249 lbs.

...is how much stuff I've just sent to New Jersey.

We're allowed 250. "250," I thought foolishly, "that's quite a lot - I can take roller skates, the kitchen sink, shoes and ships and sealing wax, and even pigs with wings."

Wrong.

You know in the Harry Potter books, whenever Harry has to move his trunks, he ususally does it by magic? There's a reason for that. My spell was a lot less fun, and involved several rolls of duct tape, an exacto knife/cardboard-box duet, and heavy-duty trunks which looked like they might store automatic weapons, but instead contain 250 pounds of (mostly) books. And sheet music. And coats. And then, for a change of pace, some more books.

I found out this week what a strong emotional tie I have to my books. Not to the words themselves, but to having my books around me. To be able to look up on the shelf, and say, "oh yes, that's where that is" means that I am settled in, ready to work. I had to cut down my pile of books three, four, five times before I was under the allowed limit for the container ship. Ah well - the excellent thing about books is that one can always acquire more of them.

In a related story, the shipping company (whom the administrators of the Fancy Fellowship have retained to ship our crap to the Land of the Engs) observes on their website that occasionally, containers fall off the boat despite their best efforts to keep them from sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic. But, they say, this happens only during stormy passages with high winds. I might observe that my crap will be steaming across the Atlantic at the height of hurricane season - one of the busiest hurricane seasons, I'll add, that we've had in some time. So now I don't know whether to encourage St. Scholastica to send hurricanes away from the Gulf (in which case they could send my four boxes overboard) or toward the Gulf (thus saving the boxes but turning the Big Greasy into a floating, scummy cereal bowl). I guess we'll have to settle for Mexico. Are you listening, St. Scholastica?