Fuego finally let me take her to see "Cars" tonight... it turned out to be a really cute movie!

We decided to get out of the house and let the new carpet off-gas by itself for a few hours (sorry Fred and Ginger). We left the AC on, but it still smelled pretty strong when we got home, so the windows will be open tonight with the fans on (should last about 2-3 days).

So we had a nice evening out together with popcorn, cherry freeze, and Pixar (yay!).

If you haven't seen the film, it's pretty much Doc Hollywood in cartoon format with a few races thrown in for good measure... your basic feel good film that actually leaves you feeling relaxed at the end of the evening instead of sad, amped, confused, or disturbed. It may not be a "must see," but it's good for a fun, low key night out (just what the doctor ordered tonight).

New carpet looks great... can't wait for it's flatulence to wear off ;o). We managed to get everything back in order by about 6:15 tonight (anticipated times turned out to be exaggerated =o).

Yay, New Carpet!!

BOO, Moving stuff off every carpeted surface and then having to move it back!!

When we moved in, it was with the understanding that the carpet would be replaced. We very carefully kept everything off of the carpet in anticipation of the glorious day when our carpet would arrive and be installed... that day came and went with no carpet. So we moved in. We set up the living room (about 2 hours of work), we set up the entertainment system and wired the surround sound (about 2.5 hours of work), we set up the bedroom (about 1.5 hours of work), we set up the guest room (about 1 hour of work), we moved our stuff into the closets (about 1.5 hours of work). We were told that it would be mid-July before the carpet would finally be in stock and we could expect the installers to come. They assured us that the installers would move our stuff and appologized for the inconvenience.

You might notice from the post date that today is June 29th. It's not the middle of July. This isn't the only myth that has been dispelled.

While the installers did move some of our stuff, it was up to us to move anything that was electronic or otherwise dear to us and fragile. So... we took down the entertainment system (1 hour of work), we moved the electronics out of the guest room (.5 hours of work), we moved the stuff out of the closets (about .75 hour of work). Next I repaired the door chime (.5 hours of work), and now I'm sitting outside in my office chair waiting for three hours for the carpet to be in so I can... you guessed it ... set up the entertainment system (anticipated 2.5 hours of work), put the stuff back in the closets (anticipated 1.5 hours of work), put the electronics back in the guest room (anticipated 1 hour of work), and assess the damages to the linoleum in the kitchen from the installers sliding heavy furniture across it (so I can let the landlord know that we didn't do it).

Somehow it just doesn't seem worth it for the six months we're planning to be here.

Perhaps our next house will just have astroturf ;o)

Got to have coffee with Sadu Crobinhobin today! We happened to be meeting with another friend in SC's office, so showed up a half-hour early and had ourselves a little spot o' joe before getting down to business.

Fuego and I drove an hour and a half to SF to meet with our hetero friend, SP, (who is starting a thankless job that desperately needs her, but which will never fully appreciate her - I know because I once had this job... how I miss being underappreciated!) to help her recover some "lost" (**cough**abandoned**cough**) data in her new (my old) job.

Someone decided that all of the pesky paper files in her office were getting in the way and purged them. Did I say purged? I might have said that they simply razed the filing cabinet to the ground -- routed it out completely and destroyed it -- abandoned it to the great abyss. Never mind that there was twenty years worth of history cradled in this storehouse of arcane knowledge... thankfully not all was lost, and we were able to help her find some of the files in the basement and others on the G4 that these devious PC using masterminds of data destruction were apparently afraid of and had left unmolested in a dark corner since my successor left.

So having restored the Mac to its rightful place as the only computer in that office (I have nothing against PC's... it's just been a Mac office since about day 3), I struggled to update the outdated links to the server and restored my friend's connection to the twenty year history of her job =o) (YAY).

I then gave her the tour of her recently recovered database, files, manuals, etc., connected her to her email, and ran like hell back to D-Town thankful that I am not in her shoes as she starts rebuilding toward a brighter future.

Best of luck SP, call if you need anything =o)

So I discovered something the other day on my new email... when I send an email (which I've already done SEVERAL times), you get to choose whether it's from your new, grown up email account that you selected when you decided to pay for DSL... OR you get the "default" email which you chose in your early to mid-twenties when you couldn't afford to pay for email so got the free Yahoo account.

So... in the past week I've sent a letter to the faculty of my seminary, sent a message to a youth group kid's parents, and sent a letter to my BISHOP ... all from "firkingarnabus" - which I chose when I was in Scotland becuase I was grumpy that plain old "garnabus" wasn't available.

