The Alligator Family is Moving!

We're renting a small box truck that'll tow hubby's car, so nothing is being shipped. We're doing everything ourselves :)

Naw, definitely not just a Jewish thing.

(Spend a couple of hours in conversation with Aaron (<3) and you'll see where I got that impression.)

Wilmington's motto is A Place To Be Somebody. I am not making that up:

Sort of like how the Pittsburgh Pirates' ad campaign a few years back was "We Will."

I am determined to not get burned out on packing, so I'm spreading it out as much as I can.

That said, I packed the inaugural box today! All the fancy glassware and stemware are now put away. We'll have to imbibe alcohol from solo cups or glass mugs (which aren't moving with us) from here on out. CLASSY!

I've also decided that the entertainment center is getting packed after my brother visits next weekend, since he's sleeping in the living room on the couch during his stay. That way I'll have fewer things to distract me from packing/cleaning and whatnot. This means I'll be without XBox for like a whole month :C

ETA: And of course not an hour goes by before one of the cats tries to get into the box, despite it being taped shut. This is going to be a long couple of weeks, lol.

If you were closer to SF I'd give you all the boxes I just finished using. :(

Oy vey!

Craigslist can be a pretty good source of boxes, either from people who just moved or from retailers who get stuff shipped in boxes all the time. I got a load of boxes from American Apparel that way.

Oh yes, I did this when we moved! Scored some awesome U-Haul boxes for free!

I WILL BE THERE IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS JUST SAYIN

but I also expect to be mostly done with packing by then. :/

When I moved I got a load of boxes from a local pharmaceutical company. They even delivered them as I'm carless. Do you have any local businesses you can ask?

Another box is almost done. Waiting for hubby to retrieve my PS2 from his boss's house (we loaned it to his daughter so she could try We Heart Katamari and then he took it up to the lake house but allegedly it's back now... idfk), then I'll be able to seal it up. That'll mean the whole entertainment center sans XBox + Xbox games and TV has been packed.

I think one box a day is a pretty good pace for now.

Also: I am so so SO glad that we've kept the original boxes for some of the stuff we have, including the Wii we got for Christmas last year and the TV we got two years ago. As much space as it takes up, the TV box is probably going to stay with us for quite a while, even after the move. I just don't know what I'd do without it.

ETA: Well like I said, I'm gonna go peruse town to see if I can find any more cardboard dumpsters. When I moved around a bunch in college (which was at least once a year, if not more often), there were these wire-fenced cardboard drops all around town, and often you could count on every restaurant to have one. We got a lot of boxes from Subway and the drop at the loading dock of the student center.

DON'T FORGET TO PACK THE CATS

Good advice; it's one of the great albums.

Well, if you all ever come up Boston way there's the locals here. We play boardgames once in awhile.

Scrapple is good, but you have to cook it right.

Pork roll is awesome. It's one of the things I love about going home to PA.

I don't know if you get Tastykakes out west, but their Candykakes will make you forget there ever was a Twinkie.

Go to Chestnut Hill and treat yourself to a Schmitter:



Really, the sandwiches are the reason to go to Philly.

Also check out Bethlehem, PA, which is a funky college town that had pretty good Christmas lights about now. I grew up in Easton, PA which is the home of Crayola. The Crayola Museum is (I hear) fun, though it didn't exist when I was a kid there. Downtown Easton is trying to become a funky, artist town. It's not quite there yet, but it has antique shops and the Quadrant Book Mart and Coffee House which is where the artsy high school kids would go to read and drink coffee and listen to folk music before there was such a thing as Starbucks. Also you could go to the State Theatre, which is a gorgeous vaudeville theater that was lovingly restored and put back into service. I was a volunteer there when I was in high school 30 years ago, and I'm one of the people who helped clean it up and bring it back.

Easton/Bethlehem is about an hour from Lancaster.

Also check out Roadside America, in Shartlesville. Because. I mean, everyone should see the largest model train set ever built and open to the public.

DUDE. I have never been more in the mood for a sandwich than right now *drools*

I'm usually not a fan of really meat-heavy sandwiches, but that looks pretty damn amazing.


