Off By One

It’s quite a sight, the spew of boxes collected into three large stacks and two small ones. An entire life… scratch that, two entire lives piled up and ready to uproot.

Char and I are entering into the second most significant collective choice we’ll ever make; it comes a reasonably distant second to having a child, but it’s still a link between us that we are never likely to sever. It commits us to the financial side of the relationship in a way that — in the all-too-human myopia that comes with large changes — seems to overshadow the real basis for the relationship for a time.

A short time, mind you.

I’m really looking forward to this. It’s been stressful, it’s been draining, but we get our keys today (I just talked to the lawyer, the money’s on it’s way to Bob now) and tonight, we move the first of the bits of our lives into the house.

All I can say is, “poor cats!” They’re terrified.

Delta(n): A change, eg the difference from one period to the next.

Time: As far as we measure it, five hours different.

Place: Approximately 11,000 km away from where I was 32 hours ago. Specifically, -46.6167, -23.5333

Language: Most people I’ll deal with this week won’t speak English. The people with whom I’ll deal most do. I speak maybe five words of the local language.

Weather: It’s currently 28º, about 35º warmer than it was 32 hours ago

Culture: The hotel powers down all of its outlets when I’m not in the room. Houses in this neighborhood all have wrought-iron fences to protect their parking spaces. The hotel is still all beige, just like hotels in Canada.

I don’t know how significant this is, really. I’ve covered it on my traveling weblog before, but there is something fundamentally dislocating about this kind of distance. I’m at best an indifferent traveler, preferring to be at home where all of my comforts are. It’s made more interesting by the fact that I’m in the middle of no small amount of upheaval on the home front.

For the last few who haven’t heard, we got the house, and will be moving into our very own home on January 23rd. We have, then, four months to prepare it for the arrival of theour baby. Luckily, there’s not a lot that needs doing in a hurry, it’s pretty much ready.

Those of you who read this are probably already aware of my feelings on the subject, but they bear repeating: We don’t plan to become one of those couples with no life other than our child. Our friends are infinitely precious to us, and we’ll be doing our damnedest to ensure that we remember that in the years to come. We’re moving, which makes it harder (as I said in a comment on the last post) but that just means that when I meet Mel for coffee in the morning it’s a bit more of a detour for me