Mr. Fototaker. yea right. I wish everyone could lead a month in my shoes. In the two plus years in San Francisco, I walk around with no money in my pockets, because I didn't have any. I would ask for pocket money from my sister but that was always used to buy things for her....
Now I am returning to my empty apartment in southern Spain. Yeaaaaa, you're thinking what a great life. Well, I've been saving up my money (wot money) over these last few years in the states so I can do the maintenance I need to get my apt back to living condition again. I just paid a small fortune (seems that way for me) to ship my stuff to the East Coast and later hope to fly in the winter months to get my stuff, two suitcases at a time. yea yea yeaaaa, what a great life!!!
I just shipped out 20 damn large boxes, suitcases and plastic containers full of my USA life. I thought it would be NO more than 10, so when did this stuff all come from? Plus I never have money to buy anything,..... where did it all come from? To enlighten you a bit: my "souvenirs" are usually my own photos or a receipt from a bus ride, the entry fee paid to enter a state park, etc and I do have a LOT of those; or a free brochure from some place I stopped at.... wow!! this guy's got some great memories!!!!
Yea, yea, yeaaaaaaa what a great life!
So, now everyone thinks I got this great free "benefit" of flying any where free. "Come visit, you can fly free".... yea right.
So I sit in a military terminal in the middle of nowhere, can't go anywhere because I'll have two huge suitcases to watch and lug around! How fun.....
What a great Life!!!!
So, I sit there waiting for a flight and it may take a day or a month (it's happened before) but heck: it's free!!! I love sitting there reading too dam many books, not taking a shower for days/weeks and hey, I don't have to dress down or get dressed every night or morning!! Plus those airport bench chairs are sooo comfortable too!!
Yea right. What a great Life!!!!
Let's see: 560 lbs of stuff shipped to the East Coast. Two suitcases to fill up.... wait for another flight, sitting there all day and it's not open at night, so I have to leave each day and go "somewhere". Maybe a shady tree on the runway would be nice? It shouldn't take more than a few years of flying back and forth, right?
Yea, yea, yeaaaaaaa what a great life!
ooooh, go stuff it!!!! I am goneeeeeeee (but still not done packing nor cleaning!!!)
Showing posts with label leaving for good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leaving for good. Show all posts
Monday, March 15, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
last days......
and am planning to pack the laptop and external monitor Sunday so will be silent finally, and be able to do the last work. Earlier this week some East Bay friends crossed the bay by BaRT and invited me to a chilly outdoor lunch. I didn't mind at all... even got to see some noisy parrots one last time before leaving. Last night a few friends of my sister invited me with a close friend to dine at Zarzuela, a great spanish restaurant just a few blocks from where I live with my sister. I had dined there previously as a birthday-dinner over a year ago and really loved it... this time was just as great and in addition was treated with a solo rendition in spanish a birthday tribute to a diner. The restaurant was packed - as usual - and Spain-noisy (which I like) and when the singing began, the hush was complete as it continued for quite a few minutes. It was a special treat, feeling almost as if it were sung for me! In just a few more days I will be in Spain, so this really touched me, plus having these nice send-offs..... I wish the packing went as easy and quick.
I have been preparing for my departure for over a year, and started the serious packing over six months ago, trashing a lot of junk and boxing others. then came the decision to burn all of my images on CDs to external hard drives delayed me quite a bit. Two months ago when I was hit by a - what I like to call the facebook virus - they delayed me by another three weeks as I was busy night and day trying to fix that. Oh yea.... in case you are interested, I was hit then by up to 24 viruses after that facebook virus hit me... for that reason I stay off facebook a lot now.
These last few days have been a blur of packing and trashing. In just the last three days, I estimate I've dumped enough papers, plastics and other recyclable items to fill up the SF blue recycle bin four times over. I won't even mention take your time to describe the five huge garbage bags filled with trash. I've been so stressed packing and worrying - at one stage I couldn't find my passport and thought I had perhaps trashed it, recycled it, or plain boxed it inside one of 15 containers already taped closed!
