Hot News!

This past weekend would have been great weather for moving. Not too warm, not too cold. Monday was nice and cool, but too drizzly. I’ve noticed they expect it to get hotter each day this week…

And now the updated forecast is out and they’re anticipating 90 degrees for Saturday. Gee, isn’t that just perfect moving weather?

Could be worse — they’re predicting 97 for Friday, when we’ll be frantically trying to put the rest of our life into boxes in a place with crappy air conditioning. I liked the earlier prediction of 84 better.

Of course, Sunday, the day after we move everything, drops down to 76.

*sigh*

Current Mood: 😡annoyed
Current Music: “It Won’t Be Easy” (in head)

Stuff

You never realize just how much stuff you have until you have to put it all in boxes. It’s getting down to the wire now, coming up on Saturday, and the go-through-everything-and-triage plan is about to give way to the just-shove-it-in-a-box plan.

Last Thursday, alenxa went out to look at condos with our realtor, and found one that looked promising. She arranged to go back that evening when I could take a look at it. Unfortunately we basically need to put an offer in now, and jump through a bunch of hoops. We jumped through the first one, but with all the moving prep, neither of us is in the mood for jumping through any more.

Cleaned out the refrigerator the other day. Katie looked through the fridge, and I took on the task of opening and cleaning the containers.

Sunday was mostly spent cleaning, since we’ve got an inspection scheduled with the apartment complex tomorrow. We want to make sure they don’t try to charge us for any of the remodeling that they’re going to do anyway.

I’ve taken 2 days off later this week, and I’m not sure it’s going to be enough. The place is full of boxes, even after taking stuff to storage.

Current Mood: 😯anxious

Movies, Moving and More

  1. Saw Iron Man on Saturday. Very good, possibly the best superhero movie since the first Spider-Man. Perfect balance of action and humor — it knew when to take itself seriously, and (more importantly), when not to.
  2. Tried “curry chips” at an Irish pub near the movie theater. French fries, only lightly salted, and a bowl of curry to dip them in. Surprisingly good.
  3. Also watched Never Been Kissed via Netflix. Funny, but in a painful way, since the movie is all about public humiliation.
  4. Boxed up most of the books on our main 2 bookshelves. The plan is to put most of our books (and the shelves) in storage until we get a more permanent place, except for one to-read box. 10 boxes later, we still have the non-fiction shelf, the manga shelf, the humor+coffee table shelf… We’re going to need more boxes.
  5. Speaking of which, we’re down to less than 2 weeks to the move. Once we landed an interim apartment, I was relieved, but now I’m starting to worry about whether we’ll have time to pack everything up. Which reminds, me, I never got a response on my request for a quote for movers. More calls to make…
  6. Finally replaced the last of my large plain T-shirts with mediums after almost a year of holding at 150-155 lbs. Printed shirts are a bit trickier.
  7. Sleepy+hungry. Finally got around to reading Superman: Birthright last night, which was considerably better than the online consensus would suggest. But it meant I was up past midnight, and I got up early so that we could go to the DMV before work this morning. (alenxa and I both had stuff we needed to do there…this week. The funny thing is, we ended up at windows right next to each other, despite being in different queues.) So I got too little sleep and had breakfast 2 hours earlier than usual, and now I’m ready for lunch at 11:00.
Current Music: Jet Black Sunrise (Gin Blossoms)

Moving! Stage 1 of 2

With our move-out date (May 17) rapidly approaching, it became clear that we weren’t going to have a condo in time to move straight from our current apartment. We asked about moving to another unit in the same place and staying month-to-month, but they wanted a minimum 3-month occupancy, and $200/month on top of the market value for the privilege of not signing a lease. With the post-renovation price hikes, the result was that it would have cost us more to rent a studio than we’ve been paying for our 2-bedroom apartment. Not an option.

alenxa found a place just a few blocks away that does everything month-to-month, was reasonably priced, and isn’t in a scary part of town. We toured the property and filled out an application on Monday, and signed the paperwork this morning.

So we have a place to live!

Pros:

  • We don’t have to put all our belongings in storage and move in with my parents for a few weeks.
  • Once we find someplace permanent, we won’t have to break a lease to move out.
  • We already know the nearby grocery stores, restaurants, etc.
  • It’s quiet.
  • It’s reasonably located for my commute.
  • It’s on the ground floor.
  • Laundry room uses a card system instead of quarters.

Cons:

  • It’s smaller (1 bedroom), so we still have to move some stuff into storage. But even including the storage cost, it’s still cheaper than that studio would have been.
  • There’s no guest parking, and street parking is extremely limited.
  • There’s no dishwasher. I think I can deal with that for a few weeks/months.
Current Mood: 🙂relieved

Sound and Image

A month or two ago I dug out a bunch of CDs I hadn’t listened to in years, including some musical-related stuff, and started importing songs into iTunes. My plan was to play the albums first, then pick out which songs I wanted, but it didn’t quite work out, so I put a lot of stuff on just from memory, or in some cases just imported the whole album with the idea that I’d remove anything I found myself skipping. Some worked out well. Others… well the Man of La Mancha suite from Quantum Leap just wasn’t as good as I remembered.

