/karen/

Gong-ite

Wednesday, 11 December, 2002

We picked up the keys on Saturday and dropped off some delicate stuff (like our guitars). Then we went home to pack and ran out of boxes (my theory now is that you can never have too many boxes; they're just too useful). The movers (Angel Piano and Furniture Removals) came spot on at 8 am. They took one look at the piano and immediately expressed their dislike for it. No one likes our piano but us (and my mum who used to own it). Nevertheless, between the three of them, they managed to get it and everything else out the door, down two flights of stairs and into their big truck. George even remembered me from 3 years ago when they moved me out of my mum's place just before Ben and I got married. I started cleaning the place. Later, my mum showed up and helped clean too. Ben went with the movers in Shamgar. My mum and I finished cleaning the flat at about 11:30. There wasn't much to do because I had done most of it before. We just cleaned all the windows and mirrors and I vacuumed and mopped the floors. I even got rid of all the cobwebs which had been lingering around the balcony. The place has never looked so clean! Hope Craig and Liz like it too—I know Liz is a woman of detail. Brad, our landlord and friend from church, came about this time to look the place over. He said it looked great. He also said he was going to miss us since we were such great tenants. I got a bit teary-eyed and said I was going to miss living in Kirrawee and having a great landlord like Brad! My mum and I left soon after that (and then discovered that Ben had forgotten to put the barbecue and his bike in the moving truck). Brad said we could come back for the bike because it wouldn't fit in my mum's car. We drove down to Wollongong eating raw almonds on the way. When we arrived, the movers had just finished (this was about 12:30). They had called reinforcements to help them with the piano which was now safely lodged on the ground floor of our new townhouse. They left and we started unpacking and rearranging the furniture. The Beilharzs showed up with Angie and helped us put together the dining table. They brought lunch and drinks which was very welcome! So we all sat down to eat. My mother left after that with explicit directions from me because she was scared of getting lost and the Beilharzs helped us cart boxes to the various rooms in the house. They left in the late afternoon and Ben and I continued to unpack. Bec and Phil invited us over for dinner so we headed over there at about 5 pm. They made us this wonderful barbecue meal with steak, sausages, onions, sweet potato, potato and carrots. Afterwards we went with them to Fairy Meadow Anglican Church where we hoped to see Pete and Erica So-'n-so (not their real name) but they were at National Training Event. We met all these other people instead including this girl named Lisa who was in her second year of BA (Psychology) at Wollongong. We were pretty tired by this stage so headed home and collapsed. And on Monday we woke up in a completely new place. It's weird living in a place that has two storeys again. It's weird because it's not like being in your parents' place where some rooms are out of bounds (your brother's, your parents', your mother's study). In our house, no place is out of bounds and our stuff is in every room. I remember after we got married and were living in our first flat in Kirrawee (the damp mouldy one), I would wander from room to room picking up things and putting things down, not quite sure what to do with myself. I started doing that in our new place on Monday but it was worse because I had the stairs to contend with. So I would go downstairs to get something and then realise that what I wanted was really upstairs but then I couldn't find it there either and would have to come downstairs again. Maybe it's just me who has these lunatic habits; surely other housewives aren't as bad. I can still close my eyes and remember the place we've just left. I can remember where everything used to be. It's strange getting used to new spaces, new places for all your stuff (particularly the stuff you use every day; the towel rack is now in a completely different place). And it's weird not being able to see all the way from one end of our place to the other like we used to. In Wollongong it's so quiet; we have none of that constant hum of the traffic along the highway. It takes some getting used to. This is also the first time Ben has lived outside the Shire and I think he is having withdrawal symptoms. So anyways Monday was filled with more unpacking. I did most of it because Ben was exhausted so slept half the day. I woke him up so we could go food shopping and shopping for the various plugs and cords which you need in a new place because all the powerpoints, TV outlets and phone jacks are in silly places. I accidentally bought the wrong kind of phone thing from Officeworks and later Ben told me he wanted a double phone adaptor for the downstairs telephone. Our aerial doesn't seem to work so we can't get TV (only a bad thing when The Simpsons are on). We ran into old friends in Woolies and I met our neighbours in Number 2. Yesterday was the first day we commuted from Wollongong into work. We left at 6:30 and it took just under 2 hours which was pretty good considering the rain, fog and traffic (most of which I missed because I curled up and went to sleep). I'm still up to my ears in potgrads and timetable stuff but I'm slowly getting there. The 2nd Sydney Web dinner at Erciyes in Surry Hills last night had an attendance of about 6 people and Chuck was only there half the time because he went to meet Mikey at the airport. We ate Turkish bread and dips, pizza, kebab and sweet things like baklava, semolina and pudding, and talked web stuff, Christian stuff and other stuff for about three hours which was good fun even if I didn't understand some of it. We also had the great pleasure of driving one of the Lukes home. We crashed at the Beilharzs' and, for a change, I drove Ben to work today.

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