We live out of duffel bags. The trunk of our car. Sometimes we spend the night at home. Sometimes with friends. Sometimes with family. Thank God for them. Because it gets old leaving your apartment to use the bathroom. It gets old closing the doors tight behind you and pushing a towel up against the crack underneath to try and contain the dust - keep it from spreading.

For the past couple of weeks, we have been nomads.

And this existence will continue through next week and beyond. There is still work to be done on the bathroom. Pipes to install. Tile to lay. So for C, it's have duffel will travel. To Olney. To Baltimore. To anywhere that'll take in a girl in need of a little running water.

As for me, I'm escaping for a bit. To do my nomadic car dance in another land. I'm heading to Austin on Friday for SXSWi. I will drive a rental car and carry bags of stuff around with me. I will rest my head for brief intervals at JP and Liz's place. Will wake early and attend workshops by day. Will see friends and go to parties by night. At the parties, the booze will be mostly free because they will be sponsored by some fancy Austin web design shop with marketing money to burn. It's going to be rough. I just hope I'm up to the task. Web celebrities will be seen. Ideas will be spread. Friends will be made. And I will come home tired but energized. Full of new thoughts. Ready to do good.

And I plan to blog while I'm there. More than I have been. I plan to post. But we shall see. Some people apologize when they have not posted for a while. I don't. I think it's self-aggrandizing to presume people give a shit. Sometimes I post. Sometimes I don't. That is all. The way I see it, there's plenty else to read out there. Just ask my Google Reader - it's constantly backlogged with over 300 posts from various blogs. And frankly, I appreciate it when people don't post every day. It means they realize that there's a thing called reader burnout. It means they take time with their words.

But back to the nomadic quality of life these days - there's really no end in site. After Austin, after the bathroom, we will carry our nomadic existence to Japan. We will take trains to different cities for over a week before landing at Mitch's place for a few nights. Japan will be crazy and new, like childhood. We will eat lots of raw fish and there will be no shortage of running water. The posts I make from Japan will be written in English because, despite my good intentions, I haven't learned a lick of Japanese. But C has. She'd done a little studying up. And so has JP. And Mitch, well he's a Japanese-language master. So I feel good. And who knows, maybe we'll see cherry blossoms while we're there. If not, we can probably catch them when we get back to DC.

And then it will be April. And a move will be in order. We're not sure exactly where or when it's going to take place. But it's coming. Another move is coming.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  sxsw  Bathroom_Remodel