Final Fargo Post

Holy shit have the last five days have been hectic! The craziness started on Christmas Eve.

While we're out here we had a blended family Christmas extravaganza. WifeRat's Father remarried after her Mom passed and his wife; my Mother-in-law and BabyRat's Grandmother, better known as Nanna; has two daughters of her own, one of whom lives right here in town named Shania. We actually see Shania and her family a fair bit, Shania's husband Craig was instrumental in pig cooking that went down at the lake this Summer and Shania's daughter Madison had swimming lessons with BabyRat at the Dragon Swim School while we were here. Nanna also has another daughter, Helen, who lives in Grand Forks with her boyfriend and they made the scene for Christmas Eve as well.

In deference to Craig who is Catholic (Shania is converting to Catholicism and Madison goes to Catholic school too), we all attended Christmas Eve Mass. After Mass it was back to Nanna's for a Christmas Eve appetizer buffet that included enough food to feed triple the number of people that were there. Once everyone had eaten themselves stupid and had a drink or two it was time to open presents.

Now this opening presents on Christmas Eve thing is new to me. I had heard of people who did it, but in the family I was born into all gift opening happened on Christmas Day.

WifeRat had always maintained that my family was ridiculous with presents on Christmas and it's true, the gift giving is excessive. My sister and I have both been working professionals for over ten years, but my folks continuously found ways to lavish insane amounts of gifts on us and years when SisRat and I have been flush we have gone all out too. So imagine my surprise when as Christmas approached, you could hardly walk in the living room of my in-laws house 'cause there were gifts everywhere. Naturally, just like every year at my folk's house, we had a four hour plus Bataan Death March of gift opening that ended after 11pm.

Christmas Day the temperature got up to about 20 degrees which allowed us to finally take advantage of all the snow we've had this month and go sledding at a little park near Nanna's house. Yes, 20 degrees felt positively balmy after a brutal cold snap where the high temperature over about three weeks was 10 degrees Fahrenheit. BabyRat took such a long nap that we had to wake her up so we could go have a Christmas Dinner of prime rib.

While most people were lolling around the house in sweat pants the day after Christmas, playing their new video games or whatever, WifeRat and I were hard at work packing up our apartment so we can head back to DC.

This morning BabyRat and I had a little breakfast date so the Wife could continue packing in peace and then when we got home it was decided that BabyRat and I would go to Dike West for more sledding fun. I love sledding and the conditions were perfect for BabyRat and I to go careening down the hill on our gigantic inner tube. BabyRat also had an epic wipeout when we hit a jump that popped her off the inner tube when we hit the ground and knocked off one of her boots and a sock.

Then things started sucking as I spent a good portion of the rest of the day loading a trailer full of crap. WifeRat worked like a stallion packing and cleaning while I was hauling today. We took a break to go to Paradiso for dinner with the in-laws and Shania & Craig but, after putting BabyRat to bed, it was go time until I finished cleaning the bathrooms and started writing this post.

Tomorrow we hit the road and expect to be back in DC on Tuesday. Sticky Rice here I come!!!!!!!!

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Random Thoughts

Here it is from the mind of Hill Rat; straight, no chaser.

A Cliche That Should Be Nuked Into Oblivion
"Love means never having to say you're sorry." What a dumb crock of shit! When I Googled that phrase I discovered that it was from the execrable movie "Love Story," which means it's associated with Al Gore and thus deserving of even more scorn. I've got no love for the Beatles and if I live to be 100 I will never understand the almost religious reverence some have for John Lennon, but Lennon was 100,000,000% on point when he said that, "Love means having to say you're sorry every fifteen minutes."

Moving Sucks
This observation is based (in part) on a childhood spent moving every two years. Back then the upside to moving was that we got to go out to eat a lot, now it just means that I'm paying to go out more.

After I became an adult and stopped having roommates, I settled in real quick and would probably still be living in the "Fortress of Solitude" (a/k/a; the Fortress or FoS) if I hadn't met WifeRat. For five glorious years I lived by myself in the Fortress and was quite content to stay in one place. This January will mark year five in the Rat's Nest and this move back to DC will be the third time I've moved into the same damn place. There was the initial move in with WifeRat back when she was known as Dr. Girlfriend, then when BabyRat wasn't quite a year old we had to move out during the renovation of the building and move back in 14 months later, and now we're moving back from Fargo-Moorhead. Blargh!

There's also nothing like moving to remind me what a consumerist pig I am. I have clothes that I packed up, moved out here, and never wore; that's fucking ridiculous and even more ridiculous is that I have at least one more box of clothes sitting in storage in DC. It wouldn't be so bad if I were some kind of clothes horse, but aside from my work clothes my wardrobe is mostly made up of rugby shirts, t-shirts from rugby tournaments, and cargo shorts. In retrospect I could have easily made it through the six months out here with the duffel bag I brought, one wardrobe box, and one box of additional clothes. I suck.

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Leaving Town, pt. 2

OK, so the schedule slipped on us a little bit and we're not leaving until tomorrow (actually, it's already today since it's now 1 am) morning for the big move.

Packing up all our stuff has been a good exercise for our family and has forced us to get rid of a lot of junk, although it makes me sick how much stuff we waste and hoard. I watched this thing on the Story of Stuff and originally I was kind of annoyed by the presentation.

[quickrant] I wasn't even so much irked by the message (everyone has too much stuff), but really it was the messenger that I wasn't feeling. It was just so typical; an over-educated academic that's been at leisure to navel gaze on the topic of "stuff" is now going to put up a website to preach to the world. Bollocks! [/quickrant]

But after throwing away so many pens, hair clips, food, clothes, shoes, etc. I can't help but think that I buy entirely too much shit. I'm not even talking about the environment or anything, I'm just talking about how much of my money I waste on things that I eventually just throw away. I gave away five pairs of perfectly good (at least wearable and functional) shoes that I probably spent close to $500 on when they were new, that's some seriously wasteful shit. The plan is that rather than using this as a pre-text to buy the next pair of kicks that catch my eye, I'm really going to make an effort to wait until I really need a new pair of shoes.

Then there's the stuff that you have, don't have room for, but want to keep anyway, so you end up on the storage area merry go 'round. Yes, I actually pay to keep stuff that I don't really have access to; it's a nightmare and it is my penance for being an over-consuming dickhead. Seriously, the more I think about this, the more I hate myself.

I have to stop and go to bed now.

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Leaving Town

Swiss Family Rat is going to be departing for the Hinterlands of North Dakota for six months in less than a week. WifeRat recently got tenure and in that fine academic tradition now gets to take a sabbatical.

All of WR's colleagues told her that it was imperative that she get out of town for her sabbatical; otherwise, people would constantly be calling her and saying, "Hey, your on sabbatical right now, could you do XYZ?"

Originally we talked about going overseas somewhere, but a couple of things held us back. The biggest thing (for me) was that even though I've lived overseas before, it was under the imperial banner of the US Army. Given the current state of the world, I'm not altogether sure I want to be living outside of the US. I dunno, maybe I'm being paranoid and silly but I just don't feel like the time is right. Also, BabyRat is only 3; I want her to have a good strong memory of life in another country, if we went now she would remember but it would be more of a vague impression.

Anyway, WifeRat is from NoDak and the bulk of her family still lives there so I hit upon the idea that we should head out that way for a while. BR would get to spend some time with her other Grandparents, WR gets out of town for her sabbatical, and HR, well there wasn't that much in it for me other than doing right by my family.

More on this later.

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