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??