I haven’t posted much lately because I’ve been moving all my stuff from Baltimore to North Carolina for a new job. I’ll be teaching Latin II (second half of Wheelock), Latin IV (AP Vergil), Greek IV (Antigone and Apology) and Geometry at Raleigh Latin High School. It’s embarrassing to admit, but in my twelve years of previous full-time teaching, nine of them in universities, I’ve never had the opportunity to teach a Greek tragedy or a Platonic dialogue in Greek. (By the way, RLHS is still accepting students for the upcoming year if you live in Raleigh.)
I’m proud to say that at 52, I can still move everything I own with nothing more than a rented truck, a two-wheel dolly, and a gallon or two of Gatorade. That may not sound all that impressive, but:
- I own roughly five tons of stuff, including 200 boxes of books, 18 real-wood book- and CD-shelves of various sizes, 16 ornamental cinderblocks to make (with 1x14s) eight shelves worth of very solid two-sided bookshelves, three 4-drawer file cabinets, 2 armchairs, and a futon. It took three round trips (over five days) in a Penske cargo van, stuffed to the gills, including the front compartment, plus three more trips in my car for the odds and ends. (Look for additions to my Books for Sale list in the next few weeks: I really need to cut down.)
- All three truckloads, and roughly half the stuff taken by car, were loaded in 90o+ heat with no shade, and it was 96o in Raleigh when I unloaded the first and third truckloads a couple of weeks ago. (The second was mostly unloaded after dark, which helped.) And cargo vans don’t come with ramps. I did make sure to rent an apartment with only one small step to get the dolly over: in fact that was my main criterion in choosing a place to live. The gentle slope down the front walk to the front door didn’t hurt.
Can I call myself a Self-Moved Mover now, or would that be too Aristotelian — not to mention hybristic? I do have a slight urge (call it a demi-urge) to hire a moving company to do the work next time around, though it would likely double the cost.
There’s plenty of unpacking still to do. At the worst of it, when I had hastily unloaded all three truckloads and unpacked very little, the place felt rather like the burrow of a gopher or groundhog: completely full of furniture and overhanging stacks of boxes, with meandering paths, just wide enough for me to squeeze through, connecting the front door to the kitchen, the armchair, the table with the laptop, the bathroom, and the corner of the bedroom with the futon in it. As I get the books and CDs out of the boxes and into the shelves and then flatten the boxes, it’s starting to clear out a bit and look fit for human habitation.
