photo saturday: icewind dale rangers

Meet the Icewind Dale Rangers. 

And yes, it sounds like an ice hockey team, and very probably they have and/or do play hockey, or whatever the DnD/fantasy equivalent is.

But this is what happens when I start creating back-up characters and don't know when to stop. And it's also why they're rangers by profession but not all rangers by class. Also partially because I didn't come up with some of the actual builds/class for them until later.

Before we even started playing, I'd already been playing around with Chane and Cutter (Cuts Like A Knife)... Chane is a Rune Knight Fighter and Cutter is a Swarmkeeper... because I really, really want to play a Swarmkeeper at some point. And then I wasn't really feeling either of them. 

Next came Snow, and I considered Shadow Monk or Scout Rogue, but then Mr and Mrs decided on monk and rogue for their classes... so in the end he became a Gloomstalker, because what better to plan in a land where the sun never completely rises.

Then, once we were playing, along came Brocc... and I'll fully admit, I recycled the name from a character I half build and never did anything with. And for a while there, Brocc the Artificer and his Steel Defender wolf Ravage were definitely going to be my backup. It kept the "three gnomes" thing alive.

And I don't remember which bit came first, but DM Fluffy and I joked about the fact that given that Quill was a female druid that was part of group of female druids... so, conversely, maybe there was an all male group of rangers that were the opposite of the druids... and that I had enough back-up characters to basically populate that group. I feel like it was all part of the same conversation, but we've had a lot of conversation about the rangers over time.

Then Fluffy decided to a) add in Dreth, the nominal leader of the rangers and b) make Quill's son Kipper/Bo an apprentice to the rangers.

Then Leif just bubbled up in my head and overtook everyone else as the definitive back-up character. I think I was just playing around making a male dwarf, because I've never played a male dwarf before, and the original version just kind of grew on me.

I also couldn't resist adding in a Fairy ranger who was a Fey Wanderer, so that's Thorn... because, why would I not do that. He was never a serious contender for backup, I just wanted to round out the team. And then as part of Leif's backstory and an offhand comment by Fluffy, I came up with one final member who went south and can't get back, plus the apprentice he went to bring back. Bringing the final number to 10. The same as the druids before all the death and desertion and the same as the number of the towns.

I'll talk about it later, but it's kind of strange that they're all officially out there in the game (instead of just Dreth) now as NPCs rather than all just living in my head.

Moving on...

Unpacking.

Unpacking sucks even when you have a plan for what you're doing and know where things are ultimately going.

The only way that it can suck more is when you don't, in fact, have one of those plans.

Guess who hasn't had a plan all week. Yep, this guy.

I started out on Monday morning by going to take the old keys back to the land agent. Well, after I moved a lot of the boxes around, so that I could actually move stuff around in the main room.

But I sent through the email to my old land agent that I'd written over the weekend, then went and dropped the keys off, which was very anticlimactic. I literally gave them to the very disinterested receptionist, told her that I'd sent an email through to my land agent and that was that.

I still haven't gotten a fucking reply to my email though. Not even an "everything was great, your bond is being processed"... or, at the bare minimum, a "thank you for your email" message. Rude.

But because it was just around the corner from Cheap as Chips I went and wandered around there briefly, mostly looking for specific extension cords. Long story short, I went to four different places, took photos of a number of items that could be good, didn't buy anything, came home with just the printing for my new character from Officeworks.

Long story long, I went from Cheap as Chips to Big W, then to Kmart, then to Officeworks. While there was a lot of stuff I was vaguely interested in, nothing caught my eye enough to buy... and also I really needed to work out properly what I need. But it was nice to just go out and wander around for a bit.

Then I came back and rearranged the furniture in the main room for the... third... fourth time. I'm not sure at this point. I think fourth. Certainly the final time. Because, you know, of what happened next.

Next up I started unboxing DVDs... but made the fatal mistake of thinking that I should arrange things differently...

Like that specifically.

And, while it made sense from a practical perspective, having all the DVDs in the same space, It didn't quite... work. Maybe it would have if I'd broken up the arrangement a little more like what I ended up doing later, but all this led to was, essentially, decision paralysis.

A little like when I fell in a hole before the move because I couldn't see my way past the choice of a moving company. Even though I already had one booked.

So, after a conversation with Ma... one of many throughout the day on Monday, I reorganised the shelves, reorganised the DVDs and got things in much more of an appropriate structure, even if a lot of it was very similar/the same as the way I had it laid out in the old place.

At least it got me past my decision paralysis.

After that, I unboxed my CDs (I think there might be some in one of the other boxes still honestly), put them on their little skinny shelf, had dinner and started unboxing the books. While also working out all of the books that... I just don't care about anymore. It pretty much started when I opened one of the book boxes and there were those very famous books about a boy wizard. And, given certain behaviour by the author of those books, I realised that I just didn't care about the books anymore.

The movies are different, if only because those are the product of many people's effort and energy.

So they went into the donate box. And were followed by other things that just, in the words of a very wise woman, no longer sparked joy. But maybe they will for somebody else.

I did start off trying to put things on the shelves as I unboxed them, but I realised that I really needed to unbox it all and then work out what I wanted to put together together.

By the time I was finished unpacking all the book boxes, it was getting late, so I called it a night and started again in the morning.

There were some bits I knew... Elfquest books go here on the far left. Superhero graphic novels go there on the far right, other graphic novels go just under them. DnD books go in the centre section, right under the space where Lego R2D2 will go. Discworld books go all across that shelf, overflow on the next available shelf.

There's a system.

But beyond that I ended up grouping the books in ways I haven't before. The detective and mystery novels and the Penguin books went with the Discworld overflow, this shelf is now vampire/Gaiman and other odd-themed fiction... we'll call this shelf "made into/book about a movie/other media" shelf. Gay fiction goes over here... oh, and these two shelves... yeah, okay, that's the "whatever is left over" shelves.

Not all of it is perfect. I know that there are vampire novels on the "movie/media" shelf, some of the books on the vampire shelf should be on the media shelf... but I don't really care.

I do like the way the shelves came out though.

As you can also see from the photos, I did also move a shelf full of DVDs from the wide shelf on the left to the wide shelf on the right. Just because there weren't any DVDs on that bookcase and it just looked... odd.

And because I essentially got rid of a whole wide shelf full of books, it allowed me to have more shelves for decoration, and put all my DnD and other things of that nature across the bottom of the shelves on the left. Plus I have a spot at the bottom on the left for my small board game collection. Granted there's only Thornwatch down there right now, because the others are still in boxes.

There maybe be some minor adjustments in the coming days/weeks, but as things start to make more sense to me or I realise I need slightly more space in other areas, I can adjust shelves up and down as needed.

I like it though.

And unsurprisingly, once I had the bookcases sorted, the place felt more like it was mine. Partially because it had more of my STUFF visibly in it.

Then Tuesday night I got my biggest surprise.

Because I'd rearranged the furniture and had decided to take a break in order to watch Critical Role, as has been my Tuesday nights for some time. And because the chairs now face the window, I happened to glance through the window as the sun was setting and notice what I thought were birds... but it was very late for birds. Then I realised, not birds... bats.

The new apartment is directly in the nightly flight plan of the grey-headed flying foxes as they set out from their roosts in the Botanical Gardens and go hunting.

Fucking magical.

As is always the case, whenever I encounter bats at dusk, I instantly go back to the first trip we made to Sydney and standing at traffic lights on Oxford Street and seeing them fly over the top of a gothic looking church.

So, now I get to watch them flap their way past my front door on the regular. Love it. I will say that as much as I love the big languid fruit bats... I have a fondness for whatever the tiny little bats are that accompany them and fly around like they're overly caffeinated.

Wednesday... Wednesday was a lot.

I started on the kitchen on Wednesday. I'll be perfectly honest with you. I don't get putting food in kitchen cupboards. I get a pantry. I don't get cupboards. Because you end up putting everything in and then you can only see the stuff at the front, and I hate it.

Yeah... kitchen unpacking wasn't fun. I also broke a bowl. So, I emptied a lot of boxes, I folded a lot of packing paper and a lot of bubblewrap, I had stuff covering the counters. And in the end, the kitchen is still a disaster, I hate the layout of everything. Plus I've kind of ended up two two kitchens. The one made up of the pantry shelf and things on the left side of the room and the actual kitchen on the right side. With a Great Wall between them.

I'll get there. I'm not there yet. And about half of the cupboards are empty because a) I don't want to have to get on a ladder every time I want X item from the top shelf (a problem that I overcame at the old place by only putting stuff up the top I really didn't care about).

