me rite gud

So….   We moved again.  It seriously cut into my internet surfing time.   So here is my backlog of randomness from the past couple of months:

CGI Lady – Not exactly sure how they pulled it off but it appears to be flash based.  Maybe its time I learn me some flash again.

Decaying Theme Parks - My recent obsession with abondoned places continues.  The story behind Dog Patch USA was fascinating but a time consuming read.   Flickr pools are much more manageable.

Free Range Kids – Blog by

Lenore Skenazy who wrote the article about leaving her 9 year old in downtown NYC to figure out his way home on the subway.  Eden is 9 now. And I think she could probably do it.  But it still scares the crap out of me to not have the kids in view.  Which is completely irrational on my part given the amount of free range roaming I did when I was 9.  I did send Eden across Target the other day to go switch out a shirt for one with a price tag.  I had my eye on the doors the entire time and I couldn’t help thinking that she was lost the entire time.  But she managed to find the shirt and make it back to the register in one piece.  Not sure if the experience was more educational for her or me.

Okay,  time to go sort some more boxes out.  If you don’t have our new address, call us.  Our phone number is still the same.  Not sure how reliable the mail forwarding is.

This summer has had the feeling of a non-stop vacation.  Eden succinctly described our new house as a “vacation house” and that our real house was still the one back in Albany.   I can’t help sharing the feeling but extending it to the whole summer.   Perhaps its being uprooted since June, living in a different spot each week in July.   Or the balmy summer nights getting acquainted with the pool.  Or the completely alien world that is LA.  Or how the house mocks our feeble attempts at making it home.  Or the first new bed Andrea and I have gotten since we were newlyweds.

In any event,  the summer has come to a close and we don’t live in Albany anymore Toto.   The kids are officially registered in the California public education system.   The first day of school is less than a week away.  Tomorrow is the first day of September.

Every summer has a sound track for me that, without fail, transports me back to that point in my life.   The summer my sister got married it was Tori Amos and Under the Pink.  Hearing Cornflake Girl instantly puts me in my Honda Accord driving with the windows down. Andrea and I on our way to Ithaca.     Other summers it has been Concrete Blonde / Free,  Wilco / Yankee Foxtrot Hotel and  Beastie Boy / Paul’s Botique.    My memory has always been crap so its great to hear B-Boy Bouillabaisse and get a head full of Mark, going on Cumby’s runs, trying on the coolest pair of sunglasses I have ever seen.   Eating Ben and Jerry’s Aztec coffee icecream at the same time drinking the scary french vanilla coffee drink from the machine.  Driving scary fast on back roads with the speakers rattling with the bass.

Even though I didn’t really get obsessed with it until August,  this summer’s sound track is going to be Amy Winehouse / Back to Black.  I know I’m extremely late to this particular party but I think I just hadn’t heard it loud enough.   In fact Andrea bought the cd months ago and had even played it in my presence.  True to form, this did not register with me and I bought it from iTunes.   We’re doing our bit to offset music piracy.  But back to Amy.  I just love massive vocals, sparse instrumentals and big beats.  It reminds me of the Verve Remixed’s treatment of Nina Simone.  So now my playlist is full of Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan,  Dinah Washington and for slight variety, The Brand New Heavies.

$5000 luxury apartments are creepy. hybrids make you drive like a grama. beer is really cheap at trader joes. there are 4 starbucks on my way to work. there are 23 if i go via down town. people actively enjoy causing traffic. nothing is like it seems on tv. laundry rooms induce dancing. apparently I’m all grown up. baby lizards are the coolest. a pool really does need chlorine. i am only 48.6% geek. i liked wearing shorts. i don’t like elevators.  grocery shopping takes for ever.  pink berry is a complete hoax.   i need to write more.

Must not let blog go stale…

So July was a little nutso. We made it cross country in one piece and it actually turned out
to be a really fun trip. Eden was a fantastic traveling companion and didn’t get antsy at all until the last day. I’m not sure she gained any great appreciation for the country as she spent most of the time playing on the computer. Hopefully something from the trip will stick out in her memory though. Its funny how you remember some things from when you are younger and others you’re just oblivious to. As a parent I find myself subconciously trying to setup scenerios for the kids where they will experience something that will shine out in their memories. Ironically its probably the things they I don’t even notice that they will remember best. Like the statue of a squirrel in the vistor center courtyard instead of the massive mountains that surround.

