It didn't seem real until....

...I packed my office and game room.

Moving isn't a big deal for me from an emotional perspective, generally. I moved so much as a kid that the concept of "home" didn't really set in until I was in my late twenties. So, for me, when mama said that we were moving, my jimmies remained unrustled. We packed up 50% of the house, mostly upstairs, and then the tchotchkes from our travels around the world. It didn't seem real, as much as just another thing to occupy my time besides sodding about the house, aimlessly.

Well, it sunk in last night. I was tasked with packing up my office, and the area just forward of my office, my game "section" (read; shelves shelves shelves). Holy shit. While putting Conquest of the Empire and so many others in big boxes, I realized that YES, WE ARE FUCKING MOVING. Wow. Not so much an emotional thing as an intellectual recognition that this IS happening, and while in the interim, my belongings are locked away in cardboard prisons like matryoshka dolls. Cardboard within cardboard within cardboard. Whoa.

The funny thing is that I left out games like Stone Age (fuck you in advance, Barnes!) and Rampage so that I'd have something left to do with the kids and wife when it's 9PM on Saturdays (our game night, if I'm not at a friend's doing game night).

It strikes me as incredibly telling that I was ultra concerned with the packing of the games in the boxes. My little trinkets from around the world were hastily tossed in boxes. Diplomas, certificates, awards...all tossed in boxes without any sort of attachment. Even my gun safe is haphazard. But not the games. Those fuckers are locked away in padding, poison peanuts, and a sea of tape.

It's amazing to me what people get attached to. It's amazing that I am more worried about the games than irreplaceable awards, family photos from the 70's, even my dad's "I'm dead, and here's the little funeral announcement for you to remember the date so that this particular day will always suck for you" card.

Totally irrational and illogical that what most people would feel is important I feel is mostly irrelevant, and what most people think is mostly irrelevant are my prized, treasured possessions.

The really funny thing is that I'm now anxious to get this bitch sold so we can move and I can unbox them all. Drakkenstrike never had such an unboxing ceremony as I will once the place is moved. The entire focus of the first day (after the beds and clothes are unpacked) will be upon designing my perfect game room, leaving room for a faux-Geek Chic table I'm going to build, and a pool table equipped with Simonis cloth. Maybe a bar. But it will be all about the leisure shit, not the office, not the bedroom.

Then, after contemplating this whole scenario, I realized that I'll have this big 2800 sq ft house with a bad ass game room and I will literally have ZERO people over because I won't know a single fucking person within 150 miles.

Excitement has been utterly quashed.

All of this amounts to the final analysis: Moving fucking sucks. I move from one place to another, become a stranger in a strange desert land, and in the interim all of the things I have spent years amassing, pimping out, modifying, and preening on are all locked away in boxes.

Yes, moving fucking sucks.

/end rant.

/unsubscribe

Starting from ground zero has got to be a bitch. Finding a game group and then finding the subset that are cool to play with or trying to bring in people met through other avenues. Just a drag.

It has to be tough for the kids too. Especially as they are moving at the end of the school year so meeting friends will be harder.

Nothing really to add and I can't remember where in AZ you said you were moving. But just think...no snow...and that has to count for something.

..and the new gaming group doesn't even know you only half mean it when you call them a "dirty cunt." Lessons to be learned.

Meetup.com is the quickest, easiest way to find other gamers in your area. I was reluctant to use it, but finally attended an event for the local meetup group (which has well over a thousand members) and really enjoyed it. Now I'm proud to call some of those people my friend.

I hope to get my family out to AZ before my little man turns two (and we have to buy him a plane ticket)...My parents are in Gilbert down the road a ways so if I can't peel away for a game I'd love to meet you for a beer.

Good luck with the move.

It's on, Von Tush.

Here's a little known secret about the Circus: It isn't a "game group" in the traditional sense. Until I started bringing over games, not a single one of our folks had played anything beyond Monopoly, really. These are country folks; we're talking about a painter (houses, not minis), a retired, disabled SEAL, his wife, the painter's girlfriend (the daughter of the SEAL...which is hilarious to watch the interactions), and some other folks who are not "regulars" but are there enough to play occasionally.

The funny thing is that I've had so many lifelong gamers tell me how much they agreed with the assertions in the Circus, which leads me to believe that you don't need to be a lifelong gamer to recognize "good" from "bad". You just need to play it three times.

Anyhow, back to the move, DESPITE BARNEY'S HATERADE. "Starting over" is no big deal for me. I've done it all my life. I went to 4 grade schools, 2 middle schools, and one high school. I've been to 3 college/universities. I lived in 7 houses from age 0 to age 18, all in different areas. My wife and I lived in 9 places in the last 20 years, in 4 states. This will be move #10, and state #5. We meet people and we're pretty likable (despite what most of you lot might believe), so it's very easy to make friends. We've lived here for 12 years and made some really decent friends, which is probably the hardest part of the whole ordeal. But, I'm a bit unattached when it comes to interpersonal relationships, so honestly, I really don't care much about anyone outside my immediate family. I mean, I'm not cold at all, and I'm very loving, but I have had my fill with humanity and so I see most people as replaceable. Only a very few people in my life are in the "inner sanctum", and I think the way I was brought up with regard to continually moving, adoption..etc..kind of taught me that life is an experience game and the object is to experience as much as you can with as many people as you can, while you can.

I know, I'm a weird fuck.

I see most people as replaceable

Proudly planting the flag of curmudgeonry.

More like, "planting the proud flag of a lifelong history of relocation which predicates a belief that no matter how good a friend is, they will ultimately be gone and thus attaching one's self is an effort in futility."

If you give a kid a cookie every day for a year, but just before he eats it, you take it away, eventually that kid will learn that keeping hope alive is a fucking waste of time.

Well, damn.

Selfishly, I was hoping to get one more trip in before Pete left.

It's not sold yet, and to be honest, irrespective of when I move, I'm GOING to GenCon. I'll just have to fly. No biggie.

It will suck, though, if we can't chill at the crib for a couple days beforehand as we have. Just depends on when we get it sold.

As of this writing, it's still not on the market. I'm still touching up things.

Moved all the time as a kid (I had 3 elementary schools and 2 junior highs...).

Excrement has been utterly quashed.

I think I slipped a bit during my fast reading...