So today, as alenxa and I were driving around to look at condos, Bernadette Peters came on, singing “Cupid.” It was a bit more easy listening-sounding than I remembered, but not cringe-inducingly-so… and then my brain stepped in to “enhance” it.

You see, we’re also working our way through the third volume of Animaniacs on DVD. I found myself picturing Rita (as in Rita and Runt) singing the song.

“Brain, stop it!” I said.

Katie: “Is yours doing the same thing mine is?”

“I think so…”

“On a fence post?”

“Yep.”

In house hunting news, we found a couple of good possibilities. Well, one good possibility, and one that was really nice, but the rooms were way too small. Fantastic view, though.

And then there was the place that had been trashed so badly that when I dropped my sunglasses, I refused to pick them up. Ugh.

Current Music: Cupid (still in my head)

Not Walking in LA

After Wayzgoose on Saturday afternoon (where we caught up with various fellow UCI alumni including wayens ), alenxa  and I went to see My Fair Lady that evening at the Ahmanson. It was a very enjoyable performance, though there were times when I couldn’t quite catch what people were singing — especially Higgins, in his sort of speak-singing numbers, and almost anything involving Eliza’s father. (Surprise casting: Marni Nixon as Mrs. Higgins.)

We finally decided to try having dinner in downtown LA instead of eating early or in the car. It turns out that a lot of downtown restaurants offer free shuttle service to the Music Center. The restaurant we picked was Cuidad, and was very good, though a bit pricey.

Coming Up

Things I’m looking forward to in the next few months:

  • Having a new place to live.
  • Going to see Bernadette Peters in concert.
  • Firefox 3 being released (I’ll get to use inline-block on websites!).
  • Our annual trip to Comic-Con.
  • Seeing my name in print as a contributor to The Flash Companion (about the comic character, not the animation format).

Things I’m not looking forward to in the same time period:

  • Getting that new place to live.  All the financial crap and wrangling.
  • Packing everything up to move.  I think I won’t mind the actual moving as much as the packing.
  • The possibility that we might have to move twice, if we manage to buy a place but it isn’t ready for move-in before we have to clear out of this place.
  • Possible shuffling around on projects at work.
Current Mood: 😡stressed

You’re Here!

Forgot to set my alarm last night, so I overslept by about 25 minutes. Though I probably would’ve hit snooze 2 or 3 times anyway, so it evened out. Decided to finish breakfast before leaving, though, instead of eating at my desk, so I got in later than I intended.

Stepped out of the elevator and the VP was just stepping out the door, saw me, and said, “You’re here!”

“Um… I was here yesterday afternoon too…”

“Now you can fix the network!”

Yep — the internal network had gone down this morning, right about the time I walked out the door. They’d been trying to call me at home (which didn’t work, since, well, I wasn’t there). So I spent the next 20 minutes looking at blinkenlights and trying to figure out which boxes needed to be reset and so on.

In retrospect, I’m glad I finished breakfast first.

Messages from the Couch

I went into work Monday morning, but after a few hours realized I’d be better off at home. So I left at lunch. Ended up staying home today, too, spending most of my time lying on the couch with a blanket, reading. Went out with alenxa at lunchtime to vote, run over to CVS, and grab some hot&sour soup.

Yesterday I finished a DVD set I borrowed from my dad, with 5 of the classic Universal Frankenstein movies. Watched House of Frankenstein, which was a rather disjointed tale of revenge with two main segments: one with Dracula, the other with the Wolfman. The Frankenstein Monster was in there too, mostly being thawed out during the second half, and finally broke free of his straps at the very end, when he strangled one person and wandered outside and fell in some quicksand. Yes, that was all he did.

Whatever I have, the rest of the symptoms aren’t that severe — except for the general out-of-it feeling that has me aware that I really shouldn’t be doing to much, say, driving. (As it was, I ran over a traffic cone trying to back out of the parking at the polling place, then dragged it about 15 feet before realizing it was still under the car.) And I’m not sure how effective I’d actually be at the desk right now, given how much trouble I was having concentrating yesterday. Not to mention I think the constant snuffling would get on everyone’s nerves.

*sigh* Comic-Con Hotel tomorrow morning. They say their travel agent has added server capacity, so with luck it won’t be quite such a chore to get into. Last year it took me an hour to get through. With more luck I’ll feel healthy enough to go into work and catch up.

Current Music: Weird Al Yankovic: Nature Trail to Hell (In 3-D)