And they're off! (posted by Lani)

Or she's off anyway, she being me, and off being very loosely used here since I don't actually leave until tomorrow morning, but bear with me here. This morning started off beautifully; I walked outside and something moved and WHOA! It's a bunny! A BUNNY in my yard, a little brown bunny with a little puff of a white cottontail and a twitchy nose, eating my pansies. In the middle of Norfolk. He was so cute and it was just such a nice, unexpected way to start the day that I even forgave him for the pansies. I retreated back into the house, opened the blinds, and the cats and I bunny-watched for a while.

After that, the day was a whirl:
(1) running to Kmart to buy Space Bags (nifty! neato! they compress your stuff into teensy little stuff-bricks that take up NO space! downside: your stuff, when uncompressed, is going to be wrinkled like mad. I'm channeling Scarlett O'Hara with regard to that though, and I'll worry about it tomorrow.)
(2) continuing on to Target to (a) buy a cheapo bedding set and some cheapo pillows (because, as Steve pointed out, they might not have stores in Philadelphia. Thank you, Mr. Sarcasm, but I want sheets and pillows immediately, not a day or so after I get there. I'm funny that way.) and (b) sweettalk the watch lady into putting a new battery into my watch (ok fine, I didn't sweettalk her, I outright lied and told her I bought this watch at a Target in South Florida at a Special Event ... but the desired results were achieved and my watch has a new battery), and
(3) running back to Kmart because one of the space bags had a hole in it, and
(4) an orgy of packing and unpacking and repacking,
all interspersed with multiple phone calls to and from Laurie as she, Mom, Dad and Alex went to Fort Walton to look at cars (I'm assuming, Ann, that you knew that Laurie's car had been totalled recently, and for the rest of you, hey! Laurie's car was totalled recently!), and Laurie wanted to discuss options, and have me run VIN numbers for her on CarFax, and then more phone calls to wax ecstatic over the car they decided on (2005 Toyota Corolla, silver with black interior, she loves it but feels guilty about the cost), and then more phone calls because she stopped to get Alex ice cream and he tripped and took a nasty fall and had a big gooseegg on his head and should she take him to the ER, and then once we decided he was fine there was a brief intermission followed by MORE phone calls with much jumping up and down and cheering on both ends because Alex won the costume contest at the Yacht Club with his dinosaur costume (courtesy of yours truly and he did remember to say Grammer, thank you my dinosaur clothes). Whew.

I did manage, somewhere during all of this, to finish packing. It's tricky, trying to figure out what I'll need in order to live in two places at once and also travel. My room in Philly has a bed and pretty much that's it; blanket, pillows, sheets, towels, all that is up to me. Plus I'll need my uniform of course, and clothes to wear to hang out in because odds are good I'll be doing a fair amount of hanging while waiting to be called off reserve, and something(s) to keep me busy while hanging (said something(s) of course being composed primarily of yarn), and at least a little of what my friend Trish used to call "homey shit" ... the little knicknacks that make your place yours, and not a sterile hotel room. I have to take my crew bags since those are what I'm required to use to travel, so that leaves me one suitcase to pack pretty much everything other than my uniform in. YAY for space bags is all I have to say, and let's hope the nice people who check me in tomorrow don't get too anal about that 50 pound per bag limit because *ahem* I may be a little teensy bit over, what with my one suitcase containing, um, everything I mentioned above. Even the homey shit. And oh yeah, shoes.

I did order a laptop for the road but it won't be here until late this week, so I'll pick it up when I come back home on the 8th. Until then I'll probably have rather limited net access; my roommate does have her computer at the new house and I'll be able to check email and hopefully post pictures of my new place, but until I get back home that may be about it for the internets for me. I'll miss you ... and when I get back on the 8th I should have lots of stories to tell.