Cardboard Colored

This is our world for the moment. Boxes, boxes everywhere. It seems that our books and kitchen items took up about 99% of our space.

First the bad news. The movers we hired to load our truck made quite the mess of it. We found most of the boxes marked "fragile" were crushed under heavy boxes of books. Numerous large items were not well-wrapped in spite of the fact that we actually provided a dozen of our own moving blankets and asked that they be used. It was very frustrating to see just how many items were either destroyed or badly scuffed and scraped. We have moved many, many times but this experience has us rethinking how we'll do it the next time.

In better news, my parents generously offered to help us unload the truck. Austin and my dad did a lot of the heavy lifting and my mom helped me with some of the unpacking. It was nice that they were able to see our new home and community.

We are still surrounded by boxes but the piles are slowly shrinking. It's been a challenge to go from owning a home to renting a townhouse. First, it's a bit smaller so some of our things (e.g. Christmas tree and decorations) will have to go to a storage unit for now. Our kitchen is one of the smaller areas so that's been interesting to get set up. It's also really hard not to make changes to the place like we would if we owned. For example, there are numerous brass fixtures I'd love to swap out with something more modern and updated. There are other issues like very low water pressure, bubbling in the air conditioning pipelines, and a washing machine that sounds like it's trying to break free of the utility closet and march across the house. All of these things would be something we'd address if we owned the place or planned on being here for over a year but at the moment, we're just chalking them up to the renting experience. Over all, though, the townhouse is nice and will definitely suit us while we settle in and get accustomed to our new community.

Austin will be back to work full-time on Monday and his office is set up enough for that to happen. I will be going to my office on campus fairly regularly to get caught up with syllabus writing and preparation for the semester along with my ongoing publication and conferencing work. We're looking forward to getting back into a more regular routine and continuing to get to know the area.