The return of the blog.

Done!


Not really, since our new house is still littered with unopened boxes, but the hard part is over.

August 11, 2003, isn't a day I want to repeat. It was Moving Day. It was also Closing Day. Double Closing Day, really, since we sold the old house and bought the new one. It was the day when most of the debris of our modern life, which usually sits still until needed, was in motion. In a truck I'd never seen before in the charge of men I'd never met before. It was the day when money sloshed around, in amounts bigger than even the prosperous bourgeoisie see in the course of day-to-day living: Watch out! Don't drop any of that! It's my equity! Attorney Brian O. was our guide through this swamp of paper-signing, as he was five years ago, the first time around. Thanks, Brian.

August 11 was that moment when everything comes unraveled, domestically speaking -- and then is dumped into a new place for you to put back together again. Anyone who has moved more than a minor amount of goods from apartment to apartment knows what this is like. I won't dwell on it, but I will say this: I'm glad the whole thing is safely in the past.

And so to the task of rebuilding a routine. It's already under way. For my part, I've re-established my walk to and from the train twice a day -- yesterday, the virgin run, and today, a more assured walk. It's longer, and in places a very different walk from what I did until only last Friday, but with certain exceptions, I'm already enjoying it. I will write more about this in the fullness of time.

I'm also noticing some of the details you don't when merely visiting a neighborhood. My favorite so far, after only 72 hours, are the airplanes. We now live closer to O'Hare International Airport than we used to, but as far as I can see there are no more jetliners overhead than at our previous house. Fortunately. But we also live within two miles of a municipally owned general-aviation airport, and the result is a steady stream of little planes overhead in the evening. Not constantly, but enough to draw your attention if you're not used to them. Most of them are small private planes, but unless I did some research, I couldn't hazard a guess on make or model. Better yet are the multi-prop, mid-sized jobs; and best of all (so far), as the sun was setting on Tuesday, I looked up and saw a biplane overhead.