Whew!!

I saw an article in my email this morning about Blogger going out of beta and said to myself, "Blogger? Ah, yes, that thing you used to update every day, but have been too busy to touch for a week..."

So we've been busy because we moved. Yes, we are in, and thank goodness for that.

In the last week, lots and lots has happened. First, earlier in the week, I went to the doctor with a cough and a funky-sounding lung. The doctor took a listen and said it was pneumonia. I needed drugs, because there was no way I could be sick for the move. The drugs were a 10-day regimen, and yesterday was day 10. Though the cough still lingers, likely because I've been outside in the cold, working so much rather than tucked into bed, but the worst of it held off, and I was able to move things without much trouble.

Friday was the closing, and that went very smoothly. We drove straight to the house from the lawyer's office, with a drained bank account and a new mortgage. But all that was rendered minor when we walked into the house. Empty and echoing, it was a huge relief. The night before, we'd gone into the house and set up a fake tree, a nine footer, and when we stepped in and turned the lights on, even during the day, it was glorious.

Within minutes, though, I was slogging up and down the ramp to the trailer. Phase 1 of the move was underway. I unloaded as much as I could by myself, and as time passed, people trickled in to help: father and mother in law, brother in law, brothers, mother, and father. We went until 10pm that night and very nearly got the entire thing unloaded.

Most of the stuff went into the garage, but a good share went directly into the house. The large foyer was a holding area for furniture as we brought in the large pieces and left them there until final placement. Saturday, we had four pieces of furniture to move in and about 20 boxes. All in all, the trailer worked out well. Everything survived, though one corner did leak and got about a dozen boxes wet. The boxes themselves took the brunt of the water, and the contents were damp at worst. I had to wipe a little mold off a couple of encyclopedias, and that was about it. If it had stayed in there longer, or if it had been wetter, it might be a very different story, but that's not what happened.

We all slept on mattresses the first night. On Saturday, I built my bed and Rick built the kids' beds. We also got the kitchen table and guest room set delivered. The cable guy came on Friday, so we had cable for the weekend, though only a 13" TV to watch anything. Monday, the new TV was delivered and installed, and the sound system was hooked up. It sounds great (which it had better considering the cost). There were some major problems with the cable box, and I had to drive to Comcast's offices three times to get a working box - but the third time was the charm and we're now watching TV like old pros. We watched our first movie on the system last night, The Lady in the Water. It has several very loud spots and at one point it woke Brittany up - sorry!

The painter had an illness in the business, so their arrival was delayed, but once the painter did come, he fixed all the spots they'd missed the first time and touched up several places that we'd scuffed moving furniture.

The main phone plug had something screwy and it caused the phone to ring after hanging it up - we thought we were going nuts. Phones are pretty simple, hard to screw up. But when the electrician came, he said he'd never seen it before, but the phone jack was bad. Once he replaced it, it was OK.

Not everything was peachy, though. Aside from the cable box problem, the blower on the fireplace is not functioning, and the fireplace guys said the electrical is no good. The builder says the fireplace guys don't know what they're talking about, and is sending out an electrician to look at it. He said they screwed something up in the original installation that had to be fixed in the waning days of the build. Confidence builder! The master bath shower door gave the installer a lot of trouble. The first floor shower door went in in about 10 minutes, but the second one took three hours.

My computer crashed the first time I tried to use it. I set up the new cable modem with it, and when I tried to open my email, I got a blue screen and a message that there was a bad system file. I tried to recover from the Recovery CD, but something's still not right. Either I'm doing something wrong or the hard drive is fried. Fortunately, I did a backup in the days before I packed it all up, so the most important files will be safe, but it is a big pain in the ass to start from scratch, so I'm really really really hoping I don't have to do that. Hopefully I'll have some time to work on it this weekend or next week. Until then, we're working off our work laptops. I set up Brittany's computer last night and it survived the move fine. Speaking of Brittany, the only thing not done is her desk. The parts are stacked in the garage. Maybe this weekend I'll put it together. The biggest issue for her will be figuring out where to put it.

We hung all of our new art and it looks great, though in the end, we only were able to fill three rooms - the guest bedroom has four pieces, the dining room has two, and the foyer has three. We bought several small winter scenes that we plan to hang in the office, but I'm waiting to be sure the layout is not going to change before I put them up. So we need more. We have our eye on several pieces, but at $200 each, we need to either be willing to part with a wad of cash or we need to be judicious with our purchases. Maybe a bit of both.

So, things are going well. We're home.