Pumpkins!

So, there's a pumpkin patch in town hosted by one of the local churches - happens to be the one where Lindsay's mom works. And as everyone knows, pumpkin patches = fun and pretty, so here are some photographs.

There are lots of pumpkins at the pumpkin patch, as one would expect. There are also various pumpkin people tacked to trees - this sounds gruesome, but is in actuality cute. :)

There are normal pumpkins at the patch...

...and knobbly pumpkins.

So, obviously, I had to get one. My pumpkin was cute and round and I drew a face on him. And then Lindsay and I carved him.

Step 1: Stab your pumpkin in the head.

Step 2: Pumpkin guts!

Step 3: Carve tiny bits out of your pumpkin until you get a face.

Step 4: Yay pumpkin! :)

Happy Halloween!

El Mercado

Today, I went with Linds and her mom to El Mercado, a huge market area in downtown San Antonio. So, of course, pictures followed. :)

First, we stopped and had lunch at Mi Tierra, a long-time, very popular Mexican restaurant (it was super-nummy, btw). The inside was very pinata chic.

There were also lots of these neat metallic napkiny cut-out thingies hanging from the ceiling. I used to know what they were called, and then Stephens cut the Spanish department and I forgot the word for them. Yeah, that's how that works.

After eating, we went to the market section, which was indoors and filled with lots of little stalls full of touristy fun things, such as fake fruit hanging from ropes:

And pink cowboy hats with plastic tiaras glued to the front.

There was a wall full of pictures of Frida Kahlo portraits, pictures of Jesus, and some optical illusions (people made of fruit, two mariachi singers that could also be viewed as the profiles of an old man and woman, etc). There was also this picture of the Mona Lisa, made from animals. If you look closely, you'll see her neck is a cat.

Then, of course, there were typical market things, such as colorful baskets and paper streamers:

One of my favorite stands was in a little corner, and it was chock full of overtly gaudy religious icons and suns and moons and basically anything that they could take a Bedazzler to.

There were also tons of Dia de los Muertos figurines in the market, all of which were creepy but cool.

And these spoons:

Also, in the same corner with all the bedazzled fun stuff, there was this little shrine. To.. these people. :)

I hear there's also a farmer's market down there on certain days of the month - I think I'll have to check this out sometime.

Oh, and btw...

Those of you who watch Gilmore GIrls will get this: this place is totally the Star's Hollow of Texas. Soon I will post pictures to prove my point. ;)

Hmm.

New development: the cat is afraid of the new apartment.

Seriously, he hides all the time during the day. For the past three weeks, he's been in one of three places: 1) in the raised window in my bathroom, which is tucked away and hidden from the rest of the apartment; 2) under Lindsay's bed; or 3) hiding in my shower. Only in the past two days has he started sleeping on my bed throughout the afternoon.

It also took me AGES to figure out what he's frightened of--the automatic gate out front that secures the apartment complex. When you drive up, you enter a code or press a button on a remote given to you by the landlord, and the gate slides open - when you leave, there's an automatic sensor on the inside that triggers the gate and, again, it slides open.

The other day, the cat was in my bedroom window in the evening when it was open, and the gate was closing. He started growling like crazy, so being a nice pet owner, I tried to pet and comfort him. This worked for a bit, and then another car arrived and the gate slid open again. Pippin FREAKED OUT: biting, scratching, growling, hissing, the whole nine yards, and finally flew over my shoulder and disappeared to some unknown hiding place for a good four hours.

My cat is neurotic.

I'm back!

Got a little waylaid by the sudden death of my laptop, which I have had since.. 2004, I think. Poor thing. Anyway, the situation is remedied, so new posts will be up soon. :)

Settling In

Okay, so it's been a couple weeks since moving into the new apartment, and it's about 90% unpacked. The rest of it is waiting on a few new pieces of furniture that will have to wait until jobs are found, like a dresser in my closet, a desk in Lindsay's room, an end table by the couch, etc. I'm thinking tomorrow might be a good time to go comb the pricier neighborhoods in the area for garage sales or even just discarded furniture. After all, that's how I found the table and chairs I had on my back porch in CoMo.

A few notable things about the new apartment, or townhouse as it's called in the lease:

1. The kitchen is SO MUCH NICER. It's big, it's open, there's a massive amount of storage, and there's even a pantry. AND it came with a wall-mounted microwave. And brand new appliances. And lots of happy things.

2. Storage everywhere! I have a walk-in closet! Yes, there did happen to be a ginormous cockroach that crawled on the closet door the other day, but that seems to have been a fluke - wondering if it hitched a ride inside, or if it was inadvertently brought along from CoMo.

3. No brown recluses! There is not much more to say to this than YAY.

4. Internet is great and super-fast and super-cheap. Time Warner = awesome. Cable TV will come soon. Again, needs to wait until a job is found.

