Update from the New Place

We're in! It's been a busy, frantic couple update-free weeks, with a lot of stuff going on at work for both of us. So, a rundown, with the hope of photos to follow soon.

Saturday the 14th, J+J stopped by with the pickup truck to help us move a bunch of the larger things still left. Most of the boxes of books were already in the new place, and within about two hours, we moved two big truckloads (+ two little carloads) of various miscellany. To celebrate, and by way of thanks, we headed to the big annual crawfish fest at Second Street Brewery. Good crawfish, great fun, and after, we all had burgers. 'Cause crawfish are one of those "negative calorie" foods (like crabs) where you actually use more energy getting to the food than you get out of it. We spent the rest of the weekend working on the finishing touches. All the painting was done, but there were a few more things we wanted to do, doors to re-hang, etc., and we knew that was going to be pretty much it for work we could get done before the move.

The following Thursday, we were off on a plane to San Francisco to represent 7000 BC at the Alternative Press Expo (APE), a trip we had planned long before the house purchase. A mostly uneventful trip into the cold rain at SFO and then via BART to the home of a friend from college. We haven't seen him in probably 15 years, never met his wife or two kids, but they hosted us in the little cottage in the back of their house in the Mission district. Their house is pre-Earthquake, so they don't know how old it is — but the thing that just struck me the most was the soaring ceilings, contrasted with our little low house here; one of their front rooms is actually taller than it is wide.

The whole weekend was kind of a whirlwind. We headed downtown to the Fisherman's Wharf area with Charlie and the kids on Friday morning to pass some time at the Musee Mechanique. They then left us on our own to get some seafood and hop the cable car to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens to catch a Robert Crumb exhibit. We made it back to watch (and help, where allowed) Charlie finishing up some of his comics for the show. After dinner, went to the APE opening night party at Last Gasp, more to pick up our badges than anything else, though Charlie's good friends with the owner. It was held in their warehouse, so we met up with some of our fellow Santa Feans and just wandered the stacks, flipping through books.

Saturday, the real madness began. The show's venue is pretty huge, especially for a small press show. We scrambled in and had everything just about set up when the doors opened, eventually joined by six other group members who had made the trip. A sale of a new book just after the show started had us in a good mood, but, overall, we found the sales pretty disappointing over the course of the two days. Last year's attendance, according to the organizers, was 4800; there seemed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 exhibitors at this show, so it's a big, overwhelming setup — you can head on over to Flickr and search for "Alternative Press Expo 2007" to get an idea (we're in there somewhere). We were positioned near the entrance, so got a lot of people just starting out. Even so, it seemed there wasn't a lot of buying going on.

We did make some contacts and meet some new folks; one of whom, Doc Pop, gave us a lift to the book release party for Truth Serum at 826 Valencia (the educational/pirate store division of McSweeney's). That was a blast; a funny, fun time with MCs running on a scavenger hunt, leading us in rousing cheers for the author, helping us overcome our greatest fears, presenting a skit or two. By the time it wrapped up, we were no longer inclined to head to the party at Isotope, so we'll have to wait for another day to see that.

We started Sunday at a local diner with the whole family, for an egregiously unhealthy and tasty breakfast that pretty much carried us through the day. The show was even slower Sunday and we ended the evening early, tired out. Monday, headed back to Santa Fe.

And I returned with a nasty cold that had me in bad shape Tuesday, out of work Wednesday, barely back at work on Thursday, and just today finally about recovered. We managed to uncrate and set up the china cabinet that had been delivered from Virginia, but my illness really kind of screwed up our last packing, so when the when the weekend rolled around, it was a big rush. We had movers in Saturday at 10 to take care of the furniture. It took the four of them a bit over an hour to pack the apartment out (up and down the 34 stairs), and about 25 minutes to load into the house. There was a lot more left than we originally thought, the kitchen mostly, but it kept me running back and forth for both days while Monica finished things up at the apartment. We put in a solid nine hours Saturday (and then spent the night in the house) and another eight on Sunday. But, at the end of it all, we're in.

We've been gradually unpacking and setting up; the extra space, though, means that there's less urgency to get to a lot of the stuff — we can just close the door and forget about it. But the kitchen and dining room are just about set (enough for day-to-day use), the clothes are out, the computer's set up. Yesterday, we got the shelving units that Jim made for the living room, getting them from his studio and set up (with his help). In the snow. And after the three or so hours of getting that done, deciding that the space they were designed for wasn't where we wanted them. Experimented some, and found even better locations that they fit just as well in, so the living room's taking shape.

Update: pix of the shelf delivery. Hover for captions, click for larger.
    

Today, we'll be restocking the kitchen and doing more unpacking, though there's plenty of other projects we're trying to work on. There wasn't a lot of time for photography recently, but we'll see about getting some pictures up soon.