Busy next few weeks … Portland to Minnesota to Portland to …. Madison?!?

Going to be a hectic next few weeks for me. Started packing up my apartment this week, because I am moving next month, to Madison WI. But, just found out the move in dates and such yesterday, so that set forth in motion the timeline for the rest of the stuff. I am heading back to MN this Friday through Nov 2nd for work and stuff, so that cuts into any packing/planning time. Me and Emily are then coming back to PDX, packing, U-Hauling, Relo-cubing, and then moving to Madison, so that is going to be a busy time. Probably won’t be settled till the 3rd week of November.

Getting back to Minnesota will be good, seeing some old friends drinking buddies (Joe and Spiller – we will see if you guys can handle it!) from college in the Twin Cities, as well as working at the office for the week, and then heading up north to the Iron Range to see my family and eat some Bimbo’s buffalo wings and pizza (don’t forget the banana peppers!)

I really like Portland, really do. Why Madison then? Well, closer to home for one. It is probably the most equivalent city to Portland in that area. Emily and I got a sweet apartment, which I can’t wait to get into, also a little more quieter area than right on Burnside Street :). I guess also, I haven’t seen a flow chart (Keep trying Reena!) that can convince me to stay (hehe). No, seriously, it will be a good move, and I hope to come back to Oregon some day, the Portland area, it is just a great city and state, the values and politics and just way of thinking here is different than pretty much anywhere else. It is just time to move on to the next chapter, which will be a good thing. I do need to get to the Matador a few times before I go though, can’t beat those 2 $ PBR’s and tots!

And now about the move. Seriously – moving companies are scammers! check out http://www.movingscam.com  – it is just ridiculous. I boneheadingly submitted a quote to another site before finding that site, and I think I got calls from like 15 moving brokers like non stop for like 2 weeks. There are so many horror stories that you should almost be scared to move. I decided to go with http://www.upack.com  but I am not having them bring a cube to me, instead just bringing my stuff to their terminal, and they will drop the cube off at the new apartment once we get there. PODS is the first thing that comes to mind, but they are about 3 times as expensive as upack, and movingscams.com recommends upack. I actually got their free DVD and it is pretty informative, and puts to rest a lot of questions. We will see how it goes, and if it is good or bad, I will blog it 🙂

In the last couple of years, I have been a moving machine. From around August 2005 till now, this is my 5th place, and the new apartment will by my 6th. Hopefully it is for a couple years at least, that is the plan anyways. One good thing about moving now, I keep purging out stuff I don’t need or use anymore. I am actually right now using Handbrake on my Mac to rip my remaining 10 or so DVD’s to the hard drive, and I am going to go sell those, and a few CD’s I have as well. Pretty much after this move, most of my college area nonsense crap will be gone, time to move on to my IKEA phase I guess – yes I know what a duvet is (wow, a moving, and Portland type reference at the same time – see: Fight Club)

So, if anyone wants to track my flights..

Friday Oct 26th – NWA 218  And then on Sunday Nov 4th NWA 597

Also, for this trip I am trying to use the new site TripIt which seems to work well, but I reserved my hotel through like a broker site, so it couldn’t really handle that reservation. I set it up manually though. If you don’t what TripIt is, what you do it email your itineraries and emails from various booking sites and it puts it all in one nice little package for you, you can share it with people, export to calendars, etc. Pretty sweet.

So, wish me luck. If by around Nov 15th if you haven’t heard from me, I probably got lost in New Mexico and am wandering around with amnesia asking for quarters so I can go buy 40’s at the nearest liquor store, but hopefully I will have a few blog posts along the way for the next few weeks…and I am sure there will be some “Madison Differences” blogs coming up, for all those on the edge of their seats (Aaron)

So long PDX, we hardly knew ye! Hello Madison!