Bruce McCosar's Dandelife : Bruce H. McCosar: Playing the Changes

Midnight on the Firing Line

Bruce McCosar — Mon Sep 08 20:59:08 UTC 2008

[ For those of you without a categorical recollection of each and every episode of Babylon 5, that was the title of the first episode. :D ]

On the day after Labor Day, I suddenly returned to life as a teacher.

If you've never been there, I can't really explain this part.

It's odd, the summer: it reminds me of Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky. In the novel, humans explore a strange world orbiting an even stranger star -- "The OnOff Star", which for unknown reasons, spends 215 out of every 250 years completely dormant. During that 35 year period of activity, a frozen civilization reawakens -- an entire planet comes back to life.

That's teaching.

We tend to define ourselves by what we do. I used to be a research chemist; I can still talk about Grignard reagents or Diels-Alder reactions if I have to . . . . but that's the frozen past.

Now, my springtime comes every Fall.

It was worse this year. Because of the move, I really felt I was drifting this summer. I lost focus on a lot of things. But now, the sun is back on.

I owe a lot of people thanks for the help in the move. First among them is my former principal, Valerie Boughanem. I don't know quite how to thank her, or if what I can do from up here will be enough, but she really helped me get some last minute paperwork done. In consequence, hard as it is to believe, I already have my Virginia teaching license -- it came exactly one day before school started.

Back to my title. In the first episode of any series, you meet all the characters, and see them in their native elements. Everyone is still an unknown quantity; the future holds complications, but also holds promise. That's opening day. Writing this from one week on, I feel like it's going to be a pretty good show.

40

Bruce McCosar — Thu Aug 21 01:18:22 UTC 2008

times around the Sun, as of today.

Day One

Bruce McCosar — Sat Aug 16 21:43:01 UTC 2008

Friday, August 15th, was my official first day at my new job.

The students won't be back in school until after Labor Day. My school district gives plenty of time for planning. Friday, however, was only for new employees -- a district level orientation meeting.

Now, I am not a big fan of meetings. The worst thing you can do to a group of highly educated people, presentation-wise, is hold a meeting where you stand and read through your PowerPoint slides. Arrgh. I've been the victim of that sort of meeting before, and when I heard the term 'orientation', it was certainly in the back of my mind.

How wrong I was.

It was fantastic.

In a way, it was exactly like something I'd do in my class -- take a theme, and play it to the hilt. The personnel department made like we were a group of stars entering the Oscars. They had a school band play us in -- and even had a red carpet!

The first speaker was actually a motivational speaker (and standup comedian). They even had entertainment -- from our school system, a jazz chorus and a step show.

It was well organized, informative, and enjoyable.

I'd never seen anything like it before.

In a way, it sends a message: this is the big leagues. We, as teachers, are always told to make our class experience memorable, not some dry recitation of facts. This is the first time I've ever actually seen someone apply those sort of classroom techniques to a group of teachers.

The bar is set pretty high here, evidently.

Looks like I've got a busy week ahead.

The Player of Games

Bruce McCosar — Wed Aug 13 15:44:56 UTC 2008

One of my favorite authors is Iain M. Banks. The title of today's post comes from one of his novels, The Player of Games.

In the book, there's a culture known as the Empire of Azad. Azad, it turns out, is a vastly complicated game. It's regarded as so great a challenge that political positions (for example, Emperor) are decided not by wars, not by elections, but by the games.

What always struck me about the book was how complicated the rules were. It was a territory-grabbing game, but managed to involve all five of the standard senses, and particular rules for particular situations.

Azad, in real life, isn't that complicated. And, on the other hand, is more complicated.

There is a game of Chinese origin called Wei Qi. In Japan, it's called Go; in Korea, Baduk. Play can be so complicated that grand masters can literally spend a lifetime learning the game, and the battles they have are truly epic.

However, the rules are staggeringly simple. Basically, you take turns placing stones, and if the stone you've placed completes the surrounding of your opponent's pieces, they are removed from the board.

That's just about everything.

I posted an article on Wordpress about how I got started playing Go, and how it's related to my current musical projects. No, I'm not making Go tunes. Somehow, when I'm working on something else, musical ideas start coming to me.

I'm playing with at least two new ideas right now. One I call "Periodic Table of the Groove", exploring unusual rhythmic groups. For example, the one I call (3,5) might be three major divisions, with five minor divisions. Someone up on their standard notation might call it a tune in 15/8. Or three bars of 5/8.

Another I call "Three Chords and the Truth". It's complicated to explain the mathematical basis for this, but it takes the concept of a simple song with only three chords and turns it on its head. The root notes are selected from one of the twelve prime trichords (an idea from musical set theory) and transposed randomly. For example, today's project involves the notes F, Gb, and Bb (prime set 015).

And therefore I come to this conclusion: music, too, is its own form of game. The rules are very simple -- create sound. However, musicians can spend an entire lifetime playing this particular game and never learn everything there is to know. From the simple rules, complexity arises. We can analyze and theorize, but the final question -- is it music? -- is as fundamental as placing stones on a Go board.

The Splats!

Bruce McCosar — Tue Aug 05 14:35:26 UTC 2008

Okay, today's story was supposed to be about filling out paperwork at my "On Boarding" session. Well, it happened.

The event was completely upstaged by something that came later.

The neighborhood we've moved to is nice. One of the notable features is this group of kids, ages 6 to 10, that hang out together and play, sort of like our own homegrown version of the Little Rascals.

