Month: September 2017

Les Mis! Again! And alone!

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I just saw Les Mis for the 7th or 8th time, and it’s bothering me that I can’t remember if I’ve seen it 7 or 8 times.  Family?  Can you help me out here?

  • I saw it twice before college, both times in Louisville.  One of those times Mario and Dennis came with us.
  • I saw it once in college with John, which was the first time he saw it.
  • I saw it once at Wolf Trap with John, in 2008, the second time for him and so far the last for him.
  • I saw it at the Kennedy Center with Mel, Jess, Margaret, and Amanda in 2011.
  • I saw it at the Warner Theatre with Brynn (former coworker) in 2012.  I think it was 2012.
  • I just saw it last night in Providence ALL BY MYSELF.* More on that in a bit.

That’s seven times, but I feel like I’m missing one.  An early one.  And I can’t believe it’s been five years since I saw it last (although it was more like nine years between the two times I saw it with John).

Hm.  Maybe it’s another DC one.  Did I see it once with Adam and Simone?  At the National Theatre?  That’s ringing a bell, actually.

So, yeah, I went alone for two very good reasons.  No, three.

  1. John’s not a fan.  He would certainly come with me, but I don’t see the point of buying him a ticket so he can accompany me to something he won’t enjoy, when he’s only going so I don’t have to go alone (which is a lovely reason), and since I know he won’t like it, it takes my enjoyment down a notch.  A teensy notch, but a notch.  Anyone else would have had to travel, and while that would have been fun (it has been in the past), see points 2 and 3.
  2. It’s kinda fun to go to things by myself.  Other people (other people I like, I should say) are hardly a burden (I can’t say the same about people I don’t like, obvs), but sometimes it’s nice to do whatever I want to do, however I want to do it, without worrying about whoever is with me.
  3. I GOT THE GREATEST SEAT EVER because I was only buying ONE ticket.  It was one seat, by itself, front row, six seats off the center aisle.  If I’d been looking for two tickets, I would have been way off to the side and further back or WAY further back.

I have NEVER had this good of a seat to see Les Mis, and it was AWESOME.  No kidding, I was so close it felt almost like a private performance, and this performance was SO GOOD.  This was the first stop of this season’s national tour.  The schedule is here.  You should go.

I miss the revolving stage, though.

I decided not to say anything

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I was going to comment on how the mugginess of late summer/early fall here in a house without air conditioning means that gear that gets sweaty and, like, towels don’t always feel completely dry after 24 hours, but I decided that it would sound like I’m complaining, and I’m not, so I won’t.

I was going to say something about how our bedroom is set up in a weird way so that our bed either goes under windows, leaving no room for a dresser (not if we want to be able to open the drawers) or against a wall between two doors, leaving no room for bedside tables so there’s no place for reading lights or glasses of water or even our phones except to put them on the floor, but really that’s an opportunity for us to go find a headboard that has a shelf on it, which we’ve wanted for a long time, so it’s not even a complaint and it’s not worth mentioning.

I was going to mention that I’m not crazy about working until 5pm again – what happened to my afternoons? – but it’s the end of the government fiscal year right now and everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off, so long (or at least normal) hours are to be expected, and then I remembered that starting work at 9 instead of 6 means I can exercise in the morning again, which I LOVE, so this is a schedule change I can live with.  Especially since I think I can shift back to earlier hours (maybe 7 to 3?) once it starts getting dark and cold in the early mornings, and then I’ll prefer to run later anyway, so it all works out, and I don’t see the point of bringing it up.

I guess I don’t have anything to say.

Last century

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I met John 20 years ago today, thanks entirely to Erik, who invited lowly freshman me to join his pack of 6 or 8 friends for a movie in Arlington.  (Thanks, Erik!)  And it’s only thanks to John, who kept his ticket stub, that we know the exact date.  (Thanks, John!)

What movie?  The Peacemaker, starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman.  Not a memorable movie, barely a memorable night (I remember John’s hat, I remember everyone waiting for the metro, I might remember one scene from the movie – something to do with a missile on the road in the mountains?), but it had lasting consequences, thank goodness.

Tonight, we’re going out to dinner (I don’t think George Clooney or Nicole Kidman have a movie in the theater right now), where we will try not to feel too old.

