Eight More Days

Only eight more days until we close on the house! Yay! 

I couldn't be more ready. An encounter this weekend with the maintenance staff at our current building confirmed that I am no longer suited for apartment life. Well, more accurately, I am no longer suited for living in a building that is run by condescending lazy a-holes. I know I will curse home repairs later, but right now I can't think of anything more satisfying than to actually fix something that's broken on my own damn schedule and to my own level of satisfaction. I will get to be that condescending lazy jerk-wad with myself and that will be outstanding.

Anyway, the packing. It's coming along. We now have a nice large pile of boxes in the corner of our living room. It's hard to tell by just looking around the apartment, but we've actually made a good bit of progress. Our closet is cleaned out, the kitchen is about two-thirds packed away, and a good deal of our shoes and clothes are in boxes. Miles has not lost any of his toys yet, but I think they'll be next on the chopping block this coming weekend. That's when we go into pioneer mode, living with just the bare essentials and gearing up for April 14th's big move to the east side. Thursday and Friday after we close will be busy with packing and coordinating small moves with fragile stuff like our art, dishes, and refrigerator items. We are also lining up repair people to come in and do minor things that the sellers (another set of a-holes that I will be happy to rid from my day-to-day existence) declined to fix, like the leaky sink and garage roof.

Until then, I'm trying to concentrate on work, so I don't have any surprises and can fully devote the end of next week to settling in. I have a lecture coming up on April 18th and there is lots to do before then! Busy busy week ahead!

48 Hours: A Photo Essay

Friday, we officially kicked off our moving box packing festivities. By Sunday evening our things were in a giant crate. If I actually wrote an entry on the whole process, it would be about 8 pages. So, the photos will have to do a bulk of the work.


"State of the Crate" as of Friday mid-evening. At this point Jesse declared "standardized boxes rule!"

Delirium set in around 11pm and we started assigning random names (kitchen-ma-bobbers) and placing totally ridiculous "items" to the box list. Yes, we do have a really ugly Christmas plate. No, I do not allow J to own nunchucks.

Here is the view of our lovely crate, delivered exactly 40 minutes earlier than scheduled. Also pictured is one of the 86 billion ass-face-haters who parked 3 inches from the door of our beautiful crate. I guess "EMERGENCY NO PARKING" means nothing to about 98% of D.C. drivers.



"State of the Crate" Sunday morning before the grand process of loading commenced.


Breakfast of champions for the crate-loaders. J cooked up a batch of eggs with Corralitos Cheesy Bavarian sausage that complimented leftover homemade beer bread and marionberry jam. Yum. J cheerfully offered to "do dishes."


This is the guy who snagged the stuff we deposited in our basement. He sold it on the sidewalk Sunday afternoon while we were packing our crate. I was weirded out at first, but then he helped us load our mattress, so we're cool.


"State of the Crate" on Sunday around 2pm. Almost full, but a few more things left to cram. We made it though. ONE CRATE.

This is the pool at the hotel where we stayed on Sunday night. My Mom booked the rooms for us earlier in the month and I thought she was crazy. I was wrong. We checked in at 3pm, did the deadman float until 4:00pm, had dinner then were back to the apartment to do some cleaning.

Our apartment after packing and a little cleaning. Still a bit more to go, but it's pretty darn empty.
Looks pretty much the same as when I first moved in, only I'm not the one passed out on the floor this time.

J is actually sleeping. I can hear him breathing. I'm pretty sure that means we should head back to the hotel.

It was our last day of work in D.C. today (Monday) and I couldn't be happier. Tomorrow we catch our plane to Portland. One-way tickets.
I can't wait.

Oh Crap! It's Friday, August 1st

Not that I didn't see this day coming, but wow, we're here. The crate will be delivered tomorrow, but we still have a boatload of packing to accomplish. Luckily though, we decided that it wouldn't be a great idea to leave a crate full of our stuff (even if it does have a padlock) sitting just blocks from 18th Street on a Saturday night. Drunk people + dark street + abandoned crate = bad news for Erin & Jesse. So, we'll be busy bees on Saturday packing and setting up for the big move on Sunday.

