packing

Up until yesterday my negative feelings towards Beijing's big summer 2008 event were general. Then they seriously got in my way. I know in the US it's the same thing with the removing of shoes at airports (not to mention fingerprinting at customs) but I complained hard about those too. Fear, mmm . . . it makes the world go 'round.

So I'm almost completely packed - books, clothes, cooking stuff, small furniture and appliances (including my precious little toaster oven that has to be at least ten years old) - we get in touch with five different offices for shipping five different ways . . . and find out that I can't send liquids or powders or electronics with the shipping company I used to move ALL my stuff ten months ago . . . or through the post office, or through the big, popular company Wuliu . . . so we frantically repack (which leads to Amy and I having our first fight) and then the next day she helps me drag the bags with all the dangerous materials into a taxi and then down the train station to the big cargo place and I send them away . . . where they will be "tossed around like pillows," my friends tell me. For the other four bags the nice guys from last year's company pul up in a van by our house, weigh them right there, and they're done. Everything's going to ZX's apartment, which feels really strange since it rested there for a few days last August too. More or less all the same stuff. I'm dealing with too-much-stuff blues, but also feeling relieved now that it's all done.

There was an earthquake this evening. Amy said she felt it and heard the roaring. I didn't. I was outside watching the new bikes we had just bought. It was an exhausting three hours at the used bike market to buy a bike for me, Amy, and Catherine. We're supposed to be leaving in the morning. It's been rip-roaring hot lately, so we're wanting to start at six.