Shipping Boxes

Dropped off all my personal belongings at the shipping company today. Six small boxes in total, plus a rug with my sweet walking stick rolled up inside of it. I don't really care about the rug much, but that walking stick...the rug was just an excuse to smuggle the stick and provide some padding around it. Adding in the stuff I'm carrying in my suitcase, I think my total personal affects sum to less than 350 lbs. I think that's pretty good? I sure threw out a lot of stuff - mostly clothes - so at least I feel like I'm living light relative to two months ago.

I called around to a bunch of overseas shipping places, and this was the best deal. Still gonna cost me upwards of $350 (!), but that's significantly less than the others. Guess that makes sense, considering a plane ticket is like $500 or $600. The boxes, however, will be livin it up ON A BOAT for the next 3-4 weeks, so I'm pretty jealous.

The dropoff was about 20 minutes northeast of University City, and this was my second time driving there because the place closed at 4:15 (surprise!) yesterday when I had been told it closed at 5. Nonetheless my friend Sufjan Stevens kept me company on the ride over, and driving can be a great mix of chill and (in a city) high-pressure, which I found I kinda enjoyed. To make things even better, I had to wait 45 minutes for the warehouse workers to finish their lunch break, allowing me to go to this awesome barbecue place called Sweet Lucy's. It was excellent. Pulled pork sandwich with macaroni and cheese and cornbread. And then a homemade cookie to boot. Yeah, even though it was a restaurant the cookie did qualify for homemade, because it was the same size, freshness and texture as the kind of cookies your mom or your neighbor makes. Mmmmm.

Shalom,

- Josh