I would like to extend an official blessing of gratitude towards my friends Sam, Amanda, Matt and Clara, all of whom helped Laura and I move our big heavy stuff into our new place yesterday. It was, as moving often is, a string of questionable adventures – but, all told, the big problematic stuff is hopefully done, and now Laura and I are settling down to the long, arduous task of actually settling in. Which will involve, we expect, somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 more trips back and forth with the Jeep and her Ford. Tonks and Albus, for their parts, are spending the day while Laura and I are at work sunning themselves on our new sun porch, which is, incidentally, the same sun porch that enabled us to get our great whopping leather couch into the apartment. Said couch is now even more banged up than before. Said friends assure me that said marks add more character. I remain somewhat dubious.
Still, the new place is shaping up nicely and is gaining in warmth even as it drains out of these last days of summer. The air is crisp and cool now, and, as I mentioned to Sam and Matt yesterday, in a way this feels like the real, true graduation – the shift in life from studenthood back into adulthood. The streets around our new place feel like Shreve or Wooster, the house is becoming a home, the job is finding its groove, and, for now at least, I am very tired but very happy.

Well, “big move” is a bit of a misnomer, since this is probably the smallest move I’ve had to do since Kenyon, but it is imminent. Laura and I took possession of our new place yesterday, although much to our disappointment we discovered that it wasn’t actually ready to move into yet. My heart sank when I saw how filthy the place was, that the doorbells didn’t work, that the windowblinds were still in tatters and the garage door was in pieces – all things that I’d assumed would have been fixed since we came in and saw the place before (when the previous tenants were just beginning to move out). My head swam with visions of another slumlord landlord, and that little voice in the back of my head began to scream, “OMIGOD WHAT DID YOU DO!?!?” I called the realtor to ask if there was still work being done, and she directed me to the owner of the house (the actual landlord, despite the fact that he’s apparently outsourced rent collection to the realtor). Mercifully our new landlord sounds like a great guy, and he assured me that he’s going to get in a cleaning crew and get all the stuff fixed – we just have to make a list and send it to him and he’ll make all the necessary arrangements. This is a big improvement from our last landlord, who, when informed that a closet door had broken, told us to “go to Home Depot and get these materials”. Whew!
So now I’m making diagrams of the rooms in Illustrator and tinkering with furniture layouts. I think I’m getting close to The Answerâ„¢, which is genuinely exciting. The new place is, I think, a little smaller than our current place, but it’s all ours – mine, Laura’s, and the two new additions to the family: the two kittens we picked up in Ohio a couple of weeks ago. I have a bunch of photos I need to take and post here of the new office, the new cats, the new house… Soon, once all the dust settles! So, uh, September?
Regardless, life is good. Mad wild and chaotic as always, but good. The Summer Singaporeans have all gone home and now I’m working on updating the GAMBIT site with their games, I’ve got a dozen projects in full swing at work, and I’m trying to get everything stitched up as much as I can before the beginning of the school year, but we’ll see what happens. Somehow I doubt there will be enough hours in the day (there never are) but we do the best we can with what we’ve got – which is, thankfully, quite a bit. More details soon, I promise.