Settling In

(Gene at his new favorite place to hang out - Jarling's Custard Cup)

What a difference a few days can make! We arrived home on Monday night, cats and all, exhausted from our long trip. Jet lag coming back from Europe is different than going over. We've been falling asleep early (8:30 PM) and waking up early (5:30-6:00 AM) ever since we arrived. Last night was the first night we were able to stay awake past ten. I even got to watch The Daily Show in its entirety.

It's been a long week of unpacking but we're finally finished. This morning we unloaded the last box of stuff and took our last trip to the box recycling bin. Now we need to clean up and straighten things a bit. Thus I am procrastinating by typing this blog. It's a small apartment but we've managed to get a lot of stuff into the space. We are on a first name basis with the staff at the local Target since we've been there every day for the past week buying storage items.

Here are some pictures of our mostly finished place:

Living room

Dinning room/kitchen

Bedroom

We also have a second bedroom that is our basement, office, music room, and general storage area. It's actually a pretty nice nice space and I'll upload a picture of that once it's finished.

As I mentioned in my last post, we got home on the hottest day of the summer and our air conditioning wasn't working. It was 92 degrees in our living room and there was nothing coming out of the vents when we turned on the air. Luckily the maintenance staff is awesome. We managed to get it cooled off to 80 degrees by the next morning with fans but it was still unbearable. Well it turns out when they remodeled this apartment over the summer they crossed wires with the thermostat in the apartment in the basement. So for the past three weeks our thermostat has been telling the air conditioner in 104 to blast cold air into the basement. The maintenance staff came by and fixed it right away. It was nice to not have to fix it myself by the way.

By Tuesday afternoon we had cold air coming through our vents and all was well. Thank goodness because it was in the upper 90s for the past several days. Yesterday we finally got some relief and we even opened the windows last night! This morning when we woke up we heard some sheep baa-ing from the agriculture research barns just a few blocks from our house. Thus far the winds have been favorable by the way and we haven't smelled any of our neighbors. Let's hope it stays that way.