On the work front, I still have a ton to do, but I keep plugging away and hopefully will make lots of progress today. This morning, I am driving our intern around to take the last few photos that we need for the building inventory and draft report. Given that there are about 40 buildings and I have only allotted a 3-hour time frame, I don't think we will finish. So, we'll focus on some of the scarier areas of the city and next week, after I'm gone, he can finish up with public transportation.

However, my biggest challenge today is not the report, or the packing, but living with the 80 billion mosquito bites on the lower half of my legs. We went out to dinner with a friend on Wednesday night and apparently I sent out the "raw meat" signal and was eaten alive. Seriously, it's almost comical how many there are (and that's just the front of my legs...the backs probably have twice as many).

Benadryl and other hydrocortisone gels have not even begun to relieve the itching welts. This morning I woke up in a fit because I couldn't think about anything but removing my skin, so I got up and consulted "the Google." And? The white stuff? It's toothpaste, which worked until the peppermint wore off and I was right back to itching. Then I tried vinegar, rubbing pennies, and even a cut onion. Out of sheer desperation, I tried one final remedy. Windex. Why? Because it feels good and the internet told me to do it. I know (gasp) it's probably toxic (but not more so than the water we drink in D.C.) I'm not sure how, but the ammonia works magic on the stinging and itching. I wonder if it would be inappropriate to take pit stops on our morning driving trip and ask the intern to Windex my calves?

Morning Musings

Monday was a good day. I turned in the final chapter of my DC Modernism study to my boss for review. It was a huge relief. While there's still a lot of work to finish (edits, bibliography, footnotes, formatting), I feel pretty good about putting it to rest by Friday and handing it over to someone else to tweak and submit. Then, this afternoon I obtained the permit we need to park our storage crate on the street for the weekend. I also tied up some loose ends for my job interview next week (yikes), confirmed hotel reservations, cooked an awesome dinner, and sold a couple more items on Craigslist. Jesse was incredibly productive and cleaned out the closet, as well as put away some winter clothes that we definitely won't need before September.

See the list? Lots of things accomplished! So, why the heck am I awake at 4:30am? I had no trouble going to sleep (except for the happy jig I did for Jesse before retiring to bed). When I rolled over at 2:45am, shaking my fists in the air out of sheer frustration, I realized this time my lack of sleep is not coming from dread. For the first time since we started this moving process, I am truly excited - to the point of not sleeping. After tossing and turning for another 20 minutes, I decided to just get up and keep myself busy.

So far, the things I've accomplished between 3am and 4:15am:

• Cleaned out items underneath bathroom sink, which included about a dozen bars of hotel soap. I don't like hotel soap.
• Added item to above list: stage intervention with my husband about his random hoarding habits (soap, mobiles, what's next?)
• Had a snack of leftover pasta salad from our going away party this weekend (more on that another time, writing about it still makes me cry).
• Updated Quicken and our moving budget spreadsheet.
• Began organizing closet, but caused an avalanche of posters and wrapping paper tubes to fall on my head. Decided to do something a little more quiet - like blogging and more snacking.

So, here I am, alternating between my new (temporary) miniature desk and our couch that now lives in the middle of the apartment. We moved it there for a Craigslister to inspect and she'll pick it up this evening. There's at least another hour to go before the alarm goes off and Jesse and I go out for our morning exercise. I think lots of coffee should be on our "meals" menu for tomorrow. I dread the sun coming up, because that means back to work for me.

Date Night = Exhaustion

Romance was not in the air this date night. We picked up our happy hour pizza at Duccinis on the way home from work, sat down for a few minutes to unwind, and then were all business (or at least I was all business). I do recall blurting out "Hey YOU! Stay focused! This is not the time to read beer blogs and download music!"

