We arrived at our new Atlanta home hours and hours ahead of schedule on early Tuesday afternoon. Zoe, the cat, turned into the perfect traveling pet, within ours of the start of our drive. She even settled into the hotel room on Monday night with little fuss. She’s now fully explored our new home and ready for more adventures. I would never have believed she would travel so easy.

With the help of our two dear moving buddies we had the 22′ truck unloaded by 5:30, just in time for dinner at The Flying Biscuit (ofcourse). Today we had time for sleeping in, a leisurely breakfast and a comfortable early afternoon movie in our semi-put-together livingroom, before shipping our friends back home via the Atlanta airport.

Now we are here, all on our own, starting to get a feel for the place. Today we found the brand-new Target and Lowes, part of a giant new shopping complex, about 3 miles from our home. Things are beginning to make sense. But still… it feels like we are on vacation or more strangely, since we were just here on “vacation”, it feels like we are reliving our last vacation on some sort of time warp.

Next week, Thursday, we are promised a DSL connection at home, until then we’ve found that the local bar, The Universal Joint, has free Wi-Fi. I think we will be spending a bit of time here. I will have more to recount about our move and life in Atlanta after we have been connected.

We hosted a going away party last night. It was wonderful and overwhelming and sad and happy much like this whole moving away process has been. We served two homemade cheesecakes and a chocolate-banana mousse. Many asked me for the recipe for the vegan, low sugar dessert.

I found this recipe in one of my Mollie Katzen cookbooks. It also seems to be all over the web. The recipe follows:

Bittersweet Chocolate-Banana Mousse
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
10 oz soft silken tofu
2 lg ripe banana
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbl brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp raspberry vinegar
fresh raspberries, fruit toppings optional

1. Melt chocolate chips (I use the microwave)
2. Place tofu and banana chunks into blender and puree until smooth.
3. Add in vanilla, sugar, salt and vinegar. Puree untill mixed.
4. Add in melted chocolate chips. It is fine if they are still warm. Puree until smooth and uniform.
5. Transfer to serving dishes and chill for at least 2 hours.

Notes:
- Always use soft or firm tofu, never extra firm as it will always remain chunky.
- This needs to be made in a blender. I’ve tried making it in a food processor and with a kitchen aide, neither produced the right, creamy consistency.
- I’ve made this into a trifle and a pie with a baked graham cracker crust.

The packing continues. I feel like I’ve been in a perpetual state of packing for a month. I moved out of my apartment around Aug. 10 and have been living amid boxes ever since. Tomorrow we pick up the moving truck and begin loading. By this time next week we will be settled into our new place and hopefully have a lot less boxes. I can’t wait!

This morning I was packing my clothing closet, taking all the clothes off of hangers and putting the clothing in bins and the hangers in a big messy, snarly box of hangers. I started wondering why no one had come up with a better solution for moving hangers. Where are the snap together, stacking hangers?

I started imagining all the money I was going to make from running infomercials on late night TV, selling my amazing stacking hangers. They were going to take over the world!

This afternoon, at Target, buying more bins, I saw a display of hangers. Right in front were lime green stacking hangers! I guess I won’t be making big money on my invention. And if they hadn’t come only in lime green I would have bought a pack of 8 for $3.

A little research on-line has yielded nothing. They were at the Target store but not on the Target web site… Hmmmm…. So no luck finding these mythical stacking hangers on-line, but my searches did show me that “fancy” plastic or “swank” wood hangers could be mine at a very, very low price. It makes me question why I’m moving my snaggy boxes of wire hangers?

I’ve read a few stories recently about all these families who move across the country every year or two. They are called the “Relo Class” according to the New York Times. The Times did a nice multimedia piece on the relo class. They focused on Alpharetta, Georgia, outside of Atlanta. It is about an hour north of where we will be living.

Now that I’m in the throes of my first nationwide move, I can’t imagine doing this regularly. My goal today was to find new renters/car insurance and new phone/DSL service. I feel like I spent half the day on the phone, on hold, listening to terrible music, only to be told that I had to call a different number and wade through the automated system one more time. Argh!

I had never really thought about all the services that I’m linked into here, like banking. I need to find a new bank or credit union and then set-up all my auto pay stuff to go to the new bank instead of the old. It feels like so much more work than just changing my address.

And to think, we will probably be doing another big move within the next five years. And maybe another one after that. It seems if you are career minded 30 somethings, this is what you must do.

It seems hard enough to plan the services and relocation needs for two people. I can’t imagine a transient lifestyle with children.

In one week I’m moving to Atlanta. For the first time in my life I will not be living in Madison. SB has accepted a library job and I’m joining him in a new city. As he says, “To begin my adult life.”

Last week we travelled down to peach country to check things out and find a place to live. You can view some photos from our Atlanta apartment hunt on Flickr, complete with little bits of commentary from me.

It was my first time in Atlanta and it was much better than I imagined. We quickly found a neighborhood that we loved. It reminds us of Madison, with a strong sense of community, plenty of yoga centers and great little eateries.

Now we are back in Madison for one final week of packing and good-byes, possibly the two hardest things about moving.