Go West
Today is my last full day in Arlington -- I start driving more or less towards Oregon tomorrow. The morning here seems pleasant so far, at least through my window: It rained overnight and now the sun's moving up in the sky so the Route 50 pavement outside looks agreeably shiny. The few cars passing are making the wispy rushing sound they do when the road is wet. That's about as close as the incidental noise around my apartment ever got to "soothing ocean sounds" but it still bothered me for a couple of months after I moved in. I've been used to it now for a longer span of time than I spent in college.
Mom and Dad drove down from Pittsburgh yesterday to help with the move and I'd like to thank them in this quasi-public space for clarifying and then largely implementing my moving strategy. I sold off nearly all of my furniture in good shape but I didn't follow that impulse all the way down to the level of dishes/ appliances/ assorted possessions. If they weren't apparently about to resolve the writers' strike I'd pitch a reality show called, I don't know, "Pimp My Move" or something where a team of five professionally qualified yet super-intense helpers show up and completely redo how some blank-eyed twentysomething is trying to fit his possessions into a lower-end sedan. So you'd have the big burly menacing guy, or maybe the gay one, saying, "You see, you can get plastic bowls at Ikea for like fifty cents each so you shouldn't pack these instead of your blender." The helpers' personalities should be varied as well as super-intense. That is key.
Dad also discovered some vacuum cleaner attachments stored in a secret body panel on my vacuum cleaner. It was secret to me, anyway. Were I selling those attachments on craigslist I would describe them as "very lightly used". Mom and Dad seem to find this amusing. I do want to note that it's not because I don't vacuum, or don't vacuum the small spaces or upholstery the attachments are designed for. It's more a matter of never asking myself, "Where are the small attachments for this vacuum cleaner?" Though I did often say to myself, "Damn, I wish I had small attachments for this vacuum cleaner." If the vacuum cleaner fits in my car I will apply this new knowledge in the future.
After winnowing down the volume of my worldly goods to approximately the interior size of my car, we went out for dinner and drinks with some friends of mine. Looking around the table I noted with pleasure that, to a person, nobody there actually lives in the District of Columbia itself. Total Virginiafication of my social life. My work here is truly complete.
In seriousness, it was nice to have a Last Hurrah sort of hanging-out night. (Credit goes to my friend Heidi for putting it together while I was running around, as I've been characterizing it to myself, sort of like a chicken that has had its head removed with an electrocautery scalpel. By which I mean one whose head was removed cleanly enough that it hasn't quite noticed that its head is in fact gone. Probably not the most apt or poetic metaphor.) Today largely features brunch, Goodwill, and last-minute cleaning. So hopefully I can sit in my almost entirely emptied apartment tonight with something like peace of mind, and the thought that opening all the windows in my apartment is something I should have done much more often, not just to clear out the dust on my way out.
I have Internet access through tonight. Once I'm on the road I'll mostly be at the mercy of whatever Internet packages are available at the cheapest roadside accommodations I can find. I don't have much of a detailed itinerary -- just a sequence of interstate highway numbers, mostly (66, 83, 40, 10, 5) and a rough estimate that I'll get into McMinnville, OR sometime next weekend. But who knows; I have no real timetable or much of a need for one. (No job, no apartment yet.) To borrow a near tautology that I remember from a Flannery O'Connor short story, it'll be there when I get there.
Mom and Dad drove down from Pittsburgh yesterday to help with the move and I'd like to thank them in this quasi-public space for clarifying and then largely implementing my moving strategy. I sold off nearly all of my furniture in good shape but I didn't follow that impulse all the way down to the level of dishes/ appliances/ assorted possessions. If they weren't apparently about to resolve the writers' strike I'd pitch a reality show called, I don't know, "Pimp My Move" or something where a team of five professionally qualified yet super-intense helpers show up and completely redo how some blank-eyed twentysomething is trying to fit his possessions into a lower-end sedan. So you'd have the big burly menacing guy, or maybe the gay one, saying, "You see, you can get plastic bowls at Ikea for like fifty cents each so you shouldn't pack these instead of your blender." The helpers' personalities should be varied as well as super-intense. That is key.
Dad also discovered some vacuum cleaner attachments stored in a secret body panel on my vacuum cleaner. It was secret to me, anyway. Were I selling those attachments on craigslist I would describe them as "very lightly used". Mom and Dad seem to find this amusing. I do want to note that it's not because I don't vacuum, or don't vacuum the small spaces or upholstery the attachments are designed for. It's more a matter of never asking myself, "Where are the small attachments for this vacuum cleaner?" Though I did often say to myself, "Damn, I wish I had small attachments for this vacuum cleaner." If the vacuum cleaner fits in my car I will apply this new knowledge in the future.
After winnowing down the volume of my worldly goods to approximately the interior size of my car, we went out for dinner and drinks with some friends of mine. Looking around the table I noted with pleasure that, to a person, nobody there actually lives in the District of Columbia itself. Total Virginiafication of my social life. My work here is truly complete.
In seriousness, it was nice to have a Last Hurrah sort of hanging-out night. (Credit goes to my friend Heidi for putting it together while I was running around, as I've been characterizing it to myself, sort of like a chicken that has had its head removed with an electrocautery scalpel. By which I mean one whose head was removed cleanly enough that it hasn't quite noticed that its head is in fact gone. Probably not the most apt or poetic metaphor.) Today largely features brunch, Goodwill, and last-minute cleaning. So hopefully I can sit in my almost entirely emptied apartment tonight with something like peace of mind, and the thought that opening all the windows in my apartment is something I should have done much more often, not just to clear out the dust on my way out.
I have Internet access through tonight. Once I'm on the road I'll mostly be at the mercy of whatever Internet packages are available at the cheapest roadside accommodations I can find. I don't have much of a detailed itinerary -- just a sequence of interstate highway numbers, mostly (66, 83, 40, 10, 5) and a rough estimate that I'll get into McMinnville, OR sometime next weekend. But who knows; I have no real timetable or much of a need for one. (No job, no apartment yet.) To borrow a near tautology that I remember from a Flannery O'Connor short story, it'll be there when I get there.
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