Here we go again!

The blog is only three days old, and already I'm finding one does not take the time to write daily even if he has the time to do so.

Dylan lasted till halftime of Saturday's game. By far the highlight for him was a huge hug from Charlie Coyote, the USD mascot, outside the Dome before the game. After that the whole experience was downhill.

Folks who have read my ramblings over the years know how I detest moving---the thinking about it, the packing, the moving, the arrangements, the throwing-away, the whole deal. Guess what! Heather (daughter), Dylan (grandson) and I learned last week that we have to vacate this house in which we had anticipated remaining until she graduates from law school in May 2009. The owner wants to come back to Vermillion.

So we are looking at new options.

Our move last May from Rapid City involved several cross-state trips, several U-Haul rentals, some long nights and days and one unbearable but survivable week. This move won't be nearly so traumatic because it will be simply a matter of going from this house to another one somewhere in the same town. With any luck at all I will get rid of a bit more "stuff" that I haven't looked at in the six months in this house.

Those who haven't read my newspaper columns won't know that my worst-ever moving experience occurred on a long hill on I-90 heading up from Wasta, S.D., out of the Cheyenne River valley to the top of the windswept plains of Pennington County, 45 minutes east of Rapid City out in the middle of what some people would call nowhere. It was the first of April in 2004 just after I retired from the paper in Pierre and was moving west to Rapid City where three of my four kids were living at the time. Driving a pickup-load of furniture, I had just reached the top of the long westbound hill when I reached the wind. It whipped a mattress right out of the pickup and lay it down flat in the middle of I-90. Fortunately no vehicles were following me at the time.

I managed to drag it against the force of the northwest gale (much like we have blowing across South Dakota today, in fact!) to the side of the road. But have you ever tried to move a mattress by yourself? The darn things are unwieldy, to say the least. I had to take a couple big living room chairs out of the pickup (by myself) in order to get the mattress back in, then reload the chairs and tie the stuff up so it wouldn't blow out again. During the hour or so I was there, not a soul stopped to help even though it was a bright, sunny (though windy) day. But I retrieved everything and reached Rapid City with it all.

At that time I swore never to move again. But three years later---this past May---it happened again. Now in November-December it's happening again. No doubt the upcoming move will be fodder for future blogs, so bear with me.