my time on terra firma

My housemate has Olympic fever...and there's no cure! She's been TiVo'ing all of the NBC televised events (she hasn't TiVo'd any of the other broadcasts on MSNBC, Telemundo and Bravo; I don't think she has the time to watch 'em all), and watching them in succession. She knows the names and back stories of just about all of the American Olympians and I'd wager she knows a percentage of their opponents as well. She's too smart to fall for the dramatics of the Olympics (the music starts off slow and then builds, athletes move in slo-mo, determined looks on their faces; contorted in pain...moving to discomfort, aggression, defiance and finally, triumph. Music builds to a crescendo. Arms raised in victory; dancing, wooping and/or lunging forward, weight resting on their front knee, one arm shoots back @ the elbow in a "Ka-ching, I gotcha!" type motion), she watches for the competition and for the US of A. She watches w/baited breath when the US

It's over. Every box has been packed and shipped, every floor has been swept and inspected, every hole spackled, every sink has been scrubbed and wiped down. Our house is no longer our home. It has been "cleansed" of all of our personalities and is now ready to be filled w/new ones. Someone else's. Another family's. Since everything is gone, our voices carry a lot further, there's no furniture, dining room table, TV or what-not shelf to absorb the vibrations of our voices. It now sounds like we're standing in cave rather than the cozy dwelling of a family of three. I remember when we first moved in. None of our furniture was there yet and there was five of us, my mother, myself, my sister, my step-father and my grandfather. So much has changed. If someone were to ask us @ the very moment we put the last piece of furniture in place what the dynamic of the family would be like when we took the last piece of furniture out, we'd probably think that things

I've been working on this project for a few days now; I have to take the names of contacts from a 24 page fax and re-type them into a word document. Fun, fun, fun. Very easy to get distracted and think about doing something else. Took me @ least two days to type it up, but now, I'm having major issues trying to mail merge it into mailing labels. Never a dull moment. So now, I'm copying the info out of a word doc. and into a spreadsheet. From there, I'll cut and paste the info into columns that will make the mail merge go easier. It seems like there's just one obstacle after another; every time I do something w/this assignment, I'm forced to change direction and try something new; it seems like if it isn't one thing, it's another. Just when I'm ready to curse out my CPU and throw it out of the nearest window, I figure out a new and faster way to get the job done. Every challenge seems to be an opportunity to overcome said challenge and come away from

So, it's come to this; after 16 years of living in the same place (give or take 4 years for military service), I must move. I'm still in the midst of packing. I'll have to pack all afterwork tonight and tomorrow night. Just 10 good solid hours of packing and purging, packing and purging. And I can't rest, not even for a second. Not because I'll waste little precious moments that I could've spent packing, no. Because I'll drift off to the Land of Nod and waste LARGE precious moments that I could've spent packing. As w/any individual who's moving, fatigue and stress seem to be a totally natural thing. Of course, saying I'm fatigued and stressed in a blog cannot fully convey the feeling of running a 20k for a charity only to be dragged into a dark alley and beaten w/sacks of oranges by street toughs when you cross the finish line ...But for lack of a better phrase, I'm pooped. And, I haven't moved in so long, this is totally foreign to me. I