Move-in Day!
This was from long ago, but I'm just getting to posting it. The pictures I took are pretty bad.
Tuesday September 28 was move-in day. I was told that the people would bring me stuff sometime between 8-6. They wouldn't promise me that they would give me a warning, so I was supposed to just camp out at the house all day, or leave it unlocked so that they could move the stuff in without me. I left the house unlocked, and left a note and some post-its with locations for stuff. As it turned out, I did get an hour warning for both the washer/dryer delivery and the furniture.
The washer/dryer was pretty uneventful, though the exhaust vent ripped when he tried to connect it. I couldn't figure out how to get under the house to investigate further. For now I just have it venting straight under the house, which may be what was happening anyway. I need to put it on a list of things to tell the landlord; that's the beauty of renting, I guess.
The perfect storm of an uncertain move-in time and the lack of air conditioning in the computer lab where I teach caused me to cancel class. I suppose I could have gotten someone else to teach something, but the stuff that I wanted to do no one else could do and only now did it occur to me that it would have been very useful for one of my grad students to teach something about something I don't care much about like making movies or whatnot.
At about 3PM, a big red truck pulled up with a couple of guys in their late 20's. One was very confused and concerned that I wanted to put the chest in the huge walk-in closet rather than have the dresser and mirror in my bedroom, but I convinced him. I am sure that I don't want to be looking at that piece of furniture--or myself--all of the time that I'm in the bedroom.
The furniture is themed late 20th century ugly, as one might find in a mid to upper level hotel. On the whole, it's nothing that I would have bought, but except for the mattresses, within acceptable parameters. The mattresses both smell of cigarette smoke. I'm tempted to buy a new mattress, but am not sure that I want to own anything that I won't easily be able to fit into a VW bus (not that I own one of those). I think I'll go buy some mattress covers that can seal in the smoke smell.
My bedroom has the fore-mentioned smelly queen bed and two bedside tables with lamps. It also has a 24" flat screen TV and a TV stand that the guy insisted on using, in spite of my suggestion that he instead place it on the piece of furniture that the previous occupant left. I bought a 36" door and two filing cabinets for a desk. I haven't used a desk in my home since I left Nashville in 2001, but I'm thinking that the bookkeeping I'll need to be doing will require a fair amount of desk space and I don't want to be doing all of that stuff at the office.
The living room has a fairly innocuous new-looking sofa, with a too-small coffee table and two end tables with lamps. The room feels pretty good. The good news is that the sofa matches Thor's new bed pretty nicely. The living room is delightfully spacious and uncluttered. The sofa's matching love seat is in a space between the Rumpus Room and the kitchen, so it almost counts as a [[http://www.diynetwork.com/kitchen/living-in-the-kitchen-great-room/index.html][couch in the kitchen]] (I've written about that myself elsewhere, I think, but I can't find it now). I considered putting the couch in the kitchen, but that'd leave the ante-rumpus room empty.
The 32" TV and DVD player that were supposed to go in the living room is in the Rumpus Room. In the 25X40 room, it looks a bit small, and there's no furniture in there, but I don't think I want it in the living room. I could change my mind, though, as there is a cable connection in the living room.
The guest room has the dresser with mirror, a bed, and a single bedside table with lamp.
The two full baths each got a kit with (4?) bath towels, hand towels, and wash cloths, a bath mat, a trash can and a soap dish. The soap dish in the master bath is somewhat nicer. They will come in handy if I ever get some soap. Yesterday I bathed with Palmolive oxy power plus degreaser. I have purchased some actual shampoo, but it's in one of the other showers I've used over the past couple weeks. I won't share just how long I'd been without showering, but having something with a strong degreaser was probably good.
The dining room has a table and six chairs. They even included six place mats and napkins, albeit with a lower percentage of all-natural fibers for my taste.
The kitchen I'll include greater details (and grater details) about the kitchen later, but they provided some pretty decent pans, crappy knives, and place settings for six, including wine glasses. Though they would have done it, I unpacked the kitchen knowing that there was little chance they'd do it how I wanted and it wasn't that much work anyway. It was also clear that these dudes didn't want to make the beds, so I let them off the hook for that too.
They also provided a modicum of cleaning supplies, like toilet bowl cleaner (but not toilet brush?) and some kitchen spray (but no dish detergent?) and no toilet paper. Fortunately, I already had toilet paper because one the bathrooms that I used of late had toilet paper that, though a leading brand and more expensive than what I use, was simply not to my liking, so at some point I bought /my/ toilet paper. I decided that small creature comforts are something that I deserve at a time like this.
Update: I just noticed that there is, in fact a toilet brush in one of the bathrooms. It may be that some of that stuff was here already.
