packing commences.

Eleven boxes of books packed.  Two-and-a-half-foot stack of old notebooks for the garbage.  (Few important pages in each saved, rather than transporting whole notebook again.  Among saved items were four songs -- in the studying-poetry sense -- that I wrote to keep myself and my classmates sane and amused in the 5-6pm Background of Celtic Literature and Culture, or some such thing, ten years ago February.  Documentary history, man.)  More relevantly, stacking bookshelves are now disassembled.  One more (unstacked) bookshelf remains, with at least three boxes' worth of books on it.  I have seven more record-storage boxes that I got today, and some boxes of various sizes that packages have arrived in, and the aforementioned 3+ boxes of books, plus all DVDs and VHS tapes (about 20 shelf feet), CDs (not crazy many, but a couple of those cube-shaped carousels' worth), also dishes, other kitchen stuff, and other Stuff stuff.  Where does all the crap come from?  Also clothes and shoes.  The total volume of shoes in my closet is well up into several cubic assloads.  And that's culled relatively recently, as well.

Manalive, moving sucks.

DCFOLK: a draft notice

(or, Fox's Type A is Showing)

Okay, everyone -- I realized yesterday that between now and when I get the keys to my new place is just a little over two weeks. I am out of my current place three weeks from right this minute. So there is to be no more putting-off of packing and planning and so on, and this morning I busted out the clipboard that made its first appearance almost four years ago when I first began turning into my mother.

Most of the details of my move needn't concern most of you, but here's the real stop-press stuff: SUNDAY, 27 JULY is Truck Day. At an absolute minimum, I will have the following stuff to move in the truck, which is stuff that meets one or both of the truck criteria, viz.: (a) it won't fit in my car, or (b) I can't lift it by myself.

• sofa
  
• chair
  
• dresser
  
• bed (well, mattress and box spring; the frame is just a frame, but it can come too)
  
• television
  
• bathroom cabinet
  
• coffee table
  
• two end tables (one is a mini-filing cabinet)
  
• bookshelves
  
• DVD wall shelves
  
• small dining-type table and two chairs
  
• other things ready to go can certainly go in the truck as well, but those are the things that must go by truck for reasons noted above.

Loading this stuff into the truck should, no joke, take ... well, let's say as much as a couple of hours, given issues with the elevator. Driving up to the new place: I'm going to allow a whole hour. Unloading: hour and a half.

WHAT I WILL NEED:

1. someone with EITHER a car OR at least a license and the ability to drive a stick shift, to come with me Saturday evening or Sunday morning* to get the truck
   
2. at least one person to come to my old place on Sunday morning** to help me load the truck
   
3. at least one person to come to my new place on Sunday afternoon to help me unload the truck

These can all be the same person, of course, or they can be an assortment. I'm not fussy. (I almost wrote "I'm not fuzzy." Moving is going to my head, y'all.) All of these people will earn gratitude, pizza or some appropriate substitute, and beer or etc.

Signups open below.


* I hope to paint the new place on Saturday -- and let me say right now that people are also more than welcome to help me with that, but if you're only up for one day of helping, make it Truck Day -- and anticipate that running late enough that truck retrieval on Saturday will not be possible.
** The truck place on Van Dorn St. opens at 8am. I'm not advocating quite that early of a start, but seriously, this is not something that can begin at noon. I adore you all, and I'm going to need people at the Virginia end who can function first thing in the morning, you know what I'm saying? :-D

moving fun continues

Reminder: locals, sign up for your free pizza and beer!

Everyone, local or not: while I'm off being stuck with needles, please feel free to recommend colors with which I should paint the walls of my new place. In the past, I've had two mirror-image medium-sized studios, painted thusways:

"bedroom" area: then: grey; now: sort of fawn color
living room: then: kitchen & side wall bright yellow, outside & bedroom wall blue; now: kitchen & side wall buttery yellow, outside & bedroom wall dark red
bathroom: then: lime green; now: purple
kitchen: orange, and I can't recall the difference between then-orange and now-orange

The new place has many more rooms, and each room can have up to two colors before my aesthetic is offended. So, because I like playing with the poll creator, here's a poll. (For those of you for whom this information will be useful, the layout is precisely the same as ellen_fremedon and sanj's place, apart from the living room windows face east and the place has hardwood floors.)

[Poll #1221043]