Yes, we could have kept the temporary housing for 30 days, but there were two problems. The first is that it sucked. The beds were terrible, without box springs, and the living room furniture was so uncomfortable that you couldn't watch TV for a half-hour without something starting to hurt. I can only imagine what the pregnant lady felt.
The other problem is that when a good place opens up, it doesn't stay open for very long. Those awesome new places in Kenmore were going fast, and if it wasn't so damn far away from work, we would've jumped at it. Instead, we got this place in Issaquah, which we really liked, and it's fairly large at around 1,400 square feet. That's a net loss of about 450, which is essentially the family room/office and a smaller kitchen.
We left the temp apartment around 8:30, and it was a good opportunity to try yet another option for the commute, in the reverse direction. Traffic was not an issue in either direction, and we did it in 20 minutes (about 11 miles). That's the big pay off for this location, as it's really the best commute distance I've had in ten years. And that's not even taking the Connector.
Someone scoped out the property for the truck driver but never got the message to him that they'd have to do a transfer, where they move stuff to a smaller truck and run a few trips from the big rig, kept somewhere nearby. As a result, they really didn't get started until two hours after the start time. There was no way in hell they could get the 80-foot truck in here. So by 11, the boxes started to flow.
It all went relatively smoothly, and as far as I can tell so far, nothing broke. The moron packers packed my fog machine with a full bottle of fog juice, and that leaked all over the place, mostly trashing a new box of 200 envelopes and some manila folders. Right now the most frustrating thing is that I can't find the glass shelves to my entertainment rack. They packed the top of it in a glass pack, but not the shelves.
The baby's room is stacked almost to the ceiling with stuff. It's hard to say at this point how much of it will find a home, but we've got some time to figure it out. We are really hosed when it comes to storage. I can't really know the extent of the hosey-ness until we get some reasonable unpacking done.
My desk may also be a casualty of the move. Simply put, the corner piece and the longer piece don't fit. Not even close. Option one is to toss the long piece and use the file cabinet as my auxiliary space for the audio mixer. Option two is to toss it all and buy something new from Ikea.
At dinner time, we headed up to Snoqualmie and scored some pizza to share with Joe and Kristen. Nina definitely enjoyed the mini-party, until her bed time. Kristen is still with child... he wasn't ready this week. It's nice having family here, and they don't try to give all kinds of advice about living here or child birthing unless we ask, which is also a big plus. When the boy is ready to hatch, we'll be assuming the Nina duty for a day or two, which will be super fun.
After dinner, we had to head back in to Redmond to get the cats and whatever remaining goodies were left. I think we got it all, but I'll check next week when check-out. Yikes, four cats in the rental Corolla was a tight squeeze, and Emma's carrier had to go on Diana's lap. They immediately began to protest, but even taking the freeway it was only about 20 minutes.
Before we left for dinner, Diana got the bedroom operational, and we're so happy to be in a real bed again. She had a small 'sode when she couldn't reach behind the bed to plug in her alarm clock, augmented by her distress that her good pillow was nowhere to be found (it was stuffed in with a Christmas tree part, where else?). I found it, and all was well with the world.
There's such a mix of feelings you get with this kind of move-in. On one hand, it's nice to have your familiar bed and couch and such around. You get excited that there's room on the patio for the gas grill. On the other hand, you wonder what the neighbors are like and if you chose a good neighborhood (though God knows we've yet to see a low-income area anywhere on the east side yet, because everything is so expensive). I think we did pretty well, and the staff running this place seems very cool and responsive.
This afternoon, when I went out for lunch (lots of convenient and decent retail nearby), I was at a light looking at the mini-mountains touching the low clouds, and thought, holy shit, I live here. Tonight the clouds broke and I could see stars quite clearly. I think we're gonna dig living here.
No comments yet.