This Side of Lost

It's been forever since I posted, and it's probably going to be a while again. Chalk this up to the business of attempting to move my life to Los Angeles. It's a pretty time-consuming business, let me tell you.

First of all, we've got a couple of cats to take care of. They're not good car travelers, and even if they were, I'm not sure I want to subject them to a 3-4 day sojourn across the country. So we'll be flying them. Which is an adventure unto itself, what with following all the FAA regulations, and trying to avoid the 85°F cutoff when they won't accept pets on planes. But I think we've got that under control.

Much more problematic is actually doing the moving. I've got a fair bit of my moving expenses that will be paid for. So my options are not limited, but they are still three fold as I see it:

1. Rent a Budget truck and car trailer, load 'er up (with a little help) and hit I-70. Doesn't sound like my idea of fun, especially puttering up long mountain passes. But it would be the cheapest.
2. Get ABF to cart my stuff across the country. But they're supposed to park a trailer for us to pack up -- there's no room for that in our parking lot. How does that work?
3. Get a full-service moving company. They'll pretty much take care of it from door-to-door, including getting around the parking issue with a shuttle. But they'll drain my entire moving allotment and then some.

Choices, choices. Anyone have any recommendations? Aaron, can you help here?

And that's not even getting into all the other stuff, like changing addresses, getting utilities worked out, banks, car licenses, etc etc etc. Ugh. I hate moving. Have I mentioned this before? No? I hate moving.

In other news:

• Gillian was marvelous as Tuptim in the Woodbury Community Theater's production of the King and I. Although I've been told I need to watch the movie now. Oh no, not another musical, twist my arm...
• Tom and Alicia's wedding was lots of fun. I haven't been to a serious Ole wedding in a while now, so it was good to see some folks I haven't really seen in years.
• We saw the Pirates movie, much like the rest of America. It wasn't fantastic, but it was a jolly good time. I'd recommend it, especially if you enjoyed the first one.
• I also saw Mystery Men for the first time, and was astounded how I had come this far without seeing a movie that was clearly right up my alley. Goofy "superheroes," random humor, great performances by Janeane Garofalo, Hank Azaria and Geoffrey Rush and cameos by Tom Waits? What more can one ask for?
• I finished Atlas Shrugged. Wow. I hope to post about this in more detail sometime soon.
• I would be remiss if I failed to mention The Dugout, a baseball humor website that has been making me laugh like no other recently. I'm not quite sure what level your baseball obsession needs to be at to appreciate the humor there (since mine is extremely high), but give it a shot if you like funny.
• We are off to Washington, DC, on Friday to sing in and witness Rob Grace's wedding. Yay, two Ole weddings in three weeks! Plus a mini-vacation to our nation's capital. Again, I really shouldn't have any complaints about my life.

Off to stress some more. Three weeks until I start my new job! *hyperventilates*

I'm going to disconnect this computer soon, but before I go:

I'm leaving for California on Thursday. I am driving Llewellyn, our Honda Accord, the 2100 miles. I'll probably be stopping in Salina, KS, Grand Junction, CO, and Barstow, CA, on the way. I hope to arrive on Sunday in the morning. Once I'm there, I'll be pretty busy buying a bed and food and all that good stuff, so it might be a while before I am reachable by the intarwubs again.

Dina, the delightful manager of my apartment building knows I'm coming. Allied is going to move our stuff. The cats have tickets booked. I think everything is taken care of right now. I hope. Dear Lord.

Thanks for being an awesome place to live, Bloomington. Hopefully we'll be back to visit. Northridge, you better be an awesome place to live. OR ELSE.

And last, but not least, how great are the Minnesota Twins right now? They have won 32 of their past 40 games, good for an 80% winning percentage. They have two Cy Young Award candidate lefties in the rotation, a bullpen that is nearly flawless, MLB's leading hitter in Joe Mauer, a bona-fide slugger in Justin Morneau, and a lineup that hits consistently from top to bottom. After a miserable first two months, they are amazingly back in the postseason race, only two games behind in the wild card standings. They haven't been this fun to watch in a long time.

That is all. Talk to you from LA soon.