The Great State Roundup

When planning a long road trip, it's important to understand how the trip will affect your state list, that is, the list of U.S. states that you have visited in your lifetime. Erica and I recently spent an evening planning our move from Palo Alto to Cambridge, after which I lay in bed, unable to sleep because I was trying to name all 50 states in alphabetical order in my head, along with when I visited each one. I wasn't terribly successful, but I think that I have discovered the opposite of counting sheep.

Our planned route cross-country will add three more states to my list: New Mexico, Arkansas and Tennessee. Here's the list of states that will remain unvisited after the move.

• Iowa
• Kentucky
  
• Michigan
  
• Nebraska
• North Dakota

Michigan is a pretty glaring omission; the others don't seem to cry out to be removed from the list any time soon. Knocking off Alaska last summer was a huge milestone.

Sketch YOU!

A couple of weeks ago I decided to use Google Sketchup see how much of our crap would fit in a shipping container for the big move east. It took a little while to get used to the interface, but in the end, I found it quite powerful and not overly complicated. Here's my result.