The uninitiated may think that life is a breeze to be a snowbird, fleeing south when the North turns cold, and fleeing North when the south turns into a furnace. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Here is a partial list of stuff I have to do to go back north as the temperatures in St. George begin crowding 100:
- Find the box of books I brought to St. George last winter expecting to read them and never unpacked them, leaving them in the box so they would be easier to haul back north again.
- Change addresses on about 30 or 40 periodicals. Typically, five or six of them never get changed and I never see them again.
- Put the TV and internet on vacation hold. Apparently this cannot be done until ten minutes before you want this hold to take effect.
- Stop the newspapers. Last year, the newspaper carrier kept delivering the papers a couple of weeks after we told them to stop delivering them.
- Start the newspapers up North.
- Change the telephone service between the two phones. Some times this gets taken care of, some times it does not. Depends on whether any one does what they are supposed to do.
- Start the internet up North.
- Making changes in TV, phone, cell phone, and internet typically takes a couple of hours on the phone listening to "you're call is terribly, terribly important to us, and that is why we make you wait forever to talk to a robot while you listen to this goshawful noise and clamor that is supposed to be music." Then, listen to the following list of 27 options. No, no, I just want to talk to a human being and not a robot and tell them what I need to do. We're sorry, you can only talk to robots. Do you mind if we put you on hold for a few moments while we look up your account? Help yourself, I say. A half hour later, after finishing their lunch or whatever, we get "I'll have to transfer you over to xyz department because I don't handle that stuff; translated, meaning I don't know what the heck I am doing because I have only been imprisoned in this cubicle for two days and I have no idea what to tell you. Another half hour of listening to noise. Are you having a party there, I ask, since it really sounds loud, and the answer is it's always noisy here because these cubicles are not very high and we are really packed in here. I felt like asking, "where do you keep the robot?" About two hours later and I have been assured that my tv, internet, phone, cell phone, etc., have all been put on hold in one place and started up in another. I have heard that song before, only getting to the other place and having to call up saying, "I thought the internet, or whatever, was supposed to be hooked up today," whereupon the voice on the other end may say, "I have no record of that." Believe me, this has all happened before.
- Now on to the post office, where the kindly postal clerk was obviously being besieged with snowbirds changing their mail delivery from the hot place to the cold place, only to get frustrated filling out the forms. Three years ago, we didn't get our mail forwarded for three months because the sorting center for USPS erroneously kept our old address card and did not substitute the new one.
- Then it's just a minor matter to throw out all the crud that has accumulated for six months. It is useful, however, to have an opportunity to go through the pile of to-do stuff I brought down here that needed urgent attention and which I never got around to giving it any (attention) due to my busy, busy schedule as an emeritus full professor of economics. So now I have to haul all this stuff back up north again with the hopes I might get inspired to look at it there. If anything is really important, some one is being paid to call and bug you about it a half dozen times, anyway.
- Whatever else you do, take all battery chargers, phone chargers, a bushel of computer cables, software backups. It helps to put a tape ID on the cords saying where the heck they are attached to so you don't have to say bad words at the other end trying to hook all this electronic stuff back up again.
- Clean out fridge, pantry, freezer; toss out all frozen remnants you never got around to eating.
- Mop and vacuum all floors.
- Check tire pressure and car. My neighbor snowbird from Chicago was ready to leave the other day, all loaded and primed, and his car wouldn't start. It was a hybrid with a dead battery. And he being a professor of engineering.
- Figure out how to get all your junk into two cars.
- Hop on I-15 headed north, preparing to stop in Beaver at the cheese factory, and Santaquin at the apple barn. Wave at all snowbirds with Montana, North Dakota, and Canadian license plates as the parade of fifth wheels, travel trailers, mobile homes, etc., clogs I-15.
- Arrive at destination. Unload junk. Wonder why you went to all this effort. Check TV, internet, phone, etc., to see if people did what they said they would do. Lots of luck needed here. Turn on water, AC, etc., making sure everything works and you don't need the plumbers and air conditioner guys the first day you are back.
- Check to see what time Matlock comes on.
- Wait five or six months and go through all of this torture again.