As for jobs, I've applied for a few, so now I just have to find more that are appealing and play the waiting game on the ones I've already submitted applications for. Would love to work for a publishing company or textbook company in the area. None of the schools are hiring right now, and a few people have been really discouraging about the chances of getting teaching jobs in the current economy with alternative certification instead of a Bachelor's in Education. Oh well. I'll figure things out. If the teaching doesn't work, then something else will. More on the jobs later. Right now, it's bed time.

Unloading the truck

Just a quick post to point out that unloading the U-Haul took about a fourth of the time it took to load the truck. Seriously.

Another plus is that nothing was damaged! Probably thanks to Maggie's amazing packing skills. :) And a big yay to Ed, the new landlord, for saying we could move in today, even though rent for us this month doesn't start until Saturday the 5th. Score for friendly people!

Anyway, truck is unloaded and heading back to one of the local U-Haul places this morning. We dubbed Lindsay's mom--whose real name is Janet--to be "Earlene the Trucker." It's a sad day to see Earlene's truck going back to the yard.

The Drive

The drive, to be honest, wasn't too bad. It was long, but divided up fairly evenly between two days: just about eight hours the first day, eight hours the second day. Because my roommate Lindsay had her car, I had my car, and we had the moving truck (which Lindsay's mom drove), we had a caravan. Lindsay led the way, I followed in the middle, and her mom brought up the rear. Pippin rode in my car in the passenger seat and was very well behaved the whole way - I was proud of him. :) No meowing fits, no freak-outs. He just sat there and watched me and dozed.

And, because of our impeccable timing, we only hit one city during rush hour: Tulsa. Not too bad. I was worried we'd get stuck in Oklahoma City during rush hour.. or Fort Worth or Austin. But nope!

Also, my car gets amazing highway mileage. YAY MAGNUS.

Here are a few pics from the drive:

My view for the duration of the drive. You have no idea how many times I sang the letters of Lindsay's license plate to the cat. PC2-XOW!!!

Speaking of the cat, here he is looking a little peeved to be in the car. :)

Loading the Truck

All I can say is thank God for Maggie! If she hadn't come to help, all the stuff would not have fit in the truck. Maggie is the queen of organization and figured out how to perfectly fit all the furniture in such a way that it won't slide, won't get damaged, and--most importantly--fits in the truck. A bunch of other people were supposed to come and help with loading the truck, but they flaked--except for one, who broke her toe and fractured her metatarsal, so I think she had every reason to avoid lifting heavy boxes and furniture. To those of you who flaked out, YOU SUCK. I deem our friendship over. -_-

Otherwise, loading the truck was hard work and took AGES. Lots longer than any of us expected. Regardless, we got everything piled inside and then cleaned the apartment. According to the landlord, we get our security deposit back. :)

And! The landlord let me leave a note for the new tenants about Catinca--one of the girls moving in is a vet student, so Catinca will be in good hands. This is a big weight off my shoulders, because I was really concerned about what would happen to her.

Tomorrow, driving to Oklahoma.

The Truck

Okay, so we arrived at UHaul a little later than our planned time of 9:00 a.m. When we pulled up, they had a row of trucks pulled up to the building for pick-up that day... and the first one there was a 14-foot truck with a giant green spider on the side. Lindsay and I (and her mom, who came up to help us move) approached the building, with a conversation that went pretty much like this:

Lindsay: Is that our truck?
Me: But.. the spider!
Lindsay: I told you we were going to get the spider!
Me: It's a happy spider, at least.
Lindsay: I refuse to get in a truck with a spider on the side.
Me: It's huge. Why would UHaul even make a truck with a giant spider on it? Didn't they see Arachnophobia?
Lindsay: What if we open the truck and there's a giant spider inside waiting for us?
Me: What, like Aragog? Maybe he'd help us move.
Lindsay: Yeah, or eat us.

After standing around inside the building for a good twenty minutes while we got the truck rented and ready to go, we were directed outside--to a different truck! No spider! No bad omens about hauling brown recluse to Texas! Instead, we got this truck:

Canada Truck to the rescue!

Thursday

Mishap number one fixed: comforter is sitting in the dining room in a nice laundry bag, all ready to be moved. Since the cleaners are next to a Starbucks... my comforter smells heavily of coffee. I was hoping for a nice fresh clean smell, but instead.. Starbucks. They give you frappuccinos and launder your bedding.

Packed most of my room today - tomorrow need to tackle the rest of the living room and kitchen, plus paint the bedrooms. Can't put that off any longer.

Yesterday, I went with Linds to Flat Branch to spend the rest of a gift card one of my students gave to me at the end of last school year. There was a ton on it, so we both got some of their house-made beer (Linds got Brown Ale, I got Scottish Ale), a BBQ Chicken pizza for Linds, a turkey and swiss sub for me with nummy mashers, and the best thing of all--the chokes and cheese appetizer.

Best. Thing. Ever. Freshly made artichoke dip with Parmesan cheese, fresh veggies, and a bread bowl.

Also, Pippin is all packed and ready to go.

Mishap No. 1

Okay. When you move, there are always last minute problems. The first of them occurred today.

I wrote the other day about dropping off my comforter at the dry-cleaners--yeah, of course it's the cleaners, when are they not jerking people around? I took my comforter, dropped it off, got my claim ticket, everything was fine. Went out today to pick it up--was told that, despite my ticket saying to pick it up before 3:00, the day's shipment of cleaned clothes etc wouldn't be dropped off until 3:00. So, I drove to the bank, did a few other errands, went back.

Still no comforter.

Frustrated, I went into the back room and flagged down the woman working. Turns out that, oh, it takes a week for household items to be cleaned. My claim ticket says two days. Good job with communication there. This made me angry. So I pitched a bit of a fit, telling this woman that I would be out of the state in a week, and I wouldn't have dropped it off with them if I had known it was going to take that long. She seemed most concerned that I'd made two trips to the cleaners in one day. I told her that I didn't really care about making two trips, my issue was that I need my $300 comforter back now.

But, of course, she can't do anything. She sends me across town to the "plant" where they do the cleaning. It's on Business Loop--I figure this out after she gives me about five minutes of strange instructions, ending with, "And it's on Business Loop, right by College [street], in a strip mall."

So I left. It took me twenty minutes to get to Business Loop because, of course, they're doing road construction on every street in the entire town. Finally get to the right intersection. I can't find this place anywhere, so I drive down a few blocks and double back. After doing this a few times, I finally find it.

The "plant," or the main headquarters, is in a tiny, run-down building with no air-conditioning and no parking lot. I wedge my car far enough off the street that I won't get hit and head inside.

Enter a wizened old woman who looks like she's had about a gajillion too many cigarettes. I explain my problem, hand her my claim ticket, and she disappears into the back for about five minutes. When she returns, no comforter.

"I dunno, it's not there," she says.

I'm about ready to start ripping people into pieces all Edward Cullen style (yes, I did just make a Twilight reference, enjoy it and laugh at the ridiculousness of that), and she decides to go look again.

Five minutes later, still no comforter.

"It's probably next door being cleaned."

She can't walk next door and find out? No, of course she can't. She looks like one more puff on a cigarette will finish her off. Seeing that I'm pissed, she promises that it'll be clean Thursday after 3:00, available at the location where I dropped it off. If it's done sooner, she'll call me.

I swear, if it's not done on Thursday after 3:00, I will go postal on these people. They owe me my comforter or $300. They can pick.

In the meantime, there are a gazillion things to do at the apartment.

• The bedrooms need to be painted.
• Everything else needs to be packed.
• Clothes, sheets, towels, etc need to be laundered tonight and tomorrow before the washer/dryer set is picked up by its new owners on Thursday.
• My comforter needs to be freaking picked up.
• The entire novella of a checklist of cleaning needs to be completed so we get our deposit back. This includes pulling out the fridge and cleaning beneath it. Are you kidding me?

Ugh. And, of course, everyone wants to do things. This is that point in the move when people in town realize that I will not be here in a few days and it's time to do something together one last time. This is all well and good, but.. I have a lot to do. Almost every evening this week is spoken for by some scheduled meeting or dinner.

I'm sure everything will get done, but I think it's about to get really crazy.

Guns, y'all! Whoooo!

You know why it's time to leave this place? It's 12:50 in the morning, and two minutes ago someone fired a gun off in the courtyard of the apartment complex. Never fear, it sounded like a glorified cap gun or something, but still.. really? Really?

What happened to my nice peaceful, pretty apartment complex? With the glittering pool and nice neighbors who asked my roommates and me to play volleyball on the sand court right outside our back door?

By the way, guys--they dismantled the volleyball court earlier this year. No more net, and they put grass seed in the sand.

Little concerned about why someone fired a gun. Hoping it wasn't some crazy drunk person or cat-hater aiming at Catinca or one of the other cats. -_- Seven days to go.

How to Destroy Curtains in One Easy Step

Right, so, I took the dining room curtains down today. These curtains were red and gauzy, with a heavy panel at the top of red and gold embroidered fabric. They were about three and a half feet wide and seven-ish feet long. Just in case, I checked the cleaning instructions on the tag--sure enough, it said to machine wash them.

Just keep in mind that I'm not one of those anti-dry cleaning people. I just took my comforter to the cleaners today, even though it's machine washable. As if my washing machine is that big.

Anyway, so I washed the curtains. Went and ran a few errands. Just pulled them out of the washer--I didn't even dry them--and this is what they looked like.