Well, yesterday, they had a band.

And they invited us! (See the promo poster they handed out below.)

They've actually been writing their own songs and practicing them -- so I have to give them a lot of credit, for being ahead of a lot of bands out there ;-)

The band consisted of two instruments. The lead rocker played [a single chord] on her guitar; her percussionist banged a tambourine; everyone else sang along.

Most of the parents came out to watch the show, but we got shooed away from getting too close to the stage by the band's security officer. (The stage was an area of sidewalk beyond the ringleader's instrument case.)

There was even an afterparty.

What a cool neighborhood!

The Word

Bruce McCosar — Mon Aug 04 21:22:09 UTC 2008

On Tuesday, July 29, I got "The Word" -- a job offer with a local school.

Confirmation came the next day, when I was called to schedule an appointment with the Personnel Department. I was to attend an "On Boarding" session on August 4th.

"On Boarding" -- Yahrr, made me think of pirates ;-)

The first thing I did after I got The Word was to call my wife, then my parents. They've been pulling for me all along.

You know, it's funny, in this society, you really are defined by what you do. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. In my case, it's probably good -- I have a job that I enjoy. But I wonder about those legions who've sacrificed their joy to pull down a bigger paycheck. Maybe money buys the happiness they're selling elsewhere -- sort of a Joy Arbitrage.

Well, I left research chemistry behind, and I've never looked back. Money can't buy a new arm once it's blown off in a lithium borohydride explosion. (Yes, that incident was a real life close call back in the day -- I've kept the chemical horror stories to myself, and they'll stay that way.)

In a further fit of irony, on the day I got the job offer, I'd just finished applying for six other positions in nearby counties and in local community colleges. Hey, you never know: hedge your bets.

Career Fair

Bruce McCosar — Sun Aug 03 13:27:46 UTC 2008

On Saturday, July 19, I attended a career fair for the local public school system.

When I first decided to switch to teaching, I had an excellent guide. Her name was Catherine Birdsong, and she worked for the School Board of Levy County (Florida). Unlike the other districts, which pretty much ignored my application until it was too late, Ms. Birdsong took many steps to ease my transition and gave me tons of advice. I certainly owe my teacher certification to her -- she was instrumental in getting things done within the Florida Department of Education. Normally this is an opaque box into which you throw the necessary forms and hope for a good outcome; she provided a human face and a direct liason to an obscure process.

She was responsible for something else, too. Now, you may not believe this, but I'm the world's most outgoing introvert. That is, I prefer to be working on projects, off in my own head . . . but when I do have to go out in public, well, I'm apparently quite overwhelming. The usual comment is something like "enthusiastic", "like a tornado", or something similar.

For this reason, Ms. Birdsong suggested I might be more at home teaching middle school.

That was quite a leap. Keep in mind, I was a research chemist. I spent zero time with younger people. I'd been told over and over again by people I'd tutored in college classes that I should be a teacher; I was acting on their advice.

So to tell me I should be working with 11 to 14 year olds was sort of a conceptual breakthrough. But that was her advice.

Man, she was good.

I got a job at Bronson Middle High School, teaching sixth grade science.

It was perfect.

I'm never really sure why it works. I think it comes down to this: kids that age hate being talked down to. For me, I only have one way to interact with people -- being an only child, I never had younger brothers or sisters to lord it over. I'm always just me. Therefore I talk to the students like I'd talk to anyone else.

They seem to appreciate that.

Certainly, when an adult comes in and starts talking to them like Ms. Marcia off Romper Room, or Mr. Rogers, it doesn't go over very well. They hate that.

Also, at that age, they're like me -- they like science just for the pure joy of learning how the world works, of doing something, building something, or making something. I guess that's part of the 11 year old world I never gave up. Even here on the brink of 40, I still fight the pirates.

So I'm at this career fair. I'm just a person, a body, a number, one of hundreds of candidates who've shown up, early in the morning, hoping to get a job with the local school system.

But when the interview came, I was myself.

I believe one interviewer said I came in "like gangbusters."

Well, of course. Like I said, I'm the world's most outgoing introvert. The tornado. Spinning around my center, but rampaging through the landscape.

I wanted my life back. See, I'd just got into the groove: I'd learned a lot teaching at Bronson, and was starting to feel like I could really accomplish things.

Then we had to move to Virginia.

These things happen.

So of course I came in on fire. I had four years of students behind me, backing me up. We'd been to the moon together, stopped asteroids, designed amusement parks, starred in disaster movies, formed our own bands, built earthquake proof towers of cards, and decoded human genetics.

Thank you, B-town, you had my back.

Adrift in a Sea of Paper, 39 03' 45" N, 77 23' 01" W

Bruce McCosar — Sat Aug 02 14:39:09 UTC 2008

For two solid weeks, I devoted most of my working day to a job hunt.

The most challenging obstacles:

Getting my resume together. It had been 4 years, and everything had changed. In 2004, I left chemical research and became a middle school science teacher. Now, I had to rewrite my resume from a new perspective.
Filling out job applications. One notable application -- I won't say where -- required me to fill out 21 pages online, asking apparently every conceivable question, then followed up with a mandatory Gallup poll. A few others required information that assumed I was a youngster fresh out of college . . . not someone whose college days started when Reagan was president.
Ordering transcripts. This was the most aggravating. Let me elaborate:

Ordering transcripts from my undergraduate college was no problem. UTC is very reasonable. All I had to do was send them a request, and they sent the transcripts -- no charge.