I had one side of my sister's crowded filthy messy garage for meself and my boxes. That garage is much cleaner than it was when I first arrived over two years ago, and so is her flat too. I've worked my butt off all this time and now will devote some hard manual labor in my apartment very soon! Just hope my key works!! hahahahaa
Today delivered the bulk of my packed and closed boxes to a shipping company near the airport. Imagine myself and a friend who's been giving me a lot of her time to selflessly help me pack, driving on the freeway - she hates that and has never driven on a freeway before - following me with my boxes in her car and mine loaded down with even more, my fuel gauge very low and the low gas light lit. The drive from North Beach to this place is just about 11miles and I made it there in the rush hour with just a half gallon remaining in the tank. Now I can "relax" and try to clean, box the remaining few, and get ready to DEPART!!!!! Monday I'll take a few last boxes and plastic containers, then I'm through. Just to clean up and finish up on some last things... the laptop gets closed and packed Sunday so no more distractions... the next time will be in Rota somewhere probably in a cybercafe or a library!
Hasta pronto... la proxima sera desde Rota, España! ciao - it's been nice, interesting and a lot of work.
I have been preparing for my departure for over a year, and started the serious packing over six months ago, trashing a lot of junk and boxing others. then came the decision to burn all of my images on CDs to external hard drives delayed me quite a bit. Two months ago when I was hit by a - what I like to call the facebook virus - they delayed me by another three weeks as I was busy night and day trying to fix that. Oh yea.... in case you are interested, I was hit then by up to 24 viruses after that facebook virus hit me... for that reason I stay off facebook a lot now.
These last few days have been a blur of packing and trashing. In just the last three days, I estimate I've dumped enough papers, plastics and other recyclable items to fill up the SF blue recycle bin four times over. I won't even mention take your time to describe the five huge garbage bags filled with trash. I've been so stressed packing and worrying - at one stage I couldn't find my passport and thought I had perhaps trashed it, recycled it, or plain boxed it inside one of 15 containers already taped closed!
I had one side of my sister's crowded filthy messy garage for meself and my boxes. That garage is much cleaner than it was when I first arrived over two years ago, and so is her flat too. I've worked my butt off all this time and now will devote some hard manual labor in my apartment very soon! Just hope my key works!! hahahahaa
Today delivered the bulk of my packed and closed boxes to a shipping company near the airport. Imagine myself and a friend who's been giving me a lot of her time to selflessly help me pack, driving on the freeway - she hates that and has never driven on a freeway before - following me with my boxes in her car and mine loaded down with even more, my fuel gauge very low and the low gas light lit. The drive from North Beach to this place is just about 11miles and I made it there in the rush hour with just a half gallon remaining in the tank. Now I can "relax" and try to clean, box the remaining few, and get ready to DEPART!!!!! Monday I'll take a few last boxes and plastic containers, then I'm through. Just to clean up and finish up on some last things... the laptop gets closed and packed Sunday so no more distractions... the next time will be in Rota somewhere probably in a cybercafe or a library!
Hasta pronto... la proxima sera desde Rota, España! ciao - it's been nice, interesting and a lot of work.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
moving again - the story of my Life
okay, I know I've been AWoL frome here but you wouldn't believe my life these past few weeks.
It seems I was infected by a virus some months ago but it sat quiet. My sister let me buy a new faster motherboard, CPU and memory.... when that arrived I installed everything, then loaded my old hard drives from the old box into my new faster setup! After testing and revalidating my windows (wot a pain), I finally got it working - and it was fast but still not as fast as my laptop.... something seemed wrong. I ran tests and it was during the testing phase of the new system that I discovered I was infected by the bug Trojan.vundo. It finally reared its ugly head and made my life miserable for three whole weeks before I decided to wipe it and my hard drives clean. I didn't want to do that but now that I look back, it seems logical. I just didn't want to reinstall everything but ended up doing it anyway... I could have saved myself three weeks of hell and misery: sleeping maybe three hours a night, testing, scanning and finding those critters.
Fortunately they affected only system files.....
So, now my system is up and running (again) and the tests are good, being the fast system it's supposed to be, much faster than my older system I picked up while in Oregon and lightspeed faster than my old dinosaur in my apartment in Spain... hopefully within a week I'll be able to box this desktop up and take it on the plane in April when I return and start my waiting game for a cargo plane to Spain.... not looking forward to that at all!!
