Window to the world

It rained today. Inside my office. There I was, sitting by my big, beautiful window, when suddenly I realize that the pitter-patter of rain had gotten a lot more... intimate. I glanced over and, to my horror, found that splatters of rain had covered half my newly issued laptop. Following the drip to its source, I discovered a veritable lake forming on the ledge between the lower window and the upper window. Sopping it up was actually quite difficult, as any disturbance of the lake would cause a sheeting waterfall to descend upon my desk!

I jammed a wad of paper towel in the offending leaky corner of the window, and put a garbage can underneath it, but the subsequent drip-drip-drip of water falling onto loose plastic started driving me crazy pretty quickly. The people nominally in charge of problems in and around the office building came by to look at it, and told me that the building managers would have to deal with that one, since the leak is not actually in the sealant around the glass, but a deeper flaw in the building's exterior and window frame. Le sigh! I really hope the garbage can doesn't leak or overflow. :(

Corporate Overlords

I got a new job at a much smaller company a few months ago, but then it got bought up by another corporate overlord. *sigh* I wonder if there's some sort of karma that says I have to always be working for some giant megacorp. Of the companies I've worked for, 1 was a megacorp in its own right, and the 2 that weren't got bought up shortly after I joined. Am I a harbinger of acquisitions?

Anyway, everyone is super distracted because we're all getting issued new equipment, and there's a lot of training for it, and so on and so forth. It's pretty tiring to keep track of all this stuff that I have to attend, and I'm totally not getting any work done. It's kind of fun, but mostly I'm finding it irritating. Oh well, that's life under our new corporate overlords. Hopefully things will get less hectic soon.

All 3 kitties

All 3 kitties
Originally uploaded by gnibbles512

I was taking a nap on J's lap, 'cos it looked super comfy. Apparently the kitties decided I looked super comfy too, 'cos one after another, they all piled onto me. :D

At last

An office! With a door and everything! Only... the walls don't go all the way up to the ceiling, so aside from visual privacy, the overall privacy is still quite poor. Plus the doors don't lock anyway. But I shouldn't complain. I have all my crap that I need, plus a bonus door I can close, and bonus lights I can choose to turn on or off. Good enough! :)

The Tyranny of Stuff

Subject stolen from jadia

Our stuff finally arrived, after going AWOL for a solid month. Yep, all 7,000 lbs of it, sitting boxed up and stacked 4 high in our living room, kitchen, and bedroom. It arrived in an 18-wheeler, and took 3 dudes 4 hours to unload. If ever there were 18 wheels of pain, this would have been it. Happily, all our stuff does in fact fit into our new apartment (at least, by volume).

To make matters worse, the landlord and his plumber chose that same day to work on installing the dishwasher, and moving the drain pipe to make our washer/dryer sit better, so the kitchen looked like a bomb went off in it, and smelled alternately of burning metal, scorched wood, and solder.

We started unpacking today, and the bedroom is approaching completion. We have to wash the bed linens before we can actually sleep in that room... and probably buying some curtains would be nice too. There are three large windows in the bedroom, 1 facing east, 2 facing south, and all of them facing some combination of the street, and our neighbors. Oh well, at least we get fabulous light in that room. :)

We've successfully deployed 4 of 5 bookcases, but because they're all boxed in (haha, literally), we haven't been able to actually use them as crash space for unpacking. The 5th bookcase is leaning against the wall in its component parts, but at least it's in its final location.

The bicycles have found their ways to the porch. The motorcycles are locked up in the driveway, tucked well back from the street. Our car has 2 more days of out-of-state permit parking before we need to find some other place to stash it. We need to get it insured and registered, then we'll have more permanent resident parking.

Things appear to be moving right along. Hopefully we'll have a housewarming sometime before the end of the year. Last time we moved, it took about 4 months before the house was in good enough shape to throw a housewarming. Hopefully this time we'll be a bit faster about it.

Moving to the right coast

J and I have arrived in our new town.... We're in a bizarre state of limbo where I have to work, but have no office; and we can paint the walls in the new apartment, but can't move in. Intellectually, I know that this would happen, but from an emotive / instinctive level, I still find it oddly upsetting to be so rootless.

We are staying at a friend's house, and he has basically rented us a room for the time being. It won't be much longer now before we will be allowed to actually occupy our new place, except for the fact that all our furniture and other worldly possessions are... somewhere in a truck, toodling along across the country at a nice, leisurely pace (in short, I have no idea where it is).

Then there is the matter of my cats, which are bumping along in their individual kennels, riding in my car with J's dad and brother, somewhere in the vasty wildernesses. I miss them a lot, and I hope they make it across safely.

The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos)

I was utterly enthralled by the story, both the past and the present. We debated the events depicted in the film the whole ride home. The Secret in Their Eyes leaves you with countless implications, and lets you sift through them until you, like the main character, arrive at the inescapable truth (although ymmv).

In short, it's good. It's complicated. Go see it. :)