Settling In

To all ya'll who didn't believe me when I told you that when I move, I am unpacked in 2 weeks or less, and that I was sure I'd do the same thing this time, even with a toddler...believe! Our household goods arrived on the 13th and every box is empty _and_ the cardboard is out! Everything has a home within my home, my pantry is restocked and the pictures are on the wall. All the boxes arrived, albeit with a few dents and smashes. Not too much in the way of damage to report. The steam cleaner application hood got cracked, and one of our cheap-o Wal-Mart put-it-together-yourself bookshelves arrived with the backing falling off. Everything the packers put in boxes arrived unscathed. I was pleased with the care of their packing, though some of the things I thought ought to be in boxes were not. Turns out I was a bit in the right on that one. When I questioned it, I was told that these bulky, not-easily-packed items would be used as top-load, or light-pack. These were things like my "wire"-rack paper system, our "wire"-rack shelf units, my wooden shelves, curtain rods and the like. The put-it-on-the-truck guys, on the otherhand, took the furniture and these "light-pack" items as they were, assembled and all. However, only the primary piece got a ship-tag. When the goods arrived, we weren't here yet to accept them, so they had to go into storage. This meant that all the things that went on the truck assembled with 1 (one) lable, got disassembled. That aforementioned bookshelf arrived without its shelves, because they hadn't been labled. Hardware to put the "wire"-rack systems was also missing, as were some of the other hardware pieces to bookshelves and the media armoire. We also discovered that the packers had neglected to open the drawers and pack the items in the coffee table--luckily what I had in there was small, not breakable, and light enough so as not to cause damage to the table as it was moved around. For future reference--next move I'm going to disassemble all that stuff myself, zip-tie things together and make a little "hardware" box (shouldn't be very big, really) to carry with us in our car, so it's ready to access as the furniture comes into the house. Oh, and Fred admits that some of my "Monkishness" that he was teasing me about before the packers/movers came has paid off. Score one for beaverism over otteriness (if you don't get the reference, ask me sometime).

I'm enjoying my new home, though it's a bit difficult to remember where I've put things; because of our layout, not all the things _can_ go where it makes the most sense to put them. I'm still doing some organizing in my craft area; that's one of the two places I really need the placement of things to "make sense", but then again, I was still organizing the one at Fort Irwin the month before we left, so... *shrugh* Haven't quite gotten around to taking pictures of the new place yet, but I'm not going to post them here; protection of personal data and all that. However, if you _want_ to see the pics, email me and I'll send them out. Oh yeah, apparently hotmail has something against my gmail account. When I sent out my info update, which had to go out en masse, every hotmail address came back rejected. Even though I've tried to go back and send each one of those individually, they've come back too. What gives! Guess I'll just have to wait until those who have hotmail accounts write to me to let me know they're missing it. (hint, hint)