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Tuesday, November 13th, 2001
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8:42 pm - A thought that occurred to me..
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At the very beginning of the 20th Century, man discovered a way to allow just about anyone to fly. It took until the beginning of the 21st for much of mankind to truly understand how bad an idea this could be.
current mood:  cynical
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| Thursday, October 25th, 2001
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6:19 pm - Fire, Fire, Burning Higher, Making Music Like a Choir..
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I am a very happy elf tonight. I am sitting here, in my apartment while across the room, a fire burns brightly on the hearth. Ahhh...
I've never lived any place that had a firepalce before. Oh sure, I'd seen them in use-- up at my grandparent's ten acre campground in Michigan it was the sole source of heat! But never before had I gotten to enjoy one that I, myself, was tending.
Making this feel even more wonderful is the stark contrast to the weather outside: temperatures in the 30's, wind gusting above 50 m.p.h., windchill at -10... But not in here. Oh, no sir, in here it's toasty, and a wonderful fire is crackling happily.
Mmmm.. this is the way it should be.
current mood:  content
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| Monday, October 22nd, 2001
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6:34 am - Underwear That's Fun To Wear...
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Last night I got a b;ast from my past when, lo and behold!, on a K-Mart store shelf just outside the fitting rooms, I spied with my little eye..
Underoos.
Now, if you don't recall what underoos are, they are a one jockey short/one t-shirt combo done up to match a superhero. They have Superman Underoos, Batman underoos (and not the dorky blue/grey Batman that they had when I was a kid-- this was the Dark Knight's black and gold), and the set my mom actually bought me when I was oh, I dunno, six: Spider Man.
Unfortunately, due to some terrible oversight, they do not come in sizes to fit me nowadays. *sigh* Oh well. :-)
current mood:  ditzy
current music: "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down
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| Friday, October 19th, 2001
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9:58 am - Where have I been?
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Oh who knows anymore. I should have been back here sooner, to jot more of what's been going on. I opened my first video club membership last night here in Madison, so I guess that means I've moved in. :-)
I'll write more, soon, honest!
Aldous
current mood:  awake
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| Sunday, September 30th, 2001
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5:27 pm - Whoa...
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Whatta week! Let's see, how does it all go again? Oh right...
I left for Detroit last Friday morning, fairly early. Let me warn anyone reading this-- the McDonald's Steak, Egg and Cheese Bagel sandwich is evil! Actually, I don't know what its intentions were, but upon consuming it, it managed to land a huge grease spot on my silk pants. Thank goodness I didn't leave the house without extra clothes.
Aside from the fast-food situation, all seemed to be going well until we hit Chicago. Mucho traffic-- and no way to get around it. Reminding myself to have an overpass over Chicago paved for my exclusive use, I waited out the various and sundry road troubles.
I didn't get to Michigan until mid-afternoon, roughly when I should have been getting to Detroit, had things gone more smoothly. Stopping at a breadstick-stingy Fazoli's in Battle Creek for a late lunch was just one of the pleasures of travel. Overall, by the time I reached Detroit, around 7:00pm, everything was great, road-wise. Traffic was shooting along at well above posted speeds (something not seen much outside Michigan, by the way) and everything was great.. until..
I recall the first time I drove to Madison, my wonder at just how nice the roads were upon leaving Michigan. Up until this point in the trip back, this detail had been far from my mind.
ka-BAM-bap-BAM! Wow! Dear gods.. I forgot about the potholes around here!!
I'm still unsure how, but I managed to arrive at Dad's with vehicle intact. Having changed out of the grease-stained garments at a gas station on the way, I was almost presentable for my family-- except no one was there. Well, not true, dad was home, but my brother Nate, Amber and their new son (my new nephew) Tyler were over visiting with my mother and Bruce (her 5th and 6th husband-- ask for details), over at Bruce's daughter's place. Bruce's daughter, Rachel, was also at this time expecting.
We ate dinner with dad (Amber had left some enchaladas with dad for us to have), and Aurora, exhausted from the trip, crashed. Me, I tried to amke contact with a few folk, only to find that it was very difficult to get a hold of a few folks. I decided to go and see who was at some of my old haunts.
Isle of Avalon was populated by Mark and Aaron, who had me help them bring a huge black wooden altar for a Gnostic Mass that they are planning on having there sometime in the near future. It was huge. There was enough room to park a Hum-Vee on it. Did I mention it was huge?
