29 August 2006

Just checking in. There's really not too much going on. We're still unpacking and organizing, but the end is near. We're almost ready to start hanging pictures on the walls.

Mike's in Salt Lake City for a couple days, so I'm just puttering around. Lots of work to do. Hope to get some sewing done very soon.

This is such a boring post.

23 August 2006

So... we found that food that went missing a year ago in the pack-out. Last night we finally got to the last box to unpack. It was labeled "Photos." After unwrapping a layer of picture frames we saw the top of my bread maker. Then Mike picked up a few more sheets of paper before saying "Oh my god." I said, "What?" He said, "You have to see this." It was the food. It smelled awful. There were some herb-scented breadcrumbs, and the herb scent had seeped out and become a musty smell. A few items were wrapped in paper--salad dressing bottle, jar of mustard (luckily unopenned). We unwrapped the rest of the paper just to make certain it was food, and then threw all of it out.

21 August 2006

Unpack, unpack, unpack. Break down boxes. Carry trash to dumpster. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

That's been our life since Wednesday. We can now walk through every room. Areas are becoming clearly defined. Office area. Living room area. Bedroom area. The new bookcases we want were on back order, but surprise! They're available today instead of 2 weeks from now! Yay! Getting those set up will hopefully enable me to finish the living room within the next day or two. Gosh, by next weekend, dare I say we could have company over?

18 August 2006

Little by little the apartment is coming together. Finally being able to sleep on a real mattress has been helpful. I bought some new bed linens, and the bedroom almost looks like a normal room now. The kitchen is almost done; I hope to finish it up this afternoon. I got my bookcase full yesterday, which emptied two boxes.

Few items have been damaged. Nothing too serious, but enough so that we need to start making a list of claims. One mirror (explains the bad luck involved with this move). Two wine glasses and a vase. A floor fan had a little piece broken off so it wobbles and makes a horrible noise when it's running. The most annoying so far--when the movers packed us out of San Diego, they took our large bookcase away in one piece. Wednesday it arrived in several pieces. Somewhere along the line it got taken apart for storage, but when they took it apart, some of the wooden dowels broke off in the holes, so we can't put it back together. We'll be claiming that and getting ourselves a new bookcase. Unfortunately all our book storage space is full, so we have to buy a new bookcase (or bookcases) this weekend in order to get those book boxes emptied and thrown out. Back to Ikea I guess.

PS. Books are heavy. The moving guys did not enjoy carrying our book boxes up several flights of stairs, from the truck to the 3rd floor.

PPS. It's been fun to unwrap Mike's photos and some of our other photos and decorative pieces. I can't wait to start decorating this place.

17 August 2006

Before and After


Our stuff arrived yesterday! We have no idea where to put it all! As you can see in the "before" photo, we had a reasonable amount of stuff that arrived a few weeks ago from our D.C. apartment. Now we have an overflow and will be making a large contribution to Goodwill. Or the dumpster.

The movers unpacked some of the boxes--dishes and some clothes and a few others--so they could take the boxes and packing paper with them. But we ran out of space for everything else, so decided it was best to keep it in boxes for now.


Last night we ran the dishwasher 3 times, on light wash, to clean up our dishes that have been in storage for the last year. I have some to handwash, but for the most part, "The dishes are done, man." We rearranged the boxes in the living room so we could actually see the tv from the couch and we watched Jean Cousteau's Gray Whale Obstacle Course and Project Runway--both excellent shows for large-screen viewing.

Today my assignments include filling at least one bookcase with books, throwing out trash, and setting up the computer in the new office space.


In other news, there was apparently a minor earthquake near Berkeley this morning. I was half-asleep at the time, and I don't think I felt it. Grendel jumping from the counter to the floor is about the same magnatude as a minor earthquake, so I may have become immune to the shaking.

15 August 2006

Why is it that making coffee is so hard to do when you haven't had any coffee yet?

Let's see, I last posted on Friday. What's happened since then?

Of course, our furniture was not delivered. Mike talked to the driver yesterday and he's expecting to arrive tomorrow morning. We'll see what happens. Further delay could be caused by the size of the truck. Right now our stuff is on a giant tractor trailer. If the driver can't get that into the parking lot here, he'll have to go to the main warehouse and swap our stuff out onto a smaller truck. That should only delay until Wednesday afternoon or Thursday. The driver's going to consult with the local warehouse people here, who have experience getting trucks around this neighborhood.

We did a ton of cleaning on Sunday in order to prepare for our delivery. This apartment is big when it's not cluttered up with crap! We need to buy some filing cabinets and other storage items. I am sick of the cardboard boxes we've been using for the last year. And Mike brings papers home from work that get mixed up with papers that are already here, and I pick up all the papers and find a place to stash them; subsequently, Mike's work papers disappear. We find them eventually, but Mike really doesn't need that stress. I need to implement an organizational system.

