After leaving work about half an hour early, I went back to the house. My mission for the week involves getting as much stuff in and into orderly piles out of the way of people who are bringing in furniture, and also ridding the house of dog hair. I think I’m making progress on the dog hair (and its accompanying odor) in all rooms except for the wet dog room. I expect that room will require the carpet to be removed. Vacuuming stairs is a pain in the back. I also unpacked stuff into the kitchen cupboards and made a cookbook annex for Book Mountain.

I also lined someone up to help move on Saturday who knows the alphabet so that Book Mountain can competently be dismantled.

When I was done that, I cleaned up all the leftover stuff from painting and changing the locks, and moved all the half-full garbage bags into the garage. When that way done, the entry that was a total disaster on Sunday looked a lot better.

I got back to the apartment at about 8:00. It is a disaster zone, and I’m not entirely sure what to do about it. I think I’m just going to keep putting things in boxes and taking those boxes to the new house. Or maybe I’ll just go to bed and hope the mess goes away.

My Dad and Alan started to paint. The old owners didn’t move things that were heavy when they repainted before selling, so this space here used to be two colours. At least the old owners left the paint for us. The kitchen was also two colours, and we didn’t really care for either, so we painted it, too.

I made this for our front entry. It was a secret project.

Other Friday things:
- we made a second trip to Home Depot for new locks, kitchen paint, and a few other things
- we painted until about 11:30 pm, with my parents leaving about 5 and a work friend helping in the evening
- I had to be back for appliance delivery by 7 am. Boo.

Saturday
Very freaking early in the morning, our stuff started to arrive in my car. I made a few mountains of books. Another trip to Home Depot to return the carpet cleaner.

And then… appliances!

Apparently this is where I stopped taking pictures for the day.
Other Saturday stuff:
- we made one big trip for stuff in Alan’s co-worker’s SUV. Lots of stuff showed up. The book mountain grew and sprouted DVD foothills in other rooms
- none of the locks fit right.
- we made a third trip to HD to return the locks and get better ones. And rent a drill.

Sunday

Alan played with power tools. It was awesome. Shannon liked.

I put the kitchen back together and started putting some things in cupboards. The stuff mountain in the living room grew. Some cabinets got new handles and I made a I don’t knowth trip to Home Depot for a vacuum because the dog fur isn’t going away without a fight. I removed large piles of dog fur while Alan put on new locks and wouldn’t let me help play with the drill. We are tired. Oh and we got cupcakes from the neighbours.

So that’s where we are at the moment. For the rest of this week, I will probably load my car with stuff in the morning and drop it off on my way to work, as I work very close to the new house. I’m going to try and run the vacuum at least a couple more times before the move in the hopes of locating all this pet fur. We have a couple of painting bits left to do in the kitchen. Furniture comes in on Saturday and we promise to feed all of our friends who come to help load and unload the UHaul.

I’m going to take a nap.

We have a house key! Tomorrow we’re going to do some assessment about any cleaning and/or painting that needs to be done, change the locks, and get a couple of things into the house. Saturday we get some appliances delivered, and we’re going to bring in as many boxes of stuff we don’t really need as possible, and then we will move all the big furniture and leftovers the next Saturday.

We have a house key! I think that means we have a house! That’s so weird.

My friends J&C have two girls, one about 12 or 13, one about 3, and one due in July. The eldest is an awesome nerdy book reading Nintendo type. She will be receiving two Super Mario themed cross-stitched bookmarks and probably a Chapters gift card. Each of the bookmarks I completed took about a week worth of work. I worked on three, but the first one didn’t end up having properties consistent with being a bookmark. I haven’t done much cross-stitch, but I really enjoyed doing the projects. My grandma was a cross stitching machine. She created seriously epic stuff that I can’t possibly compete with. However, she never made a Yoshi, and I did. So there. Here’s a few photos of the work as it stands:

Completing the bookmark phase will have to wait until the move is done as I’m not really certain where my iron or glue gun went. I will definitely be doing another cross stitch before the year is out for another family with existing kids. The next project, however, will probably be the gift for the 3 year old, and will involve felt and castles, because castles are awesome.

