Grillin’

My parents sent us the cash to buy a grill for our fabulous patio! We were both pretty excited since we love grilling food but haven’t lived anywhere where we could have a grill for awhile now. Plus, this is a REAL grill – we had previously only had table-top camping type grills.

The grill – all set up and ready to go!

Our first meal went fairly well. We had a little trouble getting the regulator to properly connect with the tank, but we got it all set after a few minutes. We decided to grill steaks and corn for the inaugural burn. We probably should have stuck with something a bit simpler, but it was still yummy.

The first meal

Other than that, I’ve been job interviewing and getting outside and going for some walks everyday. I hope that we can soon wrap up all the unpacking and truly settle in.

Washers and employment

I didn’t get out and about much over the weekend. Instead I did a lot of couch sitting. It’s been such a busy month I think I’m just winding down. I have gotten some more house stuff accomplished. I got my washer and dryer hooked up today! I’m REALLY hate laundromats so this is so good. Our Whirlpool Duets had a hard time fitting in the space for the washer and dryer here, but I think everything is okay. I’ve taken the doors to the little W/D cubby half off to accommodate them. I’ll be doing my test load tomorrow. It’s a good thing because our “careful movers” got sawdust in every drawer of our dresser. We were told to pack the dresser with clothes since the movers would be plastic wrapping the whole thing for the move. Well, our guys didn’t do much plastic wrapping. I wish I had known because I would have spent the $2.80 for the cling wrap on a stick to do it myself.

I’ve also been hitting the job hunt seriously. I had a phone screen yesterday, so that’s good news. I’m coming to Maine for a visit next week so that will obviously be on hold while I am home visiting my friends and family.

More photos of a semi-unpacked condo

I hope you guys aren’t getting too bored of my random photos of my apartment. I promise I’ll be posting more exciting and noteworthy items on here soon. Like – this weekend! Yes, Tess and I will be living the single life this weekend as my better half heads to Nevada. We aren’t going to pick up Mavericks and Ice Men at Miramar. We’ll probably just work on the garden. And by we I mean me. There are too many random cats around to trust Tess out in the patio. It will be a low key weekend, but that leaves lots of time for blogging! Escondido is surprisingly cute. The downtown is very 50′s. Hopefully I can get some cool shots.

Anyway, here’s some photos of my kitchen. The blog is probably the best way for us to share pictures and stuff with friends and family and I’ve had requests to see the kitchen. We finally unpacked our books only to find our movers put the box with our flatware at the bottom of the book box stack. So – we finally have real spoons and forks! Things are coming along well. If I can get myself in gear I may just have pictures to hang left once the weekend is over.

We may have an electric stove again (boo!) but the sealed unit is great for clean up.

The coffee maker is on the other side of the fridge. It’s not the most photogenic kitchen because of the shape, but you get the drift. Oh and Patrick’s Level 1 award is only on the counter because we can’t figure out what else to do with it. He really doesn’t need that for cooking inspiration.

Real progress!

It’s starting to come together. Pat put together a media rack for all our DVDs and I hung up the lights. What you don’t see is him asleep on the sofa.

Please tell me the lights look like they are level. We’ll be moving the TV so things are more symmetrical.

Oh! The sofa has feet again. Pat got them back on. He did a great job and I have to give him full credit. His idea for getting them back on worked great. He’s a lot better at this kind of stuff than I used to give him credit for.

Tess is doing great!

A couple of you are probably wondering about Tess. Definitely Craig, probably not Amanda. She’s doing just great! She took a little longer to settle in here than the hotel, but all is still well. She’s found some new hiding spots, including some I haven’t been able to find. But I snapped a couple of photos of her.

The morning we left the hotel, this is where she decided to hide. Again, I think she thought we might leave without her so she wanted to get in to a bag so we’d make sure to bring her.

Her new favorite spot is on top of the fridge. She always tried to jump up on the fridge at the last apartment, but this one is more achievable.