The same was not true for UF.

I think the system was modeled on the political structure of the late Byzantine empire.

First, they do not accept paper applications for transcripts. It all has to be done online.

Second, you can't do it online without a Gatorlink account.

Third, I had no gator link account, so needed a UF ID number.

Fourth, I had no UF ID number (I got my Master's before the place became Pan's Electronic Labyrinth, evidently).

Let's collapse all the parentheses around the pending operations above.

I had to log into one website to get my UF ID number. I had to log into a separate website to get my Gatorlink account. I had to log into a third website to order my transcript. I had to go to a fourth website to pay for the transcripts, because, yes, the skinflints charge TWELVE BUCKS for each one they send.

Arrgh.

And the cost of tracking all of this down, so I could actually get it done? Well, none of the above links are available from the main UF homepage. I relied on Google searches and "Open Link in a new Tab."

I hate to think what other past students -- maybe ones not so technologically literate -- do when confronted with this problem. Die, I guess. It's an academic bug zapper.

But at any rate, I managed to surf through the piles of forms. Two weeks in, I had a number of options going. Mostly these were schools, but I did toss in a few side shots that relied on my skills as a chemist. You never can tell.

It would be a race to see who could get back to me first.

Over the Mountain

Bruce McCosar — Fri Aug 01 17:55:37 UTC 2008

Just a quick note -- I'm planning a longer series of posts this weekend. But here are the highlights:

Other than the move, my biggest worry on relocating to the DC area was finding a job.

Problem solved!

I will be teaching 6th grade science at a local middle school, starting in September.

Also, a number of big projects are in the works. I'm finally back to working on new music -- hard as it is to believe, for my fifth Jamendo album. No title, as of yet, but a lot of ideas.

And finally -- the perils of reading Dandelife. Intrepid Eddie inspired me to start my own workout program. Over the past two days, I put together a small home gym, focusing mainly on upper body strength. I already get more of a lower body workout than is right -- I walk the dogs three to four times a day, now, and of course have to deal with 3 flights of stairs in my new home. My whole life is a stairmaster.

My new computer is finally up and running in the way I'm used to. I installed Kubuntu 8.04 64-bit,but there are a lot of custom scripts I had to write to accomplish my most common tasks. Since it was a new computer, I decided to start fresh and optimize them. And I did some other customizations -- made Amarok my default player,configured the sound system to run JACK in realtime mode with minimal latency.

64 bit Kubuntu still has a few blips -- mostly the fault of external software, such as the 32-bit-only binary-only flash player -- but overall, runs incredibly well.

Did I say short note? Hm. That's what happens when you can type at 200 wpm.

The Fall of Atlantis

Bruce McCosar — Fri Jul 25 20:16:06 UTC 2008

Yes, I'm one of those types who names inanimate objects. Computers, for instance. Certainly more convenient than saying "you know, that computer in the basement."

We had three.

My wife's computer is Currahee, named for the famous mountain in Band of Brothers.

Our laptop is the 10th Kingdom, named for a tv miniseries (2000).

And then, my old computer . . . the one that I first converted to Debian Linux 8 years ago, then Kubuntu earlier this year . . . the one I mixed at least four albums on . . . .

. . . the machine's name WAS the Bermuda Depths.

Unfortunately, it's now dead as a hammer.

It's sort of unusual to write an obituary for a computer, I suppose, but Bermuda Depths was a computer I definitely knew inside and out. It was an old HP Pavilion -- over the years, I'd replaced the hard drives, memory, monitor, and cd drives . . . in some cases, multiple times. The only thing remaining of the original equipment was the motherboard, the power supply, and the case.

Well, two out of three of those went bad at the same time.

I thought it was a dead CMOS battery at first. Nope. Replacing the battery just gave me more elaborate and more frightening error messages. Each time I rebooted, a new set of complaints would come from the BIOS . . . then the Linux kernel would complain . . . then things like disk writes would fail, cd writes would fail, and complex operations (such as audio encoding) would terminate with strange errors. My cpu was overheating, my hard drives were falling in and out of existence, and system memory was experiencing some sort of cyber-Alzheimers.

Fortunately, I've been planning for this day for years. I make a complete system backup each month, and back up my /home directory each week -- more if something is going on, such as a long project or, in this case, suspicious computer behavior. I didn't lose any data.

Just a computer.

It already has a replacement. I'm calling the new computer Tower of Charm, to reflect the room it was "born" in. It's a computer from science fiction: AMD 64 bit quad core, 5 Gb memory, 750 Gb hard drive . . . .

But I'll miss that old bag of bits. It was my first Linux box. It was born with a bad case of Windows XP, but I cured it soon afterward, and it went on to have a healthy adolescence that included Debian, Linux from Scratch, Fedora, and even a brief fling with FreeBSD. In the end, Kubuntu had the machine running like it was brand new.

Yet inevitably, software must fail when hardware fails.

So today I lay Bermuda Depths to rest.

The Tower of Charm

Bruce McCosar — Fri Jul 18 12:52:41 UTC 2008

I look out one window, and I see treetops. Through another, I see planes going by. The room is full of light.

Also, power strips and cables.

It's my music room, The Tower of Charm. Our new house has 3 1/2 stories -- basement, first floor, second floor, and then a finished loft. I'm in the loft, the fourth floor. I feel like I'm in the sky.

