Moving sucks...

...to put it eloquently.

Over the weekend I took to helping my brother Jeff move from one house without a pool to his new house with a pool. A couple years ago he and his family moved from a smaller apartment to the house they just left, and back then we used a medium sized U-haul and it took two trips. This time, we had the biggest U-haul they had, and it still took two trips. Shows what living in a house and the addition of another kid will do to your collection of "stuff"

The move went alright though, it was just my bro, myself and a couple of other guys, and some others who were only able to hang around for a small portion of the move. Jeff and I were the only ones who's joints and backbones were still in good shape (relatively), so we were in charge of loading most of the heavier stuff. My brother has a 60" HD TV, and believe it or not, the thing is way lighter than it appears to be. Then there's his infamous 32" bedroom TV. I've had to move this TV before, whether it be from one house to another or from one room to another, it's a pain in the neck. We laded the TV into a friend's car since it's more likely to survive if it's not loaded into the truck. We got to his new place, got the TV out of the car and shared the duty of moving it to his new bedroom. We got to the porch first and had to put it down from the soreness in our backs and forearms. We rested for a moment then got it moving again, we made it inside the house, went down the hallway leading to his bedroom and just in front of the door we put it down. Both of us let out a muffled grunt (there might have been a self-censored profane word), Jeff immediately grabbed the muscle near the elbow and I felt and saw both my arms suddenly bend up to my chest on their own. I started laughing as Jeff walked away for a moment, massaging his arm with his other hand. I pushed both of my arms down and rested them, when they again began to go up to my chest. I recalled working out in high school and witnessing the same result after completing 5 sets of bicep curls. I just had to stretch them out and they'd be fine, but it looks like Jeff had a pretty bad cramp in his. After a couple minutes rest, we managed to get it in the bedroom and continue unloading the rest of the stuff. We were appreciative for the help we had, but the level of commitment to the job was almost minimal as really only a few of them seemed like they were there to sincerely help, while the others were just being "nice" and not doing it out of the kindness in their hearts.

I really hadn't been exercising or doing anything active (or physically proactive) for sometime, so it felt good to get out into the Concord heat and do some manual labor for a change. I have a huge rainbow color bruise on my thigh from trying to get the U-haul ramp back up when we were done. I look at it as a battle scar after fighting with honor, but that's just a dilusion of grandeur really.