New Home

I write to you from our new home - now with furniture and interwebs! The move went more smoothly than expected and after this blog post i'm going to take the last batch of boxes to be recycled. I'd love to store them all but our little storage closet is already bursting with boxes. We'll be moving again w/in a few years but we'll just have to replace the ones I'm recycling today. Hell, most of them are from our move from LA back in 2005 and are barely held together by copious amounts of packing tape.

Oona was a real trooper in the car. She didn't get sick or howl at all. I put her in a harness (crazy cat lady, I know, I know) so that we could let her out of her kennel w/o fear of her bolting under the pedals or out of the car. I'm pleased to say that my crazy plan worked quite well. She was freaked by the traffic, but liked spending time on my lap and seeing what was going on in the car. It's the longest car ride I've taken since I became a knitter in which I didn't knit a single stitch.

We stayed with my mom in Phoenix for a night and then drove down to Tucson. Our furniture arrived a few days later. We are about 90-95% unpacked and most of our art is up on the walls. Our new h ouse is very spacious and modern with a gorgeous kitchen, lots of windows, and giant bathrooms. I could live in the bathroom and kitchen alone. 

 Two sinks! and a giant open shower!

Oh, the things I will cook in you...

I didn't understand it before, but I know understand why Californians flock to the SW for affordable housing and nice weather. Housing-wise your dollar just goes further. A lot further. As in this place is less expensive than our crappy, drafty, 650 sq ft 60 year old cottage in SC. The landscape is very reminiscent of parts of eastern San Diego where I lived for several years as a child. It's greener than I imagined, and there are plenty of trees - as long as you aren't holding AZ trees to the standard of East Coast or Pacific North West trees. They're like good (native) SoCal trees - short, so you can see the sky, and broad. They provide a nice bright green color and plenty of shade. Not to mention that there is quite a bit of citrus and other warm climate fruit bearing trees.  So far the people have been nice too. On one side our neighbors are a nice lesbian couple whose cars are covered with pro-Obama and anti-Republican bumper stickers, and an older man with a giant "Humanitarian Aid is never illegal!" sign in his front yard. 

I made my first foray into friend making territory and think I can call it a relative success. I went swing dancing at the UofA and met several nice grad students (all in physics (experimental and optical, and EE), and a couple who just purchased a dance studio. The swing scene here is large and active and I'm excited about the potential friend-making that could come out of it.

All in all, things are good.. We're getting settled, the weather is beautiful and I can't wait for Luke to come back from NM so that I have excuse to make all sorts of very tasty things in the new kitchen. On the work front, I'm finishing up some IHR work but mainly tabling my diss work until I get through the holidays and parental visits, and the university libraries and departments re-open. I'm planning to infiltrate the history dept and carve out a niche for myself, you can be sure I'll let you know how it goes. 

next year I think I'm going to add a luminaria menorah...