The past week of my life has been spent preparing to move from Wilmington, NC back to the Pittsburgh area for the summer. Moving is a stressful event for anyone, but I find myself in a situation that makes it even more interesting: I really don't know where I'll be when the fall rolls around (hey, maybe I'll be dead or something), so I'm stuck in that place in-between moves. Most of my ever-growing stuff is packed away (floor to ceiling) in storage for a few months, but I had to decide what I'd need to take with me and use for three months as I stay with family for that time.
I knew this was coming, so I planned ahead and brought stuff back home the last few times I visited; all of my Thing statues came with me on one trip (and almost all fell on my dog as I made a sharp turn), my Rusty painting came up on another, etc., but the final trip is always the most contentious - it's when decisions on what stays and what goes have to be made. Needless to say, I've accumulated quite a stack of comics since arriving in Wilmington, and even though I was diligent in transporting them back home after I had read them, I still had a couple of tall stacks in my room when it came time for the final packing.
It was never a question of leaving my comics in storage; I have the unfounded image in my head of wild animals breaking the door to my storage locker down and tearing my comics to pieces and leaving the more mundane items - coats, furniture, flower pots - just as they found them. But as I packed the car to make the 600-mile journey to Pennsylvania, I realized that there was no way I was going to fit in everything I had wanted to take. I suppose it wouldn't have been 100 percent impossible, but I'd imagine the bottom of the car would have been shooting sparks and my reliable Toyota Camry would have averaged about six miles to the gallon along the away. Oh, and I'd have had to steer from the roof.
As I made a mental inventory of all that was in the car and realized that some hard decisions had to be made, I realized that my boxes (and boxes...) of comics weren't as important as things like clothes. Or my dog. So I sucked it up, taped the boxes shut, and took them to the post office.
Media mail is a great thing - it allows you to mail things like books, DVDs and CDs for cheap; I ended up mailing three boxes, the heaviest of which was 27 pounds, and the cost for it came to about 13 bucks. I am, however, terrified that they will get lost or shredded in some...I don't know, shredding machine or something. Even though I could look at a picture of any comic ever and tell you if I own it, I have absolutely no idea what books were in the boxes I shipped. So if one gets lost, I'm going to have a heck of a time replacing those books.
I bought insurance and tracking for each box, but I'm still fretting the disaster that will hopefully never come. The boxes and their tracking information are each listed on the United States Postal Service's website, and you can follow along with me (hours of fun!) and see their progress by going here and entering in the following numbers:
0309 2880 0000 7564 5892
0309 2880 0000 7564 5915
0309 2880 0000 7564 5908
Fingers crossed.
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