Any chance that none of my recent American recipients doesn't know what "firkin" means? ... I haven't heard back from any of them yet. **SIGH**

Here we are at the end of another day. I am eagerly anticipating my geek toys, especially the LED light bulb, we had a lovely day at church, and then our friends came down from Sacto to visit for the day with their two and a half year old daughter and their new boy (so sweet!).

We drank Mojitos... many of them... in fact by the end of the day I would consider myself well on my way past apprenticeship toward mastery in Mojito concoction. Such was the day =o)

I must admit that I feel kind of lame since AM's birthday is next Wednesday and with all the hubbub of moving in and unpacking and getting settled I didn't think to get a cake since we won't see them again until next weekend when we're celebrating another friend's birthday... It sounds like we'll get to celebrate both at the same time, but I know it's not the same as getting to have your own day to celebrate... alas for missed opportunities (it's sad to find out that you suck in retrospect).

On a positive note, it only took us about twenty minutes to clean up our new place -- including dinner dishes!! (What a difference having a place for everything makes!!)

Still haven't used the new gym membership yet... we have a free trial period that lasts until Thursday, but we got it last Thursday, so time is of the essence if we want to experience all that 24 Hour Fitness can offer (though for trials it's really only 12 hour fitness since you can only come in from 9am to 9pm). We hope to join on this Thursday, so tomorrow we're going to get in there for sure... or so the plan goes since we were going to go for sure on Friday and Saturday too... guess we'll see ;o)

Well... on to the next adventure!

Ah geekdom... while Some of the time Girlfriend was here (a fun visit!), I got the opportunity to play with one of my new geek toys -- a barcode reader and "Readerware" that uses the net to catalog your DVD, Music, and Book collection (actually three different programs, but I got them bundled for a good price). It only took about an hour to catalog 204 DVD's including all relevant information (producers, directors, stars, release date, plot synopsis, DVD cover art, etc.). Joy! =o)

I also got the opportunity to shop at ThinkGeek.com -- mind you this is a very dangerous warehouse of toys and gadgets that one should not visit unprepared -- $72 later there's an LED light bulb heading my way (for our external carport light that goes on at dusk and doesn't shut off until dawn - grumble - I figure it will pay for itself in about two or three months) along with a binary clock for my desk at work and two bottle-opening rings (one for me and one for Some of the time Girlfriend, who celebrated his birthday last week). With this amazing ring, sheik geeks can simply grab a bottle by the top and mysteriously pull the top off seemingly with their bare hands!!

And now a moment to kvetsch (I had to look up the spelling for that one ;o)

My back hurts. My back has been hurting each morning at about 5:30 or 6 since we started moving in... I thought at first that this was from the oh so comfortable air mattress that we slept on for the first half week... then I thought it was just because of all the lifting... now we're in our normal comfortable bed with no more lifting, and I'm still woken up with the sense that my lungs are physically assaulting my back... that with each breath, a tiny little war is being fought between my avioli and my vertebrates -- why? why are you attacking me? My back seems to say as it wakes me up to change position no less than fifteen times per hour if I fail to get up when it starts to hurt. I have no answer for my back.

Kvetsh over.

Wrapping it up for today, Fuego and I are heading out to Berkeley to get away from the 105 degree heat today to go see a movie with a friend who will be down in the area from Arcata (north of Eureka), where Fuego went to school. I guess we're going to see The Lakehouse... I'll let you know how it is.

I thought I'd break up that last one since it started to get pretty long... plus we've moved into a new phase... the spontaneous combustion phase.

It's 106 degrees today. I'm pretty sure my face has already melted off, but I'm not sure since after about 100 degrees my nervous system shuts down and I cease to experience sensory input.

Tuesday was a great day, we got to turn in the receipts from moving for reimbursement (wahoo!)... turns out it costs a lot to move! We're very grateful that the chruch is paying for the move, it was a generous offer and now we can afford to eat for the next couple of weeks until I get paid (mmm... eating is good =o)

Yesterday was also fun since two of our very best friends came to visit us on their way back down from OR and week on the farm... good food shared, and the G's (Ginger and Granite) got to come with us and pine for treats from the table.

Today another friend is coming for a visit. Some-of-the-time-Girlfriend should be here momentarily and we're down to just two boxes and a bit of tidying to do in order to be ALL MOVED IN!!

Now we just have to do it again in about six months when we buy a place of our own ;o)

Cheers!

You're sort of coming into this in the middle of a very long story... but since I've never blogged before, you're also coming into it at one possible beginning, so what better place to start.

