day too

So here we are on our 2nd full day of NYCitizenship. Something I have noticed is that a LOT of the people who go walking or walk their dogs in the morning wear shirts that have NYC bradning or logos of some sort or another. Makes me wonder if they are tourists who converted to residents and just never gave up their souvenir shop wardrobes or maybe these shirts are their grubby-grungy-don't-care-about-it clothes. I don't know. I just always find it strange when you are at a place and you see people wearing shirts that reference that place (unless it's supposed to be ironic). Like, there's a shop just down the street that sells nothing but Brooklyn apparel. I get it, but I imagined it is for people to gear up before going abroad, not to wear Brooklyn across their chests while actually being IN Brooklyn. You know, like the line from PCU: "You're wearing the shirt of the band to the show? Don't be that guy."

Anyway, again, the morning ritual has played itself out: Felix gets up early, gets Andrea and I up, I get dressed, pack him in the stroller, go get coffee, and off we go for our walk. I decided to not go the same way I went yesterday and explore the park more. That is on damn big park. We walked along the path the went south, then cut over to the walking path on the side of the parkway. The road slopes down and to the east, eventually bottoming out at the lake at the southern end of the park. And I mean lake, like a real lake, not like the pond at Powderhorn. We looked at the ducks then headed along another path back north up into what I expect was more the middle of the park. We came across more open areas where people were letting their dogs run. Felix was getting bored and tired (I wasn't letting him out of the stroller because the grass was still wet with dew...and I'm a little paranoid about all the dogs) so we headed back west eventually. Under a tunnel and then out the other side I could hear water rushing. It was "The Ravine" where Felix and I had walked yesterday. We came out into familiar open area and went past the dog beach, through the park, and then home. Felix was revved up at home and wanted to play. I finally got him down for a nap, at which everyone else who was awake went back to bed to try and get more sleep (except me).

Last night we put a dent in the unpacking process. We didn't unpack so much as move things around to free up a lot of the space we'd been hogging with poorly situated furniture and boxes. ALso, yesterday I put together our new bed from IKEA. Today I will finish it up by assembling the drawers that go in its base. I also assembled Andrea's desk and moved all of our various shelving units around to get them out of the way. We now seem to have some living space, and I imagine it will only get better as we get things put away. Andrea and Glen are trying to get the kitchen in order, contact papering the cabinets and drawers so we can put our flatware, dishware, and food away. I can't wait till the kitchen is up and running. There's so many options for eating out, but it really does get tiresome. It will be nice to get back to some of our standard home cooking. We need to do a grocery shopping trip, for real.

Tomorrow is my first day at my new job. I'm a little nervous, as I guess is to be expected. I mean, you interview, you talk to the people, you get a job description, etc., but you never really know what its going to be like until you get there and get started. And, of course, just like in Minneapolis, going to work will be a sort of escape from home. I'll have my morning and evening commutes, but while I'm at work, I'm not thinking of home things. It will be nice to get back to the technical side of my life. For the past weeks I've been locked in non-technical mover/builder/packer/unpacker/stacker/mechanical mode.

And I'm sure I'll be sopping up the remnants of the address fiasco for a couple more days, but all in all, things are looking pretty good. We only have a short list of things for the landlord to fix/get fixed/reimburse us for fixing. I don't know that he did much of a run-through for the previous tenants. They cleared their stuff out and they did a little paint touch up here and there but it doesn't seem that they cleaned very much. Or perhaps they just assumed we'd be repainting. But there are a few doozies, like the doorknob (or lack thereof) on the bathroom door.