Speaking of mountains, I never realized how close we were going to be living to so many national parks. Being a hiking junky, the possibilities are endless. I am hoping that I can get the whole family into it.

Living in Los Angeles has been fairly interesting so far. I really like our new house. At first I was kinda skeptical about the style and layout but it has a very good, relaxed vibe to it. Despite the craziness of unpacking and getting settled in a new house, life in general feels more relaxed now. Still getting used to the time differences and getting up at 6 to go to work. Its so nice getting home at 4 and having time to relax.

Blogging, originally uploaded by tem.

Our week at silver bay has been great so far. It’s always relaxing to be here, even if its in the middle of moving cross the country. I think my favorite part is walking around campus at night. Reminds me of yearly meeting and being young. Of course its a little different here now. They have wi-fi at many of the bigger buildings so you see people like the pretty girl in the above picture, hunched up over their laptops. The Inn is packed with teenagers every night.

moving day, originally uploaded by tem.

It’s been a crazy few weeks but we’re taking it easy in Maine this week so its time to recap the moving adventures to date.

Monday June 25th

I call the trucking company to confirm when they are going to bring the truck. They helpfully inform me that ramps are in limited supply, this week is peek moving week and we could quite possibly not get one. I cheerfully (with only a hint of desperation in my voice) tell her that would be most unfortunate given the piano we are planning on taking with us. I mistakenly inform Andrea of the potential problem.

The neighborhood has a wonderful going away party. Its really great to see everyone. It really is a great place to live. Why are we moving again?

Tuesday June 26th

Most of the house is packed so I head to my office and finish packing there. I don’t think I will be missing the office much. It kinda smells like albany. Albany has this slightly mildewy smell. I go home and attempt to find a ramp to rent. Uhaul does not rent ramps. I decide to build a make shift ramp from leftover lumber from a deck. Andrea rejects the ramp when one of the boards cracks as she is testing it out. The truck shows up early and it comes with a ramp. The driver is super friendly and gives us various tips on loading, including: “Use lots of rope.” We hadn’t expected the truck until the end of the day. Our original plan was to load it on Wednesday. Thats when we had most of our help coming. We are too excited about getting a ramp that we decided to try it out. By moving the piano on to the truck. Amazingly my brother and I don’t drop the piano. My neighborhood couldn’t watch and had to go inside. It really isn’t *that* heavy. It’s 95 degrees out. perfect weather for moving. So we decide to load the rest of the heavy furniture. We are completely dripping with sweat by the time we are done. We go out to dinner just so we can soak up some air conditioning. When we get back my dad comes over and we do some more loading. There are some neighbors playing on the street. Loading the truck must look like fun because before I know it half of the neighborhood is carrying boxes out to me in the truck. By the end of the evening we have more that half of the truck packed.

Wednesday June 27th

With all of the boxes loaded on to the truck we see how much still isn’t packed. Yikes. We spend the rest of the day packing until Andrea’s cousin comes over to help load. Its still in the 90’s but Andrea notes that it looks like its going to rain. “Think positive” I confidently say. Half an hour later it is raining like crazy. Torrential downpour with lightning and thunder. It sounds like lightning has stuck a few blocks away. The street floods. Floods like I haven’t seen it flood as long as we have lived here. My neighbor Jim comments that its the only storm that has ever had him scared. A boy in Troy gets struck by lightning.

Once the storm has passed the children go wading in the three feet of water at the end of our street. I go back to packing the truck. Amazingly everything stayed pretty dry. Its still about 90 out. We get almost all of the truck packed.

