I'm here

My last day at the first clerkship was Wednesday (and I DID manage to get my last draft opinion done, yay!). I got a plaque. It's small but marble and weighs a ton and I actually love it, and plan to schlep it from office to office for the rest of my career.

My first day at the second clerkship is Monday. (EEEK.)

We (by which I mean the nice two guys we hired, with some help from LDH*) loaded the truck on Thursday afternoon, and then we (by which I mean LDH and I) hit the road yesterday morning. It was actually a pretty decent drive and I was never in danger of falling asleep while driving (unlike during most long road trips). The closest came while listening to Lev Grossman's The Magicians on the iPod for a while (during one of those stretches on the road where your options on the radio are fuzz, static, all-country-all-the-time, and hectoring religious rhetoric. I started playing a game: Name That Genre! It's kind of scary how it usually only takes about 5 words to figure out what kind of radio channel you've hit).

• Total digression: Does anyone out there really LIKE The Magicians? I have a terrible time evaluating books-on-tape, because they go way slower than I can actually read a book, and I can't judge pacing at all. When I listened to Middlesex on tape I'd have sworn it was about 2000 pp long, the time it took. But I'm not loving The Magicians - I find it a little hard to empathize with Quentin's ennui/angst at the beginning of the book; I feel like we're supposed to see going to Brakebills as this amazing rescue from dreary mundanity, but I have a hard time seeing the misery in growing up going to whatever private school in [I think] Brooklyn, having a thing for your best friend's girl, and agonizing over which expensive college you'll go to. He's a little too privileged for me to care much about, is what I'm saying. That said, it could be that I just don't like the guy who's reading the book.

Anyway, we made it, and we only had one real moment where we wanted to kill each other (at the end of the drive, in the apartment parking lot, before the two nice guys we hired to unload us showed up, when both of us really really needed something to eat; I just kept telling myself, "I do NOT need to do this NOW," where "this" is basically "tell partner where he gets off and why he's being completely unjust." I would imagine LDH was thinking pretty much the same.)

The nice surprise was finding out the rug and carpet have just been replaced in my unit (it's cheap carpet and flooring, but hey, it's brand new, and it's not an investment in my own property, so who cares?). The less nice surprise was that the shower curtain was not actually attached to the wall and that the kitchen sink seems to leak, but a tension rod from Target fixed the former and I put in a maintenance request for the latter, so I'm sure it will be fine.

(The even NICER surprise was meeting an old bloggy friend at breakfast this morning! She doesn't live here now, but grew up here and is here visiting her parents. LDH "checked in" on Facebook at the place we went to breakfast - which is the same place we got dinner Friday night, but hey, don't judge, it was really close and we liked it a lot and mid-move is not always the time to be all gourmet and adventurous and so on - and she saw it and realized she was in THE SAME RESTAURANT WE WERE. So LDH and I are eating away and this lovely person walks up to us and says, "New Kid?" So that was a really great introduction to this city.) 

Oh, and we did not bring the cats. First, we suddenly realized that since we weren't both moving, the cats did not HAVE to come with us, and that the actual logistics of moving would probably be easier without two cats. (Short answer: YES.) And second, after we realized the first thing, Middle Cat (the magical 20-year-old cat) got sick again (well, actively sick; she currently has hyperthyroidism, kidney failure, and a brain tumor, so sick is sort of her default state), and we really didn't want to bung her in a car and drive her 8 hours to an unfamiliar apartment where she would proceed to freak out (in a quiet, OCD kind of way) and stress for 3-4 weeks. Nor did we want to take her from her beloved vets. So the kitties stayed home. (edited: home! ha! no-longer-home. gotta come up with useful pseudonyms.]

I was an absolute wreck when I said goodbye to them, kept thinking they were in the car, then when we got here, kept thinking I heard them walking around, and when I woke up this morning, I expected to find them in/around the bed with us. I miss them TERRIBLY. But MAN, a long-distance move is so much easier without cats! We didn't have to worry about feeding them or not feeding them (we didn't usually feed our cats the morning of a drive), or how they'd handle the drive, or how to make sure they were never unaccompanied in the car, or whether they'd get out while the furniture is being moved in, etc. etc. The plan is that in a few weeks (probably at least a month, though) LDH will drive them down one weekend, so they can move from an already established place to an already established place, and avoid the trauma of de-/re-establishing. (To be perfectly horribly blunt: I am not confident Middle Cat will actually make it down here. But we'll see what we see.)

Okay, I don't really have an end to this post but exhaustion has suddenly struck, along with the realization I have to get up in 5 hours (don't worry, I plan to go straight back to bed post-airport and drown my misery in sleep, but I really should also get some sleep now). And since I will be here all by my lonesome most of the time, you can expect to see me show up in this space more frequently! So I can come up with better endings in the future. 