So, for the last seven months I've been packing up slowly, and now even more than before. My biggest job was to box up my folding bicycle and now that I know how to FOLD it (so simple yet so difficult for dumb non-bike owners like me), that is finally done and out of the way. This will be flying with me on my initial British Airways flight to Spain as excess baggage and I'll be paying for that to go with me. I have never carried so much on a plane before!! I'm already dreading it when I have to take this up into my apartment on the second floor, but at least there I have an elevator!
So, my life continues: I'm living in boxes yet again, and am hoping this will be the very last time till my death. During the day while sis is at her 7am to 5pm job, I pack and clean and during the afternoons/nights, I am on this desktop trying to move everything off onto my ext hard drives (eHDs) so I can access it later through my laptop.
I do not expect to have home net access for many months when I return to Spain. So often a person who has moved gets ISP service to later discover it's not what they want. This is due to not knowing what is available, what is better than others, and just wanting something quick. I hope to resolve that possible situation by NOT contracting net service until I am truly ready and not the reliability and quality of the service I'll be paying for! There's a lot of cybercafes in Rota, plus I hear there's a free wifi spot now downtown!
In the meanwhile I continue to search for my lost boxes from Spain and Oregon (two remain hidden ~ where I have no idea), and separating stuff into three groups: take with me, take in April with me, and shipped to friends' in VA and I won't take to Spain with me until later this winter.
So, if you don't hear from me, you know what I am doing: packing and I've probably packed my brains by accident!
Less than a month togooooo before I fly out!!!
On the weekends I've been gone on small foto trips to destress from all of my hectic schedule and activities..... pray for me I don't pack my eyes too!!!
views from Pinnacle National Monument
It seems I was infected by a virus some months ago but it sat quiet. My sister let me buy a new faster motherboard, CPU and memory.... when that arrived I installed everything, then loaded my old hard drives from the old box into my new faster setup! After testing and revalidating my windows (wot a pain), I finally got it working - and it was fast but still not as fast as my laptop.... something seemed wrong. I ran tests and it was during the testing phase of the new system that I discovered I was infected by the bug Trojan.vundo. It finally reared its ugly head and made my life miserable for three whole weeks before I decided to wipe it and my hard drives clean. I didn't want to do that but now that I look back, it seems logical. I just didn't want to reinstall everything but ended up doing it anyway... I could have saved myself three weeks of hell and misery: sleeping maybe three hours a night, testing, scanning and finding those critters.
Fortunately they affected only system files.....
So, now my system is up and running (again) and the tests are good, being the fast system it's supposed to be, much faster than my older system I picked up while in Oregon and lightspeed faster than my old dinosaur in my apartment in Spain... hopefully within a week I'll be able to box this desktop up and take it on the plane in April when I return and start my waiting game for a cargo plane to Spain.... not looking forward to that at all!!
So, for the last seven months I've been packing up slowly, and now even more than before. My biggest job was to box up my folding bicycle and now that I know how to FOLD it (so simple yet so difficult for dumb non-bike owners like me), that is finally done and out of the way. This will be flying with me on my initial British Airways flight to Spain as excess baggage and I'll be paying for that to go with me. I have never carried so much on a plane before!! I'm already dreading it when I have to take this up into my apartment on the second floor, but at least there I have an elevator!
So, my life continues: I'm living in boxes yet again, and am hoping this will be the very last time till my death. During the day while sis is at her 7am to 5pm job, I pack and clean and during the afternoons/nights, I am on this desktop trying to move everything off onto my ext hard drives (eHDs) so I can access it later through my laptop.
I do not expect to have home net access for many months when I return to Spain. So often a person who has moved gets ISP service to later discover it's not what they want. This is due to not knowing what is available, what is better than others, and just wanting something quick. I hope to resolve that possible situation by NOT contracting net service until I am truly ready and not the reliability and quality of the service I'll be paying for! There's a lot of cybercafes in Rota, plus I hear there's a free wifi spot now downtown!
In the meanwhile I continue to search for my lost boxes from Spain and Oregon (two remain hidden ~ where I have no idea), and separating stuff into three groups: take with me, take in April with me, and shipped to friends' in VA and I won't take to Spain with me until later this winter.
So, if you don't hear from me, you know what I am doing: packing and I've probably packed my brains by accident!
Less than a month togooooo before I fly out!!!
On the weekends I've been gone on small foto trips to destress from all of my hectic schedule and activities..... pray for me I don't pack my eyes too!!!
views from Pinnacle National Monument
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