Hee

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The other morning I stopped to watch some rowers on the Seekonk River.  There was an 8-person shell out there, moving relatively slowly, while some guy, I presume the coach, was standing in a nearby launch, shouting at them through a bullhorn.  I couldn’t make out most of what he was saying, but it appears he enunciates more when he’s irritated.

“Mwah mwah mwah mwah except for Josh. LOOK AT ME, JOSH.  Mwah mwah mwah.”

A few minutes later, the launch went back to the boathouse and then came back out escorting another 8-person shell.

“Mwah-mwah-mwah wah.  Then Warwick will pick it up. WARWICK! DON’T STOP. Mwah mwah.”
I’m glad I’m not  Josh or Warwick.

Feeling at home

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Mom bought me this book called This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are, and it’s about someone who moves a lot and her attempts to feel at home in those places, either to make the stay more pleasant or to find that place that feels like home so the moving can stop.

I can’t help but feel Mom is trying to tell me something.  🙂

Anyway, early on, the author makes a list of things one should do to be active about feeling at home in the place you are, and as I read down the list, I was able to check off 8 out of the 10 things.

  1. Walk more.
  2. Buy local.
  3. Get to know my neighbors.
  4. Do fun stuff.
  5. Explore nature.
  6. Volunteer.
  7. Eat local.
  8. Become more political.
  9. Create something new.
  10. Stay loyal through hard times.

I did those things in Eugene, and I started many of them the first week we were there.  Those things were not enough to make me feel like Eugene was the place for me.  I did at least half of those things in Annapolis – again, not enough to make me feel like Annapolis was the place.  So either I’m difficult and really picky (possible, but I don’t think I’m that special) or those things aren’t enough.

I think it’s just about time spent in the same place.  We were ready to leave Ashburn for several years before we finally did, but it felt like home.  It still feels like home, sometimes, but it ought to after 10 years.  I don’t think having a place feel like home and feeling like you don’t belong there are mutually exclusive.

I spent most of the book disagreeing with the author and wondering why she was dumbing down the written version of herself.  Maybe it was supposed to make her relatable, but I found it irritating.  Those “insights” are obvious.

At the beginning, she talks about being excited to move to a new place right up until she gets there and then almost immediately feeling like it’s wrong.  I don’t feel that way – I keep the excitement of the new place for quite some time, I think, and I gotta say, I’m feeling pretty good about Providence.  Of course, I felt pretty good about Eugene, too, but I don’t think I ever really thought Eugene was going to be it.  For me, Eugene was always a fun experiment, but I didn’t expect to want to stay there (Eugene, or Oregon, or the west coast in general).  Maybe that’s why I didn’t, at least partially, but I don’t know.

I can understand the author’s urge to write this book, but I haven’t had any sleepless nights worrying about whether I’ll ever find THE PLACE.  I’m confident I can be happy in any place (and I’m certainly not miserable in the places we go or have been), but for now, I’m not ready to settle down.  That does not make me unhappy.

Watch me be all zen and stuff

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The sky has been dropping quiet sheets of rain on us for the last hour or so.  It’s very soothing.  And yes, I know I just came from the Pacific Northwest, and I know I should be tired of rain, but it rains differently there.  And I know this rain isn’t the beginning of 7 months of nothing but rain.  And I have trees right outside my windows and they’re turning yellow and there’s a slate blue house across the street with a red-leafed tree in front and it has a stone chimney and behind that there’s a really tall oak tree whose leaves are still green so even though the sky is grey, everything I can see is full of peaceful colors.

Making progress

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We are down to minimal boxes, guys.  The first floor has zero boxes left.  On the second floor, the only boxes left are the two wardrobe size boxes from our closet.  In the basement, there are a couple of boxes, tools and things we don’t use much, and the third floor has zero boxes!

I was thisclose to suggesting we get rid of every item of clothing we didn’t travel across the country with – that’s all we had to wear for two and a half weeks, and we did fine – but then I remembered that it’s been summer and fall is starting and winter is coming and I’m not in the mood to buy a whole new wardrobe.  Some new clothes, sure, but I can’t handle starting from scratch.  Plus, I like a lot of my fall and winter clothes.

Next step for the house: unpack the rest of the clothes and sort out our closet situation.  We have plenty of closet space, but we’re not sure how to organize it yet.

Step after that: hang stuff on the walls!  We are actually going to hang our stuff up EARLY.  For real.  We totally are.  I’ll show you.  Trust me.

I have a desk!

