trip, along with at least two bookshelves. I may manage another shelf or two as well tonight.

Even if I don't end up working from Fernley full-time, sometime before April I must significantly downsize my living expenses, which will involve moving. My goal is to make the amount of stuff that must go in the Final Trip as small as possible, and that means moving minivan-loads of anything I can move myself with the aid of a luggage cart as often as possible. And also, I want to make the most of the good weather, since when the weather gets bad, I'm less likely to be popping over Donner Pass every weekend.

For Round 2 of the Mehama Moving Frenzy, I have been able to take another day off from work and rearrange my schedule. Unfortunately, I can't get the reduced rate for the rental truck because I'm renting at a busy time, which isn't that surprising since other people are doing what I'm doing and working it around the Labor Day holiday.

( Multimodal Kevin )

After that, I have no more time off left and I much concentrate on the Day Jobbe for a while.

There were somewhere between 70 and 100 Bankers Boxes in Round 1, with about the same volume in other, less-regularly-shaped boxes. Round 2 is for the more odd-sized things that didn't fit into Bankers Boxes and large objects like the engine hoist and other stuff that didn't fit into the first truck at all. This time, if we run out of space or time, anything that doesn't fit in the truck must go into the storage container so that we have some hope of being able to retrieve it eventually when we can make another trip to Oregon.

This morning, we went into Salem and picked up the rental truck, it being the largest truck that I can drive on a personal driving license that Budget rents. We then went back to Mehama and spent most of the day until after dark (Lisa rigged up lights so we could work after dark), stopping only for meals and brief rest breaks, and succeeded in moving nearly everything except some loose bits that don't fit in the boxes we have handy into the truck. That's not everything that has to go, but it is the largest piece.

Lisa had spent much of the past couple of months putting everything she could into "bankers boxes" and that made a very big difference today, as I can move four boxes at a time from the storage container into the truck by trundling it up the loading ramp on the hand-cart. (With Lisa guiding me, I managed to get the truck backed up close enough that the ramp lands inside the container, so it's relatively easy to roll stuff from the container into the truck.) I didn't keep track of the boxes or take pictures, but it's a lot.

Tomorrow we have to see if we can find boxes big enough for the stuff too big for banker's boxes, load other things that were not in the container, get some very heavy and large things like the engine hoist into the utility trailer that I will tow behind the rental truck, and move everything that won't fit in either the truck or trailer into the cargo container, because Lisa is taking for granted that if it is not in the container or in the truck or trailer, then it's gone forever as she expects her brother and sister to throw everything else away. She keeps beating herself up over what a mess she's leaving the old house, but I keep telling her that her brother has brought it upon himself by forcing Lisa out so quickly. You don't live somewhere for twenty years and then suddenly up and leave in a few weeks easily.

Besides all of that, of course Lisa has to finish securing the travel trailer for moving, as she'll be pulling it behind her truck. She's rigged one of her CB radios in the moving van so that we can convoy more easily. If all goes well, we'll be pulling out of here sometime late tomorrow afternoon. We'd like to get as far as Klamath Falls, but I'm checking out hotels in Chemult as well, just in case. It's at least five or six hours from Mehama to K-Falls, especially as we can't exceed 55 MPH while towing even on the freeway, Lisa wouldn't want to go any faster even if she could, and I'll be surprised if I can maintain even that speed over OR-58, especially after Oakridge.

There's not much else I can do before I leave tomorrow morning. I can't put anything else in the van because the remaining bags and boxes are waiting for things I can't put in until tomorrow morning.

I've made complete clone backups of both my personal computer (which I'm taking with me) and my work computer (which I'm not, but I'm taking the clone and the connector cable in case there happens to be something on that drive that I need). I'm leaving one clone of my personal machine in the fire safe and taking the other one with me. There's even a spare Dell D600 laptop in the bottom of the box of computer stuff in case my main machine fails on me. I know that even this isn't enough because after Denvention 3, both backup drives failed somehow, but this is all I can think of doing without trying to carry my entire apartment with me.

Lisa called this afternoon while I was running errands to tell me that she was pulling out of Mehama with the little pickup in tow. I should try to get to bed early so I can get started very early tomorrow morning up to Reno.

Thus begins the two-week adventure of Worldcon + House Moving. I sort of wish I was leaving now but it wouldn't do a whole lot of good to leave tonight other than to spend another hotel night and this trip is going to be expensive enough as it is.

After the frantic activities of the past four weeks and of the two ahead of me, this is the only "quiet" weekend I've had in a long time. I mostly took yesterday off except for co-hosting the Locus Award coverage, which I enjoyed. But I can't stay sedentary for long; it's bad for my health. So today I got out for a little while. I took my van to the self-service car wash and gave it the works, much to the amusement of the attendant who was surprised that someone who drove such an old vehicle would work so hard on cleaning it. Well, this coming Thursday morning, I have to collect Phil & Kaja Foglio and their children from the San José Amtrak station and drive them over to the hotel, and I currently also have to drive them to San Francisco on the day after the convention. My van may be old, but it's going to be clean when I do my GoH liaison duties. The one thing I couldn't do was vacuum it, because all of the vacuum stations were occupied by Serious Car People of the sort the attendant seemed to approve of. I'll find another place where I can to the vacuuming soon.

After going home, I headed out for a walk around Quarry Lakes with Giants Baseball on the radio to make the walk more pleasant. I like those 5 km walks, but haven't taken one in quite a while. I used to do it almost every evening, and I weighed ten pounds less than I do now. I expect these things were related.

Finally, I packed six "bankers boxes" full of books. I won't be moving immediately, but I'm trying to pack things that I'm not using into easily-movable boxes so that I can move them into storage when I get an opportunity. That way, when I move for real, it will only be the large/odd-shaped/currently-used things that have to go.