Meanwhile, in packing-land, I have confirmed my suspicions that over 80% of the non-furniture non-kitchen shit we have does not really belong to me. This is problematic because I'm a fan of throwing out as much useless stuff as we can, rather than moving it. I don't mind packing Mr. Alligator's things for him, but he has a lot of things that I'd favor tossing out. Example: ~10lbs or so of class notes from college. He says he wants to keep them to refer back to, but yet since leaving college a year and a half ago he has yet to do so. Additionally, he has all of the textbooks from those classes. I can understand keeping the textbooks, but not the textbooks AND the notes.

Pack empty boxes labeled his shit, then leave it behind.

.. I may not be the best person to take advice from for marital harmony.

Quoted for WHAT THE FUCK? I wasn't aware of this and now I have a sudden rage against Amish people.

I cringe every time I see one similar to her and it's named "Smokey." :(

Is yours bald on her... ankles? on her hind legs?

Until about two months ago, I still had notes from my first undergrad college classes in 1996. Also had some homework that I had printed out from my parents' computer on the dot matrix printer (the perforated strips with holes were still on both sides). The way I see it now though, once you've graduated a program and don't need to go back and refer to things such as to prove you met some graduating requirement, keep only the stuff you want to use and scrap the rest.

tl;dr I AGREE

'twas the source of much childhood amusement (and parental angst) during our annual family pilgrimage through PA on the way to western NY.

It's a damn fine sandwich, but be warned, McNally's is pretty much a neighborhood bar, so you're going to be sitting in a small place where there's a kitchen area behind the bar that just happens to make world famous sandwiches.

Interesting article on Amish reality TV came up this morning, thought it vaguely related.

"Amish Mafia": Is there really such a thing as an Amish thug?
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/12/amish_mafia_is_there_really_such_a_thing_as_an_amish_thug/

However, much as with “Breaking Amish” and other “Amishploitation” productions, the characters in “Amish Mafia” are misrepresented as having been plucked from the core of the Amish community when, in fact, the individuals involved are either on the outer periphery of Amish life, outright fabrications, or are vulnerable or classless enough to make for the kind of personalities TV audiences could find compelling regardless of religious or ethnic affiliations (the business of tabloid and reality television is premised on an ample supply of such people). In the case of “Amish Mafia,” thuggery and self-promotion certainly appear to be higher priorities of the featured “bosses” than the tenets of Amish religion.

Is there any population in which you can’t find a few badly behaving, exploitable or shamelessly colorful individuals on which to base a trashy television show? Obviously you can find such people in any community. But there are few communities for which it’s considered OK to take the unflattering exploits of such persons and make them the subject of a reality TV series while slapping the name of a religion or ethnicity on the project. How well do you think “Mormon Mafia” or “Latino Mafia” would go down? “Breaking Muslim”?

At least as far back as Lucy Walker’s 2002 documentary “Devil’s Playground,” a sub-industry has found success in a formula that’s one part Rumspringa, one part Jerry Springer. And its approach is entering the mainstream. It’s not just producers of lowbrow TV series, but respected news outlets who increasingly treat the Amish with an alarming disrespect bordering on bigotry – often clearly in violation of their own journalistic guidelines. If you need evidence, just do an Internet news search for “Amish.”

When a young Amish man in Ohio sent X-rated texts to a minor last year, many mainstream news organizations covered it as an above-the-fold story – apparently for no other reason than it was just too hilarious to pass up. In another story that ultimately saw a hate-crimes verdict handed down last September, concerning an Amish-related cult whose attacks involving beard- and hair-shearing terrified Amish communities in two states, even respected news operations initially covered the story as if it was merely the antics of a few feuding hillbillies. And the countless headlines last summer about the “Amish Bernie Madoff” (investment fraudster Monroe Beachy) stood in sharp contrast to standard media treatment of other swindlers’ religions and ethnicities.

The Amish don’t have a public relations arm or an organization to defend their reputation and monitor bigotry and insensitivity toward them. There’s no Amish NAACP or Anti-Defamation League.

Yet more troubling than the disrespect to which the Amish are increasingly subjected in our public discourse is what it reveals about the rest of us. A society that allows derogatory treatment of a religious or ethnic group in its midst – and not just allows it, but eats it up – isn’t nearly as tolerant and inclusive as it thinks it is.

