I say this every year, but I hate Halloween. This year at work wasn’t quite so bad, though. We did it as a team. Unfortunately, we lost to our Corporate team, who went as cows. They were pretty good.

But I have this booming headache, and I’m a little worried about my pug. He’s not used to my being away all day.

The hard part is over. The washer and dryer have been unloaded. When I move out of here, they’ll be listed on craigslist. If you can get them out, they’re yours. You see, between my street and the adjacent street, there is an alley, more like a path. Getting the truck in there was hell. Backing the truck out was worse.

Now I have to go to Providence and pick up my car and the last few remaining items in my old place.

The worst part is done. I still have to unload the washer and dryer at the new place, but my new landlord needs to give me keys to the back gate. I figure I can talk him into helping me unload them while we’re at it. Tomorrow, I’m back to Providence to clean up the old place and get my car. Ironically, I have to drive back to Providence on Tuesday. I’m spending the night at Brian’s place before catching my flight early on Wednesday morning to San Diego.

Reggie had a rough day, but he’s settling down fairly well now. The poor guy has handled a lot of changes in the last week, but he’s doing fine. We’ve certainly bonded. Several people have noted that he’s very fond of me. That’s okay, because I’m equally fond of him.

Now I have a ton of boxes to unpack. This is going to take weeks… But I’m here, and that’s what matters.

Let’s see… so far, Brian is a no show, Budget tells me the truck won’t be ready until 11:00, and Reggie has already decided to pee on the kitchen floor. It’s going to be a long day.

I’ve just made a decision. My couch is not going with me to Boston. It’s too big for the new place and I’m afraid it won’t clear the door anyway. That means the big stuff is down to the mattress, cedar chest, dresser, washer, and dryer. I’m okay with this.

October 21, 2002
The Butch Cafe
Oxford St, Sydney, Australia

It’s hard to believe I’ve been in Sydney almost three days. Even stranger is that I’m off to Melbourne tomorrow.

When I got here, I made a huge mistake. I checked into my hotel room and opted to take a quick cat nap. Well that quick nap turned into a full eight hours of sleep. I woke up at 7:45, and I had symphony tickets, and that started at 8:00. Needless to say, I missed seeing the Sydney Symphony.

The symphony was one of the “must do” in Sydney things I’d seen on some website. Another one was to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Climbing the bridge was a really profound event for me.

[My waiter is totally cute. He’s a bit more effeminant than I care for, but he’s still a doll. ]

Imagine being one and a half football fields above sea level when the city is at sea level. It’s simply astounding. So now, when someone asks what I saw in Sydney, I can say that I saw the whole ciity—and I mean the WHOLE city. But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

After missing the symphony, I got a much-needed shower and then ran out for some dinner. One of the great things about Sydney is that there are plenty of little cafes. The fare completely varies, too.

After filling my tummy, I ran back to my hotel to change clothes. I was completely inappropriately dressed.

Finally, it was time to check out the bar/club scene on Oxford St. Oxford is kind of like San Francisco’s Castro St., except much bigger. SF also has the SOMA district where a bunch of the seedier queer clubs are. In Sydney, they’are all on Oxford or an adjacent street. I checked out a few places, but I had the most interesting time at a leather bar. I didn’t talk to anybody except the bartenders when ordering drinks. My body was all messed up, still,k and I was utterly exhausted. That’s after sleeping all afternoon. Mikey didn’t stay out too late. My body just wouldn’t forgive that.

I went back to my hotel room and made a few calls. First was Drew. I hadn’t realized how big of an impact he’s had on my life. Keep in mind that this was 1:00 AM in Sydney, making it 11:00 AM in Pittsburgh.

My second call was to my mom’s flower shop. I’m glad I did catch her there. Fortunately, Darcie and Sarah were there, too. My sister gave me heck for having my friend Rod call. I’ll come back to that one later. Finally, I tried calling Phil.  We were supposed to get together before I left. I kept getting a message that the line was busy. Randy must have been online. So fortunately, I was able to get Phil on his cell. By this time, it was almost 1:30, and I was out as soon as my blonde head hit the pillow.

I got some of this stuff as a complimentary item on a Qantas flight a few years ago and finally looked it up today. It’s worth getting more of.

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Sometimes, it feels really good to purge things from your life. I just filled a 35 gallon trash bag with clothes that needed to be thrown away in the last move. If I keep up this attitude, there will be a lot less stuff to move on Saturday and a lot more stuff to go to the curb….  well… when my landlord gets around to it.

Oh, and Reggie is sitting on the end of my bed, snoring away. His little snores are so cute.

I was in a training class this morning, learning about my company’s value stream. That sounds dreadfully boring, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t the slightest bit boring. In fact, I wish it could have been more detailed because I’m really interested in how this company works. Susan, our Director of People Strategies (human resources), and Bill, or COO, are awesome facilitators, and they know their stuff. If all of our required training classes are this good, I’m not going to complain about them.

I’m out of the office now until Monday. Tonight and tomorrow, I pack for the move. Saturday morning, Brian and I are going to haul everything to Boston and unload it again. Last time I moved, I was much more prepared.

The cable guy came and hooked up my cable service today. He left the cable modem but didn’t hook it up. He didn’t even leave me the coax cable to install it. That’s easily remidied. After that, I took Reggie into the office so I could introduce him. He did well. I’ve written about that on das Pug.

Well, I need to get my ass moving and start packing some stuff up or I’m not going to be ready to move on Saturday morning.