The GeekHiker

Being without internet until my return Wednesday, I’ve been writing daily posts into a text file, which I’ll back-post over the next few days.  This will either be an interesting experiment in journaling, or have the net effect of boring the hell out of everybody…

SATURDAY

It’s 11:00 at night as I write this.  I’ve been up since 4:30 this morning to catch a flight here.  My mind is toast.

The first thing I learned today is this: when bringing a laptop onto an airplane, it has to be placed in it’s own separate bin.  I had no idea.

Of course, the security folks were only too happy to inform me… as well as to stop the belt, back it up, send me back past several unhappy fellow passengers to fetch another bin, and give me a little “how could you not know, you idiot” attitude to boot.

So consider this a friendly PSA: put your laptop in its own bin, or you will be made to feel like a 90-lb jr. high school weakling being pushed up against a locker and tormented for wearing the corduroy pants that your Mom dressed you in in.

Not that that’s the voice of experience, or anything.

*cough*

So, uh, anyway…

When I booked the tickets a few weeks ago, the thought was that I’d be helping The Parentage pack & move.  The whole rushed nature of this thing (literally, they put the house on the market at the end of April) pushed the move date to today.  I taxied from Sacramento International (they have a plane that goes all the way to Mexico!) to their house to find the truck already there and the house already half empty.

This whole thing has been entirely too fast to process.  Isn’t it weird that some of the biggest, most expensive decisions we make in life (renting an apartment, buying a house) seem to be those we have to make the quickest?  Sure, I can spend an hour or two in the grocery store picking between catsup & ketchup, but if you aren’t willing to sign the rental contract for an apartment the instant it’s offered, you might lose the place to someone else.

The rest of the day involved shuttle trips back & forth between the old house and the new one, moving furniture, moving boxes.  And more boxes.  And yet more boxes.

So, what about the new house?

The new house is in a community limited to those 55 and older, though it’s not, technically, a retirement community.  The primary reason behind the purchase: size.  The Parentage wanted a smaller house, which in this day and age is hard to find since everybody seems to want a mini-mansion, and home-builders are only to happy to oblige.

It’s a newer house, better insulation, new appliances, quieter neighborhood, even ceiling fans.  It’s quite nice, at least first-impression wise.

The biggest thing I notice is that it’s out in the boonies north of Sac.  Land that 10 years ago was oak savanna.  It’s new suburbia.  Tract housing and malls.  And golf courses.  Lots and lots of golf courses.

Oh, God, my parents have moved to retirement golf course suburban hell.

On the plus side, the city or county are at least forcing the developers to make some effort to preserve at least some of the oak woodlands out there.  And some of the creeks are salmon runs, so they are being careful to preserve that habitat.

And this first evening, after everything was 98% in the house, I watched a hawk cicle overhead and cruise to a landing at the top of a tall Valley Oak.

Seeing something like that, it can’t be all bad, right?

Of course, tomorrow, we make the last trip to the old house…

Did I mention there were a lot of boxes today?