For the next few weeks, we’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

‘Ouch. Moving in is almost as bad as moving out …

‘Ann Arbor: Day Two

‘We signed the lease documents and started moving things into the townhouse. This is when it really hits you that you are somewhere: when you stop living out of hotel rooms and cars and start moving your possessions into a physical house with a permanent address.

‘We grabbed food at Wendy’s (or was it Arby’s? the fast food blurs together after a week and a half) and drove to the complex and opened the door of the house and then opened the door of the trailer. And boy, did the sight of all that stuff waiting to be unloaded (with boxes falling over each other and chairs helter skelter) depress me. But we had to start eventually.

‘The first thing we did was unload the Jeep. The first thing from the trailer that went into the house was the first box that Steve saw, one containing his Venetian glass and some pottery. Then it was all a blur of lifting and sweating (the day was a very hot and humid one, and our air conditioning does not work) and grunting and, in my case, throwing my lower back out again, after three weeks or so in which it seemed the soreness had dissipated. We got a lot of work done: the dining table and chairs, the bed, a lot of the kitchen ware, the reclining chair, my stereos. We left the big game for tomorrow.

‘We drove to the Kroger on Industrial and Stadium and bought our first cleaning supplies ($72). Later we returned and bought our first groceries and had our first di er: pasta and corn on the cob. With that, as Samuel Pepys would have written, abed.

‘—Posted by Frank at 23:59:00 | 23-Aug-03’