So I put together a Costco shed today, with help from my dad. Part of our grand plan to outfit the new house with all the bling bling, you know. It’s a nice shed, but it was a pain in the ass to get set up. Actually, the shed itself wasn’t that bad, it’s all plastic and rubbermaid-type material. The worst part was setting up a “foundation” for the thing on a slightly-sloped part of the yard that backs up to the fenceline. We found some sturdy pallets in the dumpster across the street that fit the bill, after levelling them off with cinder bricks, flat stone and two-by-four shims.

Yeah, we did some dumpster diving. But it’s the big construction dumpster for the development we’re in, filled with lots of usable scrap wood and stuff! That makes it okay. :)

Still continuing to settle in to the new house. This weekend we cleared out the storage unit, and it never ceases to amaze me just how much stuff we’ve managed to accumulate over the years. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve got a packrat personality and it’s actually hard for me to get rid of stuff. But—wow. How does this happen? You’re puttering around in your daily life, happily oblivious, then one day you turn around and BAM!—where did all this stuff come from? And yes, you remember getting that, and yes, those have a story, and then you realize the true culprit:

Time.

Time: you lose track of it for even a moment, and it will sneak up on you. Your kids will grow a few more inches and start school, everyone you know is suddenly older, the music you spent formative years of your life listening to is on oldies radio stations, and stuff accumulates.

And yeah, that packrat personality I mentioned, I have that. But not too badly though, not apeshit crazy like you see on TV or read about, where the old hermit guy has 30 years of newspapers tied up in his living room, or the wacko lady has 8,000 unopened boxes of toothpicks, or anything like that. No, I’ve got it just enough to annoy my wife. Could it ever get more serious? I doubt it.

But you know… time will tell.

Well, we’re all moved in and (relatively) comfortable. Still not feeling like blogging much—after 3 days of moving and cleaning and unpacking, and the ongoing process of more unpacking and arranging and tweaking (things like hanging curtains, and towel racks), I’m just beat. So, some quick thoughts on the moving process:

• Smartest thing we did: hiring movers. Totally worth it. If/when we move again, it’s the only way to go.
• Taking a day off from work was also smart.
• Going back to work feels like a vacation.

Ugh. More later.

So tomorrow we get funded and close on our new house, and take possession. Then comes the Move; we’ll start hauling a load or two over tomorrow evening, and then Saturday is the big day. Fortunately, this time we’ve hired movers to do all the heavy lifting.

I don’t expect to be online much or at all after I leave work tomorrow, at least until Sunday sometime, maybe later. If all goes according to plan, Bend Broadband should have our cable service turned on Saturday (I think), but I seriously doubt I’ll be interested in going online after spending the day moving.

Thus marks the end of one chapter of our lives, and the beginning of a new one. It’s not the first house we’ve bought, but it will be first brand new one we’ve lived in. Should be interesting!