Oh, hells yeah.

I remember coming back from a family trip to DC, back when I was in high school, by way of I-81. The weather was clear through Harrisburg, but it started snowing lightly as we made our way north. By the time we hit the hills, the road was a solid sheet of ice, and we were stuck there (along with about five miles worth of traffic, most of it southbound freight) for a good several hours before they could get salt trucks and plows to us.

This wasn't a thin coating of ice, either. It was like a proper skating rink out there.

We wound up pulling into Binghamton around 1:00 AM and getting home a day late.

What is Reading, PA like? There's a possibility that I could network myself into a company in Allentown, so we'd likely split the difference and live in or near Reading if that happened.

All I know is the Caps' ECHL affiliate, the Reading Royals, is there. And that it's pronounced "Redding."

I hear they have a railroad.

It's just another smallish city. There was a factory outlet area there called Vanity Fair where Mom would take us to get our school clothes every year. There's also the semi-famous Pagoda there that we went to once when I was a kid and would always try to be the first to spot on the side of the mountain when we went there.

Near Reading is a Keebler distribution center that was one of the first robotic warehouses in the country, and there's a big brewery there (I think it's Budweiser). Kutztown State College is near there, which is where you went if you didn't get in anywhere else if you were in my high school.

I also forgot that they converted the former Bethlehem Steel into a casino. My nieces go there all the time for concerts now, because the concerts are cheap.

Oh, and in Allentown is Dorney Park which is one of the few independent, non-themed parks still out there and going strong. It's amazing that it survives given that for half the year it has to close because of weather.

Shit I am hitting the road in only fifteen days.

PANIC MODE ACTIVATE. EVERYTHING IS REAL NOW.

Consumption of wine +50%

Number of boxes in living room + 200%

I still need to pack three more boxes in order to stay on target with "one box a day" plan. Which really needs to become two boxes a day at this point.

Well, at least the entertainment center is completely packed now. One less thing to distract me.

Debating packing up my desktop and putting my tiny EeePC in its place, so I have an internet box but no gaming capabilities. Hmmm.

I'm with you on the scrapple, the dumplings, and the whoopie pies. All delicious.

Shoofly pie, though, is secretly the longest-running Amish practical joke in the world. PA residents aren't supposed to tell this to outsiders, but it's totally true. That stuff is disgusting, it's all on purpose, and the people telling you it's great want you to be unhappy.

Oh yeah, depending on your route out, wave when you pass through Pittsburgh.

We have enough people in PA that we really ought to set up some kind of gathering eventually.

Dude, no. I make amazing shoofly pie. (chess pie is better though)

Dude, no. My family's all Pennsylvanian (Schuylkill County coal crackers represent!) and my grandma made the best shoofly pie. Yeah, and don't forget the city chicken! And the bacon dressing.

No waaaaaay, Dean -- I would also get school clothes at Vanity Fair at the end of the summer. It's possible we were there at the SAME TIME. Spooky. I also remember yelling "PAGODA!" every time we drove by, but I never actually visited the durn thing.

Mmm, warm bacon dressing.

I dunno, man. People keep telling me there's good shoofly pie out there, but nobody's ever served me any. It's always this plate-full-of-molasses overly sugared mess and I'd just rather have an apple pie or chocolate cream or something.

It's like the time my wife and I decided to try and make an old pioneer vinegar pie recipe 'cause we'd never had one. It was... fine and all, but it immediately became apparent why people just make lemon chiffon instead these days.

(Also, autocorrect wanted to turn 'plate-full-of-molasses' into 'plate-full-of-koalas' and I am now kind of worried about what kind of baking the autocorrect folks do)

We're actually staying in Pittsburgh for one night. Mr. A wanted to stop in Columbus but I strongly opposed it.

Also somehow we did some time-warping magic where our whole trip out will take just six nights, and that's including a brief detour to Kansas City (Mr. A's dad successfully guilted him into the extra four hours... ugh). It gives us nearly a whole week to aquire housing before we have to return the box truck we're renting. I am most pleased with that.

Additionally, getting the truck a day earlier than we needed is saving us $400. I don't know how that works but it's awesome.

Oh, cool. Lemme know if you want food suggestions or want to grab a drink somewhere.