Swilson

Allen started work on Monday. This is what he came home toting after his first day of work:

It’s like he just started kindergarten.

Our NZ shipment showed up last week. The process for importing personal effects was incredibly easy until our palettes hit the US. Then we got slapped with fees and inscrutable Customs documents and bitchy warehouse workers. On Monday I rented a moving truck to pick up our palettes and unload them into our loft. I ended up in tears about two hours into my day, but all is well now, and except for a few shattered dishes, everything seems to have survived the trip.

With Allen at work, I’m kind of running around, doing errands and lots of window shopping. I can’t really unpack our boxes until we get a few basic pieces of furniture. Here’s my ‘to do’ list for today:

Weeeee! Shopping here is frustrating for the opposite reason that shopping in NZ is frustrating. There are so many options and so many stores selling the exact same thing that we’re constantly second guessing ourselves. I can’t commit to anything until I know I’m getting the best deal; it’s exhausting.

However. I looove the grocery stores here. The produce selection at Berkeley Bowl is enough to make my head explode.

That photo shows maybe a fifth of their produce. Today I found sour grapes (at least I think that’s what the sign said), which I’d never heard of. I snagged a bag of them, tried one while browsing other stuff, then put them back after it made my face hurt. That was probably shitty grocery etiquette but they were crazy sour.

The furniture shopping is going slowly. I found a few promising second-hand stores today, but I keep getting sidetracked by really impractical (but really awesome) things. I’ve found at least 3 of these type drawers already:

It’s meant to store metal type for letterpress printing. It’s a lost art and pretty impractical, but I’m so in love with it. If I had 900 extra bucks I would totally bring it home and put… buttons in it? I also found this old medical cart today, which I thought was cool:

I gotta hone my shopping skills a little better though. Activists can smell my newness; I keep wandering around, half lost, and end up getting caught off guard by someone who wants to talk to me about gay rights. Sorry do-gooder, I’ve got mass-produced furniture to buy.

I had really good intentions to blog regularly upon returning to the US, but then I got frustrated with technology and put it off. With our awesome, super fast computer currently traveling by boat to California (I hope), I’m back to my laptop, which is just old enough to frustrate the hell out of me.

If I’d written this post when I first got to the US, it would have been a very different report. I felt short of breath in South Bend, driving on big roads, past big, generic shopping centers, waiting for Allen to finish his classes. Things have mellowed out a lot for me though; I’m genuinely enjoying my time at home right now, but those first few weeks were tough. I still haven’t gotten over how unnecessarily excessive everything is here, I’m constantly paralyzed by choice, and the cost of my temporary health insurance makes me cry big crocodile tears. But the trade off thus far has been family time and laziness, both of which are oh so nice.

Here’s what I have done with my time:

– Visited Notre Dame and watched the engineering department drool over Allen. I went to the talk Allen gave and watched from the back as he spoke to about 300 students and then signed autographs and took pictures afterwards. No joke. When that first girl asked to take her picture with him, I thought “Back off, bitch!” But that quickly turned into, “Aww, this is kind of cute.”

– Digital painting.

– Drove back and forth to Louisville and Leitchfield. I’ve been to Louisville three times now; once to see Allen’s sister graduate, the second to do some home goods shopping, and the third to fly out to SF. My grandmother is letting me borrow her extra car while I’m home; it’s a sporty little Jetta with an “I Miss Bill” bumper stick on the back and a variety of hip-hop stations programmed to her radio presets. Go Grandma.

– Shot a rifle on Mother’s Day. Don’t think I’ll ever feel the need to do that again. Guns are just as nerve-wracking as I had anticipated, especially when someone’s mother swings her gun around, all loaded and willy nilly.

– Went out to San Francisco for a four-day house hunting trip. It was productive, in that we found a place to live and discovered some neighborhoods we liked, but pretty exhausting. Ultimately we’ve decided on a 3 story loft in Oakland, about two blocks from the adorable Piedmont Ave. We’re unsure of the nearest Bart stop, though, so we got the owner to agree on a 6 month lease. Lesleigh reminded us not to fall too in love with our place, lest we never return to NZ; I think the sheer price of everything out there though will prevent us from falling too much in love with any real estate.This will not be a cheap year for us.

The house hunting experience, though, was much easier than I expected it to be; the owners and tenants we met were all really nice. My apartment search in NYC was a depressing, lose-all-hope-in-humanity kind of experience.

– Took a trip to Chicago and rediscovered how amazing my boyfriend is. It’s the second time in a month that I’ve been wined and dined on his behalf. I don’t really feel the need to say too much about the trip, since Allen blogged about it so well already, but it was a very memorable weekend. I expected Alinea to do something special for Allen, but the fact that they extended that to the entire party was so generous; I cannot say enough nice things about that restaurant. And yes, I did manage to keep my shoes on throughout our entire meal.

– Lots of family time. I’ve probably gotten to see more of Allen’s family than of my own, but that should change now that my parents are back from vacation and my sister is flying in tomorrow for a long weekend. Woop!

Allen’s dad, testing out our new, used banjo:

I miss you New Zealand people heaps as, mates.

This van was parked outside our house last week. Note the stuffed animals on the dash board.

Allen gave me a new lens for Christmas! It’s a 30mm Sigma lens and I love it. The fact that I have no control over the zoom turns photography into a much less intimidating hobby for me. I’m not second guessing myself as much. Some pictures from yesterday: