The dates are set. I’ll be visiting Boston with my clan saturday May 29th through Monday June 7th. The primary reason for the trip is for me to walk in my graduation, but of course it’s also a major homecoming for us as well and we’ve been looking forward to it pretty much since we moved.

I have a difficult time describing how it felt to leave my home of 15 years so abruptly. In our last few weeks there, we managed to say our goodbyes to as many friends as we could squeeze in, but after we arrived here I realized that I never got a chance to say goodbye to the city itself. So while I’m definitely excited to see everyone when we visit, I’m also excited to just have the opportunity to walk around and see the sites.

Our schedule is filling up fast. We’ll be sending email to various groups of people, but if you’re reading this and in Boston, feel free to get in touch and we’ll see what we can do about getting together.

Last weekend, we organized our garage in what turned out to be a full-day event. When we moved to this duplex 5 months ago, the garage was initially haphazardly filled with boxes that had come from our attic in Boston. Our house was also filled with boxes at the time, so the garage wasn’t much of a concern. We eventually worked our way though the boxes in the house, but some of those too wound up in the garage until one could barely walk in there, let alone find anything.

Something had to be done, especially since our landlords were putting the house next door on the market this week and weren’t thrilled with the prospect of us filling the driveway with boxes during their open-houses. So, last saturday we pulled everything out of the garage, swept, vacuumed, put our car in for one shining moment, and then packed everything back in, collapsing a bunch of packing material for recycling.

So we can now walk in our garage now and actually access the stuff, but it was only a partial victory. We didn’t actually have time to open most of the boxes figure out what to do with the stuff. Most of them were packed by the movers and are so half filled with packing paper. It’s my hope that over the next year we can make some headway into the pile, donating, recyling, using, or trashing as appropriate.

Last December my papou and namesake, Dr. Nicholas D. Matsakis, passed away at the age of 95. There is a lot to reflect on in his life, but not here. I will say that I’m glad that my papou lived to see me complete my doctorate. It’s difficult to understate how much he valued the education of his children and grandchildren; I can’t help but think he wanted me finished more than I did myself.

It was an emotional ending to a very eventful year: January to September was an intense sprint to finish my thesis and then we immediately transitioned to a new stage in California. In December our family traveled to St. Louis twice, first for the funeral and then again for our annual holiday pilgrimage. When we came back, I took some time off of side projects, including writing here, to focus on my new project at work and really setting in.

Sometime in January it hit me that we really were settled here. We still had boxes in our living room, but I came to the conclusion that our life in California had reached the same level of entropy as our life in Massachusetts. I still don’t have a California driver’s license, but we have made some good progress on the house and the living room is free from boxes. Sometime in the next month we’ll attack the garage.

There is also one more bit of news I’ve been meaning to mention, which is that Terri and I are expecting a daughter in early august! This news hardly deserves to be left for the last paragraph, but with my writing schedule the way it is, it’s better to get it out while I’m writing (even though I think my three readers already know about it).

Two weeks ago, we took Peter to his first chess tournament. He started to learn the basic rules of chess last year, but his interest really picked up when he began to attend the chess club that meets weekly at his school. We were a little apprehensive about going to a tournament, since he’d only been attending the club for a month, but it was a small one close to our house, so we decided to check it out.

We didn’t really know what to expect. Bay Area Chess, the organization that runs the tournament, has an abominable website that is not very helpful to those unsteeped in the world of chess ratings and tournaments. Still, we managed to register him for a “quads” tournament, where he was assigned to a table of four kindergarteners who competed in a round-robin event (three games each). Winners of two or more games got a trophy.

One thing that caught us off guard were the tournament rules, which we only learned once we arrived. The rules are all very simple and sensible, such as “your move ends once you’re removed your hand from the piece” but we didn’t have a chance to practice them with Peter. He was constantly changing his mind about where to put things and even occasionally touched the other player’s pieces, which I can only assume is forbidden. Fortunately, it was a first tournament for most of the other kids at his table and all the parents were chilled out about such minor transgressions.

