Sub Ubi

Several of our friends had babies lately. (How many people “have” 13-year-old children? They adopt those, right?) Either way, this comic from Toothpaste for Dinner nicely captured their collective, holistic experiences of the first few weeks of parenthood.

At least, until I find a comic about pooping.

Our mailman left us a note.

Awesome.

So, we’re moved in. That is, we have boxes in the house. Lots of boxes. Everywhere.

The move started on Thursday morning with my father and I heading out to pick up the truck. I rented a 24′ monster because I had no desire to deal with packing “efficiently.” I wanted to throw things in the truck, and have large amounts of space to spare.

The Echo and the moving truck prepare for their grand journey.

A 24′ truck is seemingly infinite.

Most of our stuff was in storage for the past six years; a move overseas and back will do that to you. We moved from Indiana to England/Wales, and the things that we kept were stuffed in boxes and mostly forgotten. In fact, almost completely forgotten—unpacking has been little more than a sequence of surprises (that, and a lot of washing).

Stuff packed n’ wrapped in storage.

Fortunately, most of our “stuff” was wrapped and palletized, so we just lifted pallets down, put them on the truck, and I unloaded the pallets. Hot and tiring, but reasonably quick work. We took off from home, arrived in Meadville without incident, and unloaded the bed. That was the majority of our effort on Thursday… which, to be fair, was enough.

Thursday morning, we had two big, empty rooms to unload into. And fortunately, Alex, Bob, Greg, and William (colleagues and students from the Department of Computer Science) were able to offer their help. Because of their inspired assistance, we were able to start unloading at 9:30 in the morning, and were done by 12:30. Absolutely incredible.

Staging Area I: The living room.

Staging Area II: Place Where a Table Goes

Now, we made quick work of it because Alex, Bob, Greg, and William were amazing. With their help, we had the entire truck unloaded in 3 hours. We staged the truck to our little carport, and then hand-carried the boxes into the living room and dining room. (Given that they don’t actually serve these purposes right now, we’ll just call them “Staging Area One” and “Place Where a Table Goes”.)

Now we have boxes everywhere.

Boxes in the kitchen.

Carrie, like me, wondering what is where.

Yesterday I sorted roughly half the boxes we had unloaded in the morning by moving them to their appropriate geographic location within the house (clothes upstairs, random things to the attic, etc.). Today, I finished that while Carrie worked on the kitchen (much washing of things), and after that, I sat outside and started stripping some of our furniture… so that we might have somewhere to put stuffs like clothing.

Stripping (destroying) furniture.

As it happens, I did all the things while stripping furniture you’re not supposed to. Fortunately, I can’t make the furniture look worse than it does now, so I’m certain the end result will be beautiful.

And, if you can’t tell, the Internets arrived yesterday as well.

The Internets. Used for email and the blag.

I’ll have to gush about the amazing, customer-friendly policies of Armstrong Cable at some later point. That, and talk about the joys of home ownership, like discovering that the drain in your shower leaks the first night you arrive, and having water drip down through your kitchen ceiling. AWESOME! As a result, I got to spend this morning pulling part of our ceiling down so the drain assembly could be replaced. Many thanks are due to Lenny, who came over and helped even though this was a bit outside of his area of specialty.

This evening, we had instant pizzas, headed into town for sundaes (it was a fundraiser), and then headed home for a bath… because we had to, what with the shower needing time to rest while the silicone sets up.

Tub. Reasonably great awesome.

Now, I’m watching the SpaceX rocket launch (over the Internets), and then it’s bedtime.