5 Things I Won't Miss About Salinas...

Okay, so I could only come up with 3, but I'm pretty sure it was up to 5 a couple of days ago.  So I might update the page if I remember the others.

3. Water On, Water Off
Sometimes, I would wonder if manager of our apartments was channeling Mr. Myagi.  While not as common as they were when we first moved in, water outages would still occur about once or twice a month- usually just before I was getting ready for work (IOW, just about to take a shower).

2. The Overhang Hangover
The upper level of the apartments had a landing which led to the individual apartments.  Some of the children that lived there thought this was the perfect place to ride their bikes and/or big wheels.  Some of the tenants underneath (such as myself), however, had a different opinion of the suitability of the landing for such a purpose considering the amount of noise it made.

1. The Crosswalk Of DOOM!

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While it looks quite peaceful on a Google map, the reality was that the crosswalk at Sorrentini and Natividad Avenue was a death trap more often than not.  Making it worse were drivers going north and, seeing a red light at East Laurel Drive, would slow down enough that they wouldn't pass the crosswalk soon enough for a pedestrian to cross after them, but go fast enough that he or she couldn't pass in from of them.  NEWSFLASH: Yes, there is a reason why the city painted those two white lines crossing from one side of the street to the other side and placed those yellow signs with a black figure that looks suspiciously like someone trying to cross the street.

This Is The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance...

The day has come... that is, if everything with the moving truck works out as we hope/expect.  Problem is, I have a debit card, but no license, and my brother-in-law has a driver's license, but no credit card.  Now, if only the rental place will accept a debit card, we should be o.k.  Otherwise, I might have to go to the bank, withdraw some money, and hope they accept that instead.  While I realize they have to be security conscious about who they rent the trucks out to, I would think we would have enough identification among us to establish our identities.  Odd on how the whole move might be jeopardized by such a small detail.  And I have no idea what we're going to do if we don't get the van.
The bathroom looks weird in a spartan sort of way.  The only things of ours left in at the moment are some soap, a towel, and some toilet paper.  There's also a bit of an echo in there now, but we're not planning on taking that with us.
If nothing else, we got rid of a lot of trash.  Hopefully, a few prayers and/or some fast talking will be enough to see us through this difficulty.  Anyway, my brother-in-law and nephews should be here in a few hours.  Que sera, sera.

"We accept quality blog that are in English only and please submit titles and descriptions in English only."

The irony of the above is that it should be :"We accept quality blogs...."  Sad to say that's hardly the only "English" error on the blog directory submission page, such as numerous "We not"'s, "All payment is life time inclusion", and "$5.99 (Before Price Up!!!)",  And to add insult to injury, this is one of the few directories that I've seen that doesn't offer free submissions (and I have a list of at least 12 that don't,. although a few require reciprocal linking), to which I can only add that I hope their service is better than their language skills.
As for the move, we've run into a bit of a snag.  It appears that my brother-in-law's vehicle isn't up to making the trip here and back.  I was considering renting a car, having him drive it up here, and then have him drive the van back while one of his sons drives the car back (it's not like all five of us would fit in the van), but, unfortunately, neither of his sons has a driver's license.  It looks like we'll have to rent the car, fill the van, and send one of his sons and my wife via bus or train.  Adds a bit of cost to the move, but I don't see any viable options out there.

The Experiment Was A Success; Status Report At T-minus 2 Days

I is genius!
On the home front, I still have one (half) bin of garbage to toss out unless we find some more, which I highly doubt.    The only things left to pack are pretty much stuff that will have to wait until the last minute (food, dinnerware, the telephone, clock, cables from the TV and computer, etc.).  I've taken everything we had hanging on the walls off, but still have some nails in the combination dining room/ kitchen that I'm going to have to wait until we remove the boxes that are piled in front of the window which is under them (the nails, that is).  I still have to call to get gas/water/electricity turned on, but, other than that, my day today (the 23rd) should be fairly free.  My brother-in-law and a couple of nephews (from my wife's side) should be coming from Los Angeles sometime Friday (night?) to help us get the truck, load it, and move our stuff there and we've already cleared a space for them in the living room for them to sleep.  Then the fun begins all over again with unpacking and getting settled in.
My brain, meanwhile, is still in that weirded-out zone between "Wow!  Are we finally going to do this?" and "AUUUUUUUUGH!  Do we really want to do this?".

EDIT: Just had a scary moment when I heard something fall in the kitchen.  Turned out to be just the ironing board which was leaning against the refrigerator sliding down.

5 Days To Go... & I Sometimes Wonder Whether We're Throwing Away More Than What We're Keeping

Beyond that, not much to write about.  Just another day of throwing more stuff out and packing.  Tomorrow (or, that is, later today) ought to offer a bit more variety, if not excitement.  Have to cancel one doctor's appointment for my wife which was supposed to happen in March and confirm a change of service with the phone company.  Other than that, it looks like more packing and... well, there doesn't appear to be much left that we're planning on throwing away.  Of course, it might well turn out that not everything fits on the truck, but I don't foresee having that problem.  On the other hand, most people who that has happened to probably thought the same way ahead of time.  So it may well turn into one of those cases of "oops, time to go to plan 'b'"- that is, if there is a plan 'b'.

Trash, Trash, & MORE TRASH!

I suppose one consequence of moving is that it's forced us to become a little less materialistic as we simply won't have enough room where we're moving to to keep all the stuff we've managed to accumulate here (not to mention that we'd prefer not to move a whole bunch of stuff we no longer want- or at least not enough to pack it up and move it with us.  Thus, it seems like every time I've gone to empty the (quite large) bin of garbage into the dumpster, it's only back in the apartment for a few seconds before it's full again.  And that's not even including everything that we've given away (such as my *sob* approximately 5000 comic book collection (NOTE: if you ever want to get a huge response to a CraigsList ad, simply add the words "1000's of free comic books" somewhere in the title*]).  Even though I posted the ad at about 2:00 a.m., I got about 20 replies within minutes and at least 100 all told, although a few of them were actually interested in the free furniture I was giving away as well)..
Which brings me to a (AFAIK) new proverb: "Man** who want to know how much trash he have should try moving".

* N.B.:It's probably advisable, if not more honest, to first have 1000's of comic books that you're willing to give away though..  Just saying.
** Not trying to be sexist here, it's just that proverbs traditionally begin with "Man".  Anyone who wants to spread this proverb and feels more comfortable with using "Person" or even "Woman" has my official permission to do so.

One Week To Go... And Then We're Off To L.A.

I'm currently on vacation and plan to move with my wife to Los Angeles next week (February 25) to an apartment that's only a couple doors down from where her sister lives.  We're pretty much all packed up, but have a few more things that we're still have to get to.  I've called the utility companies to shut off service here.  Still have to find out which company is supposed to supply gas and electric down there, as well as make an appointment to get internet connected.  I'm also still waiting to find out whether I'm going to have a job down there at HomeTown Buffet.  I currently work at the one in Salinas and have been with the company for almost 13 years, but evidently, that's not enough to assure me that they're going to let me work there.  I'm just going to what I always do, though: the best I can and after that, not worry about it (not that I'm claiming that that's always as easy to do as to say).