...if it ain't got that swing..

So. We moved. The place is nice and spacious, a 2 bedroom apartment that'll hold us over for a year or two maybe while we arrange for a nice condo or townhome, someplace I can pick up in the area and then move away and make a killing on rent with. But that's not the point. The point is that we moved, and it's wonderful. The place is about 20 minutes from my office, close to shopping, a Nissan dealer (for my car), lots of hippy healthy joints for Raevyn, and well-essentially close to everything we could possibly need. The only reason we found ourselves travelling out of the immediate area for anything was if we just didn't know if X or Y store had a nearby location, or if they carried what I was looking for, or rather, since we went the first week or so without internet access, so we had to drive to get to stores that had locations pretty much around the corner. Anyway. All of those perks and benefits are wonderful, but the important thing is that she's there, and that's what really really counts.

So, the move. Friday the 14th I went up to Raevyn's place, stayed the night among her many many boxes, and on a very early very cold Saturday morning, our friends Matt and Liz came by to help collect our POS jenky Budget 10-foot Budget rental truck and load it up with everything my beloved owns. The truck loading went well enough, and after a few heartfelt goodbyes, we were on our way. Matt and Liz navigated us through a few tolls and let us take the lead; at which point we realized something was horribly wrong with the rental truck. It seemed that 70mph was the top speed the truck could do, and whenever it went over 50 mph (or tried to shift into third gear) a bright red "check trans" light would come on and stay on until the engine shifted down. When we stopped for coffee and bathroom breaks, we thought maybe it was low on transmission fluid; it wasn't-we thought maybe something was wrong we could do something about, and that was when we took to heart the writing on the driver's side window: "POS TRANS" and just beneath it "no power over 20mph" well, the 20 turned out to be more like 50mph, but whatever. We managed to get down, unload Raevyn's stuff into the apartment, and then head to IKEA to pick up our bedframe just fine. It was the end of IKEA's winter sale, and Matt and I went while Raevyn and Liz stayed home to move boxes around and do some light unpacking (and order food), so Matt and I picked up some tidbits in the store, waited approximately an ice age to pay for it all, and waited another ice age to pick up the bedframe (about a half hour after the store closed-we got there at about 730, we were there until about 930) and go home. At this point it was dark, colder than it was in the day, but we were at least pleased to go home, eat something, and get ready for the drive back to PA. You heard me, we went back the same night. Why? We didn't have a place to sleep at the new apartment yet, and we didn't have a place to ask Matt and Liz to crash either, so we got in the jenky ass truck and drove back up the highway. We stopped at my packed up apartment to pick up my now unecessary bed to take to Raevyn's old apartment, in case we visited and needed a place to crash. By the time we got back to Raevyn's old apartment, dropped off the rental truck and my bed, and came back to end the night, it was about 4AM. We paid our gracious thanks to Matt and Liz who had both been up for more than 24 hours, and paid our thanks to ourselves by sleeping an age. Comcast was supposed to come between 2-5 on Sunday the 16th, but we said screw it-we needed the sleep.

We woke up on Sunday, hit the IKEA close to Raevyn's place to see if they had stuff that the IKEA close to our new apartment was missing, took what they had, and packed up the car. We got Raevyn's mom all set up with AOL (ugh, but she needs something horribly simple) and her shiny new desk (which we put together) and headed down the road to our new place. We arrived late in the evening, put our bedframe together after unloading the car, eating, and having a few beers, watched the sky outside brighten with sunlight, made the bed, and called it a night. Monday was a holiday, so it was off to my old apartment to collect a few things (work clothes, necessities) that I'd need to live out of bags essentially until my movers arrived to bring all my things. Tuesday and Wednesday were strange enough, as I was in my new home but living out of bags, but boy was the commute wonderful. Much unpacking was done, and Thursday I thought my movers were coming, so we got up early (I was off for Inauguration Day) and scurried to the old apartment to be there when they arrived. Turned out I was scheduled for Friday (I took that day off too), did some light packing and tidying up, brought some things to the new apartment, and went back to bed. Shopping was to be had after we woke up, as well as another IKEA trip (noticing a trend here?). Friday we got to my place in time to greet the movers, who insisted that I not lift a finger (much to my dismay, I felt really useless while they loaded everything I owned into the back of a truck) and after finishing up, drove it all WAY fast to the new place. Yes, by WAY fast, I mean they beat us there. By a good margin, too.

Anyway, they unloaded my things into the new apartment, and then the real unpacking began. Comcast came later that day, only to find out that the line had been cut somewhere in the building, and someone would have to come to repair it. We scheduled for 8AM Saturday (the next day) and tidied up, went to bed. Saturday came, the morning hours passed, and the snow came. A lot of snow. A whole lot of snow. Okay-not that much, but it was our first decent snowfall of the year. Comcast never showed, even though the snow began after our appointment. Bitching ensued, which resulted in refunding of monies. We unpacked, jaunted out in the snow and slush for noodles, found IKEA closed, and went home to unpack more and sleep. Sunday snow melted, we went back to IKEA, bought lots of stuff, including new desks (my massive oak desk that's mad heavy barely made it through the apartment door and didn't make it into the computer room, so the movers took it away, I told them they could drop it by the dumpster, but they took it-man, if I had known that I would have given them the drawers for the side of the desk-they could have used em!) and bookshelves.

I guess that brings us up to this week. We've been unpacking essentially every day, running out to grab this or that, run an errand or another, but on the up side, Raevyn had an interview literally her first business day in town, and landed the job (with really good pay) a week later. I knew she was brilliant; now hopefully she knows too. But as of now, we still have some unpacking to do, although at least now we can see across the living room, and hooking everything up will be interesting enough as well. Might call for some runs to Radio Shack and Target to buy some cables and wiring, but we'll see. Raevyn starts work Monday; Comcast came Tuesday and fixed the line (much to my prodding of the cable guy to hop a fence and get into a damned closet-I don't care if the apartment's vacant or not or all of that legal mumbo jumbo, I want my internets) and another came Thursday to activate and give us our cablemodem and all, so now we have TV and internet access, which helps with the unpacking.

So, there-we're all caught up. I know you missed me (read: I missed you, my fair internet) but hopefully now I'm back. I have some coursework in this semester's grad seminar to catch up with, so tonight's priority is to set up the computer room and wire the joint. Better get home and get to it.