(Pattern sources: 1, 2, 3)

A large pile of boxes and bags

sad bookshelf wants more books

other sad shelves need books and/or DVDs

piles of stuff

I (and I think it’s safe to say we) keep flip-flopping between feeling mostly prepared for the move and being completely overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to do. The current plan looks a little like this:
- Tuesday: sign mortgage papers
- Thursday: get possession
- Friday: change the locks, clean carpets, plan where furniture will go
- Saturday: appliances arrive; clean new house as needed; move a bunch of small stuff
- next Saturday: move furniture and required daily stuff

We will have to be flexible and play a lot of the next little bit as it comes. This is hard for me. I like plans, and for those plans to be well thought out, and concisely executed. I don’t think that’s possible in this particular situation.

I’m not certain Patrick’s dad will share.

I don’t think it is fantastic. The wings aren’t aligned correctly, the head is slightly turned, and the neck feels weak to me, but I ran out of time to make a completely new second dragon, so it will have to do. I would definitely make another dragon for friends with kids and think that the next time around I will be able to correct some of the mistakes I made this time around. Hopefully despite its flaws it’s well received.

Do you ever find yourself wanting a book to take longer to read, because you just want it to keep going and going? Would you neglect your children (if you had any) in order to finish the chapter you’re on, and then read “just a little” into the next chapter, hoping they won’t notice? Do you find yourself thinking of who else needs copies of this book, and how you can afford to buy each and every one of them their own personal copy?

Yep. It’s one of those.

Ready Player One is the nerdiest 80s nerd book I’ve ever read. In the first chapter, there’s about a dozen offhand references to things I loved that originated in the 80s, starting with The Breakfast Club and Heathers. At some point, one character says to another “We can dance if we want to. We can leave your friends behind.” There are puzzles to solve that involve being obsessively knowledgeable about things like Quest For the Holy Grail or WarGames.

The whole thing reads like one giant text adventure. There’s crazy Blade Runner technology. There’s a terrible future and a beautiful virtual reality. There’s a quite touching romance, and a tournament that everyone in the world wants to win. A ragtag group of mavericks fighting an evil cabal who wants to destroy the purity of their world.

It’s just a whole damn lot of fun. Stop reading this post and go find it at your local library. Or buy it. It’s definitely a book worth buying. I’m probably going to buy a copy for myself.

Why yes, that is a quilt! It’s something I’ve been working on for about a year.

What you see in front of you actually started out as the back for a different quilt. When I was done making the back, I realized that I liked it a lot more than the original quilt, and started on a new project with a better quilt top.

I’ve “made” other quilts before. What I mean is that in the past, I have made a quilt top, put it in a plastic bag, delivered it to my quilting mother, and maybe a month or two later, a blanket would appear that looked vaguely like the thing I’d started with, but a billion times cooler and more useful. This time around I did everything.

Which is why this quilt is tied. I don’t really have the time or patience to actually quilt. Sewing a sandwich together for months on end seems like something I wouldn’t thrive at. I almost had a little meltdown when Mom told me I had to hand stitch the binding. (Binding is the border around the outside that glues it all together in one pretty little package.)

One of the nice things about the tying and hand stitching process was that it involved many hours of standing in front of a television. I watched all of the first season of Downton Abbey and most of Misfits which doing the hand tying. The hand stitching was mostly done while watching Archer.

Another nice thing for me about having a quilting project is that I spend my days moving form fields around on a computer screen; making something more blue; or possibly inserting, updating or selecting data from a database. When I go home at night, I can’t really pick anything up and say “This is what I did today”. I guess I could put the subversion repository on a USB stick, but it’s not the same thing. This thing takes up physical space. You can pick it up, throw it across the room, wrap yourself up in it, pretend you’re a quilt monster. Read books under it. That’s kind of cool. I can’t do that with my medical billing software. No matter how cool that database query was.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with it. I don’t really need another quilt, and I probably shouldn’t start on another project until this one is out the door. Bonus points to those of you who stopped to look at what books were on our bedside tables.