Moving – the saga
Sunday, September 26th, 2004Hi everyone! I made it in one piece.
So, Thursday night, I decided to be manly and butch – so I packed everything into the truck by myself. I had people coming over Friday morning to help with the heavy stuff – didn’t need them. Yeah, stupid me.
So Friday morning, I wake up with reall bad back pain and think “I’m going to spend all day driving, this isn’t so good.” My first stop was, naturally, the gas station for pain pills. Went by the office to pick up my final check and said really fast goodbyes to avoid any crying situations.
The Moving Soundtrack was great! The perfect mix of songs (mostly upbeat) about moving on.
As for the drive – now, I’m not saying I’m a better driver than most, but I have never, ever whipped dangerously in front of a large truck then applied my brakes really fast. There’s this little section of I-15 at the Arizona/Utah state line called the Virgen River Gorge, where you have sheer 80 foot rock walls on one side, 30 foot drops to the river below on the other, and the road curves dramatically back and forth (the road even tilts from side to side as you come through the curves). It’s not the place for daredevil driving tactics (yes, I’m talking to you, Mr. Fancy Red Sports Car that almost got run over by me because you are a dipshit!)
Anyway, I came out of the gorge and the “check engine” light came on. Not knowing a thing about engines, I called the rental company’s hotline. They told me it was an engine misfire and I should slow down, avoid hard accelerations and reduce the load of what I was towing. Um, yeah, I did the first two, but what was I supposed to do, leave my van in St. George, Utah?
About an hour later, I ran into a terrible traffic jam. Somebody had flipped an RV and smashed it to pieces across both lanes of the freeway. All the traffic had to pass on the shoulder. I must have taken me an hour to get clear of the wreck. Of course, while I was waiting, the “check engine” light came on again. Someone alongside me signalled me to roll down my window and he told me that I was leaking antifreeze badly.
**Intermission** 2 hours in scenic New Haven, Utah. Population 8, apparently. They did have a nifty Shell station where I waited for the mechanic to come and investigate the problem. Since I still know nothing about engines, I watched him fiddle with things, replace some part, and put lots of antifreeze into the engine before I hit the road again.
Luckily, that was the last engine mishap of the trip. Unfortunately, the trip took nearly twice as long as I was hoping. I pulled into Salt Lake City just after 11 pm Mountain Standard Time – a 13 hour drive to cover 500 miles.
Anyway, Saturday morning meant unpacking the truck (with help this time – my three youngest siblings still living at home and my parents). Unloading the truck went pretty quickly and the kids made the afternoon soccer game with no problem. I also managed to unpack the most important boxes. Here’s a packing tip, though — if there is any chance your family will be helping you to unpack, don’t mix your collection of gay porn in with your regular DVDs. I caught them, just in time, before having to explain to my baby brother (12 years old) what those movies were about.
I’ve already been wounded. You would think that having 9 children, 2 grandchildren, and tons of life experience with these things, my mother would have a rule against glass wall-mount shelves. But no. So, while unpacking clothes in my new room, I stood up too quickly and split my head open. It was a shallow cut, but it bled a lot. I may have mentioned this before, but I have severe hemophobia. We’re talking about shallow breath, nausea, tunnel vision and eventually passing out. So, while I tried not to collapse from my phobia, my mom patched me up with some medical tape. If this had happened to me when I was living on my own, it would have been a 911 call and a trip in an ambulence because they would have arrived to find me unconsious and bleeding heavily.
Saturday was also my maternal grandfather’s 79th birthday. We went to a big family dinner with about half of the adult cousins, aunts and uncles who lived in Salt Lake. It was less unpleasant than I was expecting. Although, for some reason, I started “closeting” myself in small ways. Like, when my cousin Brandon asked me what I’ve been doing for the last few years, I replied, “I’ve been the editor of a growing _____ magazine.” In any other conversation, the words “gay and lesbian” would have been in that blank. This is weird, because I don’t have a problem being open and honest with anybody, but I haven’t seen some of these cousins in literally 5 or more years. They all know I’m gay, but I guess I want to feel them out a bit more before I overdo the political and personal tirades.
Oh, right at the end of the day on Thursday, I got a call back from the publisher of SLMetro magazine. It seems he’s a little unhappy with his current editor and wants to meet with me this week. So yesterday I made a run downtown and picked up a copy of the magazine. They need me. I barely glanced at it and had 15 ideas to improve circulation, differentiate them from their competition, and create a product easier to sell to advertisers. The drawback is, as a new magazine, their current editor is only a part-time employee (which screams “we can’t afford you” in my ears). I may discuss salary versus hourly pay and let them make an offer if they are interested, but until I sit down with the publisher this week, I don’t want to think too much about it.
Anyway, the family is all at church right now, leaving me a few hours of uninterrupted internet time. Damn, but dial-up is slow. I’ve been spoiled. After all the moving expenses, I have about $400 to my name until I have paychecks coming in, but once they do, the priorities become: 1) new car, 2) cable modem or DSL, 3) my own place.
Well, that brings everyone more or less up-to-date on the mundane details of my life. I can tell already that LJ is likely to be the place I turn to often when I’m having family related issues. I’ve spent the last four years living on my own, only interacting with family when I wanted to. Now, I’m in the middle of clan and privacy is a thing of the past. It won’t be so bad, though, once I’ve got a job and start making some RL friends.