On Sunday we also did what people in the suburbs are supposed to do with their free time. We shopped. Ikea, Joann's, and Home Depot. We bought a TV bench, fabric for making canopy bed sheers, and more towel racks for the bathroom.

In fun news, we've started some wedding planning. We hope to lock in the date and location very soon and will reveal them once they are certain.

11 August 2006

Yesterday I was feeling kind of numb. I was trying to be so disappointed about our stuff not arriving, but I had already been feeling so low about this whole experience that I guess I couldn't get any lower. The truck breaking down is one thing that is completely out of anyone's control. The f**ked up bureaucracy had absolutely nothing to do with this.

It might have been my fault. I jinxed it. On Wednesday evening I was looking around the living room, thinking of the cleaning and rearranging I planned to do Thursday in preparation for the arrival on Friday. I said to Grendel, "Well, the only thing that could go wrong now is the truck breaking down." Why, why why?

Speaking of Grendel, do cats catch colds? He's been coughing, and I didn't think it was in a furball way. But there was a furball on the carpet when I woke up and I haven't heard him cough this morning, so maybe that's all it was. Other than the coughing he's been perfectly normal (normal for him).

Mike gets home tonight!

10 August 2006

Sigh...

The moving truck broke down. Our stuff won't get here until next week. They're still guaranteeing delivery on or before August 17, which is a week from today. Most likely on the 17th rather than before it.

09 August 2006

Our stuff might be arriving on Friday!

Our stuff might be arriving on Friday! It's on a truck making its way from Maryland right now. The driver will call to confirm his actual arrival time. It could get delayed to Saturday. But it will be here in a few days! Yay!

Mike is supposed to get home Friday night but he's going to try to come home sooner. So, I may be taking the delivery myself, but that's okay. I'd rather do that than delay the delivery any longer. Besides, it's not too hard to accept the delivery. The movers bring everything up from the truck. Then they unpack all the boxes and put all the furniture together for you, and take all the empty boxes and packing materials with them so you don't have to worry about throwing out all that crap yourself. I just need to find a place to stash the cats for a couple hours while the movers are here. I guess the bathroom will be okay for them.

Now I'll spend the next two days arranging the stuff we currently have, trying to figure out where all the new stuff will go.

08 August 2006

Mike's in the paper!

The Salt Lake Tribune

His agency frowns on being photographed, but he says someone from ICE called the press to publicize the arrests. They don't mention Mike's agency, only "federal agents wearing black vests and driving unmarked vehicles."

Mike's wearing his cool Israeli military shirt.

07 August 2006

Movies and Whatnot

We had two days, and then Mike was gone again. We spent our time together doing very little. On Friday night we saw Little Miss Sunshine, which was very good. Every good review you've read or heard is right. It's funny and silly without going too far into ridiculousness. It's serious and dramatic without being melodramatic. We loved it.

On Saturday we decided to take a long walk in San Francisco. We first went to a Belgian cafe and filled up on frits and mayo, then started walking along Haight. We didn't go all the way to the famous Haight/Ashbury intersection. We've seen it before and are still disappointed that there's a GAP on the corner. We came across a sign that said Buena Vista Park and walked up this gigantic staircase, that led to more stairs in the park, and eventually we found the buena vista. It was a nice, long walk.

We were exhausted when we got home on Saturday afternoon, and spent the rest of the day lounging around. We turned on the TV, suddenly remembering that we get HBO and some other movie channels. We ended up soaking up all the movie goodness with Animal House, Monster, and The Aristocrats. We hadn't seen Monster before; it was good, but depressing. Animal House and The Aristocrats were, of course, as hilarious as ever.

Mike left Sunday morning. I went to farmers' market. I did some housework. Then I sat around being bored for a while. Eventually I made a super-tasty dinner and went to bed early to read.

03 August 2006

All Knit Up

I'm having a knitting issue. I don't want to call it a problem, because the fabric looks nice, but I'm not quite sure how I'm achieving it. I'm going to post over in Stitchers' Guild, but I wanted to collect my thoughts here first.

