transitioning

Well I have survived 1.5 weeks in Virginia and 4 days at my new job. Things are going well for the most part. Am slowly getting used to life in a townhouse, figuring out the new locations of old belongings, driving to work, and being back in the eastern time zone. Lots of updating to do and it just poured out of me tonight, so here ya go. I wrote a lot so I'll split it into 2 parts so as not to bombard the world with too many words at once :)

Moving sure is an adventure. Putting all our belongings into boxes… letting a moving company load them onto the truck… sleeping on camping mats/sleeping bag on hardwood floors because everything except the items coming in the car are on the truck…. Fun times. See the previous post for photographic evidence. Oh and can't forget about the day of frantic cleaning - that was supposed to take just a couple of hours - so that the condo would be ready for the renters (we are still crossing our fingers that our agent finds someone soon!). And loading the car with all the important stuff, like all the plants that weren't allowed to be transported by truck. And then driving 800 miles, stopping at both parents' houses along the way, and unloading the plants each time because it was too cold for them to sit out overnight.

It was a crazy, jumbled, sleep-deprived whirlwind, but it was actually kind of fun. We left Chicago on Saturday around 6 pm - about 6 hours later than we'd intended, but we were determined to get the show on the road, now that the condo was empty and sparkling clean. That night we drove west with the supermoon ahead of us - I hadn't heard about it at all, and was pretty amazed at how huge it was looming ahead on the horizon with its red tint. Then some smartphone browsing revealed that it was an astronomical event. Seemed like a promising start :) We were listening to Guster's Ganging up on the Sun, which seemed rather appropriate for the occasion. In any case the moon guided us safely to our first stop. The next day we squeezed in some visiting with the in-laws before making our next, shorter jaunt to my own parents house. That was a shorter visit, because we got a call from the truck driver asking if we could be there a day early. So Monday, we drove the 4.5 hours south to Virginia. Suddenly, it was hot! The a/c in our little car couldn't keep up. This was a totally new drive for us, through Maryland and West Virginia and into Virginia. It was definitely a charming entry into our new town as we wove our way around the mountains. We made it to our new home, unloaded our car's worth of stuff, and stretched our legs by walking over to the grocery store to stock up on some food and necessities. Was quite pleasantly surprised to realize we still have the ability to walk to buy groceries - possibly even a shorter distance than we had in Chicago. After almost 7 years in the city it would be hard to give up all of our ambulatory ways, so I think we picked ourselves a good location. Then it was another night on the camping mats - though I did find it easier to sleep the second time (and having 2 nights of good sleep on comfy beds in between definitely helped!).

Stay tuned for Part II of the big transition!