Like a New Year’s resolution, packing up your house begins with burning passion and world-conquering confidence and ends flat on your back in despair, with a sigh and a mouth filled with trans-fats.

You’d think we would be used to moving by now. Liz and I have moved house – believe it or not – seven times in six years (not including my move from Kathmandu to DC in 2007). The smells of cardboard and bubble wrap are like crocuses in spring. Through the process, I’ve discovered that moving is a science. Unfortunately, I suck at science.

But for those of you who are desperate for somebody to tell them what to do, allow me to share….

The Seven Principles of Moving, by Conor, Who’s Not Very Good at This.

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Unless you’re a starfish, you’re probably pretty busy with all kinds of comings and goings. For us, this year has sped by, and this blog has kind of fallen by the wayside with everything else going on. But I’ve missed blogging here, which has always been a favorite hang out spot for me, here with all you guys. So I’m back. And I brought Fritos! (And a bag of Cool Ranch coral polyps for my starfish peeps. Because yum!)

That’s not to say I’ve not been writing – I’ve written a bunch of stuff for The Huffington Post (which still sounds like a stoner magazine to me) and other stuff, but I’ve wanted to get back to this, my own blog, for two reasons.

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I heard once that kids benefit from shoving dirt in their mouths and I sure hope that’s true, because if it is my fifteen month old daughter is going to have the immune system of a Viking.

I also read that kids who live with dogs (though hopefully not only with dogs) have stronger immune systems than those without pets. Even better! Every piece of food that touches the ground in my house – let’s ballpark it at thirty percent – is immediately leapt upon by about a thousand stray dog hairs. You ever try cleaning dog hair off a piece of pineapple? You could rub that thing against the sun, that dog hair ain’t comin’ off. I don’t know what God put in pineapple but you’d think they’d be using it as an epoxy for the next generation of Space Shuttles.

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Here’s what you learn at the San Diego County Fair: You can fry anything.

I’m not talking about the normal stuff, like hotdogs and chicken and whathaveyou. I’m not even talking about the “Did you hear that they are now frying…” stuff, like Twinkies and sticks of butter. (Sticks of butter!)

No, no that stuff. I’m talking about a place called Chicken Charlies, where they’ll fry you up some cereal. They’ll fry you Kool-Aid. Nobody who sees an advertisement for fried Kool-Aid pauses to wonder if Kool-Aid taste good fried, because we’re all wondering how in the name of all that is holy do you fry Kool-Aid in the first place?

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As you pack up your life to move, you seem to have time for nothing else but inventory management. Your house smells of nothing but cardboard and packing tape, and you wonder why you’ve been using a knife to cut cheese for the past couple of years when you apparently had a whole set of specialized utensils for that purpose that you never bothered to take out of their package.

We’ve moved to LA from Connecticut, and while that may sound pretty far and pretty radical, we should remember that Liz is from Southern California, so this is a homecoming for her. We’re terribly excited to be here.

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