on my way

writing from the phone at mile 190 of I-5. who is driving? carl is driving. oh no! how can this beee?

i stayed up most of the night packing. i guess i got about 90% done? but either way, i am on my way, so...

had the non-goodbye party. it probably kept me from packing fast, but at least i got to see people, so that was good.

i'll write more later.

A little more detail

Saturday started with me waking up and realizing there was no bloody way I would be able to go to the Mariners game, so I got in touch with B, who said he'd be happy to take my ticket. In the meantime, two people from Craiglist finally called about the TV's! Yay! First guy came over expecting to take the 20" one, but saw the 27", said "this is really for free? this is a great TV! here, let me write you a check for it," and gave me $15. Which was nice of him. The second guy wasn't nearly as nice and was just kinda like "hey, TV?" and I gave him the 20" TV and that was all. The dogs were, of course, already going nuts from the guests when B showed up and I gave him some more of my baseball cards along with my ticket to the afternoon's game. He made me promise to meet up later at the PI party.

Meanwhile, I packed up the rest of the downstairs room, and walked to the Ballard Seafood fair and... got extremely tasty barbecue, because the salmon burger stand had turned off their grill. Jack called me about getting my receiver/DVD player, so I came home, and Jack came over a bit later. He puzzled together the set, and Zach and Mindy went off to see Brave Combo at the festival, and Carl had stopped by and went off to get food. I got a ride to Magnolia from Jack so I could go to Churchill's party for a bit.

I had been a little nervous since I don't really post to PI, but it turned out I knew everyone there except one guy (the glasseys, positivepaul, etowncoug, katal, arbeck, bedir, and then chris-the-guy-I-didn't-know). As usual it was interesting hearing gossip from Jason -- and he updated me on the state of my former favorite Rainiers player Hunter Brown (apparently working in a brokerage now), and he even ordered food for everyone, so I ended up having a burger despite having just eaten only 2-3 hours prior. I guess I hung out until around 6pm and then took off to come home. Churchill asked me if I'd continue writing my blog from Japan and I'm like "dude, does it matter?" and he's like "what are you TALKING about, of COURSE it matters, do you need an mlb.tv hookup?"

I bussed home, and started packing. Carl and Oren showed up first, and then Drew and Jason, and then Edgars (!), and Adam and Rehana, and then the Shoreline crew showed up, Nykkel and Kiefer and Rumi and Matt and Farren. I am under the impression that people played Tichu and Scrabble and were entertained by the dogs, while I spent most of my time still upstairs sorting t-shirts and trying to pack stuff, talking to whoever came up (Rehana and Farren were there for a while, which was funny since they're the two quietest people I know). I gave/sold stuff to a whole bunch of people. Later on Zach and Mindy came back, and Eli and Katy stopped by for a bit too.

I ended up staying up for most of the night trying to pack. Problem is that around 4am-5am my back started to REALLY hurt, so I'd like, pack a box of stuff, move it into the closet, then lie down for 5 mins and stare at the ceiling waiting for my back to stop hurting, then I'd get up and do more packing. I also came to two horrible conclusions: 1) I couldn't fit everything I wanted into my bags and I'd have to get some stuff shipped, 2) MY LAPTOP DOESN'T FIT INTO MY SWANKY CAMERA BAG :( So after all the fuss getting my awesome Kata camerabag/laptopbag, I can't even bring it with me yet, and ended up taking my old laptop bag instead. I'm sure I'll replace this gigantic clunky thing eventually, but not yet.

Anyway, somewhere around 6:30am I lay down for "5 minutes" to straighten out my back and I fell asleep, and didn't wake up until 9am... when Oren showed up. Which was when we were supposed to leave originally.

So I had to get showered and changed, and by then Carl showed up, and I basically showed him around the remainder of not-packed things and told him which things should be packed, tossed, and mailed. I can't stress enough how awesome Carl has been to me these last few days in terms of helping out with this move.

I said goodbye to people and puppies, and then Oren and Carl and I hit the road around... 11am. Oops. We stopped by a WaMu so I could do a last deposit, and then went to the highway. Carl drove up to Canada, and we ran into an hour wait at the border. Yikes. Got to listen to the Mariners game a bit and some music, and had a surprisingly easy time at the actual border, considering I had to explain that "well, Seattle was where I lived BUT I'm moving to Japan AND I'm here for training and will be here till Friday, but THESE guys are driving back later today, and..." But, after I explained it all, she let us through.

We exchanged money, then drove downtown, had an adventure finding parking, paid too much for metered parking (and I went to Starbucks to get a iced chai to get change, too), and got lunch at a place on Robson called, amusingly enough, A Taste of India. Curious part is that we ordered our food "medium" spicy, which I think was about the equivalent of a 7-8 at the Pittsburgh ToI but which was a "super-hot" at the Seattle ToI, so it totally killed me.

Went to Bookoff after that, where Carl found a few things and the rest of us didn't.

We drove to Burnaby, here to Fuj and Laura's place, and Oren and Carl helped me unload the car (thank god, I can barely carry my bags), and then they left :( I feel pretty terrible leaving Carl again, I'm the worst best friend in the world or something. But you know, we've been close for almost 10 years now even without living in the same city for about half of that time, so... we'll see what happens.

I've spent the rest of the evening pretty much hanging out here with Laura and Fuj. I actually played a whole bunch of Guitar Hero, which is probably why my arms hurt. Also, they have kittens now, so we played a lot of Red Dot with the kittens (and other games like "get out of my suitcase, cat"). And I guess I've also just been chilling out. It's about midnight now, though, so I should probably go to sleep so I can get up early and Skytrain in for the first day of GEOS training at 9am. Yikes. I still feel pretty surreal about this... like I'll show up tomorrow, they'll realize I'm just a big faker who looks bad in a suit and can't slow down their speech enough, and fire me, and then I'll have to go back to Seattle. (I mean, I don't really expect that to happen, but I'm still pretty nervous like I would be before the first day of any job, compounded with all the separation anxiety. I guess I'm glad I'm staying with friends here at least)