Ants in the pants? ANTS IN THE PANTS?! YOU SONOFABITCH! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GET ME THE RED MEGAMAN YOU CHEAP PIECE OF CRAP I HATE YOU! -Cartman (Damien, 1998)

My very first exposure to SouthPark so many years ago was this episode; Damien the son of Satan comes to earth to herald he arrival of Satan. It also happens to be Cartman's birthday. This episode and "Pinkeye" were on a VHS tape that was a birthday present from my sister Theresa. I think this particular tape was given to me sometime in 2000... yeah, I got on the SouthPark bandwagon kinda late.

Let me start by saying I'm not normally a light sleeper. Certain things (my cat, gym trips, hurricanes) have changed that for the worse. You would think I should sleep better with a cat constantly walking on me but somehow, that's just not the case. Last night I had another issue: ants. That's them in the picture up there.

You know that state of sleep, right as your about to fall asleep? Where you always think you're about to roll off the bed and you jerk, waking yourself up? Yeah, that one. I couldn't manage to get past that because every time I'd doze off, I'd feel like something was ever so slightly brushing against me. My arms. My head. My leg. I'd swipe at it and doze back off, only to have it happen again. I finally stumbled out of bed at 3am and turned on the light. Sure enough I hadn't been dreaming something was definitely touching me. Ants were crawling all over my comforter and me and I had been swatting them in my sleep. I can't begin to describe the level of "freak the fuck out" that hit my sleep addled brain at 3am in the morning.

Now I don't have anything against insects in general, but anything that bites pretty much gets nuclear winter declared inside my house. I got pushed into a fire ant bed as a kid and had too many "lawn mower meets ant hill" incidents while growing up to be nice to ants. Luckily California ants don't seem to bite much, and are generally just looking for water. Call me an ant racist, but I smashed all the ones I could see (black ants on a dark wood bed half asleep at 3am!), threw my comforter in the corner, and dragged my mattress, pillow, and a blanket off to sleep on the floor. I've only been here 10 days and had my own bed for the last 4 days and now somehow I'm back to sleeping on the floor. I was just drifting back off to sleep (Wifecat curled up at my side of course) when I heard the little voice in the back of my mind say the Cartman quote. I managed to scare the cat into finding somewhere else to sleep by laughing my ass off.

I'm coming back from work with Raid though. No mercy!

That is some tasty, tasty pie you see there: apple pie ala mode with caramel sauce. Today was a pretty good day so I decided to celebrate a bit with room service.

I'm up in LA for a few days getting to meet the development teams I'll be working with and trying to absorb all the knowledge of my predecessor. I drove up yesterday evening after 8 and I gotta say; driving in LA was fun! 8 lanes of traffic, average speed of 70-80mph, and tons of traffic all dodging and weaving. It was like driving in a high speed go-kart track.

While up here, I managed to get my truck delivered ahead of schedule. The movers were in the area doing another drop off and called me to schedule the San Diego delivery. I talked them into dropping it here at the LA office instead and turned in my rental car a day early. Hurrah! It only took about 6 phone calls and twenty minutes to actually FIND the movers but we eventually did. My truck is filthy, smells like an oily boot, and the seat settings are all jacked up. But it's mine. Further fun factoids? I didn't realize until the day I drove up to LA that they only take payment in cash, money order, or cashiers check, and I'm nearly 1200 miles from my nearest bank branch. I'm probably the whitest looking person to ever appear to be doing a drug deal by giving him a wad of cash on a side street near the freeway.

After the truck trade we went up to the main Sony Pictures lot/campus in Culver City to meet some of the dev teams; we ran into them at The Commissary so we joined up for lunch. We got to hang out some afterward and see some product demos. It's a kickass experience to watch technology like this in action and to realize it's running on "my" platforms. Everyone I've met has been great so it sucks that I'll be 100 miles away and not able to be up this way more often. The eye candy wandering the Sony Pictures campus is a pretty nice fringe benefit too.

Looks I'll be heading back to San Diego a day early due to some network maintenance Thurs night / Fri morning. It looks like the rest of my belongings should be arriving this weekend too so hopefully I'm gonna be pretty busy. It'll be nice to have ...well a bed for starters. Maybe Wifecat will stop giving me dirty looks from across the room.

Food coma is catching up to me so I'm making an early night of it.

As I sit here in a dark empty apartment I find myself wishing that I had more lead time on the move. It retrospect, it probably woulda been better to pack/ship everything a week early and meet it here instead of being here a week before my stuff. Oh well. It's pretty much camping with fewer bugs and better restaurants.

My trip out was fairly normal as far as flights go. The added element of Wifecat to the flight proved to be pretty anticlimatic. She cried a lot on the smaller flight and threw up on the air tram / terminal train in Dallas, but outside of that she did fine. She seems to approve of the new place (the counters are lower and easier to jump on) so for now we're settling into what can only be described as domestic felicity.

So here it is the eve of my flight and all I can manage to feel is bone-deep weariness. I've been burning the candle at every possible end to get ready for this and now that it's finally here I'm not even excited. I haven't decided if this is good or bad; half of me misses the Christmas morning excitement while the other half is glad that this whole move has been relatively calm. I can't help but think that the level of calm in some way reduced the overall drama level.

Either way it's late, and Wifecat has curled up on my foot after taking her first dose of "anxiety" medication for tomorrow. My flight leaves Mobile at 11:15am. We both need the sleep I think.

If everything goes as planned, in exactly one week from today I'll be officially moved out of my apartment. My flight will leave the next morning at 11am with Wifecat and I en route to San Diego. My new apartment is rented, new utilities scheduled for hookup, old utilities scheduled for shut off, and my ticket is booked. Tomorrow I book my rental car and finalize with the movers who will be done by this time next week. My last day at TeleVox will be this Friday.

So why am I not asleep tonight? I'm almost done packing so it's not like I need to be up for that. Everything has gone smoothly despite the rushed timetable; in the past moving has been chaotic and dramatized. I honestly think this is the first time I've never had to ask for help from friends or family during a move and it makes me feel all grown-ed up inside. Yes, grown-ed up is a word. I just used it didn't I? I'm awake because I just got back from the gym and because I wanted to start recording my state of mind before the big move gets fully underway. I guess I need to remember in the future that cardio makes me introspective. Too much time with too much repetitive motion no doubt.

I've had the idea of this post in the back of my mind most of the day, struggling to put words to what I'm feeling. Strangely enough, blank is the only adjective that comes to mind. I'm excited about the idea of moving to San Diego, but I'm not overly anxious about the moving process itself or my new job. It feels like the right thing to do and somehow that's enough. I think it helps that my friends, family, and co-workers have all been supportive. I hope it didn't take me leaving to realize what a great group of people I know here in Mobile. I'm actually a little sad to be leaving TeleVox. The teams I've worked with and worked for have helped grow and shape me in the ways that made it possible for me to do this transition, so I owe them all. Thank you.

Hopefully this is the only serious post of the blog. These are a total drag.

Editor's note: This is one of the early photos of Wifecat. She was a stray that followed me into the house one day and never left. The first 6 months she was weirdly attached to me; she would follow me from room to room but never "cuddle" or curl up with anyone. She's only slightly warmer towards me now.