Unpacking

I will be the first to admit that I don't like moving. I try to avoid moving whenever possibly by finding places where I can foresee living for a good length of time. Of course, occasionally there are circumstances that fall outside our control and/or take precedence in which moving becomes necessary: a new job, a job loss, an increase or decrease in numbers of family members, choosing to own rather than rent, having to rent rather than own, or even an eviction (be it friendly or unfriendly.)

I lived in the same house for the first 21 years of my life. Over the last 10 years I have lived in five other places, so I only experienced moving in my adulthood. There are some good things that can come out of moving, of which the most important to us is purging. Keith and I have got purging down to a science. Occasionally, we're actually too good at it, and we've come to regret not owning something that we've ridden ourselves of a year or so later, but we try to hold our possessions loosely, so any regret is generally short-lived. One of the other great things that moving presents is the opportunity to reorganize. Typically, when we move, I end up deciding where everything in the kitchen gets to live while Keith has control over the closets (linen, storage, spare room, etc.) Then there is the fun of deciding where all the mirrors, shelves and pictures get to hang. It can take a couple months, but it can be very rewarding.

To answer the question that may be going through your mind: no, we're not moving house. We really like our place, and we plan to live there as long as we can't afford to buy something and I am working in Boulder. (Aside: I never knew that having a place on a quiet street with a fenced yard and an attached garage that has a door to the house would be so important to me.) But I am moving: my work. The entire division I work in has been relocated from our old building to a brand new building across town.

So here's why this is so much fun (and I use the term loosely), in old fashioned pro/con terms:

Con: we left a building high up on the Mesa with a beautiful view of Boulder and the Flatirons to move to a new building that has a view of the highway and a railroad track on the opposite and very flat part of town.

Pro: my new lab is directly across the hall from my new office, rather than four floors down and on the opposite end of the building inside another lab.

Con: my old office had a huge window overlooking Boulder, and my new office has a small window in the door that overlooks the hallway.

Pro: my old lab was in the second basement with no windows, while my new lab has two walls of windows for plenty of light and a frame of reference to day/evening.

Con: my new lab is a sea of cardboard boxes and pink bubble wrap.

Pro: I have the opportunity to reorganize my entire lab to make things easier to find and use.

Con: I don't know what many of the things in my lab are, let alone how to organize them.

I could go on, but I will spare you the rest of the details. After all, I have some unpacking to get back to.