We have a lot of stuff

We have internets! Well, we have wireless internet – so I’m still on the awesome laptop and I haven’t quite been relegated to my desktop yet. It’s not quite set up anyway. We are having a bit of trouble with getting our cable modem installed in the office because the jack in the office doesn’t actually connect anywhere, but that’s another story for another time.

We have pictures again for you! Here’s some shots of the moving in process in all it’s glory.

Our lovely new living room and here’s the damn sofa. As you can see, it got in this place just fine. I think a mover named Cleveland wrapped it in plastic for us because our driver didn’t seem to care about that kind of thing.

The other side of the living room.

The kitchen got a lot full while we were trundling boxes to where they would live. It’s a good thing this one has lots of cupboards.

Officially this was the WORST room in the house for boxes per square footage. We could barely walk in it. I swear it is better now.

We know what is important. We got the bed made as soon as it got put back together.

Obviously there’s a lot of chaos here. And really, it got a little worse even after these pictures were taken. But we’ve been doing good about unpacking and I hope to have total after shots for you very soon. We have waaay too much stuff though. And you wouldn’t believe how much we actually got rid of!

Here’s the car in the carport. This one is for Amanda because I know how much she loves carports! We’ve taken it to the carwash since then. As you can guess, driving for as far as we did was not good for the cleanliness of the car. I shudder to think how many insects died on our car over the 4 days.

Almost connected again!

I should be back online for real in a couple of hours. I’m waiting on the cable guy. I’m probably jinxing myself by making that kind of declaration.

We had some chaos with getting our mailbox set up at the complex, but it’s all set now. I’ve been entertaining myself with GTA 4 and a few CDs. Oh and unpacking. So far so good. I still can’t find the cutlery and I’m trying to figure out what to do with all the linens since Pat turned the linen closet into a board game closet, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Now the fun really begins!

The whole moving into the new place thing certainly isn’t over but the phase involving getting our stuff off the truck is.

From 8 til 4 we were at it. There wasn’t enough room for thbe truck to come to our door again so we had to rent a shuttle again. We tried to do it a bit more on the cheap by renting a truck ourselves but I think in the end we only came out $100 or so ahead. This whole process had really sucked and I don’t want to move again because of it! I feel we were overextended and mislead. When things started to go wrong we were not taken care of as we were promised.

Aside from that we LOVE the new place! The cat is doing much better. She was quite upset to leave the hotel room because she was really loving it. It didn’t help that we kept her locked in a bathroom while stuff was coming in. She prowled around all anxious and scared last night. This AM found her hungry and bouncing around on the boxes. Upgrade.

Speaking of boxes there are a ton of them. I should get to work.

Le Condeaux

‘Cause we’re classy like that.

At last here are some pictures of the condo.

Here’s what you see when you walk up. I like the carved wooden door. What you can’t see well is that the whole thing has the cute little tile roof.

This is what you see when you walk in. The tiled area in the back is the dining room part.

Here’s the view from the opposite direction.

Finally, we have a kitchen big enough that we can both work in without worrying about pointy knives and short tempers.

The master bedroom has a little patio outside and a whole wall of mirrored closet.

Bathroom. Very important, of course.

Even better! Another bathroom. This will be the end of many arguments.

The second bedroom. I couldn’t get a really good picture of it, unfortunately. This will be the office unless someone gets out here really quickly to stake their claim.

Our patio! See the roses?

More patio! See the big storage thing?

Doh!

The good news is we signed the lease today! Yay! We’ll likely move in on Saturday morning after checking out of the hotel here. I had some nightmares about the whole thing and what I worried would go wrong, but we are all set. I hope Tess is as happy there are she was a Barrington Mill. So that means, San Diego, you have us for a whole year. What are they going to do?

The bad news is I forgot my camera – thus the “Doh!” in the title. I think I’m going to go over tomorrow after I take Pat to work so I’ll take some photos then, come home and post them. Hopefully it will all be early enough that those of you who only use the internet during work hours can see it.

I’ve been job hunting a bit, which should go a lot easier now that I have a local address. Now let’s hope that the moving truck makes it okay here!