The first thing I did after my epic, 13-hour drive through shadow was put my music room together. Considering we were still sleeping in the basement, and the house was still filled with boxes, maybe someone else wouldn't have put it at so high a priority. But for me -- it was my home within my home.

And now it is, as they said in Star Wars, "a fully operational battle station." Because of all the chaos of the move, my instrumental skills suffered a bit -- there was simply no quality practice time. I've started over at the beginning, with the blues.

Time for the tour. (Pictures below.)

h3 -- The sun falls through the skylight onto the keyboard area. Belle (the Hammond organ) is parked near the wall, under the poster my sixth grade class made for me.

h4 -- A view of the computer / recording area, showing the skylight. It reminds me of the main screen on the bridge of the Enterprise. Washington Dulles International Airport is nearby, so every now and then, I see jet go by in the distance.

h5 -- The stairwell, and then this odd little door that leads to a storage area we call John Malkovich's Head.

h6 -- From our bedroom, you can see up into the loft. You can also see all the fans going -- heat rises.

h7 -- The living room. Nora is sitting there like a diva.

h9 -- The kitchen area. Neri is giving me a bark down, because I'm pointing a camera at her. And yes, there's the houseplants which drove up the road with me from Florida.

In some ways, I can't believe the move is over. For the past 7 months, it's been the focus almost every day.

The new chapter begins today.

Shadowdrive

Bruce McCosar — Thu Jul 17 12:46:06 UTC 2008

On Wednesday afternoon, July 2, at 1:30 pm, I completed the sale of our house in Gainesville, FL. With a huge check in my hand, I looked North. I was 786 miles away from home. In two days, the banks would be closed for the Fourth of July holiday, then for the holiday weekend.

Time to get going.

North on 34th street, far to the north, passing a neighborhood we lived in ages ago. Across highway 441, leaving the town behind, now on State Road 121 -- a secret route North I discovered a few years ago, that avoids the speed trap towns to the east (Waldo and Lawtey). The sun dives in and out of cloud banks; there will be a thunderstorm here later. I won't be around to see it.

The speed limit jogs up and down: 65 here, 35 there, each town I pass through exerting its pull on the flow of traffic like invisible asteroids. Lacrosse, Worthington Springs, Lake Butler: will I ever pass through these towns again? A log truck pulls in front of me going 20 mph in a 65 zone -- typical. It's still Florida. Now Raiford, and a long wooded stretch. A state mental hospital. A large radio tower.

And suddenly, the interstate. I-10, under construction, of course, a clogged artery pumping into the heart of Jacksonville. I avoid the big city by joining I-295 north. I travel from the 9 o'clock position to 12 o'clock around the perimeter, then get onto I-95 north.

My last look at Florida, at least for a while. The short distance evaporates, and I'm in Georgia. NPR is my co-pilot. Radio stations fade in and out; mostly I can find NPR in the low numbers, 87.9 to 92.5. The problem with scanning is that this area is also thronged with religious stations. If I accidentally land on one for any period of time, I quickly flip to a heavy metal station to balance out the scales of cosmic justice. I end up listening to a lot of metal. I'm in my wife's car, the one with the blown out speakers, so packing CDs wasn't an option.

Nor was there a place to pack them. There's no lack of oxygen in my car: it's stuffed, and my driving companions are all houseplants. There's an amaryllis behind my head, and a fig tree sitting shotgun.

Through Georgia, the land of my youth. I traveled a lot of these roads in high school, going to different academic competitions. I pass the turn to Jekyll Island, the place where the Georgia Junior Academy of Science had its 1985 convention. Then up, burning away the miles, wearing through the storm of memory, to Savannah, a city with it's own story. I may tell it one day. But the call North is strong, and the past belongs behind me: I drive on, and soon I'm standing at the South Carolina welcome center.

I'd been here a few days before, with my dogs, while I was driving that huge U-haul. Now the sun is very low in the Western sky -- it's late afternoon. I try to call Hannah again. There's a problem: I don't talk on the phone while I'm driving, and she's called twice. I've ignored it. However, every time I get to a rest area or stopping point and call back, I've missed her, only getting voice mail. Looks like I'm playing phone tag while I wander through the states. I decide at SC that I'm sick of it and will only call when I change states -- I waste too much time trying, and the road isn't getting any shorter while I stand there.

The road is strangely empty. You may hate the gas crisis. But if you'd driven I-95 when gas wasn't expensive, well, you'd be thankful for the difference. Normally the road is thronged. Now, apparently the only people out are the ones with somewhere to go. Years ago, I think if you'd charged me an additional $10 to completely clear out the road for the next 100 miles, I'd have taken it.

Every road seems to have its eyesore landmark. You know, the place that thinks having a billboard ad every 15 feet will somehow excuse the fact its a cheesy tourist trap. There's one just before you get to North Carolina. It doesn't need any more publicity, so I'll just say I was glad to pass it.

North Carolina: I lived here, in 1971-1972, and again in 1977-78. My dad was stationed in Jacksonville, NC both times, at the Marine Corps Air Station New River.

Talk about a home town. You poor kids of the 21st century. You get a bike for Christmas, and then can only drive it to the end of your driveway. Someone has taken away all your freedom. Well ponder this: I had a bike in 1977. I was 9 years old. Given a map, I could go anywhere on that base there wasn't a fence, a guard, or a checkpoint. I rode through all the neighborhoods. It was freedom.

