The Physics of Moving

For the last few days, I've been reading Lee Smollin's book, The Trouble with Physics. Fascinating stuff, string theory and all that. Fun because I know there won't be a quiz. But since physics is running about in my mind, here's my new view of moving.

The Laws of (Moving) Thermodynamics

The laws of moving turn out to be a special case of the Laws of Thermodynamics. In case you've missed these laws, here's a paraphrasing of them:

First law: You can't win.

Second Law: Everything gets worse.

Third Law: You can't quit the game.

Wow, does that all sound familiar! That's moving! The First Law is obvious and needs no explanation. The tedious, never-ending dealings with the banker are obviously an aspect of the Third Law, but it's the Second Law that seems to be showing off right now. This law is often paraphrased as 'everything tends toward disorder', i.e. entropy increases over time. Here in Ste Colombe sur l'Hers, entropy has taken over. Where's the small cutting board? Is it already packed? Is it in an as yet unsorted bag of stuff that we brought here when we moved out of the Espéraza house? Or is it just misplaced?

Well, as if entropy weren't increasing quickly enough, a brand new opportunity for disorder has been added, and it will bring more disorder in its wake. The date for the move was to be next Wednesday. We can't make it, obviously, so we've cancelled the date. The next available date (here comes that disorder) is May 25th. That's 6 weeks from today! We'll be living in a house full of boxes for 6 weeks. The current state of disorder is all but overwhelming, and it will only get worse. (First law!)

In addition to the laws of thermodynamics, a local variant of another law of The Physics of Moving seems to be at work as well, which I will call

The Clemens Uncertainty Principle: The location of all objects that we own cannot be known simultaneously. This law is true even at the best of times and becomes only stronger during a move. It also has a corollary:

Corollary to the Clemens Uncertainty Principle: If one object is located, another object will disappear.

The latest thing to have an unknown location is my camera. I always put it in my pocketbook, and yet it is not there. I hope it's not the the pocket of some piece of clothing that I put in the washing machine about 10 minutes ago. John reassures me that if this we so I'd hear it clunking and thumping around in there, which I don't. So it's gone into some alternate universe, whence it will return in its own good time. Then I can download some photos for this blog!

Tum de dum de dum; some time passes...

As an example of the above principle and its corollary, I have found the camera, which was cleverly hiding in the car. But I now cannot find the umbilical cord for the camera which allows me to download photos.