Peter’s first game ended quickly as he got trapped in an early checkmate. He did very well in his second and third games, both times capturing all of his opponents pieces save the king and a couple of pawns. He hadn’t really practiced his checkmates, though, and so the end game dragged on and on as he chased his opponent’s king around the board. In both games, his opponents eventually got tired and resigned, giving him two wins and a trophy, which was thrilling to him.

Since the match, he’s been very excited about chess and has started studying a “chess for kids” book we picked up a while back. He’s getting better and I’m guessing it won’t be too much longer until he can beat me (since I’m a terrible chess player).

On a recent outing, Terri asked me how long it would be before we felt “settled”. My reply was that I would feel settled when my weekly todo list consisted of the same types of things we would have had to do had we not moved. By that metric, we still have a little way to go before we’re settled. At the very least, we still need to get our California licenses and also buy a washer and dryer for our house.

At the same time, I think we have settled into a routine of sorts: school, work, homework, play, dinner, bedtime, repeat. The arrangement of our house is settled as well, and it just remains to get everything out of the boxes and into the right place, purging unnecessary items as they come up.

We also got a chance to celebrate Halloween, first with a trick or treating event at A9, then with a party at Peter’s school, and finally trick or treating in the neighborhood. The boys had a lot of fun and I got a chance to try out my new camera. I’ve even managed to post picture.

It’s been a month since we landed in California and only now does it feel like we’re on the cusp of some sort of steady state. In some ways, the last week was the most chaotic, as we were maintaining two residences simultaneously: our temporary apartment, which had our food and clean clothing, and our new place, which was packed high with boxes and not yet livable. Going back and forth between the two was exhausting.

Over the weekend, we vacated our temporary house and cleared enough space in the new place so that we can cook and sleep. Some progress was also made on the home network, but essential services like backup, printing, and video playback are still down. We’re a long way from “settled”, but I guess it’s progress to be living out of boxes instead of living out of a suitcase.

My last post ended we me about to fly cross-country solo with our boys, trying to squeeze some thesis time in somewhere. Though Peter and I had flow solo to Chicago before Alex was born, this was the first time I had had the two of them alone overnight, let alone on a cross-country trip. We piled on the luggage for this trip too. Since most of our belongs were not going to arrive in California for weeks, we tried to pack everything we needed for the first weeks of school and work.

Fortunately, the trip out went very smoothly. Entertainment was provided by puzzle books, two laptops, and an iPod; the batteries on the electronics were depleted by the end of the trip, but the puzzle book kept going. Getting into our temporary apartment was an adventure, but somehow we loaded everything on two airport carts, took a train to the rental agency, grabbed some pizza, and then made our way to our apartment.

Due to the time shift, the boys fell asleep quickly and I was able to polish off the final edits to my thesis by 1am Pacific (4am Eastern). My plan was to have friends submit it to the department the next day, but the internet at our temp housing wasn’t working yet and I wasn’t keen on dragging the boys out to the car to go wardriving. Fortunately, I found that in one corner of the apartment I could barely get a signal on an open network, and after a few attempts was able to get it uploaded and send the instructions to my friends.

The follow 24 hours are a bit of a blur, starting with Alex waking me up at 3am, since that is early morning in Boston, (somehow) obtaining food, visiting Peter’s new school and kindergarten class, and (somehow) viewing 3 potential rentals. We took it easy after that, and the rest of the week we limited ourselves to one property a day while Peter got adjusted to his new school schedule.

In the end, my ten days alone with the boys was a lot of fun. Peter jumped right into his school, I was on a thesis-completion high, and Alex was just himself, taking this new turn in life without comment or complaint. Meanwhile, Terri was having less fun in Boston, finishing up projects and disassembling our apartment (with the much-appreciated support of some great friends, I might add). She arrived in California a bit shocked, saying “my anthill has been shaken.”

As I write this, nearly a month after my trip out, we’re still adjusting. We’ve rented a unit in a duplex, our belongings have been delivered, and we’re trying to make it habitable before we move out of our temporary housing at the end of the week. As much work as it is, it’s also an adventure, and I’m excited for the chance to explore the area more once we get settled.