Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Yesterday we spent a good number of hours at the new place. First things first, we put up valances for the living room windows, and they look quite nice! Then we put together our sectional sofa from Home Reserve, which took a good few hours, a lot of elbow grease (at least until we finally got the drill charged up) and much wear on the knees. Once together, it is quite comfy and big and I'm sure I'll have naps on it in the future, heh. And lastly, we put together a sideboard that, upon assembly, may not be the most stable of furniture unless I add some additional wood glue to it. Alas, this last thing seems to have been a 'you get what you pay for' item. Sigh.

And while we did all that, I decided to try out our laundry machines for the first time and they definitely work a peach! It feels strange to be able to do a few loads without having to a) pump quarters and b) keep track of the time so other tenants can use it after I'm done. I do currently have a few rolls of quarters that I'll hang onto, however, as the washer isn't quite big enough to do large things like bedsheets. Thankfully we have two laundromats one block away that I can use for such things.

Current status as of Monday morning: I am slightly sore but still able to move around, so I'll take that as a win.

Still to do:

--Disassemble the old living room couch to bring downstairs for Recology pickup on Thursday. I'm kind of hoping I don't have to tear the whole thing apart, but I may have to if it doesn't fit into the elevator. I still feel kind of bad for getting rid of it as it's still in good condition, but then again we've had it for 16 years so we've gotten a lot of use out of it.
--Move the loveseat that's here in Spare Oom to the living room
--Also move the remaining book boxes from Spare Oom to the living room
--Box up the remainder of Spare Oom's desk contents, shut down and pack up Spare Oom PC, printer, etc (these can go in the car with us, of course)
--Figure out where to put the Spare Oom bookcases for imminent move...?
--Leave a few things in Spare Oom, as this will be Cat Wrangling Room come moving day. We need to have it nearly empty by Monday night.
--Pack up remaining stuff in the bedroom (my half of the closet, the remaining few things on the bookcase next to my side of the bed, etc.)
--Bring over any other small stuff that can fit in the car over the course of this week.

One more week...

To Do This Weekend:
--dropping off the keys to our old place (after I go back in to take down the hooks I forgot to take down earlier)
--shopping at the Marina Safeway while I do said dropping off (Emm will do this)
--continue unpacking/rearranging stuff in the apartment
--watch football!

Wow...no big event, no opera or symphony? O_O

Okay, so I wussed out and only did one trip to the new place today. Brought over the stuff we bought at Target/BB&B today, plus some kitchen stuff plus some of Emm's clothes. I dunno...I should have done another trip, but I'm just dead tired right now. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I kept waking up last night, every couple of hours or so, mostly due to the yahoos coming out of the bars. I think we ran the gamut last night--drunk frat boys, potential chick fight, bf/gf argument...I think the only thing we didn't have was someone hurling. Yes, that has happened outside our window. O_O

Stopped at Safeway to see if I needed to rent a carpet cleaner, but they suggested just coming in to rent one on the day needed. Hopefully there will be one available that day! And it has to be done on Saturday, as we're going to the Opera on Sunday. Yup, big weekend! :)

Anyhoo...going to spend the rest of the day packing some of my own stuff. I need to pack the stuff on the bookshelf and some of the stuff under the bed. Lord knows where I'll put it...but I'll figure it out. My bureau is now down to a week's worth of stuff to wear, my closet just has clothes for the two days I'll be in-office, everything else is in boxes. If time permits, I may bring some of it over there during the week.

Big move is Friday...we are SO looking forward to it, partly to get it over with, partly to enjoy the OMG ENORMOUS new place. :)

In fact, on tap tomorrow:

--the other half of the laundry (doing half tonight to save time tomorrow)
--some quick shopping at Safeway (probably done whilst doing laundry, again to save time)
--call PG&E (for electricity), AT&T (for landline phone), and Dish Network (to have something set up), to have things changed/setup/etc. Hopefully this will go smoothly. (probably also done whilst doing laundry)
--moving all sorts of things to the new place, hopefully more than three trips this time
--and if I have the time/will power, pack up some of the stuff that's on my side of the closet, repack the cds into boxes and put my writing into the wood boxes the cds are currently in. And move those if I have the time/will power/energy. :p


And for the rest of the week? Still working from home on Wednesday and Thursday, so I may use those days for some moving after work as well. If I'm not somehow talked into doing OT (long story, you don't want to know). And yes, next week will involve MORE packing and moving.


Honestly? I'm actually enjoying the trip over to the new place. It's not that hard of a trek, traffic notwithstanding, and I get to see what fun stuff is in the area that we can possibly go to at a later date. I'd forgotten how close Divisadero is to Fillmore (four blocks, I believe), so it's walkable. Also, there's a strip mall of sorts--more like a block of major stores, really--on California in Laurel Heights were we could possibly do our major food shopping. And we're two blocks away from Geary, which is a major thoroughfare and big on shops as well. I also get to listen to a lot of tunage during the drive, which is also good! Oh--and though there are some hills, they're not insanely steep enough where I'd do some serious rolling back if I had to stop at the top. I also like how quiet and suburban our new neighborhood is...and yet there's still all sorts of things down the block on Clement to keep us occupied and amused! :)

The only thing I haven't been doing lately is writing, but that's sort of a given...I have the moving to worry about. The writing will start up again in full force once we're completely moved to the new place and things have been unpacked. Which means maybe not until early to mid-November, but still--the phrase to focus on is "full force." :)

Well, here I am, wide awake, having woken up just before 7am on a Saturday morning. I've got the local news on while I browse the internets, contemplating what I'll have for breakfast or if I should start making the coffee. It's a little overcast (but knowing SF, it's probably jsut low-lying fog and will burn off midmorning), and a bit chilly, but otherwise all is good.

