Hurry Up and Wait...

We spent most of this past week moving my stuff into Athennia's apartment a carload at a time. That's not exactly the most riveting thing to write or read about, but I'll do my best. <shrug>

Wednesday

We officially began the move last Wednesday night: My non-nightstand nightstand finally arrived at our local Bob's Discount Furniture store—a day late, of course (not that that's any surprise, given the crap they pulled when Athennia ordered a dresser there last month). We wanted to head over Athennia's way to pick it up; so, I suggested that we might as well start packing the car and taking some of my stuff over anytime we were making a trip anyway.

We started with my library...

I don't know exactly how many books I have: Probably a couple thousand. Fortunately, around half of those are digital and have no mass or volume; but, the other half are big and heavy and require tons of space. At any rate, I didn't think I'd mind being apart from most of them for a couple weeks; so, we began there.

After carrying eight boxes of books up a flight of stairs, we were tired and hungry... but we only had about 17 minutes to get over to Bob's and grab my nightstand before their service desk closed. (The store's only ~4 miles away, but rush-hour traffic tried its damnedest to thwart us.)

Riley came along for the ride; so, as we left the store, we started discussing what we wanted to do for dinner. Athennia suggested Qdoba, which meant it was time to place our bets on whether or not our workaholic friend Larry (who seems to live there) would actually be off for a change. I, for one, was getting sick of worrying about watching him burn out in slow motion; so, I casually declared...

If Larry's there, I'm gonna punch him in the face.

No sign of him when we walked in...

Instead, we met a delightful young woman who made us the greatest burrito bowls we've had at any Qdoba ever. She said her name is Naima but everyone calls her "Nemo."

...And, just as she finished ringing us up, guess who popped out from the back to rear his overworked head?

What a surprise: Larry was home after all!

Before I could execute the promised face-punch, he assured us that he had just had off yesterday. A likely story! I let him know that he'd just dodged a bullet ;)

Thursday

Thursday was the one-year anniversary of my initial message to Athennia—which really puts into perspective how quickly we hit it off, how fast we fell in love, and how crazy it is (in a good way!) that we're merging households and becoming a family inside of a year of actually having met in person.

Friday

Friday evening, Athennia and I took Penny over to the apartment to meet Lucky just for half an hour or so. We'd been planning it since earlier in the week and gave both cats a heads-up by swapping an old sweatshirt of mine to let them get used to each other's scent.

So, now that date night had finally arrived, it was time for them to make sure they each looked their best!

Penny and Lucky can both be extremely skittish; so, things got off to a bit of a rocky start...

...But, Lucky was super chill from the get-go, and we managed to calm Penny down a bit as well...

For an absolute first impression, I'd give it a 10/10: No one pooped themselves, drew blood, or clawed out the other's eyes. We'll take it!

Saturday

Saturday, we took over a couple of my bookcases, and I assembled my new nightstand while Athennia disassembled her entertainment center in preparation for me to bring over mine (which matches most of the living-room furniture I'll be bringing over eventually).

Then, having accomplished a decent amount of work, it was time for our usual Saturday-evening hangout with Riley :)

We checked out Main Street Pizzeria & Grille in Horsham...

Where to start on that?

Half of the staff looked like cocaine addicts.

Athennia's salad came on a parchment-paper-lined plate that was visibly dirty with black grease stains underneath.

I asked to upgrade my burger's side to fries but still got potato chips.

And, even though the funnel cake fries were decent, everything else was more or less "meh."

Guess there's a reason we were the only ones in there...

After dinner, Riley asked if we could go to Barnes and Noble—to which I replied there's one right around the corner in Willow Grove...

But, I hadn't been over to the Willow Grove area since probably 2013 and didn't realize that that store apparently hasn't existed for a few millennia now; so, we ended up taking her to go spelunking around a thrift store on our way home instead.

She was hoping to find something cool or weird for a few bucks, and I was kind of hoping to snag a well-built bookcase on the cheap; but, neither of us found anything we liked.

I did spot this curiosity though...

When I questioned the logic of pricing a pair of bookends separately, Athennia pointed out...

I mean, hey, you never know when someone's going to come in looking for just a left elephant.

How can I argue with that?

Since the thrift store was a bust, we took Riley to Barnes & Noble in Oxford Valley on our way to drop her back off at the apartment.

I can neither confirm nor deny that we got her a few Christmas presents while we were there, but I certainly worked hard to keep her distracted while Athennia was off rushing merchandise to the checkout and smuggling it out to the car ;)

When we finally brought Riley back home, she insisted on showing us what a pro she was at playing table tennis on her Kinect... But, she ended getting mercilessly stomped by her AI opponent like the total noob that she is!

Monday

Monday evening we packed the car to the brim again and made yet another trip to the apartment—stopping to grab dinner at Qdoba again.

Larry had another likely story about being off tomorrow, and Naima hooked us up again with very generous portions of everything we ordered :)

Since Athennia and I inadvertently shifted our timeline for the move to a week earlier than we'd initially planned, I helped her put away all the Christmas stuff she had dug out of the closet and stacked up in the living room a few days back in preparation to decorate: We probably won't get to make too much more headway on the moving in front until after Thanksgiving; but, we'll definitely need the living room clear this weekend!