We is moved!

It's official! We are homeowners! Yipee!! Mortgage Payment!

The move went pretty much as perfectly as one could hope for - which was a nice counterbalance to the day of fun I had waiting on the Time Warner installation and dealing with the customer service reps the completely apathetic worker who pretended to sympathize with me. I already devoted about 230 tweets to this subject so I'll move on. Maybe.

Friday our team of movers showed up - BJ & Minez - and we went to dinner and then sat around and stared at each other. Boy, life without a TV, huh? The boys, including Z and my father-in-law, were pretty frickin amazing as far as a moving crew goes. Hubby had the truck in the driveway by 9, it was loaded by 10:30, at the new house and empty by 12:30. Cap it off with a visit by the ice cream truck chiming it's merry little bells down the street (PUSH POP!!! what what), and it was pretty much the most efficient and wonderful moving experience ever. Also, no TVs were dropped this time.

The moving crew, big fans of the now EMPTY truck.

Ice Cream Truck? Seriously? Best neighborhood ever.

What it took to move us: 26 foot truck, 2 CRV (full of clothing, pillows, camera, banana bread, etc, all things I did not trust to go into said truck), an Accord with all paintings, pics, mirrors in backseat, and a pick-up truck with our elliptical and lawn mower.

PS, there's just TWO of us. Yea.

And the pathetic thing is, I didn't feel like we own a lot of stuff until this move. I'm the queen of ebaying, and I'm constantly paring down my closets and warding off the accumulation of excess clutter. Yet, it took no less than 4 vehicles to transport just the two of us across town. What gives?

On a related note, see my ebay store! New and exciting stuff being posted by the minute! Eh?

After we moved in and chowed down on push pops, the boys went back to the old house to do some cleaning. Minez will forever hold a special place in my heart for cleaning the laundry room floor where the washer & dyer were located. While they were gone, my in-laws went to town unpacking the kitchen while I finished the rest of the boxes in the downstairs. By 7 pm, we had burgers on the grill, friends showing up with wine & guacamole, and the downstairs kind of looked like humans could live there. Nothing like having guests over on the first day to send you into an unpacking flurry.

You have to prioritize the order you unpack things.
Sheets & towels can wait.

I think I was on an adrenaline high, because I even made the most obscenely organized kitchen-overflow closet. If Williams-Sonoma had a 8x3 foot store, it would look exactly like my closet. I can't wait for Jamie, queen bee organization, to see it. (Yes, J, your approval on my closet space means a lot to me.) Last night, we sat on our back deck listening to the nothing-ness of living out in the country. I have come a long way, baby! From the shock trauma center in Baltimore, to the sounds of the cityscape in DC, to the rush of I-40 in our old house to.... CRICKETS. I can hear crickets. Awesome. We just keep looking around the place going "this is ours? Seriously? We get to keep it??"

My little slice of heaven, with some really fugly patio furniture, unfortch.

The only downside is that I find myself not wanting to be at work because there's about a zillion home projects I want to tackle while I still have the motivation of novetly. Including our bonus room.

Overheard on moving day: "Where does this go?" "Um, I don't know, put it in the bonus room."

Yea, that room. Sigh.

Come visit.

The Big Trip to Greenville

Yesterday I made the trip down to Greenville, NC - home of the famous B's Barbeque, the ECU Pirates, Lee Norris (of One Tree Hill and Boy Meets Fame and a fellow WFU '04 alum) and oh yes, Pitt County Memorial Hospital, where my husband is currently doing a rotation. ECU is on the list of possible residency locations so I thought it might behoove me to check out one of our potential areas of relocation... not to mention it'd been 7 days since I'd seen my husband and I was more than happy to pay him a visit too. I was truly pleasantly surprised by Greenville. I had a great tour guide, as one of our best friends and Matt's host, is a Greenville native and humored me with a driving tour complete with a stop to the local Wal-mart. I also saw a Harris Teeter and not one but two Starbucks so... I'm set! What I truly did see that I loved was that Greenville is one of those cities that is on that brink of revitalization. Mike drove me down what was the old Main St downtown area in it's tobacco hey-day and then over to the current "downtown" area, and every other building he pointed out was recently rehabbed, in the process of being rehabbed or just about to be rehabbed. It reminded me of one of my other favorite "work in progress" cities... B'more! (And maybe even Winston?) I just love picturing what potential lies beneath a dilapidated run-down warehouse. The places Mike took us out on Saturday night was a great example of the amazing rebirth of old architecture. After dinner at a yummy and obviously popular restaraunt called Starlight Cafe, we walked over to a recently renovated building that now houses a spa and a restaraunt called, appropriately, LA Lounge & Spa. Can't fault them for being ambigious. I'm always a little hesitant about places in the South that christen themselves with NY or LA references, generally finding the result to be an exaggerated stereotype. I haven't been to LA so I don't truly know what a LA bar looks like, but I didn't have any trouble imaging I was there once we walked inside. It was a very hushed decor, with palm and moss greenery everywhere, low light candles on deep dark tables and very, very pretty people. The martini list was extensive, creative and quite expensive. I had the Wall Street Red (Stoli Strawberi, cranberry juice & champagne). Kim and Matt both had something with pomegrante seeds floating in it, Mike had the Italian Kiss (of which I promptly stole his sugared strawberries, ingracious guest that I am!) and I believe Jason, inspired by our afternoon movie watching on Mike's new blu-ray, had the no fooling around 007. What more could you ask for in a city: a martini bar with bubble chairs and pomegrante garnished beverages in the same metropolils as a barbeque joint so old school they shut the doors when they run out of food? (We did not have any B's because they had run out. Of course.)

So, while I pledge to remain absolutely unbiased and open minded about our potential future cities of residences, I am pleased to say that I can now at least imagine carving out a life in one new place. Between martinis, starbucks, barbeque, and let's be honest - walmart - I could be all set. One site visited, a mere 29 to go.