End of an Era

I know some people with a fairly strict "don't ask me to help you move, and I'll never ask you to help me move" policy. Maybe that's a sound policy, too. But for me, that ship has sailed. I've enlisted help in moving before, and from time to time comes the payback.

And payback's a bitch, as was affirmed this weekend, when I helped some friends move into a new house. There were a lot of examples of how this move was going above and beyond the call of duty for all who helped.

There was the fact they've been living in the old house for 15 years, acquiring stuff and throwing little away. Despite the fact they'd already filled a good-sized storage space, it took us two full trips, each time completely loading U-Haul's largest moving van, a passenger mini-van with the seats removed, two large pick-up trucks, a jeep, and a station wagon.

There was the moving of the heaviest entertainment center you've ever seen. (Getting it into the new place required six or seven of us working in tandem.)

There was the unloading of the Tardis-like attic crawl space at the old place, in which we found (among too many other things to list) three sealed cases of Sterno. You know, in case of Y2K or zombies or something.

But despite all that, there were also a lot of good memories of the old place, and a lot of laughs -- though perhaps those were mostly augmented by extreme fatigue. In all, it honestly wasn't such a bad weekend.

Or should that be weakened? Cause I'm still completely exhausted and I think I'm getting sick.