I mean, what sort of idiot would go onto a Marine Corps base to try to abduct children?

The same wasn't true in the outside world. In 1976, I learned the value of having a family dog. My mom and I were staying in LaFayette, GA, with my grandparents, while my father was doing a tour of duty overseas (Okinawa). I was out in the front yard, playing on a tire swing, when this guy pulled off the road and came toward me. He claimed he wanted to use the phone. What else he wanted, I'll never know, because my dog, Ruff, a Shetland Sheepdog, turned from fluffy, happy pooch into some sort of clawed, fanged, nightmare hellhound. He barked and growled turned his little 30 lb frame into the most formidable threat I'd seen. The noise was enough to get my Mom and grandmother out of the house -- they made the strange guy go away.

Dogs can tell things about people. That day, Ruff probably saved my life.

Across North Carolina I drove, as the sun finished vanishing beyond the horizon. I'd finally spoken with Hannah from a gas station in Lumberton. (We had stayed in Lumberton -- with Neri -- on the way to our vacation in the Pinelands.) I was driving in darkness, now.

Virginia doesn't do much to make you welcome. Whereas other states have all these road displays (like South Carolina) welcoming you to the state, the first things you see entering Virginia are a series of signs chiding you for this and that, warning you of this and that. No radar detectors. Lights on when raining. Speed checked by aircraft. I've already mentioned the welcome center doesn't allow trucks. I wasn't in a truck this time, but I was still offended.

You know how all those rest areas in Florida say "Nighttime security" or "Rest area patrolled at night"? Well, in Virginia, I found out why.

Before I'd crossed the border, I tanked up on some Rockstar. It was getting late, and I didn't want my energy level to plummet once I crossed midnight. The side effect was: I had to visit the can in a big way. So I stopped at an (apparently unpatrolled) rest area.

Bad idea.

I'm not going to cast aspersions without proof, but I'd say there were a lot of friendly people working there, even friendlier for a certain fee. Where you see those, you generally see other types of crime. There was no turning back, though: I was on yellow alert. As I say, my back teeth were floating. So I basically ran into the bathroom, hurried the process, then got back to my car as fast as I could -- before someone mistook my houseplants for something else!

I made a point of getting gas in North Carolina, long before I reached Richmond. Richmond has this bypass, I-295, with idiotic exits. You see one that says "Gas, next exit" and list some stores. You turn off. Then, once it's too late, you see a second sign that says the gas stations are 4.7 miles away!

In other words, as we said in the '80s: psych.

Want some gas?

Next Exit!

Ah, 4.7 miles -- Siiike!!

So I resolved never to get gas on the Richmond bypass ever again.

The road from Richmond to DC is normally, as I call it, a cyclotron. However, look at the picture below. Yes, it's blurry, because I took it with my cell phone camera at night. It's something I'd never seen: that stretch of I-95 completely empty.

Of course traffic picked up the closer I got to DC. And believe it or not, the perpetual traffic jam on I-95 south (where the HOV lane merges with regular traffic) was still there -- even at almost 2 in the morning!

I turned off, and took the Fairfax County Parkway home. This late at night, I was the only traffic. I went through green light after green light, and finally made it home at 2:30 in the morning -- 13 solid hours on the road.

Galaxy of Emptiness

Bruce McCosar — Wed Jul 16 11:48:39 UTC 2008

On Tuesday, July 1, I was in the middle of cleaning and emptying my house in Florida.

The closing date was Wednesday, July 2; the walk-through was early that morning.

I wanted the house to look spectacular. This was my home for eight years, and I loved the place. I swept the floors and thoroughly cleaned them. I made sure all the cabinets and closets were cleared.

It was eerie. The house was so empty, there was a constant echo to everything I did. With all the tile work and wood floors, it was a perfect reverb tank. Already it was strange to be walking in so familiar a place, with everything that made it home stripped away. The echo made it seem even more barren.

Further, each time I'd come home, the thing I'd miss the most was the sound of the dogs barking when the garage door closed.

The Walk-Through

Wednesday morning went perfectly. I know the new owners will love the place. I played host and showed them all the little tips and tricks we'd learned over the years. For example, my favorite tool for cleaning the floors was not a vacuum cleaner, but a push broom -- you could clear the entire house in a matter of minutes, without having to worry about plugging and unplugging power cords.

The Closing

We were scheduled to close at 11:30. Originally, they had wanted later in the day -- but keep in mind, here I was in Gainesville with nowhere to go afterward. I planned on driving back to Virginia right after the closing. So we set the time for earlier in the day, which was fortunate.

After signing documents for about an hour, we hit a sticking point. To finish, we needed some sort of number from Bank of America. Well, hard as it is to believe, the entire company went to some big meeting and didn't come out until 1 pm. No one could give us that magic number.

So after all this, I found myself taking a sort of involuntary break. I went and got lunch. I wandered a bit. Then I came back and stood around in the office.

Finally, the number came. The final paperwork went through . . .

. . . and I left Florida behind.

Saved by William Shatner

Bruce McCosar — Tue Jul 15 12:00:55 UTC 2008

When I was little, I wanted to be a starship captain when I grew up.

Think about it: it was 1974. We'd just landed on the Moon five years before. If you'd asked me what the world would be like in the year 2008, I'd have talked about space stations, cities on the moon, and the manned missions to Mars.

The future isn't what it used to be.