*LDH = long-distance husband. He was LDH, then he was NLLDH (No-Longer-Long-Distance Husband - the no-longer part applied ONLY to the long distance, NOT to the husband part), and now he's back to LDH. 

 

Comments

[Belle]

Well, welcome to new place. And best of luck (although your skills diminish the need for luck) with the new gig!

[Bardiac]

Glad to hear you made it safely! Welcome to your new home :) I hope the new clerkship is wonderful! (And I look forwards to reading more.)

[rented life]

huh...I wonder what that's like, moving without cats. I have never made a long distance move without cats. Though, after awhile we found ways to make it easier for our drama queen--someone drives and I sit in the back with her on a lease. Our boy is fine (hating us but fine) in a carrying case. Once we get where we are going, she adjusts just fine, but he does not. See, Queen believes she owns everywhere she goes, sees, touches, so a new place just expands her domain. :)

Glad the moving is over!! Enjoy getting settled!

[Seeking Solace]

Glad you made it safe and sound! Can't wait to hear about the new clerkship.

I remember when we moved with the Boy. He did fine for the first six hours, but the second six hours required medication. I thought he was going to lose it in the car!

[Notorious Ph.D.]

I detested "The Magicians." I can imagine someone who is a fan of both fantasty spec fic AND Catcher in the Rye liking it, but an entire cast of whiny, self-absorbed protagonists? No thanks. In my eyes, the book kind of redeemed itself in the last few pages when you start to see that the real problem is how the desire for transcendence (as exemplified by the Narnia and Harry Potter books that this one riffs on) can, if left unchecked, render people miserable in the life they have at the moment. And there are some funny digs at some of the drudgery of academia that I found amusing. But other than that... mneyh.

[Anastasia]

I always want to listen to the hectoring religious rhetoric. It amuses me. PH not so much, so he never lets me listen to it when he's with me. :)

Glad you made it and looking forward to hearing about your new adventures!

[Dame Eleanor Hull]

I hated The Magicians too, in fact I blogged about it, but I liked the beginning of it (ooh, look, fantasy story about real angsty adolescents) and hated the end (not how this genre is supposed to play out, and I like my genre fiction to play by the rules), and yeah, Quentin is a wanker.

[What Now?]

Good luck with your first day of the new clerkship tomorrow! I hope that all goes well. And I'm glad to hear that the apartment is looking slightly nicer than when you were making the decision about which one to rent.

[Alice]

I loved The Magicians, although I agree that the characters are all mostly assholes, and I qualify my love by saying that The Magician King made me love it more (I probably only mildly like it on it's own). I also share you problem of feeling like audiobooks are way too slow; I finally gave up on them because I can't even listen to good 120 page YA books without getting completely bored.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Thanks for the good wishes, everyone! I am back online because I have been unpacking clothes and good GOD is that boring. Especially because even though I just packed everything two days ago, I'm kinda horrified by how many t-shirts I own. I really want unpacking elves right now (mostly because I'm afraid that anything I don't unpack today won't get touched for weeks!).

So about the Magicians - glad I'm not the only one who isn't enamored. Dame Eleanor, I looked at your review, and realized that I have barely scratched the surface of the book. I'm only soon after the Beast, before graduation. (The Beast episode was about the only moment that has truly gripped me so far.) And I feel like I've been listening to this book for EONS. So, I think the slow pace is a huge part of the problem and, Alice, I'm thinking that like you, I may have to give up on this audio book thing. (But you also make me curious to get through it so I can read the Magician King!) I quite like the idea of subverting/questioning/whatever-ing the draw that fantasy lit has on people (and, Dame Eleanor, I am a huge Narnia fan). But we'll have to see what I think by the end.

If I ever get there.

Anastasia - mostly I'm with PH. Sometimes it can be an interesting sociological experiment to listen to the rhetoric, but I have to be in the right mood!

Seeking Solace - we always had to drug Eldest Cat to the eyeballs, or he would cry the ENTIRE time. When we drove out to our last place, we made such a long run one day that his drugs wore off and he was just nutso. So I sympathize!

rented life - I like Queen's attitude. :-) Middle Cat used to be pretty zen about moving (compared to our male cats, who would pace and pace and pace for about three days on arrival), but now that she's about 115 in human years, she's fussier than she used to be. :-P

[NegativeCapability]

I won't judge; my family eats at that place twice a day sometimes.

That was like the pinnacle of social media convergence.

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[loyal reader]

Your goal for fall 2013 should be that you and LDH settle in one area for long-term, career type jobs.

[Janice]

I'm glad that the move was relatively smooth and yay for blogger/restaurant meet-up serendipity!