What a week

Well, this has been a week of highs and lows. I know I won't have time to give any kind of an update once I'm home, so a real quick review:

+ Sue and Will came to visit last Saturday and we hammered out painting the new apartment. It looks amazing! 7 hours of painting and the living room, kitchen, bathroom and back bedroom look absolutely smashing. It's going to be SO great to move into, especially now that it has 'our' colors. We also had a great morning at Finn's for breakfast, Gateway for a trip to the Apple Store (and Anthropologie, where I found an AMAZING dress... