s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Here are some pics of my dancing partners (I’ll add one of the Police when I get it):

I don’t actually know what the third building is. We were a little early getting to MAF, so we walked around the docks a bit there. This is just an example of some of the amazing things the light does here.

The next shot below is of C&N’s front garden, with the roses and daisies and stuff all still going at full tilt. Not bad for what is effectively early December, eh ? And here we have the Moment of Truth: Will I open the container and find everything in itty bitty pieces ?

In general, things came out pretty well intact. There was definitely some shifting, though. We needed more bracing/roping in front of the oak bookcase, which shifted forward. We ought probably to have taped the lids onto the comic boxes, three of which conveyered themselves forward from whereever it was they’d been stashed and wedged themselves, lidless, between the bookcase, the roofring, and a couple of mid-sized bins. One of them (#1, in fact) overturned completely and spilled all its comics out into the newly-opened space behind the bookcase, amongst the various bits of pressboard shelving. (“Why is there a copy of Frank Miller’s 300 lying face-up in the bottom of the rocking chair ?” I wondered aloud. “Where the heck could *that* have escaped from ?”) None of them were crunched, miraculously (Remember kids: always bag and board). If moving tip #1 is “Tape everything, yes, including that”, tip #2 would be “Wrap the furniture, yes, including that.” The big wooden specimen cabinet I rescued from the Fogg left a long brown smear of itself along the side of a Coleman cooler, where it clearly spent many weeks rubbing up and down with every swell. Some tall piece of something left a big gouge in the back of it. The microwave stand was at some point lifted off the floor and set down on the edge of the paper wrapping protecting part of the futon frame. The little table that Judith got me that I still need to set the slate tiles into the top of survived, largely because the paper wrapping took the brunt of whatever was abrading *it*. Certain things that were once flat are now in interesting shapes, depending on what they were set on top of. For instance the comic boxes set in the bottom of the oak book case now have little stepped bottoms where they hung over, and a few of the plastic storage bins are not quite square anymore. But in general, everything made it. Woot !

I am, in fact, typing this on the PC that Len built for me before I left (small moment of panic to find the video card bouncing around loose in the case — how is it we managed to not screw that thing down ?), with the newish flat panel monitor, my spiffy little Zippy Mini keyboard and optical mouse. Yay ! Chris is afraid he’ll never see me again, but until I get a comfier chair down here, he’s got nothing to worry about. And I found clothes ! Yay !

So, it looks like the stuff situation is more or less in hand. There was some urking there for a bit, because Customs wanted this permit for my knives, and the District Officer told me that although he’d sent my app in to HQ pretty much as soon as he’d got it, HQ probably wouldn’t get to it until middle of next week (it’s a long weekend here, for Queen’s Birthday. I understand the Queen’s *actual* birthday is some time in, like, August or something, but since when do any of the official B-days we observe in the US fall ontheir actual days ?). If the container wasn’t released, though, I’d get charged $60 for every day it sat on the dock, starting Saturday.

So I phoned Customs back, and they said “No problem”. They just had me come down and sign a form saying I’d set the potentially objectionable stuff aside and phone them to come take a look at it some time next week (by which point hopefully the permit will have come through). This is the cool thing about all of the bureaucracies I’ve been dealing with: none of them *actually* want to give you shit. They’re just doing their jobs. If they have to throw an obstacle at you, the next thing they do is tell you how to clear it.

There was a bit more drama towards the end of Thursday, when it looked like the shipper wasn’t going to release the container to the movers, because they’d misrouted the paperwork that said they’d been paid. But Chris, my erstwhile dance partner, tagged himself in and got it sorted before I’d even heard about it.

Upshot is: I’ve got our stuff. It all fits in the various places C&N had marked to squirrel it away into. MAF has taken away the two sets of antlers, the hunk of driftwood, the two fake styrofoam crows, a bag of feathers, and the rainstick, all of which will cost me about $25 to get fumigated. Whee ! And Chris, clever monkey that he is, kept an eye out for boxes of clothes and dance gear and stuff, so I can (once I go through them — I wish I’d been a wee bit more specific in my labelling, as five boxes all marked “Tam’s Clothes” aren’t all that helpful, really) have more than two pairs of pants and two skirts to wear to work. Huzzah !

So. Off to Molly’s for Chris’ Birthday. Pics later.