Drunken Owls and Other Delights

So last week for the hell of it I looked on the Seagate site just to see if there were any external drive sales going on, considering the one with my music library was swiftly approaching critical mass, even despite my attempts to thin it out. As luck would have it, they were indeed having a sale and I purchased a Ridiculously Large External (14TB, almost double the other big external I have, and for a surprisingly cheap price at that). It's taken a few days and a few snags, but said music library has now been moved with lots of breathing room surrounding it. Right now I'm updating the Plex server so it's pointing towards the correct location so it can be shared again!

Meanwhile, we're finally gathering all the artwork we want to put on our pristine white walls! We've been using a prints-from-museum theme for a while now, so we've been buying a few from the local museums (and a few from the MFA in Boston) and elsewhere. Alas, I've run out of the specific size of hooks I need, so I'll need to swing by a local hardware store to pick up more, but eventually we'll be all arted up!

A and I were talking yesterday about the differences between our old place the new one. Aside from the change in layout, I was taken by the fact that it's wonderfully quiet. While the old place wasn't on a high volume street, it did get its share of vehicle traffic coming and going between Geary and California, not to mention the foot traffic from the restaurants on Clement. Whereas here, we only have the kids across the street at the elementary school and the occasional car driving by. We're also kind of surprised we don't hear the traffic next block over on Fulton, which is often used as a speedway for people cutting east-west across town. Our cats make more noise!

Oh, and we are both very thankful that our downstairs neighbors are very quiet and very nice. The most I hear from them is the occasional piano practice, which I am all for. Which is a LOT better than the idiot bro at the old place with an electric drum kit and no sense of rhythm and a guitar and an amp and only plays Eddie Van Halen squealy wank with no sense of melody.

There's also the fact that it feels warmer and less humid here. It could be the fact that this is a brand new renovation so the windows are nice and tight, and we don't have leaky skylights either. The breeze is a bit cooler since we get the direct ocean wind, but only when we're outside. The view from the office on a clear day isn't as grand as it was in Spare Oom, but you can see the top of the GGB towers popping up over the hill of the Presidio, and the Marin headlands range is still lovely. We can even see Mount Tamalpais this time!

We are now completely moved into our new home, and have been spending the last several days unpacking, setting things up, putting things away, and ensuring the cats aren't too freaked out by their new surroundings.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting to feel a wave of melancholy when I left the old apartment yesterday after picking up the last of the leftover things I had to bring over. And again today when I left the keys and the garage door opener on the kitchen counter. It felt...well, sort of like when I moved out of my parents' house in 2005, now that I think about it. A little over fifteen years in the same place and it becomes a strong part of your history, I guess. We were only at our apartment in North Beach for just shy of four years and it took me that long to get used to our last place. 

But yeah, walking out of there for the last time was definitely a trip. Lots of memories, lots of life events.

There's still a lot to do, even though we're mostly settled now. The shared office needs things put away, the garage needs a LOT of rearranging and organization (and the two storage shelves built at that), and we still need to do a bit of grocery shopping.

It's slow going, but we're getting there. 

After all this wait, all the paperwork and the banking and the scheduling and rescheduling and info updating and everything else, we'll have finally fully moved into our new home come Tuesday! It's been such a weird and wild and extremely exhausting couple of months and I've completely lost track of time to the point of what day it is half the time. I'm finally on a full week's vacation where I can focus on the final couple of 'soft moves' (moving the small and fragile stuff, storing new purchases, setting up new furniture and whatnot) without juggling it with the Day Job.

This however doesn't mean that I'll be able to sleep in most of the days because a lot of our plans involve early or midmorning things to do like meeting up with our soon to be former landlady for a final walk-through and having the place cleaned, and most likely a lot of unpacking in the next several days after that. Still, I don't have to worry about any eight-hour shifts on top it all!

And after all that, I'll hopefully be back online and blogging and writing on a regular schedule soon!

...until we officially move into our new place! I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. It's not helping that I feel like I've been putting off all the packing even though I've done quite a large amount of it (and tossing/donating) already. It's also not helping that the Day Job has had some of its busiest days in months these last couple of weeks. I'm deliberately running on half-speed to conserve energy -- I'm not as fast at work so I can keep some of that oomph to move boxes and bins over to the new place.

We've also been doing a lot of shopping lately, buying stuff for the new place. We've even gotten ourselves a membership to Costco after all these years! Not that we're about to buy Armageddon Preparation Size boxes of cereal mind you, just looking for good deals on things we frequently use and need like household stuff. We're also buying things other than bookshelves (heh) at Ikea for storage modules we will need. We're trying not to go overboard considering we're moving into a slightly smaller space and there's only so much space for storage, but being smart about the space we do have is important. I will be heading to said Costco later today to pick up some storage shelves for the garage.

And INTERNETS! As of yesterday we are all wired up at the new place so that's one more thing to cross off our to-do list. Yay!

I am a little worried about some of the stuff we're getting rid of, though I'm hoping that won't be too much of a problem. We'll be getting rid of our old Dyson vacuum cleaner which we've had for almost 20 years that STILL runs perfectly (not bad for a refurb at that) which I'm sure a neighbor will yoink. The living room couch is going to be tricky, though. It's the one we bought from Home Reserve, known for their really good durable furniture that comes in boxes that you put together yourselves. I want to see if one of our neighbors wants it first before I put it up on FB Marketplace. I'd rather someone take it because aside from a bit of wear and sun fade, it's still in great condition, but if we have to toss it, at least it's gotten sixteen years of use!

I'll be honest, what's bothering me the most is that I'm barely getting any writing work done. I'd packed all my notebooks and brought them over to the new place so I haven't done any journaling in ages. I might squeeze in a few pages of revision and editing on the trilogy remaster, but that's about it. I just haven't had the time. I'd expected this and I'm using the time as a bit of a vacation from all that, but I am SO itching to get back to it once we've moved.

On that note, I have today and tomorrow off and I'd better get moving. Still using pockets of time to rest and relax, but I still have a lot to do.