I’m moved. It’s done. Everything that was mine in the old house is now in my new place. Moving sucks. I hate it. Luckily, I had a ton of fabulous help and I can’t thank my friends and family enough for helping me get everything out.
Currently, there is a tight path surrounded by precariously stacked boxes that goes from the front to the back of my place. On top of everything that I have moved in I’ve had to go to Target to get MORE stuff that I need.
All the moving and coffee and beer and lack of water and lack of healthy food has left me dehydrated to the point where my lips are hugely chapped and my face is flaking. Stupid me. Drink more water, eat more fruit, eat less salt. Just eat healthier!
Speaking of stupid, I trapped my car in my garage! I was all happy about finally having a garage to park in, I pulled in, parked, got out, hit the button on the wall next to the door and went inside. The next morning, David poked me and asked “How do you get the car out if the remote is IN the car?”. Reasonable enough question. One I had not thought about! The answer is you get a ride to work and you get a ride home and you wait for you duplex-buddy to come home from work and let you in to the garage. simple. Embarrasing but simple.
Also, a shout out to Earl at Time Warner cable. I got my internet set up with a minimum of hassle, all fees waived AND a ‘Special Circumstances’ credit for one month’s service as well as the special price for 6 months. The lesson learned here is to be nice to the people who sit at keyboards and take your calls, they know what to type to get you special things.
I love this new place, it’s amazingly cute and comfortable (not comfortable in a climate sort of way, there are 2 book shelves, a dining room table and 42,391 boxes between me and the thermostat. If we were having regular late May weather this would not be an issue, but May has magically turned into Smarch and we are suffering through lousy Smarch weather). It’s funny how there’s a ton of storage in some places (kitchen, dining room closet) and no storage in other places (bedroom has a closet smaller than your thumb, I need to buy an etagere for the bathroom). Luckily I can condense and shift and make everything fit nicely. Now I just need to do it.
And so starts my new journey (oh how new age of me). Leaving my old house was sad, it was the death of so many dreams, but the emotions that the house represented had been effectively stomped to bits. Here I am, looking at the new. Like my new, very pretty dvd player! pretty.
On a completely unrelated note, when you are a fish geek (as in aquariums, not someone who bites the heads off fish), you find yourself in some very very very drawn out conversations. i just spent 20 minutes describing the best methods of fish euthenasia, mixed communities, fish related infanticide and rice-a-roni.

I gots me 2 seconds to post here.
I’m moved, I’ve got everything in and now the task of unpacking begins.
Yesterday I learned I need more female friends. Their reactions to emotional are on the other end of the spectrum from the guys’ and while I abhorr gender distinctions, I learned a valuable lesson yesterday.
Later: pics, pithy comments, the physics of wifi in the canadian wilderness, overly stimulating descriptions of what I find in boxes.
slightly less crazy.

I’d post pictures but I packed the cord for my camera away in a box and that box is somewhere…somewhere…
So I did a lot of moving today. Not terribly interesting.
This is, however, the first place that I have ever lived in alone. Mine. Alone. I will hang pictures where I think they will look nice and I will organize the kitchen the way that works for me and I will pick curtains and colors and motifs.
And if they look bad. pfffft. Mine.
also, just a note…
‘The Village’ is a terrible, stupid movie. Three points…1) How is raising your families in an environment of total fear and paranoia any better that what you left behind? 2) You’ve got to be 12 kinds of fucked up to leave a blind girl alone in the woods when you know there are monsters out there, you are one bitch-ass pussy for leaving her behind 3) These people seem to have an unlimited supply of lamp oil and are in no way concerned about conserving this resource.
Ghengis is having a sleep over at Dena and Levi’s this weekend. He’s chilling with Bela the absolutely fucking massive rottweiler. As expected, Ghengis has quickly asserted his loyalty to Dena, he loves her. G is quite possibly the most disloyal dog ever.
In the morning we get the big truck and move everything else. Dang. yo.
PS I’m the queen of the advice metaphor. Every problem in life can be related to some other part of like that has fewer problems. When giving someone advice, though, don’t use the words ‘phototropism’ or ‘binary fission’. People can’t take advice that confuses them!

