Monday night's 2am routine was repeated again last night, without the sock this time. Evidently he just wanted some extra loving and an invite to sleep under the covers on MY side, maybe he thought Marble was getting special treatment or something. These cats are so adorable, in the superfuzzy way and the quirky noodle-brain way too.

They'd be a lot cuter if they let us sleep through the night on a regular basis.

2am Fun During Sock-Hunting Season
I was woken up last night by the sounds of one of our ravenous and deadly beasties running about with a rolled-up sock gripped between his teeth. I am assuming this was after thoroughly killing said sock, through the method of picking it up and shaking his head about vigorously. Always the best way to kill a sock.

I suspect this was an attention getting ploy, since his sister was asleep under the covers somewhere near Matt's legs, and he had nobody to play with. After 1/2 an hour of noisy purring and mewing and chewing on my hand he finally settled down and let us all sleep again. But not until after he'd succeeded in getting Marble ejected from her hiding place by jumping up and down on her head through the blankets.

Pretty much any sort of planning or ceremony writing for the Handfasting has been put off until after our move. We've now moved, so I suppose it's time to start on the ceremony, I want a basic framework to start from, other than the trad Christian wedding we all pretty much know by heart. Otherwise it's just too daunting. Time to call in John, the officiant, for a bit of prodding us into action.

* * *

Matt told his family we're engaged, it had been put off to allow a decent interval between his sister's wedding and our announcement. Some members of his family seemed to think it might be held in Pennsylvania, and were shocked to hear it's going to be in San Diego, which would involve travel for them, possibly even by plane. If anyone actually whines about it I'll point out they're lucky it's not going to be in Scotland, which would require not only travel by plane but getting a passport as well. The idea of getting married in a castle somewhere in Scotland is still very appealing to me, but it's so impractical to arrange, we'll just have to make sure we stay in a castle hotel sometime when we visit.

My Mum tried to convince me that it would actually make more sense to go for LA over San Diego, since then everyone could stay at Granny's...I shot that down pointing out that the planning part would be made considerably more complex by doing it in a city other than where I live. We're fortunate that nobody in either family is going to make a real issue out of the location, it seems it's just par for the course that everybody is going to think it would be a splendid idea for us to be married on their doorstep rather than our own. I think that's the first stereotypical "wedding planning conversation" I've had so far.

I was concerned that my determination to abandon the modern tradition of a white gown would lead to some tutting and head-shaking. Fortunately for me nobody in my family gives a rat's ass if I choose to wear blue or green, or even burgundy, over white, which relieves me. My Granny was married in a tweed suit at a little chapel in LA, and my Aunt in a plaid skirt in a Courthouse, nobody's going to care if I don't have a trad wedding (at least in the sense of the level of formality). Hooray.

OK, so Matt's family will be somewhat nonplussed at the absence of a big white dress, but they will also be nonplussed by him wearing a kilt, and by the various accents of my family. That's not even counting my European cousins, that's just my Mother (transatlantic), Father (English), and Sister (German-influenced brit). So I'm not really worried about confusing or disappointing them, because I already know it'll be pretty darn unlike their image of a wedding.

Today we're grabbing the FINAL scraps from our old place. Yes it took us this long, the difference between moving just up the stairs and moving to an entirely different apartment. Last time I opnly had to pick up everything once, this time I had to load my car, then unload it all and haul it up two flights of stairs.

It's been a long slog, but we love our new place, we just need to find ways to make ourselves fit more comfortably in here, we need to streamline our possesions, store them efficiently I mean, we've already done the throwing-out part of streamlining.

Status Report:
All available boxes have been filled, I should have been stockpiling them from work for the past month, we've got much more stuff than boxes to put it in. My car is full to the roof, except for one spot in the trunk, a little smaller than a shoe-box. Matt's car is not full to the roof, but he has an insane volume of cargo space, there's still a lot of boxes in there. Work is going smoothly so far, helped along by my considerate boss not dropping 5 hours of work in my lap on moving day (considerate employers make life much simpler).