Also, once everything else is unpacked and things are in wardrobes and cupboards and places... then I can pull things out of the kitchen cupboards and work out what works for me. And by then I should have worked out what does and doesn't really work for me in that space.

It's annoying, because if the kitchen just continued along the back wall of the apartment and didn't fucking stick out in the middle of the room, I could have arranged things much more to my liking.

But it is what it is.

When I was done with the kitchen I think I ended up going through all the cards in my wallet and updating my address everywhere that I hadn't thought about updating it already. And that was an exercise in trying to log into websites I haven't logged into in upwards of 5 or 6 years. So that was... a lot.

I got most of it done though. There are some bits and pieces that might occur to me later, but overall, it was time well spent.

Thursday... mostly, I spent Thursday slightly in a huff.

Because we were supposed to be doing our Thursday night DnD return... but someone couldn't make it and people wanted to go ahead anyway, and I was like... just wait the extra fucking week. It's not like we were in the middle of anything. But I figured that we would go ahead anyway... and I wasn't about to sit there and debate it throughout the day. So I closed the laptop and continued unpacking.

Only to discover that a consensus has been agreed to in my absence that I was right. Which I always like, but by that point I'd finished shaving my head, taken a second shower, put on "going outside pants" and was assuming I was leaving the house. Turns out no. Which was also fine, I was tired, clearly cranky, and it was probably better all around that I didn't go out.

Otherwise, Thursday I unpacked more boxes... nothing major, a few bits of decor, like Lego R2D2, made things a little more organised, and generally tried to make space so that I could move around more easily.

It's a work in progress.

I also got through the majority of the YouTube videos I had in my To Watch list... because I just ended up watching the same three or four things essentially on repeat during the last few days at the old house.

And I made bread dough. Just plain. I need to work out the new baseline before I start fucking with it in the new oven.

Friday... Friday started with a trip to the Chiro. Which meant the first trip into the city on the bus. A little more of a walk, and I need to cross a couple of roads, but otherwise, easy enough. And I'm closer to the city now, which means a slightly shorter journey.

After the appointment, I did some shopping with my Christmas money. Actually, I started off by making an appointment to speak to somebody at the Apple Store about the issue I was having with my iPhone Calendar no long syncing with my Google Calendar.

Because I'm not dumb, I did that first, and then went shopping, because I knew that I was going to have to wait. So, let's shop.

I went and bought tiny folding scissors from Lincraft. They look... less well made that my memory of the ones I used to have. But what is weird is they look very much like the ones that Ma has. So either mine were slightly better quality originally... or my memory is faulty... or the correct answer occurs somewhere between those two thoughts.

But I now have tiny folding scissors on my keyring for the first time in 12 years. Woo.

I also picked up a Dungeon Masters Guide at Greenlight, along with one of those gemstone d6 dice from Level Up. Now I have all three core books from both 3e and 5e.

Then I went to Games World with the intention of getting a set of dice. Because I've spent a lot of time browsing in that store, and I kinda wanted to buy something for a change. Turns out that the specific dice set I wanted were masters of stealth. Supposedly they had two sets in store. And neither the guy behind the counter nor myself could actually find them.

So back to Greenlight, where I knew they had the dice I wanted... because I'd already seen them there. What I didn't realise is that the Nebula Spring dice had glow in the dark speckles through them, so that was a nice surprise.

They'll also be useful for both Leif and as my DM Feywild dice for Wild Beyond The Witchlight.

Sadly, at that point, I'd done all of my shopping, but the Apple Store wasn't ready for me... I mean, who is... but I wandered around a little more, and ended up just sitting outside for a while.

And after all of that, the answer was... delete the connection and reconnect it.

Fuck. Because, as I'd assumed, you no longer need to do the CalDiv thing, you just connect your Google account the calendar and go from there.

I think maybe why I used to do it the other way is that I used to sync my work calendar to my Google Calendar, and then that used to sync to my phone. Or... work calendar to phone, then to Google... something.

Was it worth the wait... based on time spent, no, not really. Based on result. Absolutely.

Then I headed home, realised that there were other buses I could have caught, but would have had to walked up from the Parade. So, we'll file that under "things that are good to know for later". But when I was almost home the landlord called about some maintenance things I'd logged with the land agent via email over the weekend. Good to know it's a fast turn around time. Also that the land agent is basically useless beyond being an email redirection.

But, he's going to come and look at/fix things on Tuesday.

I did a little more unpacking on Friday afternoon and then Fluffy arrived to do the Session Zero for Leif before Friday night DnD.

Like the Session Zero for Quill, it was good to get a handle on who the character was before unleashing them at the table.

Most of what I learned about Leif came from his interactions with Quill's son.

Also, the first bread cooked by electricity and not gas was... actually a pretty good success. What I discovered (and would have known if I'd thought about it for all of about 8 seconds) is that when the timer goes off on the oven, it cuts the heat off as well. Which is super useful, especially as I left the bread in for another five or so minutes, and it actually browned up beautifully and the crust went really crusty. Which was lovely.

So, not a disaster, put a check mark in the success column.

<brief pause for dinner>

And right on time, here come the bats. Hello babies.

So, Friday night DnD. It was good to be back after a week off. And I enjoyed introducing Leif to the others. The accent I worked out came and went a little. I wasn't trying for anything super thick, so it might waver a little until I dial it in properly. My keys to remember are "30% deep, 30% accent #2"... you know, the one that's a little bit Russian, a little bit non-specific Eastern European, a little bit Mediterranean Sea. But that was also the accent I did for Nightingale. But that was the lighter, female version.

Like I said, it's a work in progress. I need to remember to keep it deep though. Because dwarf.

Otherwise it was fun watching the fallout from my decision two weeks back. And catching them up on information I learned during my Session Zero.

And DM Fluffy got his DM rocks off by having an invisible creature steal from the party and nobody be able to work out what was going on. Worse still, my animal companion failed to work out something was wrong by failing the check by 1. Yep, a single unit of measure. Grrr.

Oh well... this isn't the Puppies and Rainbows adventure... and at least everyone is still alive. We all just feel real fucking dumb right now. Oh well.

I also took a set of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and dukkah that Ma gave me for Christmas... a couple of years ago. And we polished it the fuck off. It wasn't the best dukkah I've ever had, but the oil and the vinegar was quite nice. We also polished off a whole plate full of bread before we even sat at the table.

So that was a success.

Today wasn't much of anything honestly.

We did the supermarket thing, came back here, I wrangled Ma's iTunes in order to work out how to put her ring tones back on. Why they didn't come back over when mine did, I couldn't tell you. But that's fixed now.

Then we headed to Officeworks to print something for Ma... which turned into a disaster when the PDF refused to print the details that Ma had entered into the form. Like, it did some of them on one of the three pages, but not the rest of them. So that was frustrating.

After spending far too much time doing a job that should have been five minutes at most, we headed off to Kmart to take another look at some of the stuff I looked at on Monday.

But the Kmart we went to was a different one from the one I looked in on Monday, and they seemed to have about half as much stuff. A common problem in the world right now. So we didn't really get anything beyond some shades for my car and a pillow for Ma.

You could call it a completely wasted trip... but nothing on my mental shopping list is super urgent, and I probably want to do an IKEA run before making final decisions on a bunch of things.

On the upside, a bunch of empty but useful boxes, used packing paper and bubblewrap is now out of my house.

And I'm down to four large green boxes and two small green boxes. Plus another five or six random boxes, and the art that was in boxes from the old house. So I'm going okay. If only I didn't need to get rid of at least one piece of furniture before everything settles down into it's final spot. And my knee is much better, but not completely so, plus my bruises are fading to that yellow/green stage.

All in good time.

Current mood:

moving house 2022 megapost

This started out as a preamble for moving house, and then it turned into... something else. It clearly was all stuff that was living in my head that needed a place to go, so I'm going to leave it here. But, you know, you can just skip down to the bit where the bolded days of the week start. Or just skip right down to the actual moving day. I'm not the boss of you. Right now, I'm not really in a position to be the boss of anyone, honestly.

Oh, and the photos in this post may or may not be doing a weird spacing thing after the first one in certain browsers, and I can't work out why... just pretend they aren't doing it, please.

Commence random memory dump in... 3... 2... 1...

When I first moved out of home, I honestly have no memory of the move... not really. I don't remember putting things in boxes. I don't remember what happened on moving day. None of it. And we definitely had to move furniture, but, yeah, it's a total blank.