My hero was Captain James T. Kirk. The one thing I couldn't understand was why he didn't marry Uhura. On the other hand, whatever he was doing, he usually won -- or went to absurd lengths to win. He'd have fit right in with my family.

And now? He's the Priceline Negotiator.

Don't laugh. He actually plays a part in this story, even if it's only as an animated character.

The Return to Gainesville

We'd just moved to Virginia. Our new home was a cross between a warehouse and a hurricane -- boxes all over, furniture in various stages of assembly, clutter everywhere. I put in a solid weekend of trying to get it in order.

But we still had a house in Florida. The sale was pending, and the closing date was on July 2, 2008. Although we'd made it to Virginia with most of our stuff, we'd only been able to drive two vehicles -- our Saturn Vue and our rented U-haul (HMS Providence).

My wife's car, a Saturn SL1, was still in Gainesville.

So were all of our houseplants. Now, I have to mention them in particular, because there are a few plants we have that go back to the year Hannah and I met. We'd carried them from apartment to house to house.

There were a few other things, as well, mostly minor -- just stuff that hadn't made it into the moving van for one reason or another. In theory, it would all fit into my wife's car ;-)

The problem was: getting back to Gainesville.

Originally, I planned to drive, because I hate flying. Scratch that: I hate airports. The flight itself is generally pleasant, assuming you've survived all that Hell on the ground to get to your plane.

So I planned to drive.

However, a few weeks before the trip, when I looked at the price for taking a one-way rental car from Virginia to Florida, it was ridiculously prohibitive -- around $500 to $600. Most of the flights I had looked up on my own were expensive as well.

And then I remembered William Shatner.

I figured I'd give priceline a try. After all, it was looking like I was about to take a hit of $500 or so -- maybe 10 or 20% off would be possible.

I logged in, put in my trip information, and . . . well, while I was waiting, a computer animated William Shatner kung fu'd as he negotiated the price (is that a real verb, kung fu'd?).

And then . . .

$180 !?!

I was absolutely certain it was some sort of trick. Surely I'd entered something wrong. I logged in on a different computer and tried again.

Nope, it was real. I'd be flying from Dulles International Airport (very close to my house) to Gainesville, FL in two hops. For $180.

So, yeah, I have to say . . . saved by Shatner.

The Actual Trip

On Monday, June 30, I went through the usual airport nonsense. My first flight was late, and I only made my connecting flight in Atlanta by about two minutes.

However, I arrived in Gainesville at exactly the scheduled time. Sandra, a family friend, picked me up and drove me back to my almost-empty house.

I'd have a lot of work to do over the next few days.

The Unscramble

Bruce McCosar — Mon Jul 14 12:13:06 UTC 2008

My parents stayed with us from the Wednesday we arrived until Saturday.

Now, I should point out, as far as the category of "people who can carry heavy objects up the stairs", there's only one person left in my family -- me. Mom has had medical problems; Dad has two "bionic knees" (he had knee replacement surgery in 1999); Hannah is fighting off carpal tunnel syndrome.

So, yeah, I was busy for a few days.

The bright side: my parents are actually pretty fun. Some of you out there are stuck with those proper types that never cut loose and act up. Me? Well, I got my class clown credentials honest.

Another problem in moving is learning the local area. One of the first places I found was the nearby IHOP -- a family favorite for about the last 40 years. Just about every trip Hannah and I have taken, we've ended up at an IHOP. In fact, there's a sort of rating system for cities we've established . . . and one of the key factors is "does it have an IHOP?"

The other meals were more of a problem. For me, it's easy: I'm a vegetarian. It's very hard to mess up the type of food I enjoy -- how exactly do you get a bean burrito wrong? On the other hand, Dad in particular is always walking into traps.

One time, in Baton Rouge, LA, he ordered some bacon-wrapped shrimp. Evidently it hadn't been cleaned or cooked properly. Result: The Green Apple Quickstep.

Another time, visiting Gainesville, he ate the horrid looking pink eggs at a local restaurant. The didn't look safe to me at all, so I called them "Pickled Do Do Bird Eggs." Result: The Green Apple Quickstep.

This time, we went looking for a Mexican restaurant. I don't think any place will ever top Las Margaritas in Gainesville. At the place we found, of course my vegetarian burrito was fine. Mom and Dad, on the other hand, ordered some sort of "steak taco." It was tough as shoe leather. Later on, we referred to the meal as the famous "Pack Burro Tacos."

By Friday, we were ready for a break, so we took Mom and Dad to the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Hannah and I had been there before. Dad served in the Marines for 23 years; the coolest thing was the extra commentary he gave to many of the photos in the Vietnam exhibits. He knew many of the people, and a lot of stories behind the photos.

It's never been easy getting him to talk about that time, but the Museum got him to open up a bit.

On Saturday, they started back to Georgia. Hannah and I were left with only two functioning rooms: the kitchen (fully organized and shelf-papered by Mom and Hannah) and the basement. Our queen size bed had been too big to make it up the narrow staircase, so, for the moment, the basement was our bedroom.

We had a long way to go, but the worst part was over.

The Home Stretch

Bruce McCosar — Sun Jul 13 11:26:47 UTC 2008

Early on Wednesday morning, we woke and started up the road. Our schedule had us meeting the realtor at our new place at about 2:30, with some local movers showing up at about 3 to help us unload.

