Well, muscles to strengthen, new neural patterns to encode...

The conversation with the Phonak rep was awesome; I'm going to my audiogram appointment next week with a list of features I'd like to activate on my hearing aids. (Seriously, if my devices have binaural voice streaming, I want to try it; do give my processors 4 microphones to beamform with instead of 2!) Actually, my writeup requires me to get into the lab and figure out how to turn these features on/off in the software, so I might sit there late Monday night and see what I can do anyhow...

Packing my apartment to move has been a surprisingly satisfying thing to do -- maybe Ethan and Kyle have gotten me to associate "lifting heavy things" with "fun." We found out today that my 1-rep max for the back squat is 125 pounds, just 5 pounds shy of my bodyweight. And mostly it's a max because I become dramatically weaker at the bottom of my form; I need to work on getting deeper. And as I haul luggages filled with books down the stairs, I hear Ethan's voice exhorting me to go down more, get that full range of motion, and I grin and pull up into a better deadlift. Shelves are emptying, cabinets clearing -- I'm only leaving the things I want to bring to Ohio.

  • The subset of books that are central to my research. (Of course I'm going to talk about books first, what did you think?)
  • An even smaller subset of books that make me happy every time I read them -- not fully winnowed-down yet, but getting there.
  • Pretty much all my clothes. I mean, they all fit in one luggage. I don't actually have that much.
  • A single chair, an exercise ball, and my desk (the slab o' wood atop two sawhorses design -- flat-packin' portability!)
  • My printer, and a tiny box of computer/office stuff -- 2 SD cards, 2 USB keys, a set of colored markers, that sort of thing.
  • My legal and medical files (these might get pared down to a smaller expanding file for Columbus)
  • My training equipment: a yoga mat, a sledgehammer, a ton of self-massage stuff for a body that's still learning to move
  • Two large whiteboards, two small ones, and the pictures on my walls.
  • My bed, my bedside table, and a little lamp to go beside it.
  • My computer and computer cart.
  • A cast-iron skillet, a soup pot, a salad spinner (which is a colander + bowl), a blender, a spoon, a spatula, a can opener, and a corkscrew/bottle-opener, plus a cutting board, vegetable peeler, chef's knife, and serrated knife, and some dishes/silverware.
In other words, my life might not fit inside my car (which is dubiously and intermittently functional at the moment anyhow), but I think it fits inside a minivan... not bad at all. Not bad at all.

I think that's it. I think that's actually it. I'll find out soon, because this weekend's goal is to move out everything I'm not bringing to Columbus (and/or need to finish the semester, but that's fairly minimal -- some papers that I'm still working from that will be recycled, some books I need for another 5 days or so until I turn in the papers that are using them). I mean, I like my sofa, and it's nice to have a hot water heater, but I don't need need need them. (If there's room, the hot water heater comes along; there are a few things I'm waiting to gauge the volume of.)

Whoa, look at the time! I should hit the road if I'm going to get to my parents' house at a reasonable hour; I need to unload and then take the empty containers back to Purdue for another haul (this time with cousins coming along to help pull down the kitchen table, the printer cart, and what we can fit and dismantle of the sofa).