dilemmas thrown up by moving house (absurd division)

a couple of hours after frying the bacon for today's bacon sandwich -- the last in this flat -- my ancient griddle pan decisively gave up the ghost (wobbly handle just broke off)

thank you and well done my good and faithful servant 😪🙏🏼

like the cosmos marking the occasion

just spent 30 mins hunting for a shoe increasingly convinced i had somehow packed it randomly and singly who knows where or else loaded it (again singly) into the washing machine

of course it was kicked under a chair as usual but

shoe elves

The move is in progress! I have left NJ, where I lived pretty much the whole first 50 years of my life, and am now in Montana. Our possessions are en route, and our car will be here tomorrow. Picking up the keys to the new apartment this afternoon, but I'm in a hotel for a week just to make the transition smooth and easy.

hey we're almost neighbors, by West Coast standards! (I'm in Western Oregon)

good luck with the move! my current absurd status is being surrounded by 349857139847 ill-labeled boxes wondering which one item x is in and how long it will be before i find it

it was almost certainly into a box semi-full of something quite different at the last minute so the label will be no help at all

("books" thx you lazy fvck)

but i am in my new home and hometown and hugely enjoying it

Almost all of our boxes are unpacked in Savannah. Garage is a wreck though. Hanging art, which is fun.

The move is in progress! I have left NJ, where I lived pretty much the whole first 50 years of my life, and am now in Montana. Our possessions are en route, and our car will be here tomorrow. Picking up the keys to the new apartment this afternoon, but I'm in a hotel for a week just to make the transition smooth and easy.

update: i found the things i was hunting for (the various leads and additional appliances that make my TV work): they were in a big semi-see-thru container with all my plugs and plugboards which i had put on one side bcz it was full of plugs and plugboards and doesn't need unpacking (= good place to store plugs and plugboards)

How will you see jazz shows in Montana?

By booking them! (Not 100% joking; the state has a pretty robust program of arts grants, and Burning Ambulance is a fully legal LLC, so I'm gonna have a friend with a lot of grant-writing experience help me put a proposal together.)

i have a question if i may. worried it might be a bit personal.

why move out of london?
why now?
how did you choose where to live?

(i am wondering what my own end-game is. a rented one bed flat isn't sustainable long term and buying isn't an option. i've also done almost literally nothing in the last 3 years that have required me to be in london, can count the number of times i've been on public transport on my fingers)

(that specifically to mark s i hadn't noticed the revive)

(there was another thread about where you would live ideally. maybe that's a better place for this. currently watching lemington spa art deco railway station refurbish and it's making me slightly envious)

( If you could pack up and move your whole life, where would you go? )

In answer to yr questions

i and ii: London became expensive and I got old… obviously during lockdown I was barely going out and seeing people anyway, and I realised that (a) I am reasonably comfortable with my own solo company most of the day; except for a tiny number of v short projects I haven't worked in an office since 2014 and didn't really miss it and (b) the work I do now (editorial consultancy on books rather than subbing magazines) I can basically do from anywhere that has the internet.

So why not move somewhere much cheaper and carry on as I am into retirement…

How did I choose where? First of all I was like, I can go anywhere! But that was much too much choice and my brain froze up. And then -- based almost on random searching* -- I realised I very much liked the idea of a town by the sea, with old stone quaysides. I know a few ppl in Plymouth; I did some work here a few years back and enjoyed the visit. It's only a few hours from London and the train journey isn't complicated (the way trains to most of Wales are complicated, for example; another early possibility). It's a city with a university but it's not fancy…

*was it random or was it meant to be? i happening on milford haven via GiS, a place I haven't thought abt since the 2 or 3 weeks we did OIL in geography when i was like 10. It's not far from where my sister sometimes goes on holiday, plus I think I was browsing pictures of stack rock fort and being deliberately unrealistic: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/stack-rock-fort

https://i0.wp.com/thewanderingquinn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Stackrock-Fort.jpg

thanks