Traveling with the two dogs, we'd been planning to stop at the Virginia welcome station. Unfortunately, when we got there, the sign read "NO TRUCKS". We had to pass it by. Eventually we stopped and let the dogs take care of business at a barren, hot truck stop. There was nowhere else to go.

When we got past Richmond, we hit the full DC metro area traffic. This is not an easy thing to negotiate even in a normal vehicle, not to mention a 24' U-haul. And of course, less than a mile from our exit, we got into a traffic jam.

Nevertheless, we made it. But we weren' t the first.

My parents -- well, they've been there for us from the beginning. When they heard about our move, they wanted to help. I told them the thing we would need most was help unpacking and getting settled in. Between Hannah and me, we had filled around 200 boxes of various sizes and shapes.

So when we pulled into the neighborhood, the first people we saw in our new home were my parents. (I'm not sure if that makes them our first guests . . . I mean, they did beat us to the house . . . .)

A running theme in this story seems to be that people have went out of their way to help us. Just as we journeyed 786 miles from Gainesville, FL to Sterling, VA, my parents traveled 610 miles from LaFayette, GA to help us.

That's class. I know, they're great parents.

It took the rest of the afternoon, but we finally unloaded the truck -- not with any particular organizing principle. We focused on getting the truck unloaded so we could return it. That means the furniture, and the 200 or so boxes, turned the first floor and basement into something that resembled the warehouse where they stored the Lost Ark.

The next few days would be a process of putting the pieces back together into something workable.

To Dunn, NC on Dog Force 1

Bruce McCosar — Sat Jul 12 12:51:16 UTC 2008

My wife and I divided the trip from Florida to Virginia into two sections. The midpoint was a town called Dunn, NC, where we would stay the night with friends.

We were in two vehicles. I was driving the furniture van (HMS Providence); my wife was driving our Saturn Vue with our two dogs, Neri and Nora.

Now, in this time of high gas prices, all of a sudden, SUV drivers are being singled out by the holier-than-thou crowd as gas wasters. Right. And how am I going to travel 800 miles with two big, elderly dogs? Stuff em in the back of a Prius? Unlikely.

Did I mention the Vue still gets 26 miles to the gallon on the highway, even though it's five years old?

Anyway, car bigotry aside, one of the things about traveling with pets is to make sure they are safe in case of an accident. You wear a seatbelt; what do they have? In the typical collision, pets turn into projectiles.

There are leashes that can fit onto the seatbelts, and then into the pet's harness, but they don't work for our dogs -- they like to fidget around and fight for space at the window (even though it's almost all windows, they want to look out the window the other one is looking out).

So I installed a set of safety bars in the car. These are metal struts that keep your pets from flying forward in the case of an accident. Not much use in rollovers, but the main type of crash in vehicles is the sudden forward impact -- hence the sense we find in air bags. As for the rest, I padded the back seat, and even built a wooden gate of sorts for the back that would allow us to keep them secure while we were loading and unloading them.

I called the modified vehicle "Dog Force 1".

You can see below, it worked out pretty well. Most of the time, they slept. We took frequent breaks, and made sure to walk them at each of the welcome centers.

(By the way, my vote for best welcome center goes to South Carolina -- very open and pet friendly. North Carolina also did a good job.)

We left early Tuesday morning, and arrived in Dunn in the early evening hours.

Hannah has a friend from graduate school who lives in Dunn named Jayna. She offered to let us stay the night. When we arrived, she and her husband even had dinner ready for us -- that was wonderful, because as you can imagine, Hannah and I were exhausted.

We really enjoyed our stay, and even got a new vocabulary word out of our experience.

Hannah and I have a lot of inside jokes. Well, Jayna and her husband had a dog named Bonnie, who was one of the best trained and best behaved dogs I've ever seen (she made our two dogs look like total slackers). One of the tricks Bonnie could do was "talk" on command. One of the phrases they used to set her off was "Have you got your growly pants on?"

And there you have it. Growly pants has become one of the new words from the trip. Neri almost always has her growly pants on. I've been accused of wearing a pair from time to time as well, generally after driving. Hannah seems to be one of those blessed with, at most, growly capris.

It was good to connect with old friends. But moreover, it was really good to be made at home -- even, as we were, between homes.

HMS Providence

Bruce McCosar — Fri Jul 11 13:06:03 UTC 2008

We picked up the moving van on Monday, June 23.

Now, if you've read other parts of this biography, you know I'm a fan of the Age of Sail -- I've read all of Patrick O'Brian's Captain Aubrey novels (Master and Commander, Post Captain, HMS Surprise . . . .) as well as the Horatio Hornblower series. I also enjoy finding out about the history and people of that time, so have read the biographies of Captain Cook, Lord Cochrane, and Admiral FitzRoy (of the Beagle). Every now and then, I'll read a pirate book on the side ;-)

So I named the moving van "HMS Providence." HMS, because it was Hauling My Stuff. Providence, because of the logo on the side of the U-haul (see below) -- Providence Canyons, in Georgia.

This was quite a coincidence.

From 1973 to 1976, my father was stationed at the Marine Corps base in Albany, GA. When time permitted, we took a lot of family vacations, even if it were only a trip on the weekend. One of the places we went all the time was called. at the time, "The Little Grand Canyon." Years later, they changed the name to Providence Canyons.

I was driving a van with a logo of a place from my childhood on the side.

We hired movers to load the heavy furniture into our truck. We'd already packaged everything, and so, mid day, found ourselves sitting in a house that was about 60% empty.

