Moving Out -- Day Two

Woke disoriented, to the grinding of hotel room air-conditioner cycling on and off at my elbow. Not a bird to be heard. This room is supposed to be an exact clone of where I'll spend my first three months in Illinois. At the house I'm abandoning, from the bed to the office requires 38 steps. The longest dimension of my new quarters requires 7. Your days of spaciousness are so over, dude--get used to it.

The moving crews came in large trucks that were very hard to move in and out of narrow, tree-canopied Clarendon Avenue, so I started to buy lunch for all. I closed my car's trunk and realized my keys were inside. It ws already 1:30 pm and everyone was very hungry. AAA said they could open my car, but that it would seal off the trunk when they did, so they wouldn't come. Lexus wouldn't help because my car was (way) out of warranty. While on hold for an independent locksmith, I rummaged in a kitchen drawer and found--a spare car key I didn't know I had! Soon I was scrubbing the oak pollen from an outdoor card table and laying out lunch for the workers, who were none the wiser.

In the afternoon, we had 8 people working. The crate makers had to move their saw table into my garage when it started raining. In the boiling hot afternoon, two former coworkers, ones not laid off but screwed in other ways on Black Thursday, called me with excellent job news. The talent at my previous employer all seem to be finding other, better jobs. I'm happy for them, of course, but the revengeful satisfaction I thought I might feel towards the company never comes. It's just sad all around.

Click below for PICTURES (total ca. 300KB, 1 minute with phone-line modem) of my unnerving but ultimately successful packing and move-out.

The moving van, into whose gaping maw will vanish everything I own save what I can cram in my car.
 

For example, the crated piano, whose loading I could not watch and could not keep from watching. I will not see it again--will not even know exactly where it is--until I return from the Netherlands. The joke about piano practicing goes: "After only one day without practicing, I can tell a difference. After two days, other pianists can tell. After three days, everyone can tell." I wonder what two years will do--have I played in this life my last proficient notes?
 

Everything does in fact get on the truck, and in only two days, and it all goes down Clarendon and around the corner. Some will meet me in Naarden this summer, but most will stay in storage until I...repatriate.
 

Is there anything sadder than a room which glowed and saw much happiness suddenly empty and abandoned?
 

Now that the dining furniture has been taken away, I can see the full glory of the bay window. .
 

A detail (lower left corner) of the bay window. Marcia Mylander, the Orlando mural artist, did this treatment for the previous owner, the eccentric son of a very well-known orange grower and generally successful businessman.
 

But now I'm committed to stuffing the rest into my car, shipping it to Illinois, or just abandoning it to the house and driving away. And I start work in Illinois in 4 days...