satisfied
willowisp and I spent the night in our house for the first time on Friday. We brought a load of stuff over after dinner, then went back to the apartment, stuffed the kitties in their carriers, and went back across town. They were not pleased. Gail was actually okay: she made herself very small in her carrier until willowisp unzipped the top and started petting her. By the time we made it to the house she was purring. Very very quietly, but purring nonetheless. Heidi was far less placid. The whole trip across town she was meowing as if we'd stuffed her into the shower and turned on the very cold water, or given Gail tuna and not let her have any, or something similarly cruel. The kitties got over their worries fairly quickly when they found out just how much fun the new house is. Lots of stuff to get into, lots of places to explore, tons of mischief... Heidi will still sometimes go upstairs and meow frantically until we come upstairs and assure her that she's not lost. Sometimes she gets impatient and comes downstairs and meows at us as if to make sure we're still there. She's silly. We've also discovered that the tile floor is indeed slippery enough for her to spin out when trying to make tight turns.
We didn't get much sleep on Friday. New house, new bed, big day the next day... you do the math.
Saturday morning I went and picked up a truck from a not-too-great part of town. From there we went back to the apartment.
willowisp caught a few more winks while I went to bring back breakfast. When I returned, dnabre, echoweaver, and Studentbane had arrived and we got moving in earnest. It became obvious after about 20 minutes Studentbane is a lot better at packing trucks than I am. Given how often he reports moving over the last N years, this is unsurprising. We worked out a relay to get boxes out to the truck while he handled the bin-packing problem and the tie-downs. We took the whole morning and packed it up tight. I was surprised: we managed to fit all of the furniture and all of the boxes into the truck with enough room left to pick up the bookshelves on the way across town.
We went to Flying Star for a much-needed lunch. It was interesting: in spite of all of us working our rears off, everyone but
willowisp opted for salads. I don't know about everyone else, but I didn't want to get too weighed down. After lunch we went across town to the house and reversed the whole process. It took far less time to unload the truck than it did to load it, although our living room hasn't yet recovered and probably won't for some time. After everything was inside, we washed up, flopped over, and guzzled large amounts of water before heading downtown for dinner at Tucano's. If there were ever a restaurant designed to appeal to primitive instincts, that's it: after a generous salad, attractive men and women come around the tables bearing swords upon which they have skewered all kinds of freshly roasted meat. It's lots of fun. Dessert and decompression took place at Cold Stone, then we all went home and crashed.
That was Saturday. Most of our time since then has been split between unpacking here and cleaning out the apartment. I expect that we'll finish off the apartment and turn in our keys tomorrow or Monday. It will no doubt be a month or thirty or so before we get the very last of the boxes unpacked, but within a week or two we should have the place comfortable.
There have been developments with Prewire and Qwest since then. Big surprise, I know. I'll post about those soon enough.
Meanwhile, I am very, very grateful to the friends who helped with the move. I had a lot of fun and we got an awful lot done. Next time we do dinner, though, I'll come up with a less strenuous occasion...
