Stuff! STUFF!!

Erm... we picked an apartment that is a bit too small for all of our stuff!

The shipment from England arrived on Thursday. Kristen went down to Eugene to receive it that afternoon. Then, after work on Friday, we picked up what was supposed to be a moving van. However, when the guy pulled it around front, it was a fairly large, diesel moving truck. That's internet booking for you, I guess. It was the same price as the van, so we just took it. Didn't have a choice because that was the smallest vehicle they had. But a wearying 2-hour drive to Eugene in that thing!

Saturday morning, we got up pretty early to start going through the stuff we had stored in Nanny's garage. The multitude of boxes from the England shipment, we just chucked right into the truck, but we wanted to have a brief sift-through of the things we put in storage over 5 years ago since we didn't fully remember what we had elected to hold onto at that point. Some stuff we set aside to sell at a yard sale. Some we threw away. Some we decided to keep storing at Nanny's until we buy a house (looks like we probably should have left a bit more there!). The rest we put in the truck.

We had to rush back to Portland because the truck had to be returned by 5. And that was after unloading it, filling it up with diesel, and then driving to the rental place in Tigard. We got to our place around quarter to 3, so we very quickly unloaded all the boxes into the apartment and then I took off in the truck while Kristen continued unpacking.

It is overwhelming how much stuff we suddenly have. And very few places to put it! We need to buy more furniture to store it, but that is going to have to wait. I went to IKEA today to get a stainless steel shelf to use in the kitchen. Little by little, we will get some bookshelves, a small computer desk, and some dressers for the bedroom. At this point, we've gotten to a reasonable level of order, though there are still boxes in every room. The closet on the back patio that I was going to use as a "brewing shed" is, at the moment, a multi-purpose storage shed instead. Eventually, we'll get it sorted out.

Tomorrow, I'll be riding my bike to work for the first time. Should be fun.

Kristen has three more "informational interviews" this week and will hopefully hear back from the company where she had an interview on Friday. They will be doing second interviews with the candidates they are most interested in.