The Internet is back and I missed it SO MUCH! This weekend was the big move, and I am now comfortably ensconced in my new living room--well, as comfortably as one can be with boxes piled everywhere and no cable yet (can't afford it).
It was a heck of a weekend, too. It started on Thursday, at 7 AM, when we got up to go get the U-Haul--from another freaking state. When we got back and began loading the thing, it quickly became apparent that: a) I hadn't packed nearly as thoroughly as I thought I had; and b) fitting all of our stuff into a 17' truck was going to be rough. And it was. With the help of some very good friends, we got most of it in there, though. They all had to leave by late afternoon, however, leaving W.E. and me on our own. It took us until 2:30 AM to get everything into the U-Haul and the apartment cleaned (and I'll admit it was a half-assed cleaning, but I couldn't bring myself to care at that point. If they say something, I have two words: AIR. CONDITIONER.). Then there was the 2 1/2 hour drive to W.E.'s mom's house, where we crashed until 9:00 AM, got up, took showers, had breakfast, and got BACK on the road for another 4 1/2 hours.
When we got to the apartment, the door was open and there was a man putting down carpet. I was ready to scream--until he said that he just had the stairs left to do, there had been an emergency delay, and he was REALLY sorry and he'd only be about 30 minutes. W.E.'s mom and her boyfriend began unloading the U-Haul while we ran off to get the electricity turned on and get our keys. About an hour of rapid unloading later, they had to go home. Luckily, they had brought about $100 worth of groceries with them, so our fridge was stocked, even though part of my crazy cleaning spree at the old place had included chucking EVERYTHING that was in the fridge and a LOT of what was in the freezer (mostly condiments, alcohol, and really old stuff that I knew we'd never eat). Since everything had gotten piled in the living room, we decided to finish with the U-Haul later and try to move stuff upstairs to make more room.
On Saturday we finished with the U-Haul, turned it in, and continued rearranging. I have more bruises on my arms and legs than I really want to think about, but we have a functional living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen now. The dining room is still a work in progress.
On Sunday, we were both SO exhausted we were getting sick, so we took the day off.
And today W.E. went in for an interview with a temp agency, only to discover that they had to reschedule and they'd been TRYING to call us. . . . Stupid moving making our phone disconnected.
BUT on Friday he got a phone interview, and we're hoping that turns out well.
A few notes about the area: sales tax is STUPID. It's about 10%. We're planning on being very very frugal with our food money, which has never really been necessary before (not extremely necessary, anyway. I mean, we don't buy steak or caviar, but we never had to go without our chips and cookies and soda. Now we probably will for awhile). But almost everyone we've had to interact with has been SUPER nice. Cashiers, utility people, the carpet guy, random neighbors. . . . All really really nice people. It's great.
Also, today I went up to MTSU to turn in my assistantship paperwork and met the Dean of English Graduate Studies, who is (you guessed it) SUPER nice, and told me that I don't have to start taking classes until fall even though my assistantship starts in July.
In other news, due to the break, my reading has sped up to the point that I'm listing again instead of having individual book covers. I'm reading about a book a day at this point. I will run out of stuff to read (probably not, actually)!
Whew! I think that's everything for now. Hopefully in a day or two, things will be cleaned up enough that I can get some writing done again.
--are going to have to look at it before I can do any more. So I'm e-mailing it to her in a couple of minutes (you have been warned, Miss Jodi!) and going to watch more X-Files, cross-stitch, read, and finish outlining Dragon Knight.
