The Fallout

Hi, Various Critters!

Did you miss me?

We did it! The big, hairy, wonderful and scary move went down Saturday and it was like bringing an atomic bomb to a balloon fight. Chaos, fire, and brimstone, everywhere. There were scrapes, drops, falls, groans, slips, skinned knees, sore muscles, banged heads and bruised arms. Our poor Motrin had to work overtime, as five-alarm calls were breaking out all over our bodies. As close as I can calculate, I expended somewhere between 3 and 4 million calories. Everyone was exhausted and fully spent after the 12-hour day.

But thanks to our tenacious and sweaty crew, we did it!

We awoke Sunday morning to a house stuffed full of boxes. It was like a recently stomped-on ant hill, and we slowly began the process of rebuilding it one grain of sand at a time.

We took time Sunday to go to IKEA for a few (dozen) things, and spent the rest of the long weekend, holiday-BBQ-less, as we unpacked.

It's a big responsibility unpacking into a new home. You need to pick the best place to put all your stuff, and if you chose wrong you might hamstring yourself for years. But if you do it right, you can really improve your overall efficiency.

Like the kitchen for instance. We put some effort into trying to arrange everything for the best possible workflow. We have a sort of mini-factory now, where the food flows from the fridge or pantry to the stove (where spices and wooden spoons await) to the counter (where we have a giant permanent trivet) to be put into serving dishes ("more than Crate & Barrel"), to the next counter where serving utensils and plates are, and then on to the dinner table. It's all in a row, like a glorious assembly line of food. That's what you get when an engineer and an occupational therapist combine process and labor-reduction techniques. :)

We made a decision to set up a scaled-down version of our AV system in the living room, with an eye towards our future purchase of a wall-mounted flat-panel TV. I have only set up the TV and DVD player (Apple TV and Cable DVR will be next). All the rest (Receiver/Amp, big speakers, surround speakers, center channel, more wire than the space shuttle, and various black boxes and selectors) I will sell and get new, more compact stuff when we upgrade to the hang-on-wall flat panel TV.

Other tasks done so far:

Temporary dog fence is up, made of plastic chicken wire and metal stakes. It keeps the poop off the back yard lawn and keeps the dogs out of trouble. Like Coco, this was a hairy bitch to put up.

I "upgraded" the two shower heads, with a hose-extension type in the kid's bath and a multi-pattern-spewing luxury unit in the master bath.

Washer, dryer and stove are all in place and working. Fridge is almost done, we just need to hook up the water, which is more involved than it deserves to be.

Next up: Hack into the nice new garage wall and install the doggie door. We are tired of carrying the jackals outside to pee.

Things are changing fast, check back for updates. We don't have cable TV or internet yet, but expect it sometime this week.

Until next time, take care of yourselves...