Taking a page from another DC blog (missing monkey head), I’m rating the past four weeks. I have a ton of pictures to publish and I’m not quite sure how to relate them all together, so watch out for some serious blog benediction as I attempt to have the free time and motivation that I used to have.

No blog apologies. Ever.

• Watching a DC United game with my old man for Father’s Day: Rule (aww)
• Having >1 bathrooms in my place: Rule
• Driving for Starbucks coffee in Suburbia instead of walking: Lose
• Having space to put studio monitors for recording: Rule
• Mowing lawn with weedwacker: Lose
• Still sharing TV time with (my lovely) wife: Lose
• Building equity: Rule
• Not exercising enough and feeling tired: Lose
• Father and Son building a small hardwood floor: Rule (aww overload)
• Transformers Movie: Rule
• Tom Sisson back in town, playing FF12 picture-in-picture: Rule
• Not knowing why I have less time to blog: Lose

First, some reference photos. This is the office of the old place. Very crampt. We started packing really early, much before we closed or knew we’d have it bagged. Moving kinda sucks in and of itself. I really would rather not think about it too much. Even seeing these old pictures of boxes kinda make me shudder. Moving was a daily chore for us every night for a while. It was also complicated by the crampt space itself. We’d push boxes into corners and try to find temporary storage space for all the bags and containers of crap. Moving makes you say “we have too much crap”.

I took all the electronic stuff over myself. The rest we put in boxes or bags. Calling the moving company and getting advice was golden, they had a lot of bright ideas like just throwing clothes in bags, getting rid of food early, or using towels to wrap dishes. Eventually we had a ton of boxes and nothing out in the open for use. Luckily, closing day came quickly after that and we got the house keys to our first place, ev-ar.

Moving in was the fun part. Suddenly we had 3x the space, weird huh? We just threw everything around and didn’t have much to sit on until we bought a new couch and chair. We sold our old bed on craigslist (which was complicated and lengthy) and tried our best to hold on to everything we could to start out with. Our papasan chair had cracked a bit so we had to dump it.

Beaker (our cat) was extremely terrified for the first few days. She had nothing to hide under and lots of weird noises going on. I built a fort for her (which you can see her emerging from) and we kept her away from the movers and noise. When she heard a neighborhood dog bark, she went running. I suppose she didn’t know that this was all her turf now. Maybe she was thinking, “Oh crap, the dog lives here?”. I don’t know, I’m not some cat-psych.

That same weekend, we started a massive number of Home Depot runs. My skills in handyman increased by +1 and we searched stores for matching paint, knobs and addons (like cabinets and mirrors). Apparently the previous owner was in love with Lowe’s. Many people tell me that Lowe’s is better. I dunno, I’m sure I’ll have more of an opinion as time goes on. Home Depot is so close, it’s kinda weird he’d shop at Lowe’s. Anyway, we had a ton of stuff to pick up. I had never owned a hose, lawn mower, duct tape, paint roller or even a drill before so we bought (and have been buying) a gross-national-product sized cache of supplies.

Overall, I think cat and humans alike are enjoying spreading out a little bit. The list of improvements over our old place is so massive that it brings a tear to my eye. Or maybe that’s just my sadness in seeing our cat check out the toilet. Don’t worry, she’s trained to wash her paws with soap and water in a small porcelain pedestal sink near her cat food.