Writing Wrongs

Intrepid reader susandennis says I have not posted here in 5 days. Well, I posted on Monday, so 4 days. Three if I want to knitpick that I started writing this on Friday.

My usual routine is to end the day with a journal post. But all the packing and prep for moving left me zonked and cross-eyed so I slept instead. Also had some sleepless nights because my OCD brain would keep making lists of things which needed to be done, and re-ordering them and re-re-ordering them.

And then there's Domino. With the disappearance of her arch-enemy Kaan, (Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!) she has taken to sleeping on top of me. Literally. As soon as I pull the covers over me, she climbs up onto me, and if I am lucky she assumes the Sphinx position, which means her 8 lbs is evenly distributed and I can breathe, but I dare not roll over. If I am not so lucky she does Isis, and her 8 lbs are concentrated on her pointy little front paws. Ouch! Last night was the luckiest, she curled up at the foot of the bed across the way from where my feet are. As the night progressed she snuck closer and closer to my head.

So, updatery:
Monday, worked a full day, went to the new place and got the garbage can off the street and onto the driveway. Did some measuring. Back to the apartment and packed till I dropped. Had a bad feeling someone had stolen my lime tree from the driveway 'cause I didn't remember seeing it.

Tuesday, worked a full day, apartment, put all my network required things in the care (2 Tivos, a cable modem, a router, my main PC with kbd/mouse, a power strip and some coax and my portable HDTV). went to the house and staged all that, one Tivo in the livingroom, one in the bedroom, the PC, modem and router in the office. Confirmed that the lie tree was still there. Collected the mail. Back to the apartment and packed till I dropped. Fitful sleep, because in the mail was a note from the CU saying I needed to send the payments by check, but I'd already signed up for auto-pay, so WTF?

Wednesday, up at 6 to be at the house by 7:30 because Comcast said be there before the 8-10 service window just in case. Idjits. Comcast guy showed up at 9:45. Grrr. Took him an hour and a second cable guy to get poer to all the outlets because whoever installed the satellite dish for the previous owner mucked things up. And then it took 4 reboots to get the modem to latch on, but once that was done it was all good. To work, then to the apartment and panic packed till I dropped, took a nap at 7:30, up at 9:30 and panic packed some more until I ran out of boxes and it was clear that the bathroom and some of the office was going to be done by the movers.

Thursday, up at 6 to be awake for the movers at 8, which is good because they showed up at 7:50. Lead guy was Israeli, three other were Hispanic. They rented a truck from Enterprise. They worked quickly, but the first thing they took outside was the recliner. It was also the last thing they loaded. I could have sat out there but it was cold COLD. Like 30F. By the time we were done at the apt it was a toasty 35. I moved around a lot to keep out of the way, there was noplace to sit - they took all of those first. :=(

One of the workers spent half an hour artfully cutting apart a couple of dishpack cartons to make a cardboard suit for the piano, totally not needed. Moving blankets would have been enough.

At the house, the piano was one of the first things in. I had removed all the removable pieces except the key guard, which got it down to where two guys could lift it, but they had no idea how to move a piano up steps (the last movers had a piano sled, piece of cake). They somehow managed to not drop it or hurt themselves.

They were done in less time than the estimate, but made up for the savings by charging me $350 for materials which at U-haul would have been less than half that. But they worked hard and quickly so I gave them all nice tips.

The realtor was supposed to show up around 2 to haul away the big TV which had been left behind, I waited till 4:30 when I ran out of things I wanted to unpack, but she was a no-show. Drove to Chef Lee's for dinner, their House Special Wor Wonton Soup used to be a staple of mine when I worked near there. It is still good, but the wontons were too thick, there was not much pork and there was broccoli.

I can't remember the rest of the evening. I think I crashed at 7:30, woke up at 9-ish, did some unpacking and had two separate low blood glucose episodes. Boring because I hadn't hooked up the TVs yet. I think I did both of them in my stupor. I know when I woke up this morning (Friday) they both worked. Oh yeah, I went to the apt and filled the cooler with the stuff in the freezer and hauled it home and tossed it into the freezer.

So that brings us to today. Woke up at 7, Junk King was due between 9 and 10 to haul away the rusty old shed. I couldn't remember the combination to the lock I'd put on, so I found my tools and snapped off the hasp. Emptied the contents and put them in the big shed. I don't know whose idea it was to put shelves all around the big shed, but a near-future project is to empty the shed, take out most of the shelves and repack it. They arrived at a little after 9.

They also were happy to haul away the TV.

Got to work almost on time, there was a doc to review and the specs for the next product to start reading (almost 400 pages, highly technical, not much fun but I have to do it because otherwise I won't know what I'm testing). Lunch at Sizzler, steak & lobster was on special, the lobster was meager but good, the steak I should have sent back, it was overdone and tough. They usually do better on both counts.

Did my weekly report to wrap up the day, then went to the house, got the mail, grabbed the cooler and went back to the apt. Filled to cooler with the stuff from the fridge. Left behind some stuff which will end of life before I get to eating it, but left a mostly empty fridge. Took down the shower curtain in the small bathroom and packed it into the trunk of the car. Checked the keys, put them in my coat pocket. Checked the mailbox and was elated to see a plain brown envelope from the DMV with this inside:



Forgot to grab the lazy Susans. I didn't think they would fit in the new place, but found a cabinet where they will. Must go back for those tomorrow or Sunday, when I do a final mail check.

Shopping - the movers had broken one of the torchiere lamp shades and bulb, I discovered just before I was going to plug it in. :-( Lowes only has expensive glass shades, Target had none but they had the right bulb. OSH had something which may work for $4. Also bought another lamp at Target for the 3rd bedroom. And they had a tool which looked like it could remove the track light which is burned out (it couldn't). Also bought three under-counter lamps for the kitchen to replace the ones which had been removed.

Back to the house, vegged in front of the TV after setting the receiver for the best kind of surround sound (I had printed the cogent pages from the user's guide online). Dinner was falafel, with humus and tahina in a wheat pita, seltzer to drink. Domino kept staring at me, I gave her a couple of small pieces of falafel which she ate, but when I gave her a bigger piece she left it on the carpet and went back to staring at me.

Gave her some kitty crack, made myself a chocolate soda. I need to make a food run, I'm out of TV dinners and ice cream.

Before and after dinner I got out the dolly and moved dozens of very heavy boxes out of the office which should have gone into the 3rd bedroom with all the bookcases. My fault, I labeled them for where they came from instead of where they were going to. Also had to move the desk back from the wall, and find all the pieces I needed. To make life more interesting, all the top power outlets are controlled by the room's light switch. I need to either tape that thing up or re-wire it. Not a huge problem because the UPS will handle all the power from one outlet.

Found the subwoofer which is also the terminal for all the PC speakers, it was at the bottom of a box the movers had packed. Ran out of steam just before midnight, have all day Saturday (except for a talk at 3 on 3D printing at the local library, which has a 3D printer for public use). I don't think it will take more than an hour to get the computer up and running (I'm typing this on my laptop).

Plans for tomorrow:
Get the PC set up
Make the kitchen usable (unpack some boxes)
Take the boxes of assorted ziplock and garbage bags out of the tall kitchen garbage container, take the container out onto the driveway and hose it down (something I did not have the resources for previously) and set up all the garbage cans with bags, and throw stuff away.
Take a stab at putting away the stuff in the bathroom. I have traded a single large under-sink storage cabinet for two smaller ones. His and hers.
Maybe see "Frozen"