Boxes

A quiet five minutes hiding from the wifes family - living with a four year old and four month old is an experience! With 48 hours before we get the keys to the new house we are just about finished packing. A camping stove and new BBQ has been bought as we are going to be without a cooker for several days, in fact there isn't much of a kitchen. The phone company kindly cut off our current phone line yesterday, just as we were phoning around sorting out things like gas and electric for the new place. Hopefully the bollocking from the wife has got it reconnected.

My biggest worry now is the removal firm we've booked. I saw one of their two vans the other day and it looks very small, especially when you see the number of boxes we've got. I thought I was a hoarder but the wife is even worse!

Disappointing Friday

Dare I admit to being quite excited at the prospect of Big Brother starting
last night? It just goes to show how little decent telly there is at the
moment! It brings a little light relief from the packing. We were going to
go and see Juliet Turner tonight but neither of us can stay awake past 10pm
and can't face the prospect of the two hour drive there and back. We are
both feeling constantly knackered and this weekend want to try and restore
some sort of order to the house. As well as all the boxes and piles of
things still to be packed, we are also housing someone elses furniture for
the weekend and then two adults and two kids are joining in the fun on
Sunday. The wife is far to soft when it comes to her kids, but that's
another story all together. Let's just say it is hard to move around the
house at the moment.

On top of the disappointment of waiting 6 months to see Juliet Turner and
then not seeing her at all, I got a free chocolate caramel bar with my
sandwich this lunch time (which at the time was not at all disapointing). It
being from M&S (this is probably the last week I can afford to buy my lunch
from M&S) I expected it to be delicious but it tasted just like a mars bar,
a sticky, sickly sweet mars bar. Utter disappointment.

The deed is done

Today we signed the contracts for the new house and in ten days we complete and the place is 100% ours! On the way down to the solicitors this morning I did point out to the wife that in terms of commitment, this is as good as getting married. I told her that this was her last chance to call the whole thing off and to speak now or forever hold her peace. She replied in her typically romantic way, "I'm not pulling out now after the amount of money we've spent getting this far". However she did suggest that we went out for lunch afterwards to celebrate and I'm sure I spied a bottle of something fizzy in the fridge!

Flapping around

Today I'm doing an impression of a headless chicken. Or a blue arsed fly.
Whichever is running round the most, suffering in the heat and having more
and more piled on her. I have managed to automate one of my experiments
which gives me 10 minutes to sit down. Finally we have a date for the house
move, contracts are being exchanged next week then the big day is happening
two weeks today. Thats just 14 more sleeps! Consequently after running
around at work all day I get to go home and pack boxes - I never knew we had
so many books. Boxes and boxes of books. And wine glasses, so many odd wine
glasses that don't match any others. We're also eating some strange meals as
we try to run down the contents of the freezer. I can't wait to get home
just to see what the wife's dug out for tonight.

Panic

It's been one of those days - just one thing after another and too much to do with too little time to do it. An annual review at work has allowed my boss to dump a whole heap of work on me. I was probably going to end up doing it eventually but now I'm going to be doing it on his terms (and his time scales) rather than my own. Then the wife tells me that we have to be moved in two weeks, she has a tenant lined up who needs her house then. Not a problem in terms of packing (who'd have thought two people could own so much junk), we did a lot over the weekend. But, having decided to decorate one of the bedrooms we also had to finish continue that and on moving the bed we discovered a hole in the floor that needs sorting. Add to that the incompetent mortgage advisor and the ridiculous amount of information the building society want and two weeks seems a bit optimistic. As the wife said, it doesn't matter, the shop round the corner is selling tents at half price. I just can't see how the wife, the dog, me and all our belongings will fit in a three-person tent!

Last Minute

So the Black Cats avoided breaking two records at once by getting their only home win this season at the last home game of the season. Unfortunately it won't be enough to stop them being relegated with the lowest number of points by any team ever (breaking their own record) but it did put the wife in a good mood last night. And the wifes good moods are good for me!

Bring me sunshine

It is a lovely, lovely day outside and I have discovered that looking out of
my 5th floor lab window I can see not only the fields with the cows happily
grazing but beyond that I can see planes on their final approach into the
airport. Which, for a plane spotter with multiple two minute incubations
during the course of any given experiment, is perfect (two minutes is too
short to do anything useful other than play solitaire and in the absence of
a lab computer the window is an ideal substitute. However, if there were to
be a computer in the lab I would now be able to visit the live flight
information on the airports website and find out exactly where each plane
has come from). I just spent five minutes enjoying the sunshine and talking
to the wife on the phone after a successful experiment. Not even the person
who let the door slam in my face or the person who ignored me holding the
door for them could dampen my mood, but why do people have to be so goddamn
rude!

Still not moving

I actually made a start on packing, although there is still no date for the move. The wife had to work on Saturday so I took the opportunity to empty and dismantle a wardrobe so that one of the bedrooms can be decorated before it is let out. After multiple trips to B&Q (DIY is what bank holidays were made for after all) I was fully equiped with a new saw, several lengths of wood, half a ton of nails and a large tin of paint. I know wood cladding is kind of out of fashion but it will make it easier to tidy up after tenants move out and we made a good job of it, even if I do say so myself. Or at least it will be once it's finished. The tenant thing seemed to be going well but the bloke who had wanted this place turned up on Sunday morning saying he had changed his mind. We think we will probably put it in the hands of an agent. It's all so frustrating, the whole business of moving seems to be going so slowly. It's almost a year since we started looking into moving and three months now since we offered on the house. Initially we had hoped to me moving this weekend but we still don't even have a date for exchanging contracts. I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall, but at the moment it's the wrong brick wall!