I want to thank ALL of you, and I mean ALL of you that responded either in my comments or via email (I got a LOT of emails about this) detailing the nutritional value of beer.
Now, while I appreciate that many of the ingredients in beer might at some point in their existence been healthy and nutrition-laden substances, I’m just gonna have to go ahead and say that the process of making beer probably negates that value. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Bill Cosby routine where he is tasked to prepare breakfast for his children. They want chocolate cake, he knows this is wrong, they insist and he determines that since chocolate cake has eggs and flour in it, both nutritionally viable breakfast options, it must be good for breakfast.
Dad is great! Give us the chocolate cake”
Also, when you take into consideration those people who seem to subsist solely on beer. These are not healthy people. At all. These people are losing teeth and organs, not because of scurvy but because their body is willing itself to die without checking with the brain first. This is the result of beer.
I’m still voting for beer negating the value of the vitamin.
non sequitur
Today a coworker came into my office, looked at me and asked “are you on the phone?”. I told the Time Warner guy to hold on and replied, “Yes, that’s why I have a phone attached to my face!”. There was much amusement at this. Even the Time Warner guy laughed and he was like one of those old, beer drinking guys with the raspy voice named Earl that your grandpa hung out with down at the VFW. Earl rocked. Earl loved me.
Earl loved me because of my policy today to be cheerful AND goofy on the phone with everyone. Also, there was a huge clusterfuck on my account that needed to be fixed. Earl was expecting yelling and hystrionics. He was expecting blame. There was no blame! Earl didn’t hold my account down and sweat all over it while he called it dirty names and grunted like a hog factory sow giving birth. No way, Earl just answered the phone, Earl was just doing his job. Also, if your goal is to be cheerful you can’t very well go around yelling at people, can you?
So, in exchange for my pleasant and off kilter repartee I got my account fixed, I got a special rate for the next six months AND he tried to wing it so my internet access could be hooked up tomorrow (he got me in on monday, it was the soonest he could finagle). Earl and I wished each other the happiest of weekends.
Then i went down to the DMV and chatted up the lady in double knit behind the counter. I cheered when she told me the vehicle I was getting tabs for needed new plates. Oddly, this revelation confused the woman next to me. She heard “your chevy needs new plates” (it’s the school’s pick up truck) and kept asking “do all chevy’s need new plates? do i have to get new plates? why only chevy’s”. We tried to explain to her that it was just a matter of age. The plates on this vehicle were 11 years old and the state routinely switches out the plates on vehicles after they hit a certain age. She still couldn’t understand why the state was targeting chevy’s, but she was glad it wasn’t hers. We gave up, she was happy enough. I was getting tabs for 2 different vehicles and I so very thoughtfully had all my paperwork, the check and my ID at the ready for her.
I declared the entire process to be ‘Keen’, wished her a happy weekend and was on my way.
I then got the ever reliable Ghengis and headed back to work to drop off the tabs and plates. I made sure Ghengis did his duty before we left and still he managed to crap in my office. He’s kind of retarded.
Tomorrow I move. Wish me luck.
Tonight the boy and I have a date. YAY.

I need a set of 3 machines. One machine will pick up my house and shake all the contents into a second machine. The second machine will sort my stuff and chuck everything I don’t need (chuck it to some charitable organization, of course). It would determine what i ‘need’ based on actual intelligence and logic, not just “oh…i might use that someday!”
The third machine will take everything left over and set up my new place and hang pictures and put clean sheets on the bed and also get me a new microwave and put a meal in the microwave.
Better living through science, that’s what I say!
Does taking a vitamin with a beer negate the benefits of the vitamin?