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Grabbing some access at Panera's. Sarah and I are out and about. Cathy cleaned up the house as packing went on, and I took Sarah to the motel we would stay at for our last night in town. Sarah and I had a final sushi meal at Oishi, and said our goodbyes to Mr. Dong, our sushi friend. He made us egg rolls for a treat, then at the end of the meal, as Sarah was clamoring for green tea ice cream, he said he would make her a fried banana. "But I want ice cream," she said to me a dozen or so times. Finally, I said that Mr. Dong was making her a special dessert and she could have ice cream later. When dessert arrived, it proved to have fried banana segments, chocolate-drizzled whipped cream, and -- with a candle burning on it -- a big scoop of green tea ice cream. Sarah was so excited, she put the whole thing on her fork and gestured with it, over the floor, of course. Mr. Dong was nice enough to clean it up and give her another. Then we went swimming at the hotel pool, which was middling cool.

Next morning, we went in again, and this time it was warmer. Then we poured into two cars (mine was so full of stuff, including all our computers, scanner, printer, and my piano, that nobody could ride with me) and drove about 300 miles. There was wi-fi in our motel and I could still read newsgroups and my mail. There was wi-fi in the service plazas, and I could read email but not groups. There was wi-fi in the motel room in Pittsford, but I couldn't read newsgroups. If anybody knows a way to read newsgroups without having a provider (comcast, warner, that sort of thing) and without using Google Groups, which look like a huge tangled mess of headers, all alike, I'd sure like to know. I found a page of supposedly free services, and not one of them was there when I clicked on it.

We went to the apartment that will be our home for the next two weeks, and the key wasn't there. I tried calling the number they posted there. Then we took Cathy to work and went back to the motel, had breakfast, and swum in the pool. It was warmer than it had been the night before. I conclude that motel pools are warmer in the morning. We spent an hour in the water. Sarah can do flips in the water. She is almost swimming.

At noon, having not gotten a response on the phone, we went back to the apartment. By this time, the office was open, so I asked the guy there for help, and he took us to the front door of the unit. We had been at the back. The key was at the front. I thanked him profusely. We got lunch from Wegman's, then I moved all the stuff from my car up the flight of stairs into the apartment, and took a nap with Sarah. I was awakened by the phone, which was the lady we were renting from. I had called her phone to let it know we were in the apartment, but she wanted to find out why it had taken so long. Then it was time to get Cathy from work.

Today we both have cars. There's a parking space and a garage unit for us. We went to the library, to the school district, and to the Y. When I have proof of residency, I can finalize arrangements with these worthy institutions for future services. Now we'll drive around a little and maybe look at an amusement park (from the outside). Pittsford, we are here.

Kindergarten, by the way, turns out to be half-day only. I won't be getting a lot of work done, it appears.
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We'll be living in an apartment with no internet for two weeks after we move up to Pittsford. My connection in that time will most likely be me taking the laptop to the public library to check my mail and such. It seems farcical to expect that I'll be able to read LJ in that time -- it takes hours each day to plow through my FL -- so I won't be keeping up. I'll maybe be seeing some journals or some entries in that time, and maybe posting and commenting here and there, but at this point I'm expecting something like radio silence.

Tomorrow is the last day for me to pack boxes that I don't want the movers to sock away. Monday, they'll start boxing things up. Perhaps this is just my general feeling of hopelessness speaking, but I guess I might as well just get an early start on the black hole and give up on LJ now, and get back on track later by the simple expedient of pretending that the intervening weeks never happened.

I hope nobody will evaluate my performance in those weeks and decide to drop me because I've been incommunicado. Remember, if you friend somebody, let them go, and if they come back, yatta yatta yatta.

Meanwhile, we've been doing some stuff "for the last time," as it were. We finally nipped up to Brattleboro, which is one heck of a sweet place -- lots of neat old brick buildings perched on sloping streets, and several book stores. The proprietor of the first one I dashed into said there had been nine at one point. I guess that means there are eight or fewer now. I've wanted to go up there and spend some money since I learned about their jihad against Bush and Cheney. While we were at it, we also ducked into New Hampshire for about fifteen minutes so we could add it to our list of states we've been in. Then I played miniature golf with Sarah at the course in Westfield, which is open for the season again, and we finished the day with what might be our last meal at Oishi Sushi, and our (possibly) last visit with Mr. Dong, who Sarah adores.

Today we drove to Boston. First we stopped at Radio Shack, where the kindly and knowledgeable fellow inside had opened the store ten minutes early, to replace the stubbornly missing car plug-in for the DVD player we got to keep Sarah pacified on trips. The obvious unit cost $35, but he located one for $9, and found the proper tip for another buck. Knowledgeable and kindly both. We proceeded along 90, exited and made our way to Alewife and took the T to South Station and walked to the Children's Museum, which was insanely full of great stuff for Sarah. After about three hours of it, they were starting to close the place up and we left, pausing for our second meal at the station. The trip home was marred only by a fresh side scuff from some adjacent car in the parking garage and the mysterious intersection where two lanes of traffic pouring into one road apparently get green lights at the same moment.

So ends the week of Spring vacation. Well, it's still on tomorrow, but it's going to be boxes, boxes, boxes, and not so much of the non-box activities, so it sort of feels like it's over. Just about time to dive down the rabbit hole. Speaking of which, I found out what the holes in the back yard are for: ground squirrels disappear into them. Better that than snakes, I guess.

If anybody needs to reach me and doesn't have my current address, I believe LJ messages should get to me. Dig you cats later.
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