I am slowly (temporarily) letting go of all my worldly possessions, hopefully to be reunited with them in California. I drop off my car on Monday. That shouldn’t hurt too much; I walk to work, and we otherwise hardly drive. In fact, I will save money by not having to pay to park the darn thing ($300/month).

In two weeks, the movers come to take everything else away, leaving us to “rough it” for a week (I make no pretense at asceticism). In particular, the following things will be gone:

• No Bed. We’ll be keeping a “Coleman Quickbed” airbed with us; it is quite serviceable in place of our real bed. The packaging for the airbed is quite ridiculously laughable. It is predominantly green-colored, with pictures of a tent and a sleeping bag, all to evoke images of roughing it in the great outdoors. Even better, these airbeds are sold in the “outdoor sporting goods” section at Target and other retailers. I bet none of these things have ever tasted the great outdoors, except maybe on its way from the store to the car. Many of them eventually leak (many web reviews complain about this). Our first one did leak, but our next two have both survived several guests’ stays. At $20-30 a piece, one can’t complain too much.
• No Kitchen Appliances. I’m already tired of the food court in the mall across the street. Even if we splurge and eat out every night, we have no way to re-heat our leftovers.
• No TV. I have some books and a huge pile of unread magazines saved up for that week. I would normally look forward to going without TV for a week, except that the new fall season seems to be starting early this year, so I will probably be missing a week or two of all my favorite shows.
• No Computers. This will hurt. No computer = no DVR (see “No TV”, above), no e-mail or web-surfing, no Quicken, and finally, no Tsaiberspace (yes, this hurts you, too, I’m sure).
• No Internet. (See “No Computers”, above.)

I planned my vehicle drop-off and movers pick-up so that everything would arrive in California a day or two after we get there (according to the best estimates the auto-shipper and movers could give me); hopefully things will work out. It will be much more difficult/expensive to go without a car on the West Coast than it is to do so here in Boston.