It's like Groundhog's Day....

It's funny what packing up your crap and putting it into storage can do. People pick up and move for every kind of reason and they say goodbye to their people and their places. Or not. Cross-town moves, cross-state, cross-country, move for work, move by choice, move to escape, move for more opportunity, move to stave off boredom. Move to keep moving. Whatever the reasons, moves always involve goodbyes. With smiles, tears, and sometimes a well placed "suck it." I've known I'd be moving for a while. I've visited all the places I've wanted to, made plans to visit with friends when I should have been packing, even had an amazing mustache themed farewell party. I've said goodbye so many times I think it's starting to get old for some people.

Today is the day I'm supposed to pack up Trixie and head north to visit with the fam before I fly to England on Saturday. I even had one final goodbye this morning that involved silent tears... you know the kind. Except now I might have to stay longer. My work PC is jacked up. Thank you IT and your automatic "updates." So I find myself tied to my work computer and phone in a way that I haven't in a long time. Waiting for them to try and fix the thing remotely. Waiting for them to tell me I need to bring it in to some office. Waiting for them to tell me it will be a week before they could fix it. Whatever. I'm tied to the damn thing and I'm stuck in a place where I've said goodbye to all my friends 5 times over. It's like Groundhog's Day. But not in a funny way.

This is all a very long-winded way of saying I'm excited and ready to leave except I can't. And there is a very real plane waiting for me on Saturday that I will catch, stupid-work-computer fix in place or not. Gooo. It's not the end of the world, just a rather large annoyance. But plans change and good things come out of those changes if you look for them.

of meetings and boxes

I sit in my office drinking coffee. I used the last of the half-n-half just a few minutes ago, so tomorrow won't be quite so lovely on the coffee front. I am also surrounded by packed boxes and the detritus of crap not yet crammed into to some appropriately sized and shaped box. Finally, I sit in my office only moderately paying attention to a giant, catch-all meeting. You can see my priorities here: coffee (elixir of life), packing (big big doings), and then giant meeting*. Honestly, the giant meeting is much lower but nothing else is doing.

Let me explain the boxes: they are labeled with great detail. You see, I'm putting my riff-raff into storage for the next 6 months or so because I'm going to Europe for 5 months. Maybe a bit longer, at least for the storage of boxes. The movers come on Friday to load everything up. I will now take this opportunity to say that anyone who enjoys packing is completely insane. I've met them. I know they're out there. Except they don't look like the kind of people you wished you'd avoided by crossing the street after you spotted them.

Bottom line, this Nerd is going on a big trip. I'll have two bases of operation over the next 5 months (one in England, the other in Germany) and hope to have trips to Scotland, Ireland, France, Croatia, and Greece. There will be other things. My Easter weekend will be spent traveling through Middle Earth to Snowdonia to conquer the inimitable Mt. Snowdon. All 3,560 feet of it. It will probably rain or snow the entire way up, so I really shouldn't make fun.

Consider yourself warned, all 5 readers who gave up on this blog. The Nerd is back for the foreseeable future to apprise you of the status of the English countryside, the prevalence of tweeds, and the state of German beer. There will at least be 3 other blog posts thrown in between those topics as well. Don't want to give it all away.


* words like "synergies," "mega," "pipeline," and "drive awareness" are thrown about; you can understand why these aren't a favorite work-a-day experience of mine.