Currently Reading: Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
As the holiday season winds up, CC and I are winding down the Memphis leg of our adventures. We're scheduled to move out here at the end of the month and start things up again in Nashville. It's certainly been an interesting week or two.
CC, poor thing, is swamped with work. I mean actual work not moving work (though there's still plenty of that left too). They're launching all sorts of new things this month and the beginning of next month so everyone is working very hard to get all that ready. And when you add to that our impending move, you can imagine she's feeling a bit stressed out. Even worse, just this week we found out that the apartment we WERE going to get wasn't going to be vacant after all. The current tenants have decided they're going to stay a little longer which sent our leasing agent scrambling to come up with alternative apartments. This, in turn, sent CC scrambling because just this past Monday we sent out a bunch of Christmas cards and change-of-address notices. Now all of that information has to be changed AGAIN to reflect our new address.
We went up to Nashville on Saturday to have a look at the apartment. The one we're moving into now IS vacant and almost finished with its make-ready. It's certainly a nice place. We've got new appliances (they still have that "new appliance" smell) and new carpeting and fresh paint. New ceiling fan and light fixtures. They've even replaced the counter tops in the kitchen. The whole thing has been renovated and we're the next tenant. Got to like that.
We also have a much nicer view from our patio. In the other apartment we were facing part of the parking lot and part of the grassy courtyard area between the buildings. With this new one, it's all grass and trees and such. Much more relaxing.
Our only real trick is going to be finding room for everything. Our new apartment is a little bit smaller than our current one and doesn't have a HUGE closet like we have now (the one I call the Bat Cave). Yes, we do have an extra bedroom, so that helps. We'll use it as our den/office area. But until we get all of our furniture up there and start moving things around, it's hard to say how everything will fit. I think it'll be just fine. This current apartment we're in now has so much wasted space. The rooms are big, which is great but it also means big chunks of empty space we just can't use. It would look pretty funny if we put a bookshelf smack in the middle of the room right?
We're making progress on the packing too. Last week I packed up the rest of my books. That leaves mostly just big things. CC and I have to pack all the stuff on/in our desks and we'll need to break down the computers as well. But since we intend to use them up until the move, there's only so much we can do. Same thing with the kitchen and the bedroom. We've pretty much packed all the stuff we DEFINITELY won't be needing before the move. Now it's a matter of boxing up things and not taping them shut in case we have to go dig through them before we leave. About the only time-consuming thing left to pack are the dvds. Lots of movies there that'll need to be boxed up.
It's going to be an odd Christmas, that's for sure. Since we're moving between holidays it doesn't make much sense to decorate. Anything we put up will have to come down again immediately after Christmas. And honestly, I don't think stacks of boxes will look nice draped with tinsel. It also makes our Christmas lists odd. Any presents we receive before Christmas will end up going right into packing boxes. That makes it difficult to figure out what to ask for.
Like I said before, it's certainly going to be an adventure :-)
