Columbus Day

If there are five stages to the grief of an upcoming international move, I imagine that somewhere between "Bargaining" and "Acceptance" is a misplaced sense of empowered serenity. Call it "Delusion". This stage is akin to classic "Denial," but coming at the end of the process, manifesting itself in a clearly wrongheaded feeling of ability supported by strong faith in the hasty underestimation of labors. I slept late today. Then we watched two more episodes of Heroes on DVD. I have a goal of finishing season one before I leave, since I'm afraid that if I break momentum I'll never return to it. What kind of priority is that? Eventually I started in on what I'd already appraised as "an hour, maybe two" of work to be done sorting our stuff from Oakwood's, then deciding what will be our baggage, our air shipment, and our freight. I also began a discrete sub-stage of the moving process fairly labeled "panic". For the next six-plus hours, Sunshine and I put everything we wanted to carry in our luggage away in the closets, while also removing everything for shipping out of those same closets. Of that stuff, possessions we wanted delivered soonest--the four hundred fifty pounds of allotted unaccompanied baggage hopefully delivered within a month of our own arrival in Vietnam--were carefully arrayed on the dining room table. The rest--freight to arrive maybe two or more months after we've moved in--we dumped on the floor in front of the bookshelves. Since we did this at breakneck speed to accommodate a hasty Italian dinner and more Heroes, we possibly made some dubious judgment calls we'll just have to lump for a few months. And as of now I have to use my computer while standing in the closet. [Cavin]