First we tackled the stash of clothes under the bed. There was a lot of head scratching and statements like, "hmm, haven't seen that in a while," and "oh god, did that really fit me once upon a time?" and "who knew we had skinny midgets inhabiting the dark corners of our apartment...I wonder if they'll mind if we give away their clothes?" Needless to say, there's quite a bit that will be going to Goodwill tomorrow. Books, an old space heater, and the extra small kitchen appliances that we never abandoned when Jesse moved to my end of Columbia Rd. We made a lot of progress, as you can see. Thankfully, I'm so tired that I won't be able to even think of all the things I have to do tomorrow and Sunday.

For a fresh perspective on life, I took a step back into our entryway and realized that it looks like our walls barfed boxes and pure chaos. I chuckled at the thought of the 5 different occasions when people visited our "large studio" and probably had heart palpitations at the prospect of paying nearly $1500/month. I bet the management company can't wait until August 5th. Well, neither can I.

More Packing

Last night Jesse was out of the apartment at a concert with his friend, Dan. On a normal night, his absence would mean lots of sewing and catching up on my favorite TV shows. However, since we are getting down to the wire with packing (only 10 more days until our stuff is shipped out), I decided to use my energy for a more useful cause. I caught up on the first two episodes of the new season of Project Runway while packing miscellaneous kitchen items. Then, I realized that after Saturday, we won't have a television anymore. Oh well, guess I'll have to catch up when it comes out on DVD.

Anyway, Jesse came home around 11pm and noticed that the blue taped box looked drastically different. I rearranged a bunch of the boxes, moved the chest of drawers (myself), and packed up a lot of stuff. All of our books are now packed, as well as about half of our kitchen. I left out four plates, spoons, forks, and knives, as well as some basic cooking utensils for the next week or so. Everything else is stored away until September. Jesse thought opening all of the cabinets and drawers was a fun game - like Where's Waldo - pointing out all of the empty space. So, as of today, these are the things that were sold (or will be sold by Saturday):

In addition to the above items that will not make the trip, yesterday morning, a bowl fell from our dish rack bounced on the counter top and smashed apart on the floor. I looked at it, felt bad for about 3 seconds, and said "oh well, one less thing to pack." I think Jesse was slightly disturbed as I nonchalantly went about pouring my iced coffee, leaving the bowl on the floor to think about what it had just done. Seriously, I'm so ready to go.

To prep for the weekend, I ordered another round of boxes that should arrive by tomorrow afternoon. Friday night has been officially declared Date Night/Packing Fest. We have a rental car reserved on Saturday to deposit a giant pile of stuff to Goodwill, so there's very little time to finish sorting and organizing. I'll gladly sacrifice my date night, though, for a good cause. I DO love organizing.

Goodbye Self Doubt, We'll Take One Crate

We found out last week from our building manager that our apartment will rent for nearly $1500 a month. Our little studio! I nearly passed out. Apparently people have been clamoring to live in our building for weeks and at least 6 different people have seen the apartment since we gave notice exactly one week ago. I think it's time to get the heck out of here.

This weekend was epic. Lots of sorting, dusting, and making of piles. We accomplished an impressive amount of packing and most importantly reaffirmed that we will, in fact, will be taking one crate to Portland. Thank goodness. I really was worried about having to get an additional street permit for that second storage vault.

As you can see, the progress so far is promising. I readjusted the blue tape to fit the exact dimensions of our reserved crate and we moved around quite a bit of furniture to get the chest of drawers in the imaginary box. The cardboard boxes contain 95% of our books and all of our CD's (except for the few that Jesse may acquire in the next couple of weeks). I decided this evening at dinner that the chest of drawers needed to move to a different position within the blue box, but decided that Jesse needed one more bourbon and soda before I broached the subject. Tomorrow, the box will have a slightly different appearance. Over time, I hope our apartment will start to look empty, rather than like it barfed our posessions all over every horizontal surface.

As of this weekend, these are the things we no longer own: