It has arrived
And, of course, there were issues.
My delivery window? 2-6. The window in which my building accepts deliveries? 9:30-5:30. Arrival time of delivery men? 8. Yeah. Not good.
And yet, the building made an exception and the pieces were delivered. Score.
The furniture is gorgeous, and great, and of course one of the sections of my sectional was damaged en route. Damnit. There's a tear in the back of the right-hand piece. It's small than the width of my pinky finger, but it's still a tear. I've called. They're dealing with it. It's all good.
So, without further ado, my furniture!
Two views of the lounge, from different angles.
The buffet (no the wood is not black, it's dark brown, stupid flash and low light).
The dining room area.
The jewelry bench in the bedroom.
And not really new, but I don't think I ever properly posted pictures of the office, or the kitchen for that matter!
So there you are, my flat apartment. :)
One down...
The table has been delivered!
So beautiful!!!
Various Bits
Photos of our leaving party have surfaced on flickr. Some are fantastic, some just amusing. Check them out for yourself:
www.flickr.com
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We're moved out - last night we stayed at a hotel. This morning I'm back at the flat waiting for the Homechoice person to come pick up the cable box and also the cleaners to come and clean the place. We get checked out at 12:30. Our car comes at 1:00. It was amusing checking into the hotel with four bulging suitcases and two carryons... for one night. I'm sure they thought we were nuts.
There was broadband in the hotel room, but via Ethernet. Because we are packed for six weeks in a corporate apartment, and we are two people with two laptops that both need the net, we have our AirPort in our plane luggage. So we set the AirPort up in the hotel room and shared the net that way. It amused me to no end. Bring your own WiFi! Is there no end to our nerdiness?
I think the Diet Coke machine at McDonald's is hooked up to regular Coke. BLECH.
Productivity and Partying
We just gave our landlord our one month's notice. We figure even if we don't move when we want to, if we're not moved in a month, we'll probably have committed ritual suicide.
Other things to do today:
Go see the attorneys - 5:00PMThis lasted until NINE O'CLOCK! GAH!!!Mail various key bits of mailGet my bridesmaid's dress fittedFind some time to go to Liberty and spend the £20 of vouches I have that expire todaySort the movers out... preferably after the attorney visit- Friday this week and Monday next, they're packing and moving usFinish washing up all the glassware form the partyVacuum and wash the floor from the party
Oh yeah, we had a party. It was our going away party. It ended up being us and 15 of our good friends and many many bottles of various substances and even some cosmo flavored jello shots that didn't set in time (I blame Gareth who was, incidentally, an amazing bar tender).
It started at 5:00 and ended at about 1:00 and the sticky kitchen AND living room floors are testament to how good a time was had. We forgot to invite some of the neighbors (oops) but we were overall pretty happy with the turnout. If you couldn't make it, we missed you - it was a great time but it would've been better if everyone had been able to come. If you did turn up, thanks for making it such a great time. :)
Moving
The movers came yesterday! Part of James's relocation package is movers. This is a good thing because moving all your shit across the ocean = mucho bucks. I think we talked to someone about it at one point and it was somewhere along the lines of £10,000. That's not money I particularly want to spend. If you catch my drift.
So he came through our apartment, looked at everything. We did start to pack a few things, and still have a million boxes from our last move, but all of that is moot. Because they are insuring all of our shit, anything we've packed will be repacked. And they will provide us with brand new boxes. Because if something happens in transit because of an old box, they are responsible.
So.
On the 24th, they arrive with a van, movers, boxes and other packing paraphernalia. They pack us all day on the 24th. They also possibly pack us on the 25th, if necessary. They will disassemble our Ikea wardrobes (which BARELY made the move here and will certainly not come with us to the States) and anything else we don't want to bring with us and take it away. They will recycle any boxes or anything else we're leaving behind.
We get to ship 1000 pounds of crap by air and the rest by sea. The air stuff will take about 2 weeks to arrive. The sea stuff will take 5? weeks. Depends on how long it takes to get through customs and fatherland security and such. Obviously we will also bring four or so suitcases of stuff with us.
We have a million forms to fill out, but the moving company only does overseas moving and has been doing it for 50 years, so they seem very competent. I did remember to ask if we needed to contact the council about blocking off some parking spaces for the truck, but he already had it written down. Even the parking space numbers. Good stuff.
I have to admit I find it sort of amusing that when I moved over here, it was only with a couple of suitcases full of clothes and six or eight boxes of books shipped book rate (which took about a month and a half to get here). Packing light, clearly. :)
As far as immigration goes, we're working on it. There's confusion with the embassy and a recent change in legislation means we did not get the visa as expected. We have been approved. We just need to send them more documentation. The lawyers are working on it. Hopefully (please send good thoughts our way), this will be resolved before the end of the week.
Singing!
We live on the corner of a medium sized road and a tiny side street. There are a few little flats on the ground level down this side street and lofts across. The lofts across from us are pretty boring. There's a nice big one directly across but all we see in there is the chick opening all the shades in the morning and shutting them at night. Real rear window stuff. :P
The flats down the little side street are more interesting. They are full of hipsters who walk to and from their places late at night and sometimes open their french doors and let the music out. They also have parties.
Today, someone's having a voice lesson. Consider my ears pricked. They're just warming up right now, but if she starts making him sing anything remotely classical, she's just found herself another student. (Her voice is quite obviously classically trained so I'm optimistic.)
Of course, we'll probably be out of here in a couple months, but Neil's wedding is coming up and I've got to start practising sometime....
Also, I love living in the city.
Edit 14:30: The vocalising stopped abruptly and no singing followed. Awwww.
Film crew!
The Shepherdess (our local caf here in Shoreditch), is teeming with film people. Lots of crew, huge amounts of lights and equipment. There are actors but they're mostly hidden behind many other people. I'm completely curious. I think a recon mission might be in order...
Eugh
It's 8:45AM. Isn't it a little early for my neighbours to be smoking weed? Like I want to wake up to that!
Domestic me
Those of you who know me know that I am not very handy. I don't really cook very much, and I have a cleaner and although I do the laundry... well, most of it goes to the cleaners anyway. I can code you whatever you want in one of many different languages, I can wire your computer up, configure your network, solder you a Christmas tree or set up your hi-fi, but when it comes to housework? Well I've never been very interested.
So it raised a few eyebrows when I asked for a sewing machine a while back. I did make some curtains with it (I'm sure I took a picture, but cannot find it for the life of me), but other than that, it's been largely unused.... until now. On Friday, Tina came over with some instructions and a whole lot of patience and taught me how to make pillows! This is silly, you say, and perhaps it is. But it was a big deal to me and I remain very pleased with myself.
We made one together, and one I made today, while watching TV with James. Here's a picture of the two of them all nestled in the LoveSac!
There are a few other pictures here as well as a pic of the projector and one of the fabulous image it projects! Possibly there will be surround sound hunting tomorrow, but we need to focus on getting James a new pair of shoes first!
I have a couple more pillows to make, but I'm just so pleased with the way that these have turned out, I had to share! YAY! Domesticity is not out of my reach!
Lounge decorating
Finally, our lounge is getting cleared, and it looks like we'll finally be done getting rid of all the shit and extra boxes and papers and stuff by the end of the month. Woot!
So we bought a rug, for the main living room area of the room (it's a big room - part of it, we use as a dining room, part as a living room). It's quite big - 2mx3m - and it should cover most of the space we need it to. It would be beter if it had been 3mx4m, but they don't make it that big.
There's a picture of the rug as well as a couple swatches of fabric here on smugmug. Please look at the fabric and tell me what you think. I'm trying to choose between the two designs for a screen we're getting made for the dining area of the room. The fabric should sort of match the rug that's in there, and also should sort of match the colour of the shades... or at least not clash. The first swatch of fabric is actually a closer match to the rug than it looks in that picture. I should probably get a better picture of it.
Anyway, tell me which you like better, please! I really could go for the different opinions!
