I bought plane tickets from Portland to St.Louis, and St.Louis to Phoenix. They were both one way, and more expensive than the $150 I had budgeted for the flights. But it will work, and mercifully, direct. When I have the option of spending an extra $30 to skip a twelve hour layover in Denver, you bet it's worth it.
I worked out lodging in Portland, staying with a friend from graduate school and watching his cat while he's gone with his family. He also graciously offered me the use of their car, although I may try to stick to Uber and mass transit to stay closer to the experience of what my daily commute will be like as I jump from apartment to apartment.
Sunday, Saori gave away a book for free, an exhibition catalogue and study of the artist Gego to the Serbian architect. But she had severe sellers remorse, and really began to regret letting it go. I didn't have the guy's name either, so I had no way to get in touch. So I went back to the facebook forum where I posted the original ad for the yard sale, and asked the group if the Serbian architect who lived in Japan would get in contact with me, we would like to buy the book back from him.
He contacted me, and said he would be happy to return the book, and I met him today as he took some time out of his lunch to meet on a street corner near his office. I offered to pay him again for the trouble and the book, but he refused. He did accept the bottle of wine I brought as a thank you, however. On the way back home, I stopped into a grocery store and bought more ginger-lemon haribo gummies, packing tape, paper plates, plastic cups, and a few beers.
Today we packed away most of the books in one box, which taped up, constituted the first shipment box and tipping the scales at 28 kg. Second box is also almost ready to go, with our Eames rocker, and a lot of winter clothes and posters we never put up. Saori has been very busy sorting clothes. We have bags and bags and bags of clothes, mostly Saori's which we are going to donate.
More of Saori's coworkers came over tonight. Saori is quite beloved at the office to the point that everyone wants to get together before we take off, even though we have already had the goodbye party at the office, a second goodbye party at the apartment, and a goodbye lunch date. In the end, Daphne, Georg, Kiara, Martin, and Angie organized something and came over with a bunch of really really good pizza and I popped some good champagne and wine, and we enjoyed dinner together in the partially packed apartment.
We found some great people in Stuttgart.
No comments:
Post a Comment