Last Night I Slept With Earplugs for the First Time Ever /
I've never, ever, EVER heard rain, thunder, and lighting like this in San Francisco. It was our last night in the Glen Park house
we love so much. We sleep in the converted attic, which has a little bubble skylight through which any wind or rain easily can be heard. Until last night, I always found it charming. However, when one needs to rise at 7 a.m. for movers, being woken up every five minutes by what sounds like the apocalypse is not particularly charming. Honestly -- I thought the world might be ending.
I dammed my ears with purple foam earplugs bought for our lengthy travels, and finally fell back asleep around 3 a.m. Bryan shook me awake at 7 with a panicked look on his face: The wind and rain were still incredibly intense, and he'd spoken with the movers about rescheduling. (Normally rain wouldn't be a huge deal, I suppose, except for the fact that our entire lives would be sitting in storage for a year, and damp boxes are not particulary charming in such circumstances, either.) I popped the earplugs out and tried to process the idea of rescheduling this huge THING we'd been working toward non-stop for the past two weeks.
We had five minutes to decide.
No. We'd proceed as planned, weather be damned. We'd figure out a system to keep things as dry as possible, and hope not to return to a moldy TiVo in 12 months.
Amazingly, when the movers arrived, the sun peeked through the clouds and the rain stopped. Well, not for the whole time, but for enough to at least get our
Prized Possessions into the moving truck. The last thing to go will be this Internet connection, which I chose to keep last night (over the TiVo!) so that I may continue to compulsively document.
Now I'm waiting for Bryan to return from the storage space, and we'll be on our way.
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Savannah's Second Trip Across the Country / 
Tomorrow morning we'll be moved out, and early Monday we'll depart for the 60-hour drive back east. When we first drove to California, we had two cats.
Savannah, the noisy, loveable troublemaker, and Noah, the mute, gentle angel
who died the day George W. Bush was re-elected president. We put both cats in
the largest dog crate we could find, loaded it into the back of our Microsoft-funded SUV, and then covered it with stickers from every state we drove through. It was one of my favorite weeks ever.
This time, we're short one cat and have downsized to a smaller, comfy crate. Savannah's
already taken a liking to it.
When we arrive in Connecticut, we'll get Savannah settled in to her new home with my mom. She's been surprisingly mellow these days; all she wants is a warm lap to sit in (and an ear to bend, of course.) I'm gonna
miss her like crazy.
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Our House: Is a very, very, very fine house ... / 
It is now 3:30am, and I cannot sleep. Not sure why because the last week or so has been exhausting trying to get everything packed up and ready for the movers to arrive on Saturday. Maybe it is because we are about to enter our last day in our home, after which we will have no "home" for about a year. Maybe I am just a little sadder, a little more anxious than I had anticipated. Most likely, it is a combination of the three that is causing my sleeplessness.
So, I am down at the computer reading Allyson's most recent post where she wrote about prized possessions, and how when going through the exercise of down-sizing one's life, you begin to realize what is truly important to you. I think I have known this all along, but other than my two-tuner Tivo, I think my other prized possession is
this house.
It is this house because over the past three years, it has been the gathering point of our friends and family. A place where everyone felt super-comfortable and would come to play games, have dinner, be lazy, or to simply catch-up on each other's lives. It is our friends and family that are most important to us, and this house (in particular) has been a major part of that San Francisco experience. Below I offer up some evidence of that (just a few).
Over the past three years, we have ...
Hosted not
one, but
two big Thanksgiving dinners
Helped friends prepare for their
wedding danceHad the gang over for many, many
game nightsThrew a kickin'
Prom Night 1989Offered a warm and fun place for
friends and
family from out-of-town
Sleepovers and the
mornings afterMust go back to sleep for a couple of hours.
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My Two Prized Possessions / 
As aforementioned, leaving the country (and any sort of actual residence) for a year forces one to assess what's really needed and what's not. Granted, I'm not saying we've boiled everything down to one pot and one spoon or anything -- but the process has inevitably reminded me to value certain things. Like photographs and pets, of course, but also a couple of items I've had forever and ever and would be devastated to lose. My top two prized possessions are:
1)
My Clock Radio from 1984. Though it's quite literally old enough to buy beer, this clock radio (by the brilliant folks at GE) has been with me every waking day for the last 21 years. It has 2 alarms, each of which I set every night, along with a "grad-u-wake" feature by which the volume rises slowly until you
must rise (or manually turn the volume down and continue to listen to Howard.) There are other clock radios out there with these features, but what I love most is something I've been unable to find elsewhere: The time is set via numbered buttons on the top of the clock, which I know by heart after 21 years of use. Thus, even if it's pitch dark and/or I don't have my glasses on, I can reset the wakeup time blind. Genius.