I've been working on a scarf. It's my second knitting project ever. When I first got started, I picked up my warm-up piece to get back into practice and I just did what felt natural. After a few rows I was confident I had my knit back (I haven't knit since Christmas time), so I cast on some pretty yarn and knit away. Three skeins and about 50 inches later, I decided to take an evening off and rest my hands. I picked up Confessions of Knitting Heretic and became intrigued by the combination knitting style. I studied the photos of western knitting, and my stiches didn't quite look like that. I looked at the eastern knitting illustrations, and mine didn't quite look like that either. Wow, I must somehow be doing combination knitting! Nope. My stitches don't look exactly like that. So, what am I doing? My fabric looks (to my untrained eye) like it's been knit into the garter stitch. But my technique doesn't match anything in any of my books--the books I originally used to teach myself. I've taken a couple photos. I really don't know how to explain what I'm doing. I'm hoping a knitter who knows what she's doing can look at them and figure me out.

I'm not too concerned. I'm going to finish the scarf in the same manner I've been doing it. Why change now? It's almost done and I like the way it looks. Then I'll go back to my books and work on my purling for my next project.

I just felt an earthquake

We live in a shaky building. Whenever a big truck drives by, or someone moves some furniture, or a kid sneezes, our apartment wiggles a little. After a couple days I stopped my hourly check-ups of the USGS Earthquake Map, assured that the wobbles were not earthquake related. (I'm back in California! Yay earthquake paranoia!)

But just a few minutes ago I was knitting and watching House, and the wind came up. The place started wobbling like crazy. At first I was like, wow, strong breeze, but the moving lasted longer than it should have and was much stronger than the previous wiggles and wobbles. As I was bringing up the USGS Earthquake Map, the local news broke in to House to announce a quake happening in Sonoma County. Go to the map, and look at the big square just under Santa Rosa. That's what I felt. (We live by the dot left of Concord. I guess at least one of the minor wobbles last week was a tiny quake.)

I'm fine. The cats are fine. I think Grendel slept through it. Nothing happened in the house. I've been wondering how sound this building is, though, considering how much it shakes on a regular basis, when there aren't earthquakes happening. At least we're on the top floor, so if the big one does happen to hit while we're home, we won't be crushed.

02 August 2006

Thoughts on the morning news

I think Mel Gibson needs to make a guest appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and then all will be forgiven and forgotten. Not that I even care about him and the poor excuse for news that's currently surrounding him (very little news time spent on Iraq or Israel and the rest of the Middle East this morning, even though a lot went down last night), but he must be looking for ways to reverse his image. Mel, take it under serious consideration. Curb Your Enthusiasm is the way to go.

Steven Colbert. At first I didn't watch his show much, but he's growing on me. I officially considered myself a fan after last week's battle with "real" news, in which The Today Show, Good Morning America, and a few other news outlets ran stories about how he humiliates his guests and why does anyone even go on the show knowing it could be a career killer. Steven made a great point when he intereviewed a Congressman who supports a bill to require the 10 Commandments to be hung in the Senate and the House and Steven asked him to name the 10 Commandments and the Congressman couldn't name them. I think that should be news! Steven shouldn't be chided for that! Why is it wrong to expect our Congresspeople to have understanding and knowledge of the bills they are supporting for us? How come "real" reporters can't ask those questions? I am so sick of the fluff that makes up so much of each news broadcast. There's a difference between human interest and crap and mainstream news continuously blurrs that line.

I don't know what's gotten into me, except I just watched Matt Lauer interview Nicholas Cage, and I am very annoyed.

01 August 2006

Brrr...

Dare I say it? It's chilly here! I know the rest of the country is still gripped in a heatwave, but we have cooled off big time. Just a few days ago we were so happy it was cool enough to open the windows at night. Now we are getting up and closing them in the middle of the night because it's too chilly. It was about 50 when I woke up this morning at 5:00. The days have been clear, sunny, and mild. We are having lovely East Coast-like September weather.

Last night, in Mike's absence, I picked up my knitting needles. My sewing area isn't set up yet, but knitting I can do from the couch. I haven't done any knitting since last winter, around Christmas time. But in March, I think, we went down to Charlottesville to visit Mike's photography professor from college and I admired some sweaters in her studio that she had knit. A couple weeks after our visit, I was surprised by a huge box of yarn, needles, and pattern books in the mail. She had sent me leftovers. Skeins of beautiful yarns that she didn't have enough of for sweaters but knew I could use for my new-knitter hats and scarves. A collection of needles of all different sizes. And some how-to books pattern books with some lovely sweaters and other projects to inspire me to work up to something big some day. Since I received that great box, though, I haven't done anything with any of the yarn. I finally got around to it. I picked up a green slubby wool and some large needles and started on a chunky scarf.

It must be the chill in the air, but I'm ready to think about fall sewing projects. I've been collecting photos of what I'd like to work on. And some fabrics, too. I suppose I could take over the dining room table if I really want to start sewing, but I'll probably wait until I can set up my sewing room(/office/guest room).