the Life of Zim

So I’m guessing some of you may be checking the blog to see how Laura’s and my trip out west is going. I’m hoping to get a post in everyday. If you’re looking for some more frequent updates I suggest following me on Twitter. I have the my last 5 updates being posted to the right of my blog on this page, but if you’re looking for more, go to Twitter. I’m trying to send as many updates as I can on there. Enjoy.

Well we’re finishing up day 1 of our journey westward right now, and I’ve gotta say, moving is f***ing exhausting. We’ve been up since 8am and we’re only 2 hours from Minneapolis, but today was more full than the past week. The biggest event, of course, being the packing. My entire body is sore as hell. My feet, my knees, my thighs, my elbows, my hands… damn.

Most of the day was spent in packing up the remainder of our things and moving them downstairs and into our “Cube” in the alley. Our “cube” is basically this 6′ x 7′ x 8′ crate that we’re having shipped (I believe by truck) out to Portland with all of our stuff. And I do mean ALL of our stuff… or at least most all of it. We definitely filled the thing pretty damn near full today, excluding some cloths and things like that we packed in the car (which definitely still would have fit in the “cube”. Throughout the day we had a fair amount of help from Kate and Mike, my Mom and Molly, who were all a great deal of help. My mom brought chili over for lunch which was especially fantastic. All in all we worked for a good 8 hours just finishing packing things into boxes and hauling them down to the cube. Around 5:30 I called U-Pack (our movers) to pick up the cube, thinking it wouldn’t get picked up until the next day, and within about 30 minutes it was gone. It was a little unsettling seeing it gone, but relieving to know it was on it’s way.

Finally, we started cleaning up the apartment, which is one of the worst activities to do after you’ve been busting your ass hauling stuff around all day. We eventually got to the point where we just said “fcuk it”, packed the remainder of our things into the car and hit the road. I think we ended up leaving around 8 or 9pm, which was fine. The plan for leaving tonight was just to shave off a few hours of travel for the trip tomorrow. The goal for tomorrow is Bozeman, MT where my Uncle Ray and Cousin Biz live. Bozeman is about 13 hours from Minneapolis, and we’re figuring the difference between 10 and 13 hours is work the night drive. Besides, all of our stuff is packed up so we would have wound up sleeping on the floor of our apartment anyway.

So here we are, in room 133 of the Super 8 Motel in Alexandria, MN, so exhausted it hurts to think that I need stand up again to take my much needed shower. Very excited for bed, and very excited for the remainder of this trip. Can you guess how many times I’ve written “remainder” in this blog entry without looking back? Anyway. I need to shower and I need to sleep. More adventures tomorrow.

As you may or may not have heard, Laura and I have signed a lease on a house in Portland. Here are the pictures that we have of the house. It’s in a good area and seems like a really nice little home. We’re both excited.

Well yesterday there was a 37 °F difference between the high and low temps for the day. Welcome to Minnesota. Definitely one of the colder days of the year as it barely got below zero. The high temperature for the day was 36 °F and by the end of the day it was at -1 °F. Freaking insanity. And on top of the temperature change it snowed all night, which has made for an exceptionally interesting Monday. Luckily didn’t fall at all on the way in, but there were definitely some wobbly moments. The forecast for today calls for a HIGH of -1 °F. Biking it this morning it was around -5 °F and snowy roads. So as you can imagine the ride in was pretty brutal. It’s never too bad as long as you’re covered up well enough, but baring the cold again definitely makes me more anxious to get out to Portland. I keep feeling like we’re going to get out there at the end of January with temps like 40° when we’ve been used to temps around 0°. I’m picturing us riding our bikes in t-shirts and everyone looking at us like we’re out of our minds. It should be a nice sudden change in climate though. Just when we think we can’t take any more of the Minnesota winter, we won’t have to.

Speaking of Portland, for all of the good people that like to keep up with my blog, we’ve got some exciting news from this weekend. We’ve got a place to live! Laura actually just mailed a signed lease and check for the a deposit and first month’s rent on a house in St. Johns. It’s a nice little house as we’ve seen from pictures. We had one of Laura’s friends that lives in Portland check it out to make sure it looked kosher. It’s a pretty sweet area (as far as we can tell). We’ll be about 7 miles from downtown, which isn’t super close but definitely bikable. We’ll also be just across the river from Forest Park, which is amazing. The woman renting the house to us is a social working going back to school for her Masters in Social Work, and will actually be living in the basement apartment of the house. I guess she’s normally lived in the house and rented the basement, but as she’s going back to school needs the extra money and has decided to rent out the house. She’s in her mid-30’s, seems like a very nice lady, and has a 12 year old dog named Blue. We’re definitely very excited about the house, but nervous at the same time. It’s a pretty big commitment for a year when we haven’t actually seen the place, but sometimes you’ve just gotta jump. We’ll be paying rent both in Minneapolis and Portland for January, which sucks a little, but it’s nice to know that we’ve got our new home figured out. Next step is figuring out how to get all of hour shit out there.