I've actually been moved in for a week, but things have been kind of busy so I just haven't had time to sit down and blog!
First of all, I love it here. Love it. I love my job, love my
house, love the town, love the people. It's one of those times where
it's so obvious that this was the right thing in the right place at the
right time that it's kind of ridiculous. I'm very happy to be here, and
thrilled to be working again. I've actually enjoyed it so much that I've
been in the office BEFORE 9AM, every.single.day. And if you know me, you're probably still picking your jaw up off the floor.
My
mom and dad have been here this weekend, and we've been having fun
playing. I've been showing them around the town and trying out some of
the great restaurants here in town. We did some shopping, I got a MUCH needed haircut, and we put some
finishing touches on the house.
A few pictures from the last three weeks...
I completely forgot to take pictures of the moving truck after they got here, but it's pretty much the reverse of this:

Then Sunday night after the movers left, I went over to Mindy and Darren's for a little farewell dinner with the Peanuts. It was great to see everyone again one last time before I took off. Not that we won't see each other again at some point!

Monday I took another load of stuff to DI, turned in my equipment at Comcast, got some car snacks and gased up the car, and then Melody came over and saved my bacon by helping me get everything cleaned so I could turn in my apartment keys the next morning. Then that night I went to her house and we had some farewell snacks and fun with her family plus Tim and Dustin.



And then Tuesday morning I was off! I drove by myself with a packed car and my iPod and GPS and I was off. I stopped in Kearney, Nebraska the first night and then just outside of Toledo, Ohio the second night. I got to Branford at about 5pm on Thursday evening and picked up my keys at the real estate agency and then got to the house and unloaded the car. At that point I was just exhausted and set up my air mattress and crashed.
I spent a few days picking up necessities and figuring out where things are, and doing a lot of reading.
The last time I posted were the pictures I took while I was waiting for the movers to get here on Sunday... they ended up coming late because of a morning job that took longer than planned and then bad traffic on 95. Then it took several hours to unload and they didn't finish until about 9pm, so I didn't really get started unpacking that night. And then Monday, I started my new job.

Did I mention I love my new job? I do. I've been there two weeks now and it's been awesome. I have plenty to do, I'm getting looped in and up to speed and all that pretty fast, and the people are just great. Of course, the people are the main reason I turned down my other opportunities and took this one. And I'm excited that it's turning out even better than I had hoped.
I kept unpacking in the evenings after work, and then did a big push last weekend to get pretty close to finished. I did a few last things last Monday and then I was pretty much done!
(I hauled ALL of the boxes and paper down to the basement of the house on Tuesday, and it was quite a job. They won't last in the humidity here so I'm going to have to list them on Craig's List, but at least they're out of the house for now!)
A few of the rooms as I was finishing...

(You see a lot of fans around because the house doesn't have A/C - which it really only needs about 2 months of the year. Next summer I might get a few window units or something. We'll see.)
And of course, the all important scrapbook room!

This room is easily twice the size of my scrap attic, and I can't believe I fit it all in there! Of course, in here I have one entire wall that I can't use because it's full of closets (which hold the stuff from my guest room closet - the guest room here doesn't have one, as well as my coat closet). And I also tried to keep things from covering the windows, so it's more spread out instead of using vertical space. But I love it - the yellow walls and wood floors are awesome. And since the master bedroom didn't have cable hookups, I put the 2nd TV in here so I can watch the Food Network and hockey games while I work - I think this will work great!
So I had Wednesday night where I just relaxed and relished being done with the unpacking. Then Thursday night, we had a work Happy Hour at a place near our office where the eCommerce team headed for some after work drinks and snacks.

I started with straight-up water on the rocks, but eventually switched to virgin frozen peach margharitas which were pretty tasty. We ordered apps (it was Mexican) and then desserts (it was also unhealthy). After a few hours there, a group of us broke off and went to a different bar close to the water (funny enough, it was the singles who stuck it out - everyone else went home to their families). So me, my boss Craig, our analyst Ryan, and Cassi who was down working in the office for a few days (she normally telecommutes from MA) went to the bar where I switched to Shirley Temples. Lots of grenadine... yum! Part of the fun with this group is that I've fallen in with some fellow foodies who also happen to be super fun to hang out with. I'm slowly being shown all the great places to eat with the promise of many more opportunities to sample the local cuisine and entertainment scene. I can't wait!
Friday my boss "made" us all leave early for the holiday weekend, so I went home to get the house picked up and to get some of the moving dust out of the way before my parents came. They got here for dinner and I took them to one of the places I've tried for dinner and we also drove along the water. We did more shopping, eating and sight seeing on Saturday, went to church at my new ward on Sunday, and today we did more shopping to get curtain rods and a few sets of drapes for the house. Because of the way the windows are here (old and slightly slanted plus not being allowed to drill into them) I had to get tension rods for all the windows. And with lots more windows, I needed more drapes. So we hit Target, Ikea and Walmart and got what I needed between those. Then my mom and I busted out the sewing machine and measuring tape and got to work.

We hung everything up first to see what we needed to cut off, then I did the measuring and cutting and mom did the sewing. As she finished hemming, I got them ironed and hung.
And my dad, well he did this:

(can't say I blame him!)
I've now got drapes up in all but two of the rooms - the front two rooms I'm waiting on until the contractor comes to replace the windows this week. Mostly because there's a wasps nest in one of the guest room windows, and I only want to move things once in the scrapbook room. But the other rooms look great! So now it's finally really feeling like home. Still a little weird / new, but it's a lot homier now. I love it and I can't wait to have people over! Next up: wide screen HD TV (WAY overdue... I'm still using the huge 30" Sony I bought in college!) and maybe a BBQ and some patio furniture for my porch. We could do some serious game-day partying here! But we'll see when I get to it... I have time :)
Whew! Well, there's my huge catch-up post. I'm going to try and do a little Project Life catch-up as well. I might not do all 4 weeks individually, but I'll pull something together to cover the last month. It's been crazy, but kind of awesome too. And now, I'm off to finish up a few things and then hit the sack so I can be up bright and early for work in the morning.
Later!
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