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I remembered where we put the screws first thing this morning, as we were walking to Starbucks.  They were in the toolbox because OF COURSE they were in the toolbox.  Now I have a desk AND a chair and they’re both set up in my brand new office with lots of windows that would be letting in all the sunlight if we weren’t in the middle of a rainy day.

Also, the pod is gone, our own washer and dryer are hooked up, and now we just have to figure out how to arrange the rooms.  Also also, I still have to work full-time.  Where’s my lottery jackpot?

I’m sitting in a chair!

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Our container was delivered today!  And five hours later, it was empty, and our house was full.  We have chairs and shelves and dishes and a couch and a TV and OH OUR BED HALLELUJAH, but you know what I don’t have yet?  A desk.  I have a chair and a table top and I have four legs for the table, but we can’t find the ziploc bag that has all the screws to connect the legs to the table.  We both remember putting them all in one bag (all the screws for both of our desks are together), and I remember taking it from John, and I think I remember making him look at where I was packing it, but neither of us remembers where that was.  We’ve opened every kitchen box and most of the living room boxes.  We’ve searched the car and we’ve searched the suitcases we packed in the car.  Hopefully it will turn up soon.

In the meantime, now that we have chairs, I can at least work with my laptop on my lap.  Which is how I’m typing right now.  It’s SUCH a nice change to have chairs.

Fleeting thoughts about traveling

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  • Oh my god, I love being this close to an airport.
  • Maybe I should start booking two aisle seats, same row, for us when we fly.  Then I don’t have to sit in the middle seat, I get the aisle (always my first choice anyway), and we can still sit next to each other.  Of course, John won’t get the window, but I feel like I’ve spent enough years sitting in the middle for him to owe me this one.
  • I find airports to be peaceful places. As long as I’m not late.
  • Mosquito bites are the WORST.
  • That was not a travel thought. Stick to the theme!
  • I like travel size things, like the little containers of Advil and the little bottles of contact solution and the little packets of Benadryl that aren’t helping with the itching.
  • I hope the TV screen in the seat back shows our flight progress.
  • Holy mother of god the itching.
  • My seat mates won’t notice if I gnaw off my legs, right?
  • Maybe I can buy enough tiny bottles of wine to light the bites on fire.
  • Fire!
  • $&#*”&-@$&@

Lutheran Insulter

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Apparently this website has been around since 2012, but it came to my attention today because next month is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

Go here to check out the Lutheran Insulter.

Some favorites of mine:

“It is the old dragon from the abyss of hell who is standing before me!”

“You are a brothel-keeper and the devil’s daughter in hell.”

“You no longer have, as you did several centuries ago, a cunning devil spurring you on, but a palpable blockhead, a crude devil, who in his malice can no longer disguise himself.”

“Your words are so foolishly and ignorantly composed that I cannot believe you understand them.”

My friend Chastity wants to put that last one in her email signature.  She doesn’t think anyone will notice.

A Typical Day

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Cross-country moves really screw with your daily routine.  Before we left Oregon, here’s what my day usually looked like:

5:45am: Alarm

6am: At my desk, 9am (eastern) meeting started.

6am – 9am: Work.  Coffee and toast around 7am.

9am – 10am(ish): Run in the park.  Maybe.  If not in this hour, then it happens after work.

10am(ish) – 2pm(ish): Work.

2pm(ish) – 6pm(ish): Run, if it didn’t happen at 9am.  Maybe a riding lesson.  Errands.  Read.  Your standard after-work stuff.

6pm(ish) – 9pm(ish): Dinner, TV, clean-up, shower.

9pm(ish): Bedtime.

Repeat.

Then we started the cross-country drive.  Over 6 days, we developed a pretty good routine.

7am: Get up and work out, if the hotel has a gym. Shower. Check out.

9am: Hit the road.  Breakfast and coffee somewhere.

9am to 2pm(ish): Drive drive drive.  Usually John took the morning shift.  Maybe lunch.

2pm(ish): Switch drivers.

2pm(ish) to 7pm(ish): Drive drive drive.  Usually I took the afternoons and evenings.  John got sleepy.

6 or 7pm: We figure out where we’re stopping for the night and John books us a hotel room.

7pm or 8pm: Check in to hotel, find dinner.

9pm or 10pm: Crash hard.

Repeat.

We knew exactly what had to come out of the car each night, and we knew exactly how to put everything back in the car each morning.  We listened to audiobooks (the first Ellis Peters monk detective book (good enough, but MAN it was slow-going), two MC Beaton Hamish Macbeth books – I love Hamish Macbeth), podcasts (mostly Hello from the Magic Tavern), and music (Sirius XM’s Pop Rock channel is good, and for Labor Day weekend, they had a road trip channel that was fun), and mostly stayed off the internet because we had basically zero reception nearly the whole way.

Then we got to Providence and moved in to our empty house.  Since hardwood floors are not a comfortable place for sitting and I still have to work, we’ve had to develop a new routine.

7am(ish): Get up.  Run.  Breakfast at home (cereal – we did some basic shopping).

9am(ish): Arrive at the office, otherwise known as the Starbucks about five blocks away, to work where we can have internet, tables, and chairs.

9am(ish) to noon(ish): When I can work quietly, I work inside where there are outlets.  When I have to talk during a conference call, I pop outside, where I can speak loudly enough to be heard (and also where I mute for passing traffic).  Then back inside.  If I have a call with clients, I head back to the house to avoid the background noise.

Noon(ish) to 1pm(ish): Back home for lunch (sandwiches).

1pm(ish) to 5pm(ish): Same as the morning, back at Starbucks because chairs are a wonderful thing.

5pm(ish) to 9pm(ish): Clean the house or run errands or take a long walk (one afternoon we drove to Narragansett to find a beach) or otherwise kill time outside of the house, find dinner, bed.

Repeat.

And it is a routine – we’ve been doing approximately this for a week now.  The baristas at Starbucks recognize us, and a number of the regulars recognize us, too.  Oh, the regulars.  I don’t mean regulars in the sense of people who always go to the same place at the same time every day and order the same thing.  I mean the people who come to this Starbucks every day to work.  Like, every day.  And they stay all day.  I mean, it’s exactly what we’re doing, but we’re only doing this until our furniture gets here.  These people have been doing this for years.  One guy brings a power strip to get past the limited number of outlets and has been nice enough to let us use it.  So, you know, we’re making friends, but I’m not going to be too sad when I can go back to something resembling my Oregon routine again.

Somewhat less stressed, but still furniture-less

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UPDATE: During our first phone call with PODS this morning (after an hour on hold), we found out that the company didn’t know where our container was.  They were going to find out and get back to us in an hour.  Two hours later, after no update, I called back.  After nearly another hour, I got the person who could actually tell us what was going.  While I was on the phone, NOT ON HOLD, she contacted someone in Logistics who called the truck driver and asked when they were arriving.  The truck with our container on it will arrive at the storage facility tomorrow.  Since they don’t know what time yet, they can’t schedule the delivery for tomorrow, and since we’re going out of town for the weekend, we can’t get our stuff until we get back.  BUT.  The delivery has been scheduled for Tuesday.

So the mystery of our missing stuff has been resolved, although not entirely because I was so relieved to get some answers that I didn’t ask all of the questions.  Why is it late in the first place?  Where is it right now?  Why are ALL OF YOUR SYSTEMS CENTRALLY MANAGED WHEN YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A NATIONAL COMPANY?  I wouldn’t have asked the last question since the woman I spoke to is in customer service and not responsible for that part, but still.  I would like to know.

Disaster recovery systems are important

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The cloud is not really in the cloud.*  I mean, I knew that – the cloud is really just a server farm (or several server farms) and thus entirely physical and subject to disasters like hurricanes and I’m mentioning this because we’re using PODS to move our stuff across the country and they’re based in Clearwater, FL, and apparently they got destroyed by the hurricane because their phone lines and EVEN THEIR WEBSITE have been completely down since Saturday.  (That run-on sentence was sponsored by my fear that our truck will not arrive tomorrow and we’ll be living on the floor for another week.)  Based on the phone message I heard on Monday, they had deliberately shut down the customer service center Friday to Monday to keep their employees at home, which makes sense.  I can understand and appreciate that.  But they said they’d be back up Tuesday.  They were not.  They still are not, and now it’s Wednesday.  I can’t get a live person, which, again, I can understand considering they’re probably literally underwater, but for the website to still be down?  I can’t log in to my account to see the status of my shipment.  I scheduled it to arrive tomorrow (Thursday, earliest day possible).  Is it still coming tomorrow?  I can’t check.  I can’t call anyone to check.  Local PODS storage facilities don’t have local numbers.  All numbers route to FL, where there are only unhelpful recordings and hang-ups, and all web URLs route to the Hurricane Irma page they put up.

UPDATE!  All of the above was written earlier today, when I had been trying to contact PODS for three days.  This evening, I checked again and the website was back up!  With a message saying their phone center is open again!  And that they’d be prioritizing existing customers!  Unfortunately, I didn’t see that until after their call center was closed for the day, but I logged in to our account (yay!) to find no new information (boo).  It says our POD is due to arrive at the local storage center before 9/13.  That’s today.  Did it arrive?  That step doesn’t say it was completed, but is that because there’s a backlog and they haven’t updated the system or did it really not arrive?  It also says they’re going to deliver the POD to our house on the 14th.  That would be tomorrow.  Will it happen?  I can’t say.  The night before they delivered it to us in Eugene, we got a phone call, and email, and an update on our account online giving us a three-hour delivery window.  I have not gotten any of those alerts, and it’s nearly 10pm.

It’s all a mystery that I hope will get resolved tomorrow.  More to come.

*If the computing cloud were actually in the real clouds, this hurricane would have REALLY messed with their systems.

Food that isn’t real food

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John thinks I should write about how I tried Drake’s Devil Dogs today and how they transformed my life, but that wouldn’t be true, and I would never lie to you.  I did try one today, but it did not transform my life.  It tasted like every other chocolate and cream Hostess food I’ve ever had, and (don’t hate me) I gotta say those aren’t my favorite completely synthetic treats.  Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies are the winner for me (which is kind of odd, since I refuse to eat oatmeal cookies).  Runner up: Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls.  Apparently, I prefer Little Debbie to Hostess.  Good to know.

 

We are predictable

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We did it again.  We got our new library cards before we got our new driver’s licenses.  Took us three days this time.  It wasn’t more than three days in Eugene, I think, but we’ll never know since Twitter won’t let me look back that far and apparently I didn’t talk about it here.  Boo, Twitter.  The point is, duh, libraries are important to us.

That was our Saturday. We slept in, exercised, ate lunch, and then walked 5 miles to visit two libraries.  When we left the downtown branch, we walked by the convention center, where HasCon was going on. Hasbro is headquartered here, and there were a bunch of kids dressed up as My Little Ponies and GI Joes and other Hasbro stuff. It was cute.

Our Sunday included a visit to the Rhode Island Seafood Festival for lunch and music.

I had the best fried scallop sandwich from a food truck called Plouf Plouf. It was a good first weekend in Providence.

Made it!

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We’re here, in our new home, and the massive drive is over. That is a relief (even though it was fun and I didn’t have to work much and we had no responsibilities and we were seeing things we’ve never seen before and where was I going with this?), but the celebration will have to wait until the cleaning is done.  The big rooms are all okay (bedrooms, living room, dining room), but the other rooms are gross. Both bathrooms are grimy and the kitchen is grimy and greasy. Every surface in the kitchen, including drawers and cabinets, is greasy and vaguely yellow. The crew that was in here painting when we saw the place a month ago cleaned up after themselves, but no one cleaned up after the previous tenant.

Wednesday night, we got in after dark, did a quick tour and unloaded the car, walked to dinner, and dropped by CVS for some cleaning stuff. Then we spent the next two hours on the bathrooms so we could shower before sleeping.  Today (Thursday), I worked most of the day, and John spent the afternoon de-griming the kitchen. New appliances, but it looks like the previous tenant spent his three years deep-frying everything he ate.  When I finished working, we headed to the nearest Target (in Seekonk, which in my head sounds an awful lot like a donkey’s heeHAW) to buy the stuff CVS doesn’t carry, like a mop, a bucket, a broom, and some heavier duty cleaning stuff.

At least the house is empty. This would be a whole lot harder with our stuff in it.  And the weather is lovely!  It’s not all bad.

Too many nights in hotels

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Speaking of hotel oddities, there was this gem in the hotel in Wisconsin.

Too bad for the people in room 121.  Our room in Erie, PA is quite nice, although the bathroom door doesn’t close all the way. There’s always something. We’re in the type of hotel I stayed in the night I walked into a dresser and tore my toenail off (three years ago in Philadelphia) so I’m going to be extra careful when I get up in the middle of the night. My toenail has STILL not fully recovered.