Sockeye*-It To Me!

*OK, congratulations if you noticed. It's SO not even sockeye salmon. It's King/Copper River, which is waaaay better, and thanks to the laws of supply and demnand, waaay pricier. It's the little things...

Oh my goodness, a blog update. Where is everyone? I think only Zimmerhouse updates regularly--check her out.

Well, well, what's been happening? As if you've been dying to know. Summer is upon us in Central Penna, and I've been sweating it up in the humidity. My current routine consists of early-morning wakeup and get up 'n go to my teaching jobs--which have been great!--, and then coming back to my apartment, which is the current source of my discombobulation. My lease is up on August 10th. I will not be renewing, which means I will be moving, which means I will be leaving Penna after all these years. Don't get me wrong, I'm ready to begin transitioning out of here and to schlepp stuff cross-continent to the Motherland, but since beginning the mental and physical demands of the arduous packing process, I am finding things to be a real PITA (pain in the arse).

A few shorts weeks ago, I started taking down my shelves and the like, which means that all my items are, well, all over the place. Since then, I've slowly been getting rid of things, shipping books via media mail, ridding myself of some furniture items, putting classified ads in for stuff and generally doing moving-type things. This is when I wish I didn't have to do it all myself. Urgh!

By the way, if you are in town on 7/7/07, apartment #7 and neighbor are having a huge yard sale...so stop on by! We plan to start early to cater to the pro and semi-professional yard sale hunters.

I've moved before. It's always a pain. But this time is different, as I am not moving to another country, but rather getting stuff back to another state. I don't have THAT much stuff, but on the other hand, hey, I have a lot of STUFF. So I'm getting rid of most of it. Ideally, I'll only take what I can fit in the Buick in the drive back West at the end of August. Realistically, though, U-Haul will be a travelling companion. Yay, time and money out the door! But I guess it is, as they say, all part of the deal.

This is how it goes: I wake up daily to a place in disarray, go do my teaching stuff, maybe do something on campus, and come home to the mess. It's bizarre. I don't really live here anymore. I am glad that I've started taking apart gradually rather than all at the last minute--anything to avoid more PITA.

The shifty situation has manifested itself into other aspects of life as well. I am not exercising regularly, and I don't know why. It's not like the weather isn't nice, and I don't need to spend more time inside than necessary. Some days I can't even find stuff, like my keys, and sometimes I don't even have space to sit down to a meal. Which is why I think I photographed the above lunch from today--hopefully a metaphor for calm in the storm and nourishment, etc. etc., yadda yadda.

By the way, one of the many things I will miss about living in Penna is getting fresh Alaska line-caught salmon here: when I'm chit-chatting with the gal at the Seafood counter and say 'oh wow, that salmon looks great today!' said gal reliably comes back with a 'yeah, I've heard'. I've encoded this utterance to mean, 'Nope, never tried salmon, never gonna. That stuff looks FREAKY! Now where's my ham loaf?' Yet another reason to keep plugging away at my PacNW / Penna Dutch fusion cuisine. Fresh blueberries from the Amish, fresh salmon from the sea, cornbread from whomever, coleslaw from the deli ladies here, and you got yourself some good eatin'. If you can follow with delish coffee from the PacNW combined with the caliber of pie that only Penna produces, you have yourself a dessert made in heaven too. Conversely, you could do yourself damage by getting a cheesesteak in Seattle and coffee at a farmer's market in Penna and learn what horrid eating really means.

So, until next time, this has been a Most Interesting Update from the great disapperaing office nook of Lisaopolis. In fact, I now write to you on a little table housing my MacBook, since I sold my IKEA desk and have packed up my iMac, debating on whether to Fed-Ex it on ahead, or pack it in aforementioned U-Haul container.

Stay tuned for the next big thing, which, due to internationally mysterious banking issues holding up a firm contractual agreement, I can neither confirm nor deny.