I also have... no memories of the move from that first place out to Golden Grove. Well, I think it was that move where the old bookcases got ropeburn. Because some people Ludo knew helped us move I think. I honestly don't know. It feels like that was that move. Maybe it was the move before. It could have been.

I have a couple of memories of the move from Golden Grove to North Adelaide. Mostly because I think it was the first time that I met Lownee's parents. And her dad gave me one of those bonecrushing handshakes where you feel all the little bones in your hand shift around. And I know we moved a bunch of her stuff outside the apartment in order to move my stuff into the apartment before we could then put her stuff into... whatever van or truck or whatever was being used. I do remember how the apartment looked the night of the move though. When my TV was up on the kitchen counter and the apartment was packed full of stuff and Ma went down the road and got Chinese take-away while I took a shower.

I don't remember the unpacking portion at all... just that one night.

The next move didn't happen for another 17 years... and while I documented that one in the blog, I only really remember bits and pieces of it. I remember losing the Very Important Folder and having a meltdown in the new kitchen. I remember doing an IKEA run to buy a chair and small bookcase and the like. I don't remember what we did about dinner that first night. I want to say pizza, but I'd have to look it up. Ah... turns out, pasta.

The move to this place will always be marked out by the mad dash I made at 12:15 am across town from the old place to here in order to make sure that I had working electricity on moving day. I also remember running up and down all of the stairs at the old place helping to load the moving van. And I remember that Ma went and got burgers from a place that no longer exists.

What feels super weird to me right now is that when I moved out of Childers Street I had nine days to pack and move. When I moved from Wellington Square to here, I had a month more or less, but I was also working full time, so only really had evenings and weekends to pack and get ready. And I only had two weeks from the time I got that apartment until moving day.

This time it's been... 45 days. Well, it will have been 45 days by the time the move comes around. So, some of my stuff has been packed in boxes for 40+ days. Part of that is because I was supposed to be out of here at the start of February, so these extra three weeks have both been a bonus, because no mad panic packing thus far, but also it just feels both like I've been "moving" forever but also it keeps feeling as though it's not really happening at all. And then something will remind me that, yes, in fact you are moving house. Very soon now.

This move will also be the first time I've had assistance that I didn't pay for or that wasn't Ma since the swap with Lownee. So that'll be weird. Good. But weird.

Okay, enough fucking reminiscing. Back to the present.

Let's go through the week that was...

Sunday.

I didn't really do a hell of a lot of moving related stuff today. Mostly, I did DnD related stuff to get my new character firmly in my head so that I can let him simmer away while I'm doing other things for the next two weeks.

I took the backstory I had already written for Leif, pulled the guts out of it and put it back together. Mostly it was the same, I just changed up the old childhood for a new one. And then tailored the rest of it to fit. I'm somewhat excited about introducing this new character. The only cause for concern is having him fit in with the rest of the party. And by rest I mean the two other characters.

Also, the voice. I have no idea what I'm doing with the voice. I did come up with something briefly today that I liked, but I didn't remember it fully about an hour later and haven't really tried anything out since then. It'll come to me when I get into the character, it'll be fine.

I also discovered that my Bakery Boyfriend is cheating on me, with a girlfriend. I mean, clearly, he's too pretty to be single. And yes, he's sweet. And I was under no delusions about the nature of our relationship. 

It's just weird that on my very last Sunday visit to the bakery, THAT was the day that he mentions a partner with a pronoun. Odd.

Monday.

I packed a box. I also started cleaning the oven. Well... I cleaned the grill tray and the racks in the oven. And gave myself a blister, because wet hands plus friction plus scouring sponge equals blister. Not a full on blister... but, you know, great timing.

Then I got distracted by the kitchen cupboard doors and started cleaning them and did some of it. Then I decided that I should go and give the windows outside a once-over while it was hot and they would dry out very quickly.

I nearly flooded the apartment. Kind of. Not from the windows, but when I took the giant sponge I bought on the weekend and sponged down the screen door... and the water dripped down and ran under the door. And suddenly I had a river of dirty water running across the floor. Go me.

At least I don't have carpet.

I also organised to meet the woman from the real estate agent at the apartment on Thursday afternoon and pick up the key. So, bonus there. It also means that we can do some runs of the fragile or awkward things on Thursday, before the movers show up at 7:30am on Friday morning.

And I watched The Spirit... which is a train wreck of a movie that is ALMOST the right kind of bad to be so bad it's good. But not quite. Plus, it's basically Sin City with less charismatic characters.

Tuesday.

I started "organising" things. I went through the box of art stuff that's been sitting alongside my bed for... six years... and reorganised the things inside it so that the lid would actually fit.

Honestly, there's going to be so much of that when I get to the new place. Going through things and discarding the stuff that I absolutely do not need.

Weirdly, I feel like I have both more stuff than when I moved from Wellington Square and also... less. Or else I've organised the boxes better... or... something.

I know that I went through my books more than once while I've been here and gotten rid of ones that I don't love/need any more, and I've been through other bits and pieces and culled stuff out. So, it's not maybe as bad as when I moved from the last place... but not as good as when I moved out of Childers Street, since at least in that case I was already in the process of going through things there as well. Plus while I had a lot of stuff, I had less house.

And maybe I had a little bit of a moment at the end of watching Critical Role, because that'll be the last episode I'll watch here. The next episode I'll watch will be in the new house. And I could say that about a lot of the things I watch on YouTube, but somehow it feels more real with that show.

Wednesday.

More organising.

I started on some of the stuff in the kitchen that I won't need before the move. And sorted out some of the boxes that probably won't come in handy and moved them to a spot where I can give them back to Ma, or we can just dump them in the recycling.

Cleaned some of the bits and pieces in the kitchen, stuff that just needed a wipe down. Which led to me pulling stuff out of the broom closet and putting it in my laundry hamper... it all sticks out the top more or less, but, fuck it, I will just tape the lid shut with some masking tape and they can put it on the fucking moving truck.

I also made The Plan for the next three days.

• Tomorrow: Final packing in the morning with Ma, pick up the keys, do some shuttle runs with Fluffy to the new place in the afternoon.
• Friday: Moving van arrives at 7:30am. Move all the things. Leave Ma here. Do the final shuttle runs with Fluffy. Start cleaning the old apartment in earnest.
• Saturday: Normal supermarket things. Move furniture around as needed. Come back to old apartment to finish cleaning. Start unpacking as appropriate.

I'm hoping that we can get most of the place cleaned on Friday, and just do a once over on Saturday and then I can drop the keys off on Saturday afternoon at the latest. But hopefully earlier... and maybe we could slot an IKEA run in on Saturday. Maybe. If we need to. I'm not sure we do, but after the last two moves we've gone to IKEA... so it just feels traditional at this stage.

I really don't want to have things to spill over to Sunday, but I have the keys until Monday and I didn't shut off the power or the gas until Monday, so we have the time.

I only put The Plan in so that when it invariably falls on it's ass at any point between now and then I can point at The Plan and laugh... or cry... you know, whatever is appropriate.

Thursday.

It's the day before the actual, full-on move and I am absolutely and completely broken.

On the up-side, everything that needs to be packed has been packed, more or less. I'll be honest, we ended up just throwing pots and pants into plastic bags, because every time we tried to shovel them into a box, it just didn't end well. By comparison, the bags worked a treat.

Ma came down first thing this morning and we packed the last of the stuff. Last of the pantry stuff, the stuff for my breakfast, all of the cutlery and crockery. You know, all the stuff that you need right up until the very last minute. Because I'd packed a couple of boxes throughout the week, we didn't have as much to do as I otherwise thought, which was nice. Honestly, that's been the best thing overall about having all this extra time. Being able to take my time.

I got my hands on the keys to the new place at 1:30 this afternoon... and of course, when I got to the new place, Fluffy had shown up at the old place, so he got to have a chat with Ma while I got the keys, did a first look around the place and then headed back.

So we did one run where we packed up Ma's car and my car, and did the first trip. Then after we unpacked Ma's car and we'd all had a look at the new place, I sent her on her merry way and Fluffy and I spent the afternoon doing a few runs of random stuff.

We got all of the very fragile things that I absolutely don't want the movers to touch, plus things that were just weird or not actually in boxes. We also threw the entirety of my wardrobe into the car and moved all of that over into the new place. The wardrobes are... weird. I might post a photo later.

As a complete sidebar, I spent so much time with a phone that didn't want to post things to Instagram and that had the battery life of a mayfly, so I got out of the habit of doing it. I'm trying to get better... there has already been some picture spam, there may be more picture spam during the move. We'll have to see.

I'm reminded of when I moved in here. I hated the cupboards, I thought the oven was ridiculous and far too huge, things just seemed wrong and different and weird. Yeah... I'm kind of there right now. Not in the same way. And I know I'll get over it, I know that I'll settle in. But right now... yeah, everything is just off enough to be annoying.

Case in point. The bathroom isn't super wide, however the toilet is on the north wall... and the toilet roll holder is on the fucking south wall. Like, you have to reach across the width of the bathroom in order to do that one simple thing. Also, the toilet is right next to the bathtub/shower. Like right next to. Stupidly too close.

Also, the cupboards are the opposite of here. Here they're all super deep and narrow (for the most part), but in the new place, they're mostly super wide and, for the most part, shallow. And there are a lot of cupboards that go around a corner, so they have those doors that fold in the middle. My least favourite kind of cupboard door.

As I said to Fluffy on our last trip, any kitchen fitters or designers or cupboard manufacturers should be forced to live with the kitchens they design for at least a year. Oh, you think this tiny sink is a good idea... sure, you live with it for 12 months... you think that putting cupboards there, there, there AND there and making them very narrow is the height of design... sure, now they're in your kitchen, let me know how you get on.

And when we left after the last run, we happened to run into the landlord. He seems very nice. I mean, it's still a little weird to me that he's in the same building. But at least maybe that means some things will get done when they should. Hopefully it doesn't backfire.

One thing I will say is that it is SO much quieter. Which isn't surprising, since I live on a major highway where big fucking trucks drive past at all hours of the day and night. That will mean less noise overall, but it may mean that what noise there is is more noticeable. We'll have to see.

I also had pizza for dinner. Because I have no food in the house that isn't in a box. Well, there's a bit of stuff in the fridge, but all the pots and pans are in the new place. And of course, because I haven't ordered pizza in... some time... I didn't do the usual thing I had previously done and put specific instructions on how to find my place in the order instructions... and, of course, the dumbfuck got lost. So lost in fact that I think he went back to the store. Thankfully the store is only about two minutes down the road. Also, because it's been so long, I didn't know that they made thickshakes. Pretty good thickshakes actually. So yeah, my last meal here was pizza and a malted thickshake.

Before I go to bed I need to do a few things. I need to pack up the PS4 and unplug some stuff and put the laptop in it's bag. I also still need to repack the Safe Spot box. Just to take anything out that doesn't need to go to the new place with the boxes. Or something. I don't know, I'm all kinds of tired right now, and I know what I need to do, I just can't fucking explain any of it.

I won't be posting this until afterwards, but if you can all retroactively pray for me for tomorrow, that would be great.

Friday - Moving Day.

Broken.

Merble fjan fooster, mij dorzon flerp.

I am borken in all the ways I expected and a few extra besides. And yes, I know I said borken. Every time I go to type broken it seems to come out that way... so we're going to leave that one in.

Roughly what I expected to happen last night happened. After I discombobulated the TV and the PS4 and the DVD player (which, for reasons known only to my brain, I referred to as a VCR player more than once today in front of the cute mover boys), and packed up the laptop last of all, I went to bed, tired, but relatively pleased that I was as organised as I could be for the move today.

And then my brain woke me up at 3am, and I was fully awake. For... a little bit. And then I got back to sleep.

And then woke up five minutes AFTER my alarm had gone off. I did swear quite spectacularly at that, honestly. I mean it was only five minutes, but by the same token, WTF brain.

And then (the last one, I promise), I turned on Das Internets... and it rumbled through it's whatever up until it just wasn't connecting to the actual internet. I very much had a "what the"... I know the plan was to turn off the internets in the old house today and to start the process of getting it up and running in the new house. But, that early?

So I did what any sane modern individual does. I turned it off and turned it back on again. And then it worked. Fuck you modem/NBN... not pulling that bullshit on the day I'm moving house thank you very much.

By that point, the thought of laying in bed any more kind of lost it's lustre, so I got up, showered and started moving stuff around, stripped the bed, and eventually started taking it apart. During that time Ma messaged me to say that she was on the way down, and the Fluffy did likewise. Then the movers called to say that they were leaving the depot. Fluffy arrived when I was about half way through taking the bed apart.

It was at that point that Fatal Mistake Number One occurred.

By which I mean that I tripped over one of the sides of the bed once I'd taken the end off, and we had a very slight "foot stays here, thigh goes that way, knee is displeased in the middle" moments. Yeah, not as bad as that one time. But enough that it's been painful all day, and may or may not have swelled up... I mean I think it did (sidebar, it definitely swelled up). It is definitely sore.

But right now... the only part of my body that isn't really sore is... my hair?

Movers arrived at about 7:15... but they also parked the trucks next door because that's easier and then were wandering in the direction of my place when my "Hot Boy Radar" went off and I knew they had arrived.

No, not really, what happened was I saw a Budget truck, then realised it was probably about time for them to be showing up, went out and there they were. The Budget truck turned out to be theirs, just in case not everything in my apartment fit into their big green moving truck.

Guess what, it did all fit.

So they started hauling things out to the truck, and Fluffy and I started assisting. And somehow that made us special and unique. So, I guess other people don't actually want to save money/time. Silly them.

I stuck to the lighter things, Fluffy did a great job, and we left the really heavy stuff and the furniture to them.

Ma arrived about a third of the way in. And brought breakfast. I mean, I had asked her to this time, unlike last time where she just spontaneously did it... but I also didn't know if she was going to do it... so it was a nice surprise anyway.

Packing the truck, officially, took from 7:15 to 8:45. Not bad at all.

At that point Fluffy and I left Ma and all the dustbunnies behind in the old place and jumped in the car to head to the new place, moving van in tow. Well, behind me all the way at least.

By that point, even with the very brief moment of sitting down in the car after wrenching my knee and the tromping up and down the stairs a bunch of times, I was definitely starting to feel it.

So, mostly we let the lovely moving boys drag things up the stairs. I did sent Fluffy to help at some stage. I absolutely would have also been tromping away up and down the stairs, but with my knee acting up, I wasn't about to push it and make it worse.

I got them to put things in certain spots. Not the spots anything is going to be in at the end of the road, obviously, because honestly, fucked if I know where the fuck anything is really going. I'm not there yet.

But places that felt sensible. Bedroom things in the bedroom, furniture all basically piled in one corner and boxes in a different corner.

Unsurprisingly, unpacking the truck took basically the same amount of time as packing the truck. In this case, 9 til 10:30. Then I paid them all of the moneys, thanked them profusely, and they toddled off on their merry moving way.

Sidebar... sitting here, typing this on the night of the move... The building keeps... making noises. I guess they're probably settling noises. As in, the exterior of the house cooling down. Or maybe it's the guy in the place next door. But it keeps throwing me off... because it's weird and new. 

On the upside, it is deliciously quiet outside right now. Yes, there are some cars driving past, but it's just normal, regular cars. At a normal rate for 10:30 at night. It's not every car in creation and very noisy trucks.

I will not miss those fucking trucks.

Fluffy and I headed back to the... old place. Sorry, I'll touch on it later, but until all my stuff was actually in this place, none of it felt real. I don't know why, but if also felt as though somebody was going to jump out from behind a bush and say "Haha... we got you... nah, bud, you're good, you don't need to go anywhere".

Alternatively it was my brain just wrapping itself in a layer of bubble wrap in order to give it some protection. Yeah, it was probably that second one.

There was a bunch of stuff that we either didn't get around to moving this morning (stuff we could have packed into my car, but just didn't because, life, complicated, difficult.

Also, we needed an extension cord for the fridge, the baby step ladder also for the fridge... and... honestly, I have no clue. Other things. It made sense at the time. It was probably just stuff that didn't need to be in the old house.

Then it was back to said old house... for All Of The Cleaning.

First and foremost. It's always much more filthy than you think it's going to be. You don't feel like you live in squalor and grime and filth... but, suddenly, everything is gross.

See also, unrelated photo of dead flies, bees and one spider who all got between the window and the screen behind the TV and died there. Because I doused them with fly spray generally.

Secondly... Fuck horizontal venetian blinds. Doubly fuck white IKEA ones that seem to be made out of paper. And triply fuck anyone who would decide to put them in an apartment next to a major road.

And, while we're at it... also fuck me for never fucking cleaning two of the sets of blinds.

However, on the flip side of that, bless Ma and doubly bless Fluffy for doing the very long, very boring job of cleaning the blinds, one row at at time, all the way up to very tippy top.

Because that left me free to attack the bathroom with the usual amount of gusto that I use during pre-inspection cleaning. Which basically means that I end up very, very wet. But the bathroom also ends up clean. And very, very wet.

I had also told Ma not to strain herself. And to take a rest whenever she needed to. Which she did. But there was also only a limited amount of things that she could really do.

Thankfully though, I had Fluffy there, which definitely helped. Not sure he had the Best Day Ever. But it made my day considerably better or easier.

We paused briefly at lunch and sent Fluffy to get sushi. Well. Other people had sushi. I had seaweed. I kind of wanted one of those little seaweed and rice... thingies... inari. I had one the other week and they were really nice. I was not wording on the higher levels by that point though and didn't describe them appropriately enough, so he ended up just bringing me a container of pickled seaweed, which, honestly, I wasn't mad at. Because it was very light and very refreshing and kind of hit the spot even though I wasn't particularly hungry.

At some later point in the afternoon I was trying to tell Fluffy something... and I just couldn't words. So I ended up talking gobbledygook at him. None of it meant anything, but I was able to sustain doing it for... a little bit too long honestly.

We also cleaned the windows. Yet another job that I have never actually bothered doing in that apartment, because fuck that. But we did it, and it actually looked pretty damn good once we were done.

And at some point Fatal Mistake Number Two happened, when I slipped coming in the door after washing down the balcony outside and... honestly, it happened so quickly, I don't really even know what precisely happened, but I banged/scraped my arm, probably along the door, possibly hitting the doorknob. I couldn't really tell you. I do know that within about five minutes it had turned into a graze and my forearm was all lumpy and right now it has developed into a lovely lump and, I am very sure, will go all manner of colours of purple and green and ick over the next week or so.

Honestly, I bumped, banged, scraped or otherwise totally fucked myself over all day. Whether it was stumbling coming up the stairs at some point and scraping my leg on one of the steps. I will point out that I have not fucking done that once in the entire time I've lived there. But, on moving day, yeah, that is totally what happened.

*mumble mumble*

By about 5:30, even though I probably could have kept going for longer, Ma suggested we call it there, and come back and finish off the last stuff tomorrow after shopping. Unfortunately sans Fluffy. But he did good.

So we packed up the car with everything left over that was going to the new house.

Fuck... except we didn't because I'd put two things in a safe spot to that they didn't get messed around while we were cleaning... and them promptly fucking forgot they were there. Even though I mentioned more than once that we needed to take them... I have now put a reminder in my phone for tomorrow... so, first thing, they get moved either into somebody's car, or into a space where we won't fucking forget them. Urgh.

Anyway...

Then back here, unpackery... and... honestly, we should have got pizza delivered. But the fucking website was doing my head in (also, I fucked up the order process, but it was very hard to actually go backwards to previous steps. So Fluffy and I walked down the road to get pizza.

Firstly, the distance from my place to the Parade is... longer than I expected. So, good to know, I'm 100% catching the bus on the street that is easier/quicker to get to.

Then, the pizza place was much further down the fucking road than I thought it was. So... too much fucking walking.

They are decent pizzas though. But I made myself even more sore by carrying said pizzas and a bottle of drink back to the house. I would totally have given Fluffy the drink and the garlic bread to carry, but, because they announced my order was ready when it technically wasn't. I don't fucking know what happened and by that point was too tired to care. But she gave us an additional bottle of drink, which was nice of her. I mean, I wasn't bothered either way, but she made the gesture so that's what counts.

Pizza was had. It was good pizza, as I said. A little colder than it would have been if we'd gotten it delivered. But when have I ever knocked back cold pizza. Never, that's when.

After pizza I asked Fluffy to help me put the bed together.

Cue Fatal Mistake Number Three. Or possibly it was three, four and five. I'm not sure.

So, because I was tired and not thinking clearly, I managed to get one of the big chunky nut pieces that fit on the screws that hold the bed together... lost inside the bed. Because, of course, the bedhead is hollow tube steel. And it now has an extra nut piece in it. We heard it sliding around in there... all the way from my side, then when we tipped it, down to the top, all the way along the other side and down onto the side where Fluffy's was sitting.

FARK.

Then, somehow I screwed one side of the foot of the bed in wrong. I think. I was tired, and I don't know how the fuck I did it. But they're both at a weird angle and I can't unscrew them. And also can't completely screw the nuts on. Enough to put the bed together. But minus one nut and with the other nuts sticking out slightly.

Just imagine that under this is a paragraph that is one, long, unbroken and very creative swearing sentence. It goes on for... some time.

I'm not going to say that I would have been better off doing it on my own, because that's probably not true. All of those things could have happened had I been doing it by myself. But, maybe, just maybe, I would have been paying a little more attention. So, I can't blame anybody but me, but it's still frustrating.

It also may have led to a moment of me letting go of all of the tension and frustration and fear and anger and... emotional baggage, honestly.

We're not talking "collapse against the kitchen counter and sob for what felt like 20 minutes, but was probably no more than 2, about a lost folder that turns out to be in the fucking bag with the pillows" mental breakdown. But I mentioned that moment and... basically invoked the thing from high atop the place or whatever. And I didn't want to. I don't know why... I just... it didn't feel like the right time. Whatever the fuck that means in this context.

And Ma was all saying nice things and I was just "hand"... and then she kept talking and I was all "index finger"... and then suddenly she's right there and she just fucking Elsa's me... "let it go"... three words that now only every fucking remind me of the stupid movie.

But it was the right thing to say and the right... everything. And, yeah, emotional catharsis. Necessary emotional catharsis.

Because you never REALLY live somewhere until you've had a big cry there, right? Right?

With a patented Yani Breakdown out of the way, I sent Ma and Fluffy on their respective ways. Well, Ma drove Fluffy home, because it was on her way and I wanted him to show her the way he showed me yesterday, because it's much more restful than driving down Portrush Road.

After they left, I pottered. I had to make the bed and I had to find the power pack for the laptop. Basically I kept getting distracted from Option A, because I couldn't find Option B, so I kept encountering other things, and doing those.

I found my standing lamp. Put the shade back on it. Plugged it in. Broke it. Not in a bad way, but one of the three arms that hold the shade in place at the top is now busted. It was also a $10 lamp from IKEA. The downside is that they no longer seem to make it, and the one closest to it is about three times the price and the cheap $11 lamp is... not as good.

We'll see. I can either try and superglue this one, put up with it was it is, or look at what they have in IKEA and what it looks like up close.

I also started to rearrange the bookcases a little. I think, possibly, I have a plan for the space between the door and the kitchen. It's not 100% of a plan right now, and I might change it. But it's 1% more plan that I had earlier in the day.

So, I pottered, I hung my clear shower curtain because absolutely fuck the fabric shower curtains that always seem to come with rented apartments. I hate them and they suck. Granted, maybe you don't want a clear curtain if the toilet is in the same room as the shower. But, it's a one bedroom apartment, you're already seeing each other naked, honestly.

I called Ma to check she got home. She was basically just about to text me, so I jumped the gun a tiny bit.

Then I finally made the bed and sat down to write this fucking opus.

And everything hurts. Which brings us all the way back around to the start of the post.

We did stick to the plan today as much as we were able, it was just the fucking blinds that threw us for a loop.

So tomorrow Ma and I go back and do Part 2 of the cleaning.

Yay. By which I mean... urgh.

I needa go to bed. Thanks for letting me burble.

Saturday - Post Moving Day.

Portrush Road apartment, who is she, we don't know her.

Also, if I thought I was broken yesterday, today was a whole new bag baby.

But it's done.

Not really according to the plan, because everything took five times as long as it needed to, both from a cleaning perspective and just generally from a me perspective.

Going back to the beginning though. No, not the beginning, we don't that kinda time. Just back to the start of today.

I slept... unsurprisingly... like shit. I think it was because every time I would have just naturally rolled over, I couldn't because my body was too stiff and sore, so I woke up in order to do said rolling. Good times, good times.

And when my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, I did what I always do, reached out on the right side of the bed (from my perspective) in order to grab said phone... and punched the chest of drawers that is now in that location. Not hard, you understand. But I still punched it. Because my body was working on muscle memory and not on the actual current layout of the bedroom. Weirdly enough, at Wellington Square, the bedside table was on that side of the bed also... but that was only for two years, six years ago.

I fucked around on my phone for a bit until Ma said she was on her way... then got up and surveyed the carnage. Yep, definitely carnagey...

Then I hit the shower. Only to discover... tragedy of tragedies... the shower fucking SUCKS. It's one of those stupid "take it down off the bracket and hold it in your hand" massage style showers. Urgh already. But the water pressure is abysmal and currently the shower can wash about 3 square inches of me at a time.

So, no. I'll be putting that on the list of things to send to the landlord. Can I please have a not stupid shower that actually works. It's bad enough that this shower is in the bathtub, or that there is a bathtub at all. Who needs a bathtub in this day and age. Laying around in your own filth water... no thank you.

Anyway... I got showered. I got dressed, Ma showed up. I climbed up and down the stairs for the first time today. It would not be the last.

It was very strange to have Ma come back towards the apartment with me and wait in the car while I went up to drop things off, then came back down and we went off to the supermarket. Don't get me wrong, not having to hike from the very front of the apartment block to the very back of the apartment block in order to get to and from my car is going to be a blessing. Albeit a blessing without a carport.

We went off to the supermarket. It took all of about three minutes to get there. So, not bad honestly.

When we got there, I suddenly realised that I actually had no idea what the hell I was going to buy, firstly because I didn't have any idea what I wanted to eat this week, but secondly, because I also have no idea where the hell I'm going to put anything after I buy it. Because all of my pantry things are in boxes and the actual pantry is currently standing by the door holding my two big Lego storage blocks. And a basket that is holding the glass tray out of my microwave. Because that's a thing that I absolutely should have done... I should have wrapped said glass tray in bubblewrap and stuck it back in the microwave, so the movers could have moved the whole thing.

But I didn't, so here we are.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah... where things are going. No clue. Not the foggiest, not even slightly.

After we got back and I unpacked everything that wasn't fridge related onto my kitchen counter, I needed to... organise. Actually, I think that started before I unpacked, because I didn't really have any space in which to unpack.

But it turned into me moving some stuff around, and then realising that while I had 900 plastic tubs full of random tchotchkes... I also had a corresponding 900 little cubbies in the wardrobe. So, in order to make some additional space until I actually need any of them, into the wardrobe they all went.

Excellent.

I basically made a space so that I could get around three sides of the giant pile of boxes in the back corner of the main room and moved all of the detritus that was back here (the stuff that Fluffy and I moved on Thursday) into the aforementioned wardrobe.

That just made me feel significantly better about life. Space. Not just the final frontier.

Goddam... I am just so tired... no, not tired... bone-weary. That's a much better description of it. Because that also covers a lot of the general soreness going on right now.

After that was done, I called my ISP to go "hey, no internet worky... wha-ha-happen?" The nice lady from an overseas call centre said that my internets was indeed connected and should be good to go. I told her... "no work"... and she put me through to tech support.

Now, I got through to her in less than 30 seconds... tech support on the other hand, I was on hold with for a Very Long Time.

But eventually the second nice lady from an overseas call centre with a fake Western name answered and started to walk me through things. And because I'm a person who exists in the world, I had already turned it off and turned it back on again. But she still got me to hit the reset button on the back.

You know, that little button that you have to stick a small slender object into and hold for a period of a few seconds. But, you have to have a small slender object first. And I've just moved house... and my everything is.. basically anywhere.

Eventually I found some safety pins in the kitchen junk drawer box, which I'd already opened to look for something that I would have already seen had it been there, because I repacked that box more neatly a couple of days before the move.

Anyway, reset did squat... and at this point, time was marching on, and I really wanted to get to the other place and start cleaning, and she was going to need me to either try and log into the modem via either my laptop or my phone... and, honestly, I wasn't about that life right then. So I told her that I'd need to call back when I could have the laptop ready to go.

And she offered to call me back. Tomorrow. Sunday. At 9am. Which, as customer service goes, is pretty much up there in my book.

So I just need to be ready to go tomorrow, and with any luck, I should be up and running with Das Internets before 10am. Not that you'll see this before that has already happened, but pray for me. Retroactively, when you're reading this, pray that it all worked out, and then keep reading to see how those prayers went.

After I got off the phone, we packed up the little bits of things we needed to take over (which was mostly just a change of clothes and a water bottle for me) and went to clean the ever-loving shit out of the old place.

I think I said something similar after the last two moves, but it's fucking weird to go back to a place you no longer technically live in after you've moved out of it. And all that's there is a shit-ton of cleaning products and the two items that I remembered I'd left there after we came back here yesterday.

Those definitely got moved to a place that I would not then forget them.

I also said it yesterday and I will 100% say it again today. Fuck those fucking venetian blinds right in all of their fuckholes. Fuck the combination of those blinds and the grime that comes off all of the trucks and cars that stream down Portrush Road on the daily. Add in the fact that I hadn't actually cleaned two of the sets of blinds in the entire time I lived there, what, they slowly went from mostly white to slightly less white and it took six years to happen... I didn't fucking notice or mostly care. But in any event, you've got a recipe for disaster right there.

I started off just wiping down the obvious dirty marks on all three sets that we cleaned yesterday and then it seemed as though as I was cleaning them, they were getting dirty again as they dried. Especially the underneath. So I drove myself crazy for a little while and then went... "Fuck this". Because I could have cleaned for another 8 hours and still somehow not gotten past cleaning those fucking things. So I don't care anymore.

Then we settled into what basically took us the remainder of the day. The kitchen. Based on the photo you'll see later on, I can imagine you're saying "WTF, why did that take so long?". Firstly, no fucking clue. Also, all my movements were super fucking slow, because knee. But mostly, you're right, it shouldn't have taken that long, but this was the big one... this was the very last time I would be cleaning it and the one where I was playing for all of the... wait, how does that saying go? No idea. Anyway, it was the final one and the one that counted. So I cleaned it more thoroughly than I had ever before I think.

Ma was amazing... going above and beyond. And more than once I told her... "just sit, you've done great, take a rest".

The stove, honestly, took the longest time I think... and at various points we were both working on it... Ma on the bits that could come off, me on the stove itself.

Also, the nice folks who make Jif... give yourselves a fucking pat on the back and, I dunno, some kind of a medal. That shit is amazing for getting through all the dirt and grime. Even stuff that I'd tried to get off previously and had failed at... still came off with some Jiff... and, honestly, the elbow grease of an elderly English woman.

My knee was in full scale revolt by this point. Actually, it's been in revolt all fucking day. Which is why everything took five hours longer than it otherwise should have and also why I made sure to put some ice on it this afternoon when we were back here. Just to help it along. And by along, I mean back to normality.

So I ended up cleaning the oven sitting on one of the folding chairs Ma had brought down, and that worked pretty well. Right up until the point where I tried to get up, leaned too heavily on one side of the chair rather than both equally and it tipped over and spilled my fat ass onto the floor. I wasn't hurt or anything, it was just ignominious... and given how much trouble I had standing up after sitting on the floor yesterday, the prospect of trying to get up again wasn't fun.

I knew that that was a brain thing though. My brain was telling me that if I put any weight on that knee it was going to hurt, so I should just stay where I was, even though I knew I could get up without putting the knee down, my brain was still sending me "NO, STOP" signals.

But at least it meant that I could finish off cleaning the inside of the oven from a spot that was actually much more appropriate and beneficial. I also discovered, quite by accident that the bottom of the oven lifts out for easier cleaning, so all those spots down the back I couldn't reach... suddenly I would reach them. Good times.

Did I fuck up the order of operations of the whole oven because I was so tired? Yes, yes I did.

What should have happened was... First we clean the rangehood, then we clean the top of the oven, then we clean the inside of the door and the inside of the oven, then we clean the outside of the door. Because otherwise things drip on things you've already cleaned and you end up cleaning the same things 10 times. 

I did not in fact do it in that order... so there was a little bit of recleaning already cleaned things going on. We got there in the end.

I also made sure to thank Emilia the Oven (it's the brand... I never thought about it most of the time I lived there, but yeah, since it was written across the bottom of the door, essentially my oven had a name)... thank her for being comedically large for a single person apartment, thank her for us learning to make bread together, thank her for all the giant pots of soup and the trays full of 40+ sausage rolls at a time and the big ass tuna mornays and everything that I learned to cook there or cooked there or was able to make a metric fuckton of because she was I always viewed as a catering sized oven.

Last up was mopping the floor. The job I always hated when there was a rental inspection. This time without being able to cut corners in several locations because of all of the furniture that couldn't be moved.

First though, we had to move all of the things that were left in the house out of the house and into the appropriate cars. And given that I was taking the stairs one at a time, this was not a fun bit for me. And meant that everything took 900 times as long. But we got there in the end. I sorted out some of the things we were taking back and ended up throwing a lot of them out. Partly because how many old cut up tee shirts do you need as cleaning rags when you already have a big unopened roll of Chux and do I really need three different bottles of this particular cleaning product? Maybe we combine those into one bottle and throw the empties away.

Then we set Ma up in one of the folding chairs on the balcony in front of my place with all the things that I didn't just want to leave in the car just yet, and I went in alone to tackle the mopping.

And so that I wouldn't be walking back across the floor that I'd already washed, I filled up all three buckets with hot water and floor cleaner and started in the bedroom, backed slowly out of the room before calling it wrapped in there. And then I refilled the one I'd been using, and staggered the three buckets across the floor, mopped the whole main room as I slowly backed out of it, dumping the dirty water outside as needed.

When I shut the door to mop behind it... I may have thanked the house for... well, everything really. Sheltering me, being a place to make memories, being a place I cultivated friendships, just... for being mine for the time that it was.

Actually, brief sidebar. 

If you're reading this, and you own a property that you rent out, you own it, absolutely, your name is on all the paperwork, you own it. 

But, it's not YOURS. It belongs to the people who live in it. Whether for two years or six years or seventeen years. Because they exist in it day by day, and they're the ones who say "Hello little house" when they get home, and understand all the dumb foibles of it... if you step on that bit of floor instead of this bit of floor, the floor complains about it, and exactly the right amount to turn on the shower to get it how they like it, or that the sink takes 900 hours to fill up, or whatever it is.

They're the ones who fill it with love and stuff and memories and milestones. It is theirs. Lock, stock and wonky door lock.

And when you decide to sell it, or you want to move your tenant on for some other reason, or you put the rent up in order to price your current tenant out, or however it is that one tenant leaves, only after they have taken everything of worth and value out of it, and it's just the walls and the appliances and the light fixtures. Then. Then it's yours. And have at it. You're welcome to what is left.

Moving on... in more ways than one.

I literally mopped myself out of the apartment for the final time. There was no going back both lierally and figuratively. I dumped the eco-safe wash water onto the garden bed and we, very slowly, took the last few things down to the cars.

And, as was decreed by the Old Gods and written in blood in the sacred texts... the very last item to come down those stairs from the place I no longer live was the very large Corningware casserole dish that I used every week to make bread dough. As it was, so shall it ever be. Amen.

And we got into our cars. And we left.

I don't live in the apartment on Portrush Road, right next to the Burnside Village, any more.

......

Did I briefly get teary driving down the road. You're goddam right I did. But it was just for a moment and it was just because I was saying the final goodbye, and by the time I'd driven past Burnside Village, it was done.

Of course, when we got back here, we then had to unpack everything from my car. And by we, I mean me. How many trips up and down the stairs was it? Nobody can say. Mostly because I wasn't paying attention... but, you know... 10+ maybe. Because I couldn't just drag everything up the stairs in a couple of trips, my knee was not having it.

Eventually though, it was done.

And we ordered pizza. Which will make three nights in a row that I've had pizza for dinner. Honestly, a bit of a shemozzle all around, for a variety of reasons, but if we do that again, I am absolutely going to no longer be ordering from the place that was just down the road from the old apartment. They used to be excellent... now they're just fucking it up on the regular.

But as I said, it was hot, it was fresh, it was tasty and I didn't have to fucking cook it. So a win all around honestly.

Afterwards I sent Ma homeward bound with my heartfelt thanks and a big hug... and settled in to pen this little ditty.

Now, even though it's only 9:30, I think I might just call it quits and go to bed. Or at least go and lie down and futz around on my phone for a bit. Because it's been a good little trooper the past two days, but it's nearly all the way down to a bat flattery.

As I am.

So, good night gentlehumans.

We might return to our regularly scheduled broadcast from next Saturday, but there might be something else between now and then, we'll just see how I feel.

Sunday.

Ow, my calves... ow, my calves... owwwwww... my calves. 

So many stairs, so much ow, my calves. Also my knee... but when I first got out of bed, ow, my calves.

I slept just fine... didn't wake up quite so many times I don't think, I don't currently have my bedside clock set up, so I really have no idea. I know I woke up once and it was only about 12:30, but that was about all I remember.

The shower still sucks balls. I wouldn't mind quite so much if the water didn't limp out of the shower head. In the words of a very wise inventor... "Give it some welly, lad".

Well... those of you offering your retroactive prayers for a speedy resolution to my lack of internet clearly let me down. Or at least the part where the woman said that she would call me back at 9am. 9am came and went... nothing... 9:10am... waiting... 9:15am... waiting... 9:20am... waiting...

So I called the ISP at 9:20, got through to someone almost instantly, and I think the whole security question bullshit stuff took longer than him fixing the problem.

Basically it amounted to "put the yellow cord into the blue hole on the back of the modem, not the yellow hole". And then it worked. What the what now? I mean, sure, if that get's me internet enabled, whatever you say bud. But why isn't the cable blue in that case?

Doesn't really matter I guess, since it's fixed now. Yay.

Much, much later...

Okay, nothing is working out the way I want or need it to, so I'm taking a fucking break. Plus, I haven't really had anything much to eat all day, and I've been on my feet all afternoon, so I deserve to sit down. Also, I don't know whether I'm overtired, overcaffeinated or overstressed, but one or more than one of those three things appear to be making me feel like throwing up.

I thought... oh, if I put that there, and I move that there, and then put that there, I can start putting those bits of furniture over there, which means that I can put the bookcases where they need to go, which then means I can start unpacking boxes. Which means I can clear some space.

So I did all of that. And discovered that, no, in fact, all of the bookcases won't go along that one wall. Four of them will. But not the fifth tall skinny one.

Okay then, I thought, if that needs to go over by where I'm putting the TV, then maybe we just put all of the DVDs in that bookcase. That should work, right? So I start unpacking and alphabetising once again. Because while I MOSTLY put them into boxes in the right order, they do tend to get shuffled around a bit, either in the packing or unpacking process.

Box 5, unpacked... box 4, unpacked... box 3, oh, wait (yeah, I think I labelled what was in them first and then came back later and put the numbers on and got those ones completely the wrong way around). At the end of box 4 and the start of box 3 I realised, there's only a shelf and a half left for a whole box worth of DVDs... that's not going to work.

I also don't really love the big giant skinny bookcase standing there next to the small, low TV table. It might feel more balanced when the TV is on it, but right now, it looks... weird.

Soooooo... I'm... displeased. About life in general. But more specifically about the apartment and my furniture and the combination of the two.

Also, I've been standing up/moving things around since noonish when I started by cleaning the top of the fridge and the top of the microwave, so I'm just generally sore now. Sore and annoyed.

I don't know if I should just shift the two big bookcases next to each other on that wall, push the other three skinny ones together on the other side of the door... but then where does the stuff that I'd decided goes along that wall go?

And I've moved all the boxes around from the giant stack they were in, so now a bunch of them are pushed up against the furniture, so now I have to move those before I move anything else.

There are two problems at work here.

Firstly. When I moved into Wellington Square, I bought a tall "bar" table for my dining table. And a new short bookcase to replace the one I left behind at Childers Street and two small black console tables, one for by the front door, one for an empty bit of space under the aircon and a wire kitchen bench that I used to use for breakfast prep and a bedside table that I stained and painted and varnished myself and a square coffee table and a shoe rack.

Then when I moved into Portrush Road, I bought a rolling kitchen bench for prep space, and a chest of drawers because the new place didn't have any drawers of any kind in the bedroom and a wire rack to use as my pantry because the cupboards were ridiculous... and later I bought a dining table and four chairs... because I had delusions about actually having people come to my house for things. Not dinner, obviously, but other things. DnD and boardgames and such.

This place is slightly smaller all around.

Secondly. Both of the previous apartments had a long, blank section of wall with no doors or windows or inconvenient power points or the like.

The main room in this place is, more or less, a square, but a square with something happening on every single wall. The kitchen takes up that corner and sticks out into the middle of the room, and that wall to the right of it has a powerpoint at one end but the front door at the other end. And then the wall with the door also has a window, then there's some blank wall, but there's a powerpoint in a weird spot in the middle of that stretch, and then the next wall has a door smack in the middle of it, and the aircon in the top right corner. Then the final wall has a high up window along the whole space between the aircon and the kitchen cupboards more or less.

So I can't even do the things I've done in both previous apartments and just run the bookcases along a straight, flat bit of wall.

Essentially, what I knew to be true is more or less true. I have at least one too many pieces of furniture for this apartment.

Also that I kind of need to move all the boxes into the bedroom to be able to have a proper run at organising the furniture.

Maybe what I should have done was get the movers to basically dump all of my stuff at the bottom of the stairs from out of the truck and then got them to bring it up in a sensible order. Bookcases, other big furniture, then boxes. Yeah, that would have taken more time and cost me more money, but, you know, it could have been a good plan.

I feel like, as much as I hate to say it, that this is going to have to be a Not Today problem. Maybe tomorrow after I get back from dropping off the keys.

I'm going to go back to the start of this post, do a final edit and then post it, while I think about... things. Maybe enlist some outside assistance with moving shit around.

Later again...

As much as I love having fully functioning internet two days after moving house (or, you know, if I'd plugged the plug into the right plug instead of the plug that I thought it was) immediately... there was something of a buffer to having no internet for a week or so. It meant that by the time I posted about the move, everything was situated correctly and I'd unpacked a lot of the boxes and I was much more settled.

This time... not so much. I'm about to hit "Publish" on this mo-fo and I don't even have my kettle or my cereal or my coffee cup unpacked. Yeah, I think I'm going to give up on furniture and do that for the rest of the evening... right after I clear enough space so that I can get into bed and get into the kitchen to make some sort of food.

But stay tuned... I'll get there... it just seems like it's going to take me a little longer this time around. Updates with be forthcoming once I have something worthy of updating.

Current mood:

photo saturday: new leif

So... sometimes you need to go back and completely redo a character. Turn over a new Leif if you will. Yeah, I know, shut up... but it was too good not to.

Welcome to today's DnD Character Colouring Book... where I completely re-do my backup character for the Friday night DnD game, because he's going to make his debut in two weeks.

I really liked the old version when I made him. A lot. But now looking at the new version, the old one just looks so bad by comparison. And I adore the new version.

Part of that is the Tundra gear set they dropped on Hero Forge a couple of weeks ago. It's so beautifully designed and has so many intricate little details. Also, yes, I made him a little less chonky, it just made the clothes sit better.

And I deepened his skin tone. I don't even really know why. He just... needed it to be darker.

But yeah... he's needed.

Not that Quillamina is dead... but she's been... taken off the board. By my own hand. But more on that later.

I started redoing his character sheet and got halfway through it and realised that I didn't actually want to make a Strength based ranger the way I originally designed him. Even though I really liked the ideas I had for his weapons. So that version of him is also getting a do-over. Same with the background I'd previously written. I need to live with him in my head for a little while to see who he tells me he is now that I have his visual look nailed down. Because I think he's somebody different to who he started out as.

On the plus side, I like him more now. And some of that old backstory will still function. But there's some other bits and pieces I need to mix in.

Moving on...

I've started doing "lasts"... as of last night. *ba dum tish*

Last loaf of DnD Bread baked in this house, last Saturday that Ma comes to this place before we go shopping, last time I'll drive home from Friday night DnD to this apartment. Last Photo Saturday post written entirely here.

Tomorrow will be the last time I go to the Village bakery on a Sunday.

It all feels... real now. Actually that happened earlier in the week, when I finally booked in the change of address for the electricity and gas and internet. Turns out I don't seem to have gas at the new place, which is a drag, because I much prefer gas hot water and gas for cooking. But it is what it is. Too late now.

I'm getting all out of order though. But I'm really all a bit jumbly right now honestly.

Rolling back to Monday. The woman from the land agent's office turned up with the "stylist" who I've been mentally calling Auntie Joan all week... not because her name was Joan or I have an Auntie Joan or she looked like any of my aunts... but she, herself, just looked like an Auntie Joan and not at all like a stylist who puts together rooms for real estate photos/open inspections.

They were here for about five minutes tops, I told the woman from my real estate agent about all the bits and pieces that have been issues and whatnot, and after they'd wandered around they headed off. All very painless.

Then she showed up again on Thursday with the painter. And because painter, they were at least 20 minutes later than the time she told me they'd be here. While they wandered around doing their thing, I started taking the shelves out of the empty kitchen cupboards and wiping them down, more to give myself something to do than anything else.

But then they left and I kept doing it... and then I had gone through all of the upper cupboards, wiped them down inside, reorganised the shelves in a couple of them and basically got them ready to go. So, bonus there.

I also called the moving company to have them talk me through the stupid insurance form, and spoke to the woman I'd spoken to originally, which was nice.

At various points during the week I dragged various bits and pieces out of wardrobes or cupboards or what have you and moved them to a more central area. Or in the case of all the cleaning supplies and the bathroom cabinet, transferred them into some green IKEA storage tubs that I have.

Fluffy and I had a conversation about the move on Friday night when he got here (last time he's coming here before a DnD game... I could do this all day long), which kind of helped me orientate some of my thinking that had been a little ephemeral into a more defined idea. Which was nice.

And then it was Friday night DnD.

So, remember last week, when I said we were all "technically" dead/fucked/paralysed? Yeah, turns out... that, but turned into frozen sculptures. Good times.

But a mystical NPC that keeps showing up... showed up... and gave us a choice. We could stay frozen for "years" and she could then get us out without an issue, or she could get us out immediately, but we'd have to fight a god. Yeah, not great options for any number of reasons.

And then I threw DM Fluffy a little bit of a curve ball. One that I had been considering before I even knew what the "consequence" for failing the "reward" test from last week were going to be.

"What if one of us stays behind in place of the others?"

Because... yes, Quill would 100% do that. She's the one that triggered the reward test in the room, she's the one that encouraged them to look in that room in the first place, she's the one that, really, convinced the other two to try for the reward. And... because of backstory motivations that Fluffy and I came up with between us, she's always felt like the goddess has kind of had it in for her.

The other two characters weren't fans of the idea, but the other choices were also unappealing. Fighting three phases of the avatar of a god... which maybe, possibly, we could have survived... maybe. Or waiting some number of years, which we also couldn't do because of other people's story stuff.

But I talked them around. Also, Quill is the one who has... done a lot of her story stuff. The adventure kind of frontloaded my character a little bit, just because of the way that Fluffy integrated my background with the existing story beats... and she's lost her husband, her son is safely off with the rangers that my backup character is a part of, so I have a built in reason to still care about his safety, and while there were some conversations I would have liked to have with certain NPCs about why they did certain things, none of it was... vital.

The other two characters, they still have outstanding stuff to do. We need to save Mr's sister and Mrs has to revisit a location she's connected to, and also work out what's going on with her and a competing god to the one we've been dealing with.

Plus, given that Mr and Mrs are totally roleplaying their characters being super into each other and Quill has, on a couple of occasions, given one or the other of them a gentle (and not so gentle) shove in that direction, so I wasn't about to separate them.

And my girl is TIRED... she's been through it. So taking a time out... even if you're not aware of time passing... it's a tempting proposition.

And yeah, we could have left behind the NPC... but that was absolutely the coward's way out. And too damn easy.

So, Quill stays behind... as a frozen statue... on the island of the Goddess of Winter. And we're skipping next week due to me moving house, but when we come back, I'll be playing a new character.

The time is just the TINIEST bit on the nose, honestly. I move house and move characters. Yeah, wow, you couldn't write nor plan this shit.

At the very least it gives me something that ISN'T moving house to occupy my brain for the next two weeks... so that's... helpful...

Anyway...

Today was... less productive than I thought I needed it to be but also more helpful than otherwise expected.

First up, shopping. I didn't buy a ton of stuff, because Thursday and Friday will be a write off in that regard. Plus the less I buy and don't consume within the week, the less I have to move.

But on the way to the supermarket I told Ma the story about Quill... and may have, at some point, finished that story by having a little scream in the car. Because, while I fully did it to myself with knowledge of what I was doing... I don't think the full weight of it 100% hit me until I was explaining it to someone who wasn't there.

We did the shopping, we came back here, I unpacked my brain for Ma about plans for the move, I unpacked the shopping.

Then we kind of tried to work out what needed packing vs what really needs to wait until Thursday and which of the weirdly shaped or fragile or otherwise odd objects I have left can be appropriately packed together. We did get through one box... then decided to head out to Officeworks to grab Ma a different phone cover than the one we originally bought when she got her phone, because that one turned out to be... a slippery noodle. Mostly though, we went to pick up a couple of their packing boxes.

Because I'm not going to have enough boxes otherwise. And there may or may not need to be a last minute mad dash to somewhere for additional boxes on Thursday afternoon. We'll have to see.

But we came back here and packed up some of the fragile teapots and cups and whatnot... in a box that I already had... so... there's that.

And then I sent Ma home. Because we'd done enough for today.

Six days and counting.

Current mood: