Here's a video tour of the new house!

And here's the view out the back right now.

Pretties.

The Day of Days

We're moving! 9 a.m. the moving guys come and help us with the big stuff and then the house is ours! Mostly. It's still not really done, but it's done enough!

(this is the after!)

(this is before)

Wednesday is the Day

We're moving!

It's official.

The floor is done, the walls are painted but there is still work to be done. We've taken the first load of schmooze over today and tomorrow will be rife with it's own little... "joys".

Tonight, I am pooped. Tomorrow I'm tired and Wednesday I'll be relieved! I'll post lots of pictures Thursday-ish. You can see some early things here, at Dad's blog, but for now I'm content to be achy and sleepy and stressed.

I Believe in Aliens.

Well... mostly. Specifically the kind that take over tubs of ricotta cheese that have been lost in the back of the fridge for eons. I was cleaning out the fridge in preparation for moving day (FRIDAY!!! Soooo close!) when I casually popped the lid off of an unassuming white tub I dug out of the back. Holy Jesus on toast it was scary! But ultimately super sweet. I took 50 pictures, chose the best one and now I'm sharing! This was by far the most interesting thing that had ventured to the dark side this time.

It's sitting in the trash still if anyone wants a peak. I'll even let you pay me to see it!

Moooooovation!

Star moved today, and I helped! We picked up the Uhaul truck at 1 and then drove it back to the Glen to load up all her schmooze then drove it to her new house on Thomas street in west Oly.

Ben holding Lil' Hauler, one of Uhaul's two stuffed Uhaul trucks available for purchase at your nearest Uhaul establishment. The discovery of Lil' Hauler was a great start to a pretty good day of moving furniture.

The lawn gnomes in front of the Uhaul store on 4th Ave.
This one is special.
The Uhaul all packed up and in action with Star at the wheel. Don't worry, I was stopped when I took this so I'm not TOTALLY reckless when it comes to driving.
The front of Strizzles new house which is right across the street from a park and tennis courts. Way cool.
Maneuvering the Uhual into the parking area behind the house, a venture that really wasn't successful at all and ended in the mauling of a bush. Good times though.

Ok, so there's a story in all of this. It was just Ben, Star and I and we managed to wrangle everything into the Uhaul without incident. Star's new house, however, is a bit of an engineering conundrum. The staircase isn't to code, not in the least... and Star's new room is at the top of said stairs. Plus the door we'd been using to get furniture into the house opens up so that the door blocks the foot of the stairs so when you bring something in you have to squeeze in, turn around and close the door and then squeeze back onto the stairs which are super steep (see video below). Anyway, we had enough trouble trying to get her dresser up there when it became clear that the mattress was going to be an issue. In order to get it up these dubious stairs it was going to have to be bent double. Unfortunately this is a brand new mattress equipped with reasonably stiff springs, metal, etc. Ben took the door off it's hinges so that it would be a straight shot up the stairs.
Ben taking the hinges off.
And then we tried to get the mattress up.

And this is what happened.
And this is Ben's "puzzled, strained and stressed" face once it became clear that with our muscle power that mattress wasn't going anywhere. I think we got it to move about 3 inches in 30 minutes after lots of sweating, grunting and "Squeeze it Ben! PUSH!" It sounded like someone was going into labor, or a Lamaze class.

This is Star's "stressed, freaked out and tired" look. At one point she yelled up the stairs "What are we going to do Ben? This whole plan hinges on having the bed upstairs!"

Finally Johann (one of Star's new roommates) remembers that he has one of those cinching straps and got the idea that we could use it to help the mattress bend. After two tries we got it around and squeezed (it looked like it was wearing a corset and non too happy about it either) the mattress upstairs.
It sounded like a birth. "We did it!" "Oh you were so good Ben!" "Oh I'm so happy!" "I need a cigarette." It was almost a perfect Lifetime movie happy-ending script.

Here's a video of the house, the stuff and some of the pets (just some, not all).

That Place with the Trees and School... oh and my New Home

I’ve officially moved back to school! My last day of work was the second and I was up here by 3 on the third. Dharyll, Star and I drove my sweet NOS accessorized Subaru up to Olympia crammed full of laundry, knick-knacks and people with a boxed and shrink-wrapped futon strapped to the roof. It poured and poured just about the whole way down, complete with scary wind and mysterious skittery-tappy-rolly noises coming from the roof. It was sort of like that Simpson’s Halloween episode where the little gremlin is crawling around on the outside of the school bus holding Flanders’s head. But not, because there wasn’t a gremlin… details schmetails. Anyway, we made it in one piece, hauled all the boxes and packages into the house and left only a moderate dirt/water trail into the living room. Dharyll and I managed to huck the metal frame up first and then the mattress. It turns out that I have almost no upper-body strength. I don’t think I could lift anything bigger than a bunny in my arms…. But that’s okay because what else could I possibly want to lift? Bunnies are pretty much the beginning and end of that spectrum for me.

“Groceries? No, thanks, I don’t think I can lift those, I’ll just stick to this bunny that I’ve got in my arms, thanks anyway. You have fun with those.”

Anyway, so we got those up and unpacked. Apparently that bed frame comes with three different screws. One kind is clearly identified by their slightly pointy ends. I got that. The other two are more subtle. There’s a difference of, like, 1/5 of an inch which is ridiculous. I should be able to just cram the screw in there and twirl the little wrenchy thing around and it should magically a.) fit and b.) require no more strength than what I’ve got in my pointer finger. But no, I actually have to stop, look at the little instructions, realize that they have drawings of the screws, including life-size drawings to illustrate the differences and exert more effort and time than the two seconds I actually put into it. Which is exactly why Dharyll was there. So while he was diddling around with that I started to unpack the most inappropriate things. Like picture frames. And socks. But whatever, they’ve all got to be unpacked eventually. It’s like eating… it doesn’t matter what order it goes in, it all ends up the same. Or something.

Assemblage. The right way. Where's the excitement in that?
End product, three days later. So far, it's pretty sweet. a little barren, but I got a plant which makes things instantly better. I'll do a tour once the barrenness has worn off.