I saw the Wayne's World flashback sound written that way once.

I want to tell you about the weeks when we were absent from everything, right before I restarted blogging.

I'm not going to go into tiny detail or anything; some is much too private.  But to not blog the time surrounding Joey's dad's death and my landing as an immigrant seems selfish, because other people will go through these things, and knowing we survived can only help.

The first thing I would like to say is this:

Flirt with the U-Haul guy.

Because of everything that was happening, I ended up picking up a 17' U-Haul alone and driving it the 20 or so miles from the pickup place to my parents' house.  I could have gotten the truck closer, but it didn't happen that way, just because of the order of events.

So I'd been in Harvard Square in the morning, at the Top 10 Sources office, interviewing a couple of really nice guys whom we eventually hired.  I took the T to Davis and got on a Medford Square bus.  The driver knew where I needed to go, and I got off the bus in the rain just a few steps from the U-Haul place.

This is where the flirting came in handy.

A few smiles and jokes about what an excellent driver I am yielded a truck which had been driven only 300 miles, ever.  Shiny and new.  Good shocks.  Clean cab (except for what looked like a Coke spill).  This literally saved our asses on the drive back, across New York State in the snow.

Unfortunately, Medford and Somerville are filled with streets marked No Trucks.  So I wove and dodged and tried not to kill any Tufts students and got a little trapped on campus somehow, but finally I managed to get on 93 and get my butt out of there.

The next day, Gentle Giant stuffed my belongings into about half the truck (who knew) in about 40 minutes.  I love, love love love Gentle Giant.  I cannot say enough about this company, they are the best, I have used them for a bunch of things and I would use them again and again and again.  I'm sure they've made mistakes.  They are humans.  But they have worked so hard and so well for me, for really not that much money when you consider how careful they are.  My mom and I just kind of stood there and marveled at how efficient they were.  And then we took the truck home, met up with my dad, and went to get Joey at the airport.  The drive back to Toronto would begin early the next morning.

And I'll write about that tomorrow, unless some other great post comes along.