stripethree

It only took two hours, with the help of a couple friends, to load the stuff from the old apartment, drive to the house, and unload. Tomorrow morning I’ll get the stuff out of storage, return the UHaul truck and be done. Thankfully. Moving is a pain in the ass and I hope I don’t have to do it again for a while. This time though, it’s sooooo worth it.

Back to putting together more furniture and laughing at the cats as they explore their vast new accommodations.

I got the keys to the house today.

More pics are here with more coming after I finish moving in.

Yes, moving is getting old (this will be the third time this year), but I’m convinced that this is really worth it, and I won’t be moving again for at least a year. It’s not that there is anything all that wrong with the place now besides it being somewhat small, my only real complaint is the construction noise that starts across the street at, on a good day, 6:00am. Not fun. I’d been cruising the good old Craigslist and realizing that I could rent a house or town home for not much more than I was paying for this 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment. So I responded to some ads, posted an ‘in search of’ ad of my own, and off I went.

I got a three bedroom, one and a half bath house in the north/central part of the city; actually a bit southeast of where I am now. It’s pretty nice, the third bedroom is small and will make a perfect office so I can stop killing my back sitting on the futon or the dining room chairs while I work. There’s a nice backyard also and while I probably won’t do much with it, it’s nice to have. I can do nothing more than have a space for the grill and be perfectly happy with it. The place also has carports, enough for two cars actually, and plenty of room to wash ‘em up. The inside is nice as well, it’s all one floor, the layout is nice, and there’s plenty of space. What else can I say? I’m stoked and can’t wait for mid-November.

So I have survived five months without the usually deemed ‘essential’ appliance known as a microwave. Weird huh? The last place had one built in to the kitchen and I just never bought one when I moved into this place. There’s really only a few times where I really could have used it too, so why bother spending the money? Maybe the next place will have one built in again, who knows. What’s the point of this thought? Well, while there are numerous things I know I miss and am dying to see again from the remainder of my belongings that will get back to me next month, but I wonder about all the stuff I’ve forgotten about and totally wouldn’t have used anyway in the last 8 months. I can’t even picture half of the stuff that’s packed away, I just see boxes and a mental question mark of ‘what the hell is in there?’. Maybe when I get some of it back I’ll be throwing out a lot of Craigslist for sale ads, who knows.

I am definitely going to move again in November but just somewhere else in Tucson (sorry Maryland folks if I got your hopes up…). This place is nice, but I keep seeing 2 bedroom townhouses in the area for about the same rent. This equals a real ‘office’ for work, perhaps a car port with some room to get small car things done, and generally, a more comfortable place to live. Plus, I’m absolutely fed up with the construction across the street. Every weekday morning at around 6:00am, sometimes earlier, the ridiculous amount of noise starts. If it’s not the actual construction noise, it’s the music the workers are playing loud enough to hear across the street. Seriously. I want to go annoy the hell out of them at an inconvient hour everyday for a few months straight. Trucks are constantly parked or moving slowly across the stretch of road in spanning the two entrances to the complex and the road itself is just tore up. Knowing that this construction would continue through the entire time I’d be here through a year’s lease just doesn’t make me very fond of living here. So come November, a change of dwellings for the third time this year. This also leads to a tentative goal for ‘08: no relocating, enough is enough!

Llama is in the midst of perfecting the habit of stealing bottle caps; Nantucket Nectars juice bottles, Powerades, whatever he can get his little paws on that I leave sitting unattended on an end table. He’s actually become quite good at it, grabbing them when I’m not looking and scurrying off to hide them somewhere. If I don’t notice and immediately give chase, he just parades around the place with his prize in his mouth, basking in the success of his thievery. Sometimes he even climbs onto the coffee table and stares at me, flaunting his conquest, until I appear to try and get the object back at which point he scampers off with it. It pretty entertaining, as long as he doesn’t get in the habit of stealing or destroying anything of any value, like, oh, say, a pair of iPod headphones (yeaaaaaaaaah… my own fault for leaving them out).

Myself, Summer, and what appeared to be half of Tucson went to the Beer Festival last weekend, which was fantastic. Pay your $40, get a 6oz plastic cup, and off you go. Roam from tent to tent filling said cup to your hearts content with beer and the occasional, quite delicious, twisted iced tea with lemonade. There was also tons of food that we sampled from the generic stadium hot dogs to various pies, appetizer samplers from BJ’s, pizza, surprisingly spicy seafood salsa, overly salted sirloin steak and… I honestly don’t remember what else. Definitely worth the price of admission, I know that Summer, myself, and each of the friends we went with downed enough beer to well surpass $40 at any nearby bar. Next weekend: Oktoberfest!

Lastly, is that the last quarter of this year is going to be filled with travel, travel, travel! My parents get into town this weekend and we will be going to Sedona and the Grand Canyon at the end of next week, it should be a lot of fun. It’s been fun just to gather recommendations up for things for them to see or do around here. Then next month I’m making the trip to California I alluded to earlier in this post, to pack up my stuff and get it back to Tucson. November and December I’ll be back in Maryland for the holidays, the 21-28 and 23-28 respectively. I’ve always been the one picking up people at the airports on horrible holiday travel days but this time, this time I get to see how bad it will be all for myself! It sucks that I am traveling the day before each holiday, but plane tickets aren’t cheap (especially three roundtrips) so the dates were dictated as much by cost as they were by convenience.

The rest of the San Fran trip was excellent from the happy hours, dinners, to the weekend long birthday activities for Olivia. That city is pretty sweet, but I’m not so sure about living there. I’ve been swamped since I got back with work and catching up on class stuff I neglected. I definitely welcome being kept busy as it keeps my mind away from the selfish actions of others that I am forced to deal with. I’ll leave any harsher words out, just know they are there. Luckily, I have some of the best friends in the world from Maryland to California and many places in between.

Yesterday I went and looked at a handful of places in Tucson that I researched online and liked. Three of the four met expectations, the fourth was not bad, but it just wasn’t as good as the others. I put in an application at the last place I visited, a smaller, quiet complex a couple miles outside the real ‘city’. I still have no idea if I want to stay in this area, but I figure, it’s a $30 fee to get approved for a place and I’ve got until almost mid-April to let them know since they have a couple places available. I’ve got to start the process somewhere, and I figured even if I don’t end up there, this place was a good start. The other two nice places I liked as well, but one doesn’t have anything available that fits what I want and and other, while nice, just didn’t have some of the minor details that the place I applied to does.

I previously put my name in the hat for a position with my company in Seaside, near Monterrey, California, but it didn’t work out. It was nice to find out that the folks out there were impressed with what I had to offer and want to keep me in mind for other opportunities out there; just this time around some things that have nothing to do with me didn’t work out with the planned work. A little disappointing, but that’s the way it goes. There are a couple other things I want to look out, still within the company of course, in San Diego and Fairfield. Maybe, maybe not. I figure if I am going someplace new, it might not be a bad thing to get back into an office environment and at least met some people implicitly through work. As I expected, I keep getting encouragement to come back to Maryland, and I have mixed feelings about it. Sure it would be familiar, it would be easier (minus actually making that insane drive again) and would probably be more comfortable, but I don’t want to go back there, get stuck there, and be unhappy with it. Granted, I could end up unhappy if I go somewhere else than Maryland, but at least then I tried somewhere else, and I can always pick up and go somewhere else.

It’s great to have this decision and be able to pick up and go, but it’s also extremely difficult decision to actually make.

Oh, and check out the completely redone Gallery. it’s not 100% complete but I want to show it off anyway.