Gallumphing To A New Location

Well, it's official. In a couple of weeks, I will be abandoning my underground lair for more spacious digs. I've been inhabiting the lair for about six years now, which has been great, but I'm ready for a change. The prospect of having some natural light in the place is nice, not to mention that Dar will be there, too. Co-habiting after so long on my own (and for that matter, on her own) presents its own set of challenges, but I'm looking forward to it.

For about a month now, after finally finding a place, I've been as busy as a one-legged man at a butt kicking contest. She has too, but she has a lot less stuff than I do. The last time I moved, my collection of stuff had been pared down to a fairly manageable size, but after living in one place for six years, I was astounded at the sheer volume of crap (um, I mean 'valuable collectibles') that I've amassed. Every morning for the last two weeks, I've been loading the car with at least a couple of boxes of stuff to be dropped off at Goodwill on my way home. The thing is, my place is still looking as cluttered as ever. Sheesh. I've packed six file boxes full of books that I'm keeping, and got rid of two more boxes, and I still have almost two full bookcases.

One good thing I did was to buy a large CD wallet which holds 224 CDs and booklets, then dumped all of the jewel cases into the recycling bin. It's amazing how much space those things take up.

Side note: Thank you to whoever carted away the CD towers (with a note reading, "FREE - Please Take Them") that I left on the street in front of the house. They were gone in less than two hours.

For a move, of course, one needs boxes and lots of them. Both Dar and I have been harassing our respective offices' Mailrooms for empty file boxes and printer paper boxes. I have also been staking out my local LCBO (that's the liquor store for those outside of Ontario) for boxes, and have made out like a bandit there, too. A mistake I made on one past move was to pack all of my stuff into a few large boxes, which then needed two people each to lift them. I almost threw my back out trying to heave a television-sized box full of books onto the truck. Ah well, live and learn.

The major challenge in this move is going to be the actual moving date. We take possession on September 15, but the place might be ready before then. You see, the current tenants move out on the first of the month, and then the place will be completely renovated before we move in. This means a completely new bathroom, new floors, new fridge and stove, and new kitchen cabinets. Nice. If the place is ready before the 15th, we can move in early which is what we're aiming for. Y'see, this year September 15 falls on a Monday, which means that we wouldn't be able to move until the Wednesday or Thursday, which I had already booked off work anyway as it is my birthday (yay!). We can't do it the following weekend, because I'll be out of town with the boys for our annual Golf Weekend, which we'd arranged months ago. Ideally, we'd like to move the previous Saturday or Sunday (the 13th or 14th), because then we could hit up our friends to help out. We could probably handle it ourselves if need be, but the thing is - we'd rather not. And, it's more fun with more people. We have to wait until a week before the 15th to hear for sure when we can move in.

Does anyone need some spiffy IKEA bookcases? Seriously. You can have them if you come and take them away.