Month: August 2018

We had some good news at the VA Hospitals and Clinics for Arthur. His fractured neck bone (technically, his right occipital condyle bone, the base of the skull) is healed sufficiently that he was permitted to remove the nefarious neck brace, which he's hated wearing so much. This allows him to look and feel more like himself, not to mention he doesn't have to feel so conspicuous when out and about in public.

Further good news came from the ENT (otolaryngology) specialist, who said he didn't need any "remediation" with respect to a chronic ear issue. So overall, Arthur is healing apace. 

In the car driving back home from the hospital, I said, "Well, it's all cause for optimism."

Arthur's reply, in his classic Arthur style, was, "Now I just need to be an optimist."

[daily log: walking, 3km]

I had a lot going on today. Busy. Clearing out the storage space, then spending some quality time interacting with my good friend Bob, his parents, and his two sons. It was a good day. But I didn't leave myself much time to work on a blog post, and I'm still exhausted from yesterday's loading party. So I'll keep this short, and give a more substantive update when I get back to Portland, tomorrow.

[daily log: walking, 6km]

My friend Bob and I loaded my stuff into the Alaska-bound container today. I took some pictures, and was thinking to write about the experience in detail, but I'm very tired. So maybe tomorrow I'll give more details.

[daily log: walking, 5km; carrying stuff, 2tons]

My representative at Alaska Marine Lines, who has been very helpful and personable through this process, sent me a confirmation email with the following line added on as an observation. She'd mentioned on the phone earlier that there was another "Jared" whose account she was handling, and it was causing her some confusion. So she wrote:

"This is so strange, what is the likelihood of 2 Jared’s loading in MN (one in Cohasset MN) on Friday the 10th and both moving to Southeast Alaska!?"

It is quite strange. What is causing Jareds to migrate to SE Alaska? Sunspots? Pseudo-Mormon pseudo-apocalypse?

[daily log: walking, 2km; moving heavy boxes, yes]

I'm trying hard to have things as organized and sorted as is possible over such a short time, in such a cramped space. But I face the fact that the container will come, on Friday, and I will still be shipping a lot of "random junk" off to Alaska. Really, once I decided to go with the container, it becomes a fixed cost. As such, whether I ship only exactly what I want to keep or whether I end up shipping stuff I should have thrown out becomes a bit moot – the container will have some surplus space, either way. So I'm shipping junk to Alaska. Such is life. Mark reminded me of the old science fiction satire series, "Bill the Galactic Hero," by Harry Harrison. In that book, a certain planet deals with its excess of trash by mailing it, one small package at a time, to random people on other planets. In a Galactic empire, this is apparently possible. In our own continental empire, likewise, it becomes practical for me to "mail" junk to Alaska. I doubt my uncle would approve. But it'll get dealt with eventually.

[daily log: walking, 2km; and many heavy boxes]

I have definitely lost momentum on my clean-up and sorting project today. After a rainy few days, the sun came out and heated everything up. So when I got to my storage unit at 10 am, it was a bit uncomfortable. That didn't help.

And I dropped a box on my arm. No major damage, but a fairly noticeable bruise. Pushing too hard, I think. I need to be careful, right.

So I slowed down, and played at being a semi-sentient slug for the rest of the day today. Mark and Amy and their son Charlie are spending a Sunday afternoon laboring on a patio construction project for their backyard (which looks impressive, by the way). But I begged off and have tried to spend some time relaxing. I've been reading some blogs and contemplating this next phase of my life.

I started trying to write a little short story about a teacher who quits his job and moves to Alaska, but I found the character uninteresting. What does this mean?

[daily log: walking, 2km; heavy boxes moved, a few]

I'm working extremely hard, physically. I am shifting boxes and furniture in my storage unit, but because I don't have any free space in there, and I can't leave anything outside unattended, it's a matter of "unload, shift, reload" each time I go over there. Yesterday and today I did a "morning shift" and an "evening shift" – and so far I've got all the book-boxes in one place, now, and the refrigerator and some throw-away furniture in the back (I'm going to have the container pickup on Friday, 8/10 and the trash pickup on Saturday, 8/11, so I want all the "throw away" things at the back). There is no dumpster on site at the storage, so I can't go along slowly reducing the amount of stuff – I just have to keep shifting. My next step is to try to get the futon sofa, which is at the back, up to the front, because it's a nice piece of furniture in good condition, which  I want to ship. I also have a number of boxes in very bad shape – 11 years sitting at the bottom of the pile squashed a few into implausible geometries. So I need to do a bit of repacking on about 5% of the materials. But overall, I did a pretty good job organizing 11 years ago, keeping in mind I intended to move into a new apartment after only 2 years in storage, rather than what ended up actually happening.

I'll just keep working at it.

[daily log: walking, 2km; shifting boxes, alot]

I made a reconnaissance to my storage unit. It is a bit overwhelming. It occurs to me, that if my effort to clean and sort my possessions in Korea over the first 3 weeks of July was a "clearing out" of the my last decade's worth of accumulation, then cleaning out and sorting this storage unit represents a "clearing out" of the previous decade's worth of accumulation, because I didn't do an adequate job when I departed for Korea 11 years ago. So now I face it. 

There are some heirloom furniture items in there, and there is of course my vast collection of books. There are some nice newer furniture items, worth keeping too. There are a lot of things not worth keeping: old clothes, some appliances, a lot of old broken electronics stuff that I hoarded for some unfathomable reason. I have to sort into two piles: "send to Alaska" and "junk." Here I go: my full time job for the next 10 days.

I'm tired already. But I am going to face it with optimism. My friend Amy had excellent, aphoristic advice, which I'll paraphrase because I don't remember her exact words: "be brutal with the stuff, but kind to your self."

[daily log: walking, 3km]