Not exactly home.

But then, a friend of the family named Colette came over and did something wonderful: she brought us lunch. She knew we'd have packed everything up already, so she brought everything we'd need -- plates, silverware, drinks.

So we sat on the floor in one of the empty rooms (out of the way of the movers) and had a nice lunch on our last day in Gainesville. And knowing me, she'd even made sure the entire meal was vegetarian.

It was one of the nicest things, I think, that anyone's ever done for us.

Quite a send off for the HMS Providence.

Coming soon, to a Black Hole near you . . . .

Bruce McCosar — Thu Jul 10 14:27:32 UTC 2008

There is a limit to the amount of mass that can be placed into a given volume of spacetime before it collapses into a Black Hole.

In trying to pack up our house, I had the strange feeling we were coming dangerously close to that limit.

Hannah and I have been together since 1993. We've been building our household ever since. Gradually, the particleboard furniture from the college days was replaced by real wood furniture -- solid construction, built to last . . . .

Heavy.

Consider the geometry of our move. I'm going to use what I call the Farmer Brown analogy: we were moving from a place as open as a barn to a place as narrow as a silo. And in the middle of our journey, the stuff had to fit in a U-haul.

Now, some of you might be wondering, why drive a U-haul at all? Why not hire a moving company?

Simple. My family's already been robbed by movers.

See, my Dad was in the Marines. We had to move around a lot. You've seen the reports on Dateline and 60 minutes about moving companies that hold the contents of your house hostage until you fork over additional fees; well, these weren't those guys. These were folks that went through our stuff like a sort of home furnishings salad bar, and took whatever they thought we wouldn't notice immediately.

It happened in 1977, during the move to Jacksonville, NC. One of the items lost was a movie projector. Really, that projector was outdated technology -- Super 8 movies didn't make it in the age of video tape -- so the actual loss of the projector wasn't that significant. However, we had stored all of our family movies in the projector's box.

What happened to them?

Probably thrown away.

We never saw them again. So, yes, if you pack enough of your belongings into a finite volume, for example a moving truck, there is a small chance you may get your own version of a black hole -- an irretreivable, impenatrable void into which parts of your life vanish.

Things that fall into a black hole never vanish, really -- time slows down for them as they approach the event horizon. Even after the last surviving stars in our universe go out, an object that falls will still be slowly emitting the last photons of its image.

Here's what vanished: the movies were of me and my friends from elementary school. My birthday parties; our family vacations in Florida; and, of course, me playing a guitar and pretending to be Johnny Cash. If you want to see the frozen image that hovers over this particular event horizon, look at the cover art for my fourth Jamendo album, Points of Departure. Yes, I chose that image with deliberation. That's me, probably singing "I Walk the Line."

It's a reminder to me that things get lost in a move.

So during the week leading up to the actual event, we prepared. I boxed, labeled, indexed, and kept track of everything we packed. We made lists, recorded serial numbers, and marked our items.

Things inevitably get lost in a move. The trick is, to control what.

Transplanting Reality

Bruce McCosar — Wed Jul 09 17:25:52 UTC 2008

My wife and I came to Virginia to look for a place to live. However, Hannah also used the time to check in at her new office and get some work done. With the question of our rental home settled, she actually went to work for the next two days.

Meanwhile, I explored the area.

Now, I have been to the DC area many times before. (Most recently, in the spring and summer of 2007). My impression of the place was a concrete jungle, with people living up on top of each other, crowded streets, and slow traffic.

Well, I was wrong.

Taking the time to explore the area around Sterling, VA, I found the developers have actually done something that's usually overlooked in Florida -- preserved greenspace.

In Florida, the first step of any new development is apparently to clear cut all the trees, push off all the topsoil, toss up as many houses as can legally be put on the land, and pave basically everything else. There are "lawns" of a pathetic, water-hungry grass that withers as soon as it misses even a day of irrigation.

Well, in Sterling, I discovered there were a lot of local parks. In addition, the townhouses we live in provide a very sensible living area -- the houses are close, true, but the green areas around the houses have been preserved. All throughout our neighborhood, there is a walking trail, with a sizeable amount of space for pets, bicyclists, and pedestrians. In addition, there's another feature we didn't have in Florida -- sidewalks!

Such a simple thing, but it's cut out my one main aggravation in the morning and evening dog walk -- almost being run over by speeding cars. Our old neighborhood was a quiet one, and most of the neighbors were courteous. However, you could tell when something went wrong on one of the main roads -- angry drivers would cut through our neighborhood, evidently speeding along to make up for those lost 2 minutes from their day.

I also took the time to get familiar with the main roads. Now, I'm somewhat unusual in my ability to remember roads -- if I've traveled it once, I can repeat the trip at any point in the future without directions. The trick is to get it right that first time. I'm very good with a map, and proved it by navigating all of the key points in the region. Later on, I drew a wall map of the area for my wife.

On Friday, we left our hotel at about noon and started back to Florida. There was a lot of work ahead, and we were already exhausted -- we decided to break the trip into two smaller sections. That afternoon, we drove from northern Virginia to Fayetteville, NC and stayed the night.

In the past, I had felt a certain sense of panic in thinking about the future. I couldn't imagine it. But I'd been to the strange land, now, and was in the first stages of making it into a new home. However, ahead were some huge obstacles -- chief among them, packing up our home of 8 years and moving it nearly 800 miles.