(Also, it probably should be noted that this clock radio was somewhat-ill-gotten-booty, as it was gifted under duress by my father on Christmas 1984. I can't remember exactly what transpired, but I think I didn't technically get it as a gift but really wanted it and whined in a bratty fashion until my dad relented. I know, ridiculous, but that's what you get when your parents are divorced. Plus, look how much use I got out of it!)2)
This painting by my Grandma Ruth. I admired this work of art my entire life, and when I first moved into my own place after college, Grandma Ruth graciously passed it on to me. It's just beautiful and I love looking at it. When we traveled cross-country the first time, I had the movers crate it up in this crazy contraption generally reserved for works by Picasso or Monet or the like.
We're making great progress -- we've got one more day, as the movers show up first thing Saturday morning. Tomorrow will be the final push.
Oh and tonight, my manager Jim came by, and
we went to the local dive bar to go over my 2005 review. Cute.
Sleep well!
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Also Moving: This Blog / In addition to all our worldly possessions, we've moved this blog to a new, better, slightly-easier-to-remember URL:
http://www.runonsentence.com/allysonandbryan.htmlHopefully I can figure out how to keep the RSS feeds working properly.
[Pressing many keys on keyboard]
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Today Was My Last Day at Yahoo! / Today was my last day at the Yahoo! Sunnyvale offices. It was perfect: As I drove down at 9 a.m., the skies opened wide to grace us with torrential downpours, whiteout driving conditions, and bone-chilling winds. Midday it began to clear, and I had lunch with Andrea, Erik, and Mr. Hunter (he and I shared an iced tea), saw Steve Enders and his wife and baby (he and Mr. Hunter shared a stroller), and photographed some leftover deviled eggs in the D5 kitchen. Then I said farewell to John and Rachana, who walked me out and took my final Y! photo. Unless you count this one, which I took myself as the security gate released me to freedom.
We were laughing at how nerdy we are, all taking photos in URLs. I like this one of Erik outside Building C.
I can't believe that two years of work fits into one tiny Budweiser box. Well, to be truthful, one tiny Budweiser box plus a backpack plus a bunch of CDs. I guess I'm 93% digital.
Then, it got totally sunny. On the way home I did something I've been meaning to do for a while: stopped at the "vista points" on 280 to take photos. I also took a few while driving, which I will please ask you kids not to try at home, unless you're a trained professional. The photos from points vista are okay. The heavy clouds mixed with sun made for some dramatic moods. I only stayed for a few minutes as there were weird creepy people up there and who would know if one decided to chop me up into a million little pieces?
I'll miss you, Yahoo!.
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5 Things to Throw Away When You're Leaving the Country (and 5 Things to Keep) / Packing our lives into an 11x17 storage space for a year has forced some tough decisions. Well, I suppose we could've rented a smaller storage space -- but then how could we possibly keep The F***ers? Here are some things we're tossing:
1. Bottles and bottles of
nail polish, and tubes and tubes of lipstick.
2.
An old TV we've kept only because it reminds me of college.
3.
Microsoft Ship-It awards.
4. A beleagured (but favorite)
coffee pot.
5.
A computer that no longer feels well.
And some things we'll never part with:
1. The aforementioned
F***ers.
2. Beloved "
frog clock," the first thing Bryan and I ever bought together.
3. Ken O'Brien,
in plastic action figure form, a gift from my brother in 1987.
4. Shoes, belts, and
prom dresses, boiled down to
one medium-sized box.
5.
Important Halloween paraphenalia.
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The World Wide Web Amazes Me / I think I just created an RSS feed for this blog. Sometimes I just dumbly press buttons on my keyboard, and things actually work. It's really kind of crazy. Note "+ My Yahoo!" and "XML" buttons on the lower right side.
Is it working for you?
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Packing Update: The Dump Smells Bad /
It pains me greatly that I've been too busy to compulsively document our recent packing/moving/dumping activities as we ready to leave San Francisco. I'm starting to catch up -- I most recently posted photos from
my brother's opening earlier this month in Brooklyn. I also took a bunch today at the
SF dump, which was quite an interesting experience. As one might expect, it smelled foul, but there were some upsides too: e.g. dumpside animal art (photo to come) and finding out how much our garbage weighed (I'll get back to you on that.) I feel terribly uncomfortable about how much crap we generate as a society. But who doesn't?
Things here are moving along nicely. We've got the rest of the week to finalize everything and be out of the house on New Year's Eve. We'll stay with
Sue and Mike for two days (yes,
Savannah too!) before hitting the road. Then we'll drive cross-country, spend January on the east coast, and finally fly out to Fiji (via LAX) on February 4 for our first leg. It's all very exciting.
More photos to follow... Including the best karaoke ever: in Toronto!
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We're Leaving Our Home in One Month to Travel Around the World /
Bryan and I are getting started. We're:
* Packing
* Planning
* Prognosticating
* Posting
* Pushing
* Partying
* Penny-pinching
And other things that don't begin with "p."
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