I get by with a little help from my friends...

My friends are awesome.

Since we moved into the new place, the wife and I have been attempting to find a way to get some sitting furniture into our living room. Our last couch was just toast, it really had to go. So the new place didn't have crap to sit on, much less feel good on the butt.

We did get a great chair from her aunt (as payment for helping HER move a weekend after our big move), but that was really just a GREAT sitting spot for one person.

Enter our friends Mike and Meghan, who also moved recently. They found that they had a chaise that just didn't quite fit into their new house, as well as a very sturdy coffee table that fit great in front of the chaise, but again, not in the new place.

For about a week I was trying to coordinate the use of someone's truck to go pick up the stuff from Mike and Meghan, but every time I got close to getting transportation, something went wrong.

Lo and behold, I get a message Thursday of last week stating that Mike and another buddy Jason would be dropping by with the furniture on Saturday! They were doing some sort of epic city-wide furniture rearrangement with multiple houses, lots of big furniture, and a rental truck.

So now we have a respectable amount of sitting space in our living room. I've yet to grab a picture, but now we don't really have anything preventing a housewarming party. I'm thinking Aug 18. With the meatfest.

This is what it is to be a grown up.

Everything is in place. The owls are on the shelf, the books are up in some sort of weird order, and the yard is mostly kept clear.

The car is functioning, even though borrowed time is not even close to a good adjective to describe how long it will last.

The kids are healthy and staying peaceful. They tend to get too lodged into things that must be provided electricity, but once school starts and they make friends, things may change a little.

But the thing that isn't set up correctly, at least the thing that bugs me the most, is the living room is still in shambles.

Our television died at our old place. I tried to fix it, but I guess I wasn't good enough with the soldering stuff to make it work again. We also pitched the couch, thinking it wouldn't be very long until we got a new one.

It really isn't a big deal to not have a living room, but I find myself more and more just going up to bed to find a comfortable place to sit. And then, once on the bed, I recline and just fall asleep.

This is stupid, I know, and it's starting to make me feel like such a lazy slob.

But I've found the furniture places close to me that have what we need, and I can get them soon, I just need to be patient. I'm thinking maybe a sofa and a loveseat, because there are times when we have lots of people that come over and want some comfy place to sit.

The TV may have to wait another month, just because of all the expenses in getting moved... But I know what I'm after, and I know when to get it, it's just a matter of waiting and being patient. :D

A Rare Occurrence (hopefully)

I don't typically use this space to bitch about work, but I feel this is the most influencial thing going on in my life today, so I'll just jot down some thoughts.

It seems that there's some weird cycle of people trying to be excellent, then noticed, then appreciated, then they just don't care. At that point they become cynical, then jaded, then downright hostile, then poisonous. Then something happens where they go back to trying to be excellent...

I've tried my best to just keep an even keel. I get my stuff done when necessary, I don't try too hard and burn myself out. When an emergency comes up that I can handle/help with, I tuck my wings and divebomb all over it until the problem is resolved. Otherwise, I'm just another cook in the kitchen, and I may get in the way.

The problem is when these two ideas merge, and especially when they merge when everyone's in the poisonous part of the cycle.

When a VIP client asks for assistance, and the on-call guy doesn't drop everything and assist, it's a bad time. When the root cause of the issue is a certificate that expired days earlier but wasn't noticed, it's a badder time. And when everything gets dropped into my lap to correct, it's a really badder time.

But again, I don't try to over-extend, I just politely note the issue, find out that it was someone else's mistake that caused the cert to drop in the first place. I tell who needs to know what they need to do, and back out of it.

In years past, I would have flipped the fuck out, fixed all the things, then gone on a witch-hunt to fry those responsible. Now, it's not like I don't care, but I just don't care enough to get all finger-pointy. The cert is requested, other methods of hitting the servers are given out, and we're generally in an alright spot.

But this is just a sign of the times. Shit's about to get really bad if this is what it's gonna be like for the next few months.

Reboot

So we've moved. All our things are out of the old place, and into the new place. Our shitty, two bedroom townhouse/apartment in the middle of the woods is no longer our "home". Maybe someone else will enjoy the garden we built, or the notes I left in various places with things like instructions on how to light the furnace (seriously, it was hard for me the first time), or the other small improvements we made on the abode.

But now, now we're in a huge three bedroom house. It is fully equipped with AC, an ice maker, a dishwasher, and all sorts of things we haven't had for what seems like forever. I think we're gonna like it in our new place. It's within ten minutes to work for me. It's closer to our friends. It has a host of awesome little shops and pizza places and butchers and niche-ey things.

We're nestled away in this little part of Covington called Peaselburg. Apparently that's slang German for goose-shit, because during the initial years of existence, Peaselburg was home to immigrants that kept geese. Like, lots of them. It was food, and geese have to eat and poop.

Anyway, now the little neighborhood is quite pleasant, no goose-shit anywhere. I have noticed something, though, whenever someone who knows anything about Northern Kentucky asks me where I moved to, and I reply Peaselburg, they sorta drop their expression a bit. They seem... I dunno, saddened by this. They mutter something like, "Oh, that's nice..." and then just move on to something else.

What the fuck? The place isn't bad, really. The neighborhood is full of blue-collar workers who work every day and come home to a nice home cooked meal and then sit on their porch and smoke and think about things. That's pretty much what I like to do, so I fit right in. My car is not the nicest nor is it the non-nicest car on the block, so I fit right in.

I imagine it would be different if I had moved to some meth-production neighborhood, or if murders were an all time high just up the street, but that's not the case here. I live in a nice place, damnit. My neighbors are friendly, but they keep their respectable distance. When moving in, our truck got stuck halfway in the driveway, and several of them hopped off their porches to come investigate and offer their opinions on how to un-stick the stuck truck.

And anyway, I like it, so I don't really care what anyone else thinks.

I've got two grills now, too. Very soon I will be hosting a large meat-fest full of grilled sizzling meats fresh-cut from our local butchers. There will also be local wines from the vineyards down the street. You are welcome to come attend.