I’ve been very unbloggy lately. But it’s been a crazy-busy fall of 2008.

Ever since I finished up at IDEA, it’s been a mad sprint to get myself moved to North Carolina. You’d think 6-8 weeks would be plenty of time, but not the way I work. I bounce around between tasks like a six-year-old in a chocolate-flavored-meth lab. Only, you know, less illegal than that. Mostly.

Also, I’ve been preoccupied with my new position as a Director (on the Board of Directors) for the IA Institute. But even that has been mostly on hold for a few weeks as I scrambled to get things arranged for the move. But now we’re in the thick of planning an IA Summit pre-conference session, which is shaping up to be chock full of awesome.

Moving is hard — especially if you’ve been stewing in your own juices in one apartment for four years. And especially if you’re as old as I am with all the legacy crap in tow. Boxes of books, memories, grad school papers, orphaned journals, toys from when you were seven and the rest. (I still have my Mattel Electronic Football game, and a worse-for-wear Evel Knievel doll — the one that rode that wind-up motorcycle that I could never get to work right). The logistics are crazy too — finding a moving company, getting all that squared away, then dumping enough junk so that you’re not paying someone to move things that you’re just going to end up dumping later anyway.

Finding an apartment is a trick — I finally had to stop worrying about finding something “interesting.” I’ve lived in “interesting” for the last 4 years — a historic building overlooking an up-and-coming entertainment district — and I’m kind of over it. My new apartment doesn’t have any historic charm or line-of-sight to awesome bars, but it has four whole drawers in the kitchen. FOUR drawers, my friends. Not the one I had before but FOUR. I still haven’t figured out what to do with this obscene amount of horizontal storage space. Not to mention I have two bathrooms, so I can leave one of them a mess and still have a decent one for any guests who may happen to be over.

So what does any of this have to do with the main thrust of this blog? Not much, other than making some public record here of my existence so that the content gap doesn’t reach an entire two whole months. (“Thrust of My Blog” would be a pretty nice band name, btw)

A bit of personal news …

It looks like it’s official: I’ll be moving to Charlotte, NC sometime around December. I’ll still be working for Vanguard’s User Experience Group, but from that location.

Why? Well, for one thing, it’s an opportunity for the company to have more UXG presence at that site, an opportunity that has recently started to make more sense. But my main reason for requesting the move is that my daughter lives with her mom in Winston-Salem, NC, which is pretty close to there. Plus, my aging parents are just south of there in GA. One might wonder why I didn’t do this sooner, but there are practical reasons why I haven’t until now (happy to explain off-line if anyone’s interested). I’m glad I can get closer to family, while still continuing to work with Vanguard’s UX group, which is honestly the best job I’ve ever had.

I hate to leave the Philly area — it’s been my home nearly 5 years now. While I’ll be coming back up for work reasons now and then, it won’t be the same as living there. And while living here, I’ve grown some very close ties that I hope to keep tied even from a distance.

It’d be great if any Philly locals can work me into their schedules for a meetup of some kind, before I ship out.

If anyone has recommendations on moving companies, places to live, etc, I’m all ears! Hit me at inkblurt via gmail.