After saying goodnight there, I headed up to Kinko's. Walter, Andy, G.G., Greg and a number of other pals/former co-workers were there and I hung out and chatted awhile, chatching a late-night Ram's Horn snack with Walter afterwards. Then back to dad's, and to bed!
Next morning, I got up and got ready to go to the family reunion / memorial service that just kind of fell together. Up there, I visited with the Getchells (Aunt Marilyn is my mother's sister, and the rest fall in from there, including two cousins who had to travel almost as far as I had), Uncle Boogie and Aunt Donna (okay, his name is Jim, but hey, he got named that by me after he always used to tickle me as a wee one saying "Boogie, boogie, boogie!"), my mom and Bruce, my Dad, Nate and Amber (and Tyler too!).
It went on for quite some time, in fact, longer than it was supposed to by far, Aunt Donna calling in "sick" to her work so she could stick around. Late in the afternoon we held the memorial service for my Uncle Bill, who, if you read an entry from a few months back, meant a good bit to me. His final will was that his ashes be scattered about the 30+ acres that Uncle Boogie owns up in the rural forested area of Metamora, Michigan called Bucksnort Ridge-- and you know, that just so happened to be where we were. We walked around the property on a long winding trail throgh the woods, the final pair of folks in the procession scattering the ashes alongside the way.
By the time we got out, it was getting close to six o'clock.. eep! I was supposed to meet a dear friend of mine for dinner at six! I knew it was taking longer than expected at my uncle's! We made it back home in pretty good time, all things considered, getting back by seven or so. i immediately dashed out the door again and cross-town to where I was meeting them, and caught them just as they were about to leave, thinking I'd stood them up. Being very happy to put that idea to rest, we chatted for awhile, and parted ways. I tried to get ahold of another friend of mine who said that it wasn't going to work out, so I stopped by Isle again for a bit before going home.
Next morning, Mom came over and we all went out to IHOP for breakfast. It was a delightful time overall, but too soon the afternon crept in, and Aurora and I had to be driving back to Madison. Zipping along, we made better time this time through, and got back in time for me to get some sleep before having to show up at 8:00 am Monday morning for work.
whew!
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| Saturday, September 15th, 2001
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9:40 am - A party! A party!
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I was finally, last night, able to attend my first party since moving here (thank goodness I have weekends off now!), and I loved it. It was on the south side of Milwaukee, in Oak Creek, WI, at a club called the Roadhouse. They'd rented out the basement level of the place, and it was a blast.
Well, that is, once I found the place. There are two places where WI HWY 100 crosses I-94 in the Milwaukee area. The directions didn't mention this, only that you had to get off at the HWY 100 exit. It isn't a problem if you're coming up I-94 from Chi-town or meeting I-94 from where the freeway to Green Bay joins it, as you'll only run into HWY 100 once. From here, though, you get the western exit first, and that, my friends, is the entirely WRONG end of the area. Thanks to a helpful fellow at a nearby Kinko's, I was able to figure out what went wrong and get there only about an hour after I'd intended. Given that it went until at least 2:00 am, this wasn't a problem.
current mood:  chipper
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| Wednesday, September 12th, 2001
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9:21 am - Nostra-damnit...
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On a few of my email lists, there's this quatrain from Nostradamus floating around that says it predicts the attack on the WTC yesterday and that the event would begin World War III. Here's what it says, in it's own words:
"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb, The third big war will begin when the big city is burning"
Nostradamus 1654
There's a few problems with this, the first one that caught my attention was the date. Nostradamus lived from 1503-1566. 1654 is just a little past his time. I checked out snopes.com (specifically this page), and sure enough, they've already tracked down the source, and indeed, it's false. Taken from the page on snopes:
It originated with a student at Brock University in Canada in the 1990s, appearing on a web page essay on Nostradamus. That particular quatrain was offered by the page's author, Neil Marshall, as a fabricated example to illustrate how easily an important-sounding prophecy can be crafted through the use of abstract imagery. He pointed out how the terms he used were so deliberately vague they could be interpreted to fit any number of cataclysmic events.
It appears someone mistook Marshall's illustrative example for an actual Nostradamus prophecy and, not content to let well enough alone, added "The third big war will begin when the big city is burning." A fabrication was thus further fabricated.
The point is simple. NOSTRADAMUS DIDN'T SEE EVERY-DAMNED-THING. Sure, some of his writings are interesting, and even somewhat accurate. That certainly gives no reason to propogate a false quatrain. The world is scary enough right nowwithout ol' Nost's help.
current mood: annoyed
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| Tuesday, September 11th, 2001
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12:04 pm - This day shall forever be known to me as 911
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This day, September 11th, 09/11, seems to be all too appropriate for this disaster.. 911. I'll never think of it as anything else.
current mood: worried
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10:48 am - It's gone.. it's all gone.
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You know, I once saw the World Trade Center, from the window of an airplane that was landing at Newark International Airport. The twin toers were incredibly huge, notable the biggest things to be seen of Manhattan.
And now they are gone, both just.. gone. More, the people who worked in there, the poor people whose flights were hijacked, who found themselves suddenly riding a guided missle..
(Aldous is simply in shock)
current mood:  sick
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9:11 am - The South Tower just collapsed
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The South Tower of the WOrld Trade Center just collapsed.
current mood: shocked
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8:50 am - Dear gods..
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Below is a transcript of a chat session I was having with my friend when the World Trade Center got hit by two planes. I got all my info from the TV broadcasts as the news sites were clogged to death:
v meeks: but I was just told about the plane crashing into the World Trade Center.
elvenspell@yahoo.com: THe World Trade center just had two planes hit it-- a terrorist attack
elvenspell@yahoo.com: (nodfs!)
v meeks: Anyone other than cnn covering it right now?
v meeks: Kris can't get to the cnn site.
elvenspell@yahoo.com: I've got it on ABC TV
v meeks: My, what a wonderful world we live in.
elvenspell@yahoo.com: (BLINK-BLINK)
elvenspell@yahoo.com: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/
elvenspell@yahoo.com: It's responding
elvenspell@yahoo.com: Both towers were hit, both aflame
elvenspell@yahoo.com: one was hit just above the midsection, the other was more toward the top
elvenspell@yahoo.com: Whoa-- one plane was a 737, one a 757, they are reporting
elvenspell@yahoo.com: One was just before nine am the other was just after
elvenspell@yahoo.com: One hit one twoer one hit the other
elvenspell@yahoo.com: Seemingly kamikaze
v meeks: Definitely
elvenspell@yahoo.com: Possibly hijacked planes
elvenspell@yahoo.com: one of the planes was en
route from Boston to LA, hijacked from American Airlines
elvenspell@yahoo.com: Senior military officials say that it was AA flight 11 from Boston
elvenspell@yahoo.com: THat's it for now. I'll keep you updated
v meeks: Thanks
elvenspell@yahoo.com: The smoke is just pouring out. whoa
elvenspell@yahoo.com: Hang on.. there seems to be new info.. there seems to be an explosion at the Pentagon. Unsure-- the building shook, windows rattled, security is clearing a portion of the structure
elvenspell@yahoo.com: They are unsure-- construction workers were seen running from their project there just after the boom
elvenspell@yahoo.com: Could have been an accidnet
elvenspell@yahoo.com: billowing smoke from the pentagon
elvenspell@yahoo.com: It appears that a bomb was detonated at the Heliport.
elvenspell@yahoo.com: unconformed possibility that it might have also been a plane
elvenspell@yahoo.com: They're evacuating the White House
elvenspell@yahoo.com: They just shut down all air trafficv in the USA!
current mood: distressed
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| Thursday, September 6th, 2001
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2:53 am - As if they didn't know...
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I belong to a number of online clubs, communities and the like. On one, the founder decided to ask:
"Why is it that 4 day weekends seem just as short as 2 day weekends? ;o) "
Now, anyone who knows me well at all, knows that it is dangerous to ask me a silly question, as I'll likely have a silly, or possible even serious answer, no matter what the query may be. Here's mine:
Time flies when you're having fun-- but why? To start with, keep in mind that Time is a Dimension, just like Height, Width and Depth. Now, as you probably know, no matter how you look at a three dimensional object, you will experience a phenomenon called Foreshortening. That means that, unless the object is a true sphere, perfectly equal in all three dimensions, you perceive an object's shape relative to the angle you view it from.
For example, think of a pole. Let's say it is ten feet long, by two feet wide, by two feet deep. Look at it from the side, and you'll have a good idea of how big the pole is. Look at it from one end, however, and all you'd really be able to see is that it is 2' x 2'. The viewing angle wouldn't let you see its full length. Only by changing the angle that you are viewing it from can you get an idea of how long it is.
Now consider Time as a dimension, very much like length in this case. When we are having fun (which let's hope is happening on a four day weekend), we are focusing on the moment, as it is very pleasant. From this angle, the length of time is Foreshortened, that is, unless something removes us from living in that "fun" moment-by-moment view, we will fail to see how long the amount of time is that we are passing through.
On the other hand, when we aren't having fun, the moment is NOT pleasant, and thus, we are far less tempted to be focusing on it. In fact, we are more likely to try to focus on either a memory of something past or some anticipated future event. Either way, we are not looking at Time from the same end-on angle as we do when we are enjoying ourselves, and so we are desperately aware of exactly how long it is.
Aldous (hoping that post flew by for you!)
current mood:  geeky
current music: "She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby
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| Monday, September 3rd, 2001
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11:22 am - Oh dear....
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I need sleep. This became painfully obvious a minute ago when, momentarily looking across the room at the coffee table I wondered just how big newspaper origami swans would be. They wouldn't last long, especially not after they burned... but then they'd just be making ashes of themselves..
Oh my gods! Good night!!
current mood:  groggy
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| Thursday, August 30th, 2001
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11:40 pm - Tolkien was a sick, sick, man....
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J.R.R., how could you? Dear gods, I hope they skip this in the movie version...
Okay, on to the source of my disgust. If you've ever read J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I'll bet this little bit of bestiality escaped you. The reason it would, of course, is that J.R.R. never meant for it to be read this way. Still, I'll present it to you, for your own perusal.
In Fellowship of the Ring, a few pages into Chapter 3 of "book two" (page 366 in my edition), the Company of the Ring are preparing to depart Rivendell. As they wait for Gandalf to join them, so they can get going, it is briefly noted what each character is doing to pass the time. Aragorn is sitting in deep contemplation, for example. Then the focus turns to a hobbit named Sam Gamgee, who had grown fond of a pony that had been bought earlier to haul baggage. At this point, I'll let Tolkien paint the scene:
"Sam was standing by the pony, sucking his teeth, and staring moodily into the gloom where the river roared stonily below; his desire for adventure was at its lowest ebb."
I don't know about you, but if sucking a pony's teeth is what Sam does when his desire for adventure is a its lowest ebb, I'd hate to see what twisted mischief he gets into when feeling randy!
(okay, again, I know Tolkien didn't mean that, but.. I mean, READ it..!)
current mood:  crazy
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| Friday, August 24th, 2001
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2:36 pm - This Just In! This Just In!
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In a startling development, a good friend of mine, who agreed to be quoted in confidence, informed me that if you're wearing glasses you are not, I repeat, NOT naked. The ramifications are staggering.
Under this new guideline, you are free to send anyone any picture of yourself you like, so long as you are at least wearing glasses. This would include "Groucho Marx" gag specs, if you wish to remain anonymous in the pictures.
This revelation particularly rocked the porn industry, as they suddenly realized that their materials could be sold without concern for obscenity laws. Titles such as "Four Eyed Hotties" and "Ladies With Lenses" are now in production, along with "Spectacled Specimens", featuring men posed with nothing but their "sexy specs". A movie, "The Love Optometrist" is slated for wide release for the holidays.
On the more personal side, lusty people are overjoyed by this news, as their friends no longer have to worry about sending them "lewd" pictures via work e-mails, or to homes where parents or spouses might be monitoring incoming content. "She's not naked-- She's wearing glasses" t-shirts and bumper stickers are already hitting the streets.
Reporting from Madison, Wisconsin, this is Aldous Tyler
current mood: cheerful
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| Tuesday, August 21st, 2001
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4:04 pm - The Revenge of the Orange Juice
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Well, last night, after a grueling game of Rummikub, I went to the refrigerator. I wanted orange juice- nectar of some god, somewhere, I'm sure..
The OJ is kept in one of those large translucent Tupperware juice containers-- normally not an issue, but last night, a combination of chill temps on old Tupperware and possibly the stickiness of dried OJ, it didn't want to open readily.
I stood there, in the middle of the kitchen, and pulled hard-- and it popped open, at the same moment, spiraling out of my hands and hitting the floor.
There was only maybe one full serving left, and about half spilled out. I picked up the container before any more got loose, sore that I was robbed of my drink. I saw that some remained though, so I said "heck with it" tipped the container up to drink from the spout and..
That's when I discovered that the wide Tupperware lid had been jarred loose by the impact, mostly evident by the fact that the last of the OJ spilled down my front, not out the open spout. :-(
Whatever god OJ is the drink of, he/she didn't want me to get any last night. :-)
current mood:  amused
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| Sunday, August 19th, 2001
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1:39 am - On too much caffeine...
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It would appear that I have a new Pagan name.
I was chatting with a friend online tonight, and I was listing off the natural forces that I have a strong affinity with: the Night, the Moon, Autumn and Storms. Later on we were talking about animal affinities (not the same as totem animals, by the way-- ask if you want to know), and I mentioned that I have four animals I have a strong affinity with: the owl, the wolf, the raccoon and the raven.
And then it hit me. Hard. Painfully hard.
I must be Nightowl Autumnwolf Stormraven Moonraccoon!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!
current mood: distressed
current music: "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty
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| Monday, August 13th, 2001
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3:08 am - The disbelief of the cats....
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From the cats' point of view, this last month has got to have been one of the oddest they can recall. First, all the things in their home began to disappear and be replaced by boxes that smelled like they contained the missing items. Indeed, they caught Aurora and I stuffing things in these boxes many times!
The way they reacted to all this varied from cat to cat. Gwynhyvahr, the three year old grey cloudy tabby, got very nervous and anxious looking, darting about furtively-- she'd been through a move before, and she hadn't liked it much. Phantom, the ten year old black cat, just noted with annoyance every time one of her favorite items disappeared. She had seen a number of moves, and they just didn't bother her much anymore. Zephyr, our one-year-old dark black and grey striped tabby got more and more depressed looking as her whole world got slowly packed up and put into boxes. She'd be often seen moping about and hanging her body limply off the back of a chair, like a doily. She'd never in her life gone through a move, and she didn't know what to make of it all, and had no idea that she'd ever see any of the disappearing items ever again.
Then, one day, when pretty much everything was all in boxes, they all got put into a small bathroom with nothing but a cat litter box and a food and water dish. They were in there for a few hours, sometimes meowing to be let out as they no doubt heard all the thudding about outside that door. When they were finally let out, all the boxes and everything else was gone! They sniffed the carpet, examining the indents where the entertainment center and the couch had been, completely amazed at this change.
Then they were packed up in cat carriers, and taken off in a car. According to Aurora (who drove that car while I drove the truck) they didn't make much of a fuss. They then got put in a room in my dad's house and were kept there all night, with us joining them when it was time to sleep.
The next day, they get put back in those cat carriers and put back in that same car. They had no idea where I'd gotten to, but they at least had Aurora there. They had been dressed in harnesses that had leashes attached to hem. Those leases were tied to the front of the cat carriers, so that, once on the open road, the cats could mill about the car as they needed to. There was a cat litter box in the backseat, which they had no trouble getting to with this configuration.
Every so often, the car would stop, Aurora'd get out for a few minutes, then she'd be back and off they'd all go. At one of these stops a few hours into the drive, Aurora had me keep the cats company while she went off to fuel up the car, so they got to see that I was still with them, even if they had no idea how.
When we got to Madison, we left them in the car for about ten minutes while we got out new keys, and then we let them out into the new place. They whiffled and sniffed at everything, roaming from room to closet to shower to fireplace and back again. We all spent that night in the empty place.
Then the next morning, they were once again put into a bathroom with just their litterbox, food and water. More thudding about could be heard from beyond that door, and, when they were let out, all those boxes were there!!
They seemed truly amazed and sniffed each and every box to be sure it was really the same ones as before. As the days have passed and we've unpacked more and more things, assembling the waterbed and such, they've been happier and happier, especially Zephyr, who now understands that her life wasn't just going into permanent storage.
current mood: relaxed
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2:54 am - Labelled for your protection...
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I noted, back when we were packing everyting, that the way some of the boxes were labelled was humorous. Case in point: when the movers in Madison unloaded the truck, one of them read the label on the box he was carrying, saying: "'Toys and Lingerie'? Seems like an odd combination." I replied: "Well, you know, we're just kids at heart..." Somehow I didn't think that, if he didn't understand what that meant from the get-go, he'd want to know about the ropes, lubes, and other such items in the box.
In another instance, it was getting late one evening as I was unpacking the boxes and putting things away when I misread a box, causing me to violently double-take. What it said was "Dragon Faces". What I thought it had said at first? "Dragon Feces" Given that it wasn't in my handwriting I was momentarily very scared about what kinds of things my dear Aurora had packed.
current mood: amused
current music: "We Didn't Start The Fire" by Billy Joel
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2:33 am - The Move, in a nutshell...
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We took a U-Haul from Michigan to Wisconsin when we moved. We'd put a $100 deposit down three months in advance to make sure we'd have one of the size we needed the day before our move-- reason for that was so that, the morning of the move, the movers would be able to load it up. We would then take it to my father's and load up everything I still had stored there, sleep over at his place and drive out on Wednesday.
Under that plan, I'd get off of work on Monday Morning, go pick up the $1500 I needed in order to move from someone who wanted a web site built from the ground up, go get some sleep, wake up, get the truck around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, park it out back, and go see a sweet friend for dinner, as a farewell kind of thing. After that, I wanted to go to work and say goodbye to a couple of co-workers and meet with Duane, Robin Goodfellow, and anyone else who showed up. I knew that I had no real margin of error for doing any of this, but I had to try to see my friends this last chance.
So, as the day unfolded, I had fun trying to collect the $1500, which I wound up having to borrow from a few sources (if any are reading this THANK YOU AGAIN), as the ones who wanted the website weren't ready to pay yet (they'd had three weeks). That got me home close to 2:00 pm. I found out, upon arriving, that U-Haul had yet to call and tell us our truck was ready.
What occurred from then until 8:00 pm was the most frustrating six hours I've ever had the displeasure of spending, what with U-Haul continually promising they would call us when a truck was ready, us calling them back every half hour asking for an update, and never being told until too late to pick up our truck that it was about a half hour north of Ann Arbor (about an hour from the apartment in Wayne). It would have been nice to have been told it was too late before we headed out there. As it turned out, we had to get a friend to stay over with us so that, EARLY in the morning, the two of us could go get the truck while Aurora held down the fort so that when the movers got there, someone would be there to greet them-- otherwise they would likely turn around and leave.
Then I crashed hard. I'd been awake for way over 24 hours and at that point there was no way I could go anywhere. It wasn't a good sleep: I regretted much having missed seeing all my friends. I knew how much it had to have hurt some of them-- in the case of the one I was meeting for dinner, we'd been trying to meet for a meal together for months without success, so it was even more bitter that our last chance to reasonably do so was missed.
The next morning, we got our truck, the movers packed it, and then we packed our precious or fragile things into the cars and were off to my father's. We got there just after 6:00 pm, having had a long time of getting our old landlord to come and do a check-out, and we packed up the truck from dad's attic as fast as we could. It was dark by the time we were done, and exhausted again, we collapsed asleep.
Next morning, we called our new landlord to let him know we were about to depart, and he told us he had an appointment that would make him unavailable to us from 6:30 (Central) to 9:00 pm. Hearing that, and knowing it was already 9:00 am (Eastern), and that we expected it to take at least 10 hours to get there with our huge truck/car trailer, we rushed off.
It was a hot, clumsy drive. For those who don't recall August 1st, it was way over 90 degrees and very, very humid. Thankfully the 26' truck we'd gotten from U-Haul was nicely A/C'd. Of the two cars Aurora and I own, only mine has A/C, so Aurora's rode behind the truck, carried on a full auto transport (about an 18' trailer), so Aurora and the cats could survive the heat by following me in my A/C'd car. Still, the sheer size of the setup (totalling fourty-four feet long twelve feet tall and almost all of a freeway lane wide) was daunting to manuver. I managed to get it all there without any damage to the vehicles, but boy, some of those Chicago drivers were making that a tough task.
We reached our new place in Madison with a half hour to spare, letting us get the keys from our new landlord before his appointment (YAY). We then unpacked the blankets and spent a very hard night sleeping on the floor. Come morning, I felt like I'd been beaten by a 2"x4".
The movers showed up on time in Madison, and while they seemed to be taking longer than the ones in Wayne, they had the truck and cars unpacked about as quickly. Aurora and I have been spending every moment since then either working, sleeping, or unpacking boxes and assembling furniture. The result? As of now, a week and a hlaf later, we're about 95% done, having placed many bundles of cardboard boxes out for the recycling crews to get.
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