It's going to be a busy weekend all around...it's Fleet Week here, so we'll have the Blue Angels buzzing our apartment current apartment sometime today. There will also most likely be many tourists clogging the sidewalks (and the roads) too, but we're used to that. However, most of today I will be driving between here and our new place, dropping off boxes and other stuff. Not sure how many trips I'll take, maybe three or four, but it'll make a nice dent in what needs being moved.

On Sunday we have Mozart's opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, which should be fun (although getting there may be a trick due to the Italian Heritage parade partially blocking off our normal route to get to the Opera House). Depending on how tired/in pain I may be (not from the opera, of course :p), I may move some more boxes then as well.

And Monday? Unfortunately Emm has to work but I have the day off. w0000t! Which means even more packing and moving!

So yeah. Lots of moving stuff this weekend. Hopefully I won't pull or break anything in the process! :)

Hi all! Some of you are new to this news, as I had it very friends-locked until we knew for sure that our plans were going to go through. But now that everything's confirmed, we can share the news to everyone else now:

We're moving!

In what has to be a land speed record for find-online/view/sign-the-lease preparations for both of us, as of 10/19 we will be renting a very nice 2 bed/1.5 bath apartment in the Central Richmond district of the city (our new neighborhood can be found on Google Maps here...for those curious, we've been here since December 2005)...so yeah, still in the northern half of town, but on the opposite side. And it just dawned on me that we'll be less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean...!

We've been sort-of looking for new places for awhile now, but only in passing, nothing serious. But it was a choice we'd made last Sunday to take a look at some apartments in that neighborhood, just on a whim, to see what was available, since the postings looked pretty nice. By midweek we'd made a few appointments to look at a few places. We saw all three on Thursday. That night we sent in rental applications for the one we really liked. By late Friday evening I'd gotten an email from the agent (Virginia, you are AWESOME) saying she'd processed the apps, done the credit check, talked to the owner, all was good and we'd gotten it, and oh by the way, can you stop by the new place on Saturday to sign the lease?

One week. From finding to viewing to signing. That has NEVER happened for either of us.

So!

Now commences some insanity, in which we need to do the following (in no real order):
--phone (need to find if we can keep the number or if it needs to be changed)
--driver's licenses (need to have addresses changed)
--cable (this is Comcast, so I'm sure it'll be a headache)
--movers/moving truck/which day we'll move
--handing in 30-day notice for Trinity (and hoping they don't make us pay for November since it'll be just shy of 30 days)
--utilities (shutting off of some, starting of others)
--change of address for bills, credit cards, mail, etc
--major cleaning of the current place before we leave
--packing
--packing
--packing
--*sigh* eventually unpacking, rearranging, settling, arranging, and whatnot

Mind you, all of this will be done while we deal with the regular work day, as well as going to two operas on the 11th and the 25th. Yes, we're insane.

What's been done so far:
--lease signed and rules and regs gone over with the agents
--trip to Target/Lowe's for cleaning and moving stuff (did that today)
--pictures taken of new place for reference (and to file under "it was like this when I got here")
--measuring of rooms and windows for reference
--ordering of boxes and packing material from Go Green Moving Boxes (we bought the 2bed/office "Average Joe" package), hopefully they should arrive while I'm working at home. Where we'll put them, I have no idea. O_O
--making a list of places to hire for moving


So yeah...going to be a crazy couple of weeks this month. Of course, this means that writing will fall by the wayside while preparing/doing the move, but I will be picking it up again starting in November! I'm not entirely sure what our new mailing address will be (well, I do, I just want to verify it with the agents and the owner, to make sure I have it correct), but once it's confirmed, I'll email everyone with an update...and let me know if anyone else wants an update and I'll shoot it your way when the time comes.

Till then, expect me to be twitchy and speaking nonsensically (that is, more so than usual) by month's end. Whee! :p

Emm and I are starting to finalize our plans for our move to San Francisco. It hasn't quite sunk in yet that we're actually moving out there. Especially when I factor in the fact that I'd moved down to New Jersey at the beginning of this year. Mere months after that, when I'd finally popped the question to her, we were thinking of moving elsewhere in NJ, closer to her work, probably in Parsippany. All that changed when a few months after that, she was offered the position in SF.

Getting a girlfriend after 7 years of little or no dating. Quitting my job of nearly five years. Moving to New Jersey. Being engaged. Getting married. Flying to Scotland. Being offered a transfer to the other coast. And finally, making that move.

It's been one hell of a year for me. I think I could actually use these things as an excuse for my lack of writing this year. ;)

On a more serious note, I've been thinking of all these changes and I've come to the realization that I've been given all these great chances to better myself, and I've accepted all of them so far. Being with Emm has changed my mindset in so many ways...I'm not a morose bastard anymore. I'm no longer as deep in debt as I once was. And I'm not worried about money keeping me from doing things I want to do--not that I'm any richer, but I realize there are ways I can still make myself happy and not have to spend inordinate amounts of money doing it.

So I'm thinking that once we're out in San Francisco, there's still room for improvement on my part. After seeing various reception pictures and seeing my FAT GUT sticking out past the rest of me, I realize that I am in dire need of losing weight. So I'm making a resolution to make a concerted effort to change many of my bad habits, such as drinking way too much soda, eating too much, and not getting any exercise at all. If we're going to be living in a city made up almost entirely of hills, I'm gonna need to be in shape or else I'll be wheezing and hacking and that's not good. Then there's the fact that other than my roommates and their friends, I really don't know anybody here in NJ at all. I think that it's time that I got out again and started talking to other people, and being a part of a community in SF certainly sounds like a good start.

As an aside, my roommate from ten years ago lives in SF and is a piano teacher now. I think I may just look him up and see what he's up to.

So yeah, I figure, with all these changes, what's a few more?