I have just moved to the sunny side of hell. It's beautiful here, lots of birds, lots of friendly faces, but average temperatures range from spontaneous combustion to 'oh my God, I think my face just melted off'...

What is a Norwegian (part Norwegian Eskimo even), third generation removed from the Fjords of my homeland doing in 106 degree D-town, you might ask?

Let me catch you up on the whirlwind tour of the past month...

One month ago I was a hapless Seminarian about to graduate. I didn't have a job, I wasn't ordained, I wasn't even guaranteed that I would graduate since my grades weren't in yet. I lived in cool, foggy, temperate, never really too hot Berkeley with my wife, our dog, our cat, our unwanted and uncontrollable rodent population (living in the walls), and our immpressive collection of silver-fish -- just what a book collector always wanted!

The fateful day was May 20th... I was thrust into the reality of graduation with my Masters in Divinity (have I mastered divinity now? Somehow I find that just a bit presumptious). After a long day, complete with some beautiful RAIN, we had a BBQ under the rain canopy, drank some alcohol, kicked out the family and went to bed.

Little did I know that this was only the beginning of the tempest to come... the following Monday I had an interview for a job, which on Thursday I found out that I got!! (YAY!!)... so Friday we went up to D-town to look for a place to live... found one. Went home and started packing. We packed on Friday, we packed on Saturday, we took a break on Sunday to go to church from 7 am to 7 pm, we packed some more on Monday, then took a break from Tuesday to Wednesday so I could go to my ordination retreat with the Bishop... we stopped packing to prepare for ordination which would be on Saturday -- did I mention my family was still in town? More to the point, my Dad was in town... [time for a sidebar -- skip the brackets to resume the story]...

[Sidebar]

My Dad... let's see... up until September of this past year I'd been afraid of him for my entire life. He's an authoritarian, disciplinarian with a short temper and a sharp tongue. He still believes that corporal punishment is appropriate discipline for children (and when the parents can't administer it under threat of being reported to child protective services, it's okay for a sibling to administer it ??!! Wait... WHAT?? -- nice one, Dad). Of course I love him... he is my Dad and he's mellowed a lot over the past decade. He's still intimidating, which makes it a little hard to spend more than a few days with him at a time... plus he is very money centered, which makes converstation invariably end up on the subject of finances and what recent fiscal triumphs he's achieved. Golfing and Bocci Ball seem to pacify a lot of the surface crap and it's acutally fun to hang out with him for these events. Did I mention he's also homophobic? Oh yes... he loves to rag on that subject, particularly (I think) becuase my masters thesis for my MA in Social Ethics is going to be on Gender and Sexuality in the Anglican Communion with an eye toward reconcilliation. There... I think that's enough laundry to air in public domain.

[end sidebar]

So having tried to spend as much time with family as possible over the course of the week between graduation and ordination (including a golf game and a bocci ball game), having found a place to live, having started packing, having gone to my ordination retreat, we arrive at Wednesday evening and I am home from the ordinand's retreat... Oh, right... I forgot that Monday was Memorial Day, so we had an eventful day with my brother, his wife, and my nephew (who was in a huge tissy because his parents discovered he'd been lying to them and he had to stay home with family and be grounded in stead of getting to go to Great America for the day), and my Dad, and my step-mom who is also now in town for ordination... okay, back to Thursday... I think Thursday we actually got to relax.

So Friday we're back up to D-town to secure our domicile, which the landlord ensured us would be ours for the taking until Fuego talked to him on Thursday and he said "oh, and by the way, I'll be showing the place to two other people as well"... thanks there champ.

So we go into Ordination on Saturday not knowing where we'll live in D-town, but having agreed to be out of our place in Berkeley by the fifteenth of June (this is now June 3rd... two weeks and a day after graduation.

Ordination was quite simply overwhelming! It was a truly amazing and uplifting experience, combined with about a thousand people watching who all want to come up and talk to you afterward... which is amazing and wonderful and kind (and did I mention I'm an introvert)...

Thankfully we only had about thirty people over for the BBQ after Ordination... this time no rain... so we had vast quantities of food, drank a keg of homebrew (in a half hour), drank wine, drank more beer (it's good to be Episcopalian =o), ate more food, then opened gifts! Our friends' daughters helped me open presents... they're two and four and very cute -- and very keen on opening presents. Off to bed.

Sunday morning I was deacon for the first time at church (weird!)... Apparently A.S. doesn't do the sung dismissal very often... they were quite unprepared to sing any sort of response (but they enjoyed hearing it ... ??).

Monday started packing in earnest. The landlord in D-town gave us the verbal go ahead with a move-in date of the 12th of June (YAY! We have somewhere to live!! -- Holy Crap, that's in one week?!). This starts the third week since graduation and it's a doozie! Somehow we get everything packed and arrange to pick up the U-Haul on Monday morning at 7am... only problem is our loading buddy ("Some-of-the-time-girlfriend") has gone and drowned his cellphone, so he doesn't know that we're moving on Monday instead of Saturday, and since we couldn't reach him and he didn't have our number anywhere other than his cellphone, he didn't know if we still needed help, so didn't come. Thus we now have to locate (same day that is) a car tote for the Subaru... so now it's 10 am, we have the car tote (from two cities away), and we're heading home to start loading.

Thankfully, we had Samwise the Great, my student mentee, brew-buddy, and all around good guy... he was a rockstar and came to the rescue, helping us pack up the whole truck -- which took us until about 5pm instead of fininshing around 2pm when we hoped.

Another thankfully... my brother and another good friend, Devian (AKA "DJ Purgatory") came to help with the final loading, drove one of the cars, and helped unload for an hour and a half in D-town (where I drove another twenty-five miles to get the keys from the land lord -- turned out to be the wrong keys). Add another thankfully to the mix... the side door to our new place was unlocked, so when I got home, my rockstar friends and family had unloaded about half of the truck and had ordered dinner! (YAY!)

Tuesday morning... a quick two hour unload from 7-9am (I love the appliance dolly!)... then a quick trip down to Berkeley to load up the Subaru with more stuff and start cleaning... back to D-town (an hour each way and a round trip takes up almost a whole tank of gas in the burdened Subaru with AC on). Since we're supposed to get new carpeting on Thursday, we're sleeping on an air mattress and unable to set up the house.

Wednesday morning, another early morning... did I mention there are roofers arriving at 7 every morning and getting tar spatters all over our boxes and couch outside? We attempt to take a day of rest and find the dog parks for Ginger... then realize that the carpet people are coming in the morning, so we move everything off the carpeted surfaces (mind you this takes quite some time)... did I mention it rained on all our stuff out in the courtyard because we couldn't move it inside? Still sleeping on the uncomfortable air mattress that wakes us up at 6am unable to go back to sleep... but you do get a lot done in a day that way!

Thursday!! At last we expect our carpet... hmm... it's 10 am... we've been up for four hours... where are the carpet installers?

A call to the landlord reveals that the carpet is on back order and they never bothered to call and let him know. "Go ahead and move in," he says, "they'll move your furniture when they install it." Great! We can move in!! But we had planned to be out of town all day, so we go back to Berkeley instead... have to get it cleaned up and emptied by the end of the day! We manage to get the rest of the stuff (minus the two anarondak chairs our friend Dave made for us as a wedding gift) in the Subaru and get the place cleaned up... one more trip back up to D-town... and we set up our bed!! We might actually sleep past 6:30?!

Nope. Friday morning, we wake up at 6:30 and start moving in for real! Saturday more of the same. Thankfully the sofa and boxes didn't get too messed up by the rain, thanks to a quick bit of reoranizing involving an amazing display of box moving by me that would have impressed the strongman competitors (those guys who move as many 300 lbs. boulders over their heads on to pedastles as possible in two minutes), and a clever grab of the camping tarp by Fuego to cover the sofa. We also get to sign papers and get my office key at the church today!! Yay!! (I have an office?!).

Saturday more moving in stuff, but we take a break on Sunday to commune to Berkeley for church from 7am to 9pm... and to grab a couple things from Ikea =o)

[Side bar]

Ikea is one of those amazing places in life... kind of like a combination between disney land and castor oil. There's so much to see and so much you want to plan to get in future trips, yet you can only stay for so long because the moving floor and bad flourescent lighting make you sick to your stomach within the first thirty seconds. There is also the challenge to find real furniture in amongst the countless throngs of particle board and plastic venirs... wait... could this finally be the one?? Nope... just another clever use of glue and sawdust. Oh well. We did find what we wanted, made of real wood even!

[end side bar]

So we had our final Sunday at our Berkeley Churches, Fuego at her church, me at mine... and we head back to D-town again only to turn around and come back for the anarondak chairs on Monday.

Week four having finally ended, we move into the present, where we DON'T live in Berkeley anymore, and where the summer temperatures soar into the hundreds in Davis... did I mention I'm Norwegian??