Thursday June 28th

I call the company to come pickup the truck. They tell me they will pick it up later that afternoon. We throw in the last few things into the truck and rope the last layer into the truck. As usual I don’t keep such great track of time and am rushing to get out to Eden’s violin teacher in time. We get half way there when I ask Eden if we have the violin in the car. She says “I thought you grabbed it” The whole purpose of the visit is to return the rented violin so we turn around. When we get back to our house the trucking company is just pulling up. At this point my stress level for the entire move reaches a peek. Not only am I late to drop off the violin but also I haven’t finished loading the truck and now they are there picking it up? Ack! Luckily they were just there to drop off the bulkhead, the wall that we install to separate our stuff from the rest of the truck. We rush back out to drop off Eden’s violin and say good bye to her teacher. When we get back I finish packing up the truck. Amazingly we use exactly the amount of space on the truck that they estimated we would need. They come pickup up our truck after dinner. We officially don’t live here anymore. Sigh.

Okay, I know Andrea and I have been talking about this since January but its finally for sure: We are moving. After almost 6 years (holy crap 6 years!) of living in Albany we are switching coasts and trying Los Angeles on for size. Last week while I was in Ohio I gave notice, at which point I went from not really believing this would happen to ruh roh its time to make this happen.

Living in Albany has had its ups and downs. Overall though I would say it was a very positive experience and the perfect situation when we had little kids. Having family close by has been great. But I think we are all ready for some new adventures. The kids are at the perfect age to move. Eamon will be entering 1st grade at a school that has only a part time kindergarten. If anything he should be more comfortable with the full day school thing than his new classmates. It will be a little harder on Eden since she has such a great core of friends here. I hope she will be able to strike up an on going correspondence via letters or even email. She is very outgoing and seems to make friends very quickly so after a few months I think she will be happy as a clam.  Especially with all the bamboo that is growing out there.

The only of part of moving to california that I am not looking forward to (besides being further away from family and friends) is the moving part. After we moved from Vermont to Albany I swore I would never do the moving thing by myself ever again. Andrea was pregnant with Eamon so I got to be the designated mover. I also got to drive the U-Haul. We weren’t 5 miles down the road before someone was flashing their lights at me and yelling at me to pull over. Apparently my honda, which we were towing behind the truck, still had its parking break on and the tire was practically on fire. Then when we crossed over into NY and got onto I87 the towing hitch popped off and my honda went swinging back and forth between the two adjoining lanes. All that was keeping the car still attached to the truck was a very small flimsy bit of chain. How I managed to get the truck to the side of the highway without killing anyone is beyond me. The ironic bit is that I never got my honda running again. We did by with just our subaru while my honda sat in our driveway rusting out. Eventually the people who redid our driveway took it away. The move was also fairly last minute so we ended up just taking everything with us. There are still some boxes that we still haven’t unpacked. Needless to say those boxes will not be coming with us this time.

But back to my original point. Last time we, with the help of a few family and friends, loaded and unloaded every single box and piece of furniture. It sucked. So this time around I was convinced that we would just hire someone to do everything including the packing, loading, driving and unloading. It would be perfect to just have everything magically show up at the new house. Then I started actually trying to figure out what mover to pick. It seems like everyone has crazy horror stories about someone else’s things showing up their new house, or worse, everything showing up broken. After reading the third “wish we had just sold/burned/goodwilled everything we owned and bought new stuff at the other end” stories I decided that maybe hiring a mover was not idyllic thing after all. So we compromised and are going to go with U-Pack (ABF). We load the truck but they drive it across the country. Hopefully we’ve learned from our mistakes and it will go smoother this time round. For starters we are really weeding out our junk and only bring the things we have used in the last 2 years. It’s been a long time since I last wore my skin tight gold disco pants, they are not coming.

travel food, sigh, originally uploaded by tem.

I will not be missing the crappy food I eat while traveling. The above is pretty typically of dinner in Ohio. A spinach lasagna from the “healthy” cooler at the grocery store, nuked. The iceburge lettuce salad with the dressing that makes it as bad as a burger. The stale hotel room air. Andrea insists there is better food to be had with too much more effort but somehow after 12 hours at the office searching out a better meal seems like an impossible task. Plus all the roads in Ohio are 35 mph.  It takes forever to get anywhere. I miss being at home where Andrea makes such yummy things. I would gladly wash dishes for the rest of my life for the chance to eat her food.