Magically, the curtains are now ruched. Linds, who is holding this panel, said it looked like a prom dress.



And check out that amazing hole.

So, of course, we both flounced around in the curtains for a while, pretending we were in Oscar or prom dresses. Maybe--just maybe--curtains should be made a bit better, eh? Yeeeeah, that's what I thought.

Oh, and here's a picture of Pippin just for fun. He was lying in his box-tower, but flipping the picture upside down makes it so much better.

Flying box cat!

Happy Fish

Last trip to China Chef tonight... last time seeing the happy fish in the restaurant. There used to be more, which sometimes worries me. What exactly are they doing with all those dozens of fish that used to be in the tank? Best not to think about that and just enjoy my crab-not-goldfish rangoon.

Kidding, obviously. I'm sure they're totally reputable. :) Besides, greasy Chinese is the best. China Chef, how I will miss thee!

UHaul

Who knew renting a UHaul was so expensive? Fun times.

Linds and I are taking bets on which "Yay USA!" picture we get on the side of the van. I'm hoping it'll be something encouraging, like a picture of Texas or of a cute and cuddly animal. Linds is thinking that it'll be just our luck that we get the van with the big ol' eight foot tall green spider. You know the one. They've been all over the place lately. 14-foot UHauls with huge green "happy face" spiders on the side.

Will post a pic the day we pick up the van. Truck. Thing.

Leaving CoMo two weeks from today! Better get to packing. No pics today, chickadees. More to come soon.

Picture Post

Time for a few pictures... I've been taking photos pretty regularly over the past few weeks, so here's a selection of what I've shot, just to give you an idea of what we've been up to with packing and getting ready for the move. A lot of these are from my phone, so apologies for the not-great quality.

Linds and I have been selling a lot of furniture - one of the things that went this week was the liquor cabinet from the dining room. I think it's been sent off to live in a dorm at one of the Missouri colleges. Also gone is the beige couch, the treadmill, the two fancy dining room chairs, and.. uh.. some other stuff. Soon to go is the washer and dryer.


Then there's the painting... when we all moved in, we painted the bedrooms, and about a year later we painted the living room as well. The living room was orange and blue - now it's mostly white. Ran out of paint on this wall, so there's a nice little border of orange up by the ceiling.


Pippin does not like change. As soon as these bins were stacked up, he ran over and sat on them, then proceeded to meow for a good half an hour. So, to make himself feel better...


...he climbed into the tower of boxes in the living room. Can I hear a woot for free boxes from a UPS employee? I like the plastic bins better, but at $4.00 - $9.00 a pop, they're too expensive to use for all the packing.


Then there's Catinca. She's the stray outside that Linds and I have been feeding. I would love to take her Texas, but she won't let me get close enough to her to pick her up. Also, no help from Second Chance or the other no-kill shelter in town, so I'm going to have to just leave her and hope that she has other food sources.

By the way, for any of you who have been in the apartment before, you probably remember the dent/hole in the hallway bathroom wall - this happened after an unfortunate incident with, of all things, the hardware for the toilet paper holder. Well, amazingly, after three years of staring at the ugliness of a damaged wall, it's fixed! After a lot of goes-on-pink-but-dries-white spackle, a metal spatula, and way more time that the estimated five hours of drying time, the hole is patched and painted and looks almost like it was never there. Good enough for me.

Texas Bound

Howdy, y'all!

No, just kidding.

This is a blog to document my move to Texas, share pictures and stories with friends, and basically keep everyone up to date on what's happening. Whenever someone moves, everyone wants pictures: the new place, the old place, paint colors, floor plans--and photos of the cat panicking about all the change going on around him. That's the kind of thing I'll be posting. Should be fun. :)

What? What's that? You want a little background on this move? Well, sure, kiddos!

I'm moving to Texas with my best friend Linds, who is originally from Texas and is heading back. This whole move idea came about fairly suddenly. Sure, we'd both been tossing around the idea of moving for a while: Let's move to New York! Let's move to Portland! Let's move to London! But the idea of moving to Texas came up suddenly in the spring, and after that everything started to fall into place.

See, Missouri--where we are right now--turned into a dead-end. Jobs didn't work out, dating was basically non-existent, and the apartment that I formerly really liked has giant scary spiders in it.

Seriously, spiders trump all. Time to go.

Moreover, Linds and I both have English degrees, which aren't exactly sought after in times of economic downturn, so we both started to toy with the idea of teaching. Unfortunately, the requirements for teaching certification in Missouri are through the roof; going back to school for another four years is not financially feasible, mmkay?

But lo and behold, Texas has alternative certification programs that take 12 months! They have a thriving job market! There was no housing bust! Cost of living is low! There are no more ice storms every three days all winter! Linds has a huge network of friends and family who are willing to help us both move!

And so we're moving to Texas. Official leaving CoMo date is August 31. The countdown is on.