Back to the cell culture hood for me, then it's box-hauling time!

The plan for the move is taking form. We can get the keys tomorrow any time after 2pm, I am also supposed to be picking up the U-Haul around 2pm tomorrow.

So. Tomorrow...I will bike to the med center, catch the shuttle to campus, work for a few hours, catch no later than the 12.30 shuttle back to hillcrest and then bike to the U-Haul place to collect my 14' monster. They double-booked the 10' truck, and originally tried to offer me the 17' as a replacement, fortunately I thought to ask if they had anything smaller. After picking up the truck, I will drop it at the old place, pick up my (already loaded) car and drive with Matt to hand over our rent check, get our keys and start filling the new place with our junk. I'll unload my car while Matt does a Boot Camp Inspection of the place and fills out the move-in inventory. He's really good at finding random little bits of damage to make sure we don't get screwed on our deposit.

Then it's back to load up the truck as much as possible, hopefully with everything, but failing that with essentials like the bed. The goal is to be able to move the cats Friday night, which means having the bed set up so they have something familiar to hide under when we lock them in the bedroom on Saturday so they don't get underfoot for the rest of the move.

Around 5 a friend is showing up to help with the loading/unloading of one lot of furniture in the truck. Saturday morning will be the second load of furniture, if needed, I have to return the truck within 24 hours, so we have until 1 or 2pm to make use of it.

I'm hoping very much we'll get the actual moving part done by the end of Saturday, so we can use Sunday to unpack, clean the old place, and recover.

The packing has begun, I took home every decent sized box that came into work yesterday containing shipments from various biotech supply companies. None of them biohazardous I hasten to add.

I'm having what seems to be the usual pre-move misconception that all of my belongings will be relatively simply and quickly stashed into conveniently categorized boxes, leaving no random detritus of odd-man-out items that doesn't fit (either physically or categorizationally) into the other boxes.

I know this is a misconception because it's happened every time I move. I start packing with the conviction that in no time I will have everything neatly and securely packed into appropriate boxes. With no leftovers. Then I keep stumbling across more and more stuff that must be packed and moved and it all has to get packaged up somehow. All of this ends up being unceremoniously crammed into whatever receptacle happens to be at hand, as long as that receptacle has handles.

There was the large IKEA bag that ended up containing the last-minute stuffing of: two silk cushions; a half-dead woolen sweater; a season of Sex And The City on VHS, still in it's plastic wrappings; a roll of ribbon; some pens and a couple of books. There is also the large cardboard box I still haven't unpacked entirely from moving in to this place. At one point it had candlestick holders, candles, a fire iron, tubes of decorative frosting...And a spurtle. A spurtle is a wooden spoon without the spoon part, it is used for stirring porridge. In other words: it's a stick. Only this stick has the shape of a thistle flower at one end, and a little tartan bow around it. Just in case you were in any doubt that it is an object of Scottish origin.

It is vitally important that I own a spurtle.

Important enough that it languished among the drying out tubes of frosting for four months before I thought to go find it and put it with the more frequently used kitchen tools.

Halloween has been survived, this year we had two parties to go to, in place of the big fat none of last year. We just had to stop back at home to re-apply our fake blood in between. We were Bonny & Clyde: vaguely 1920s clothes and bullet holes in our heads were all we needed.

It was unsettling seeing Matt with a pair of bloody bulletholes in his temples, he looked gory from all angles, I looked normal from one side, but when I turned the wound on my throat, and the one on my temple, became visible. It was kind of fun being the goriest pair of people present at one party. I think we got out-gored by the guy who came to the second party as one of the Reservoir Dogs, he was wearing a few more pints of fake blood than us.

Now it's time to start packing up our apartment, we're moving into the teeny weeny super cool place this weekend. Hopefully things will stay settled for a little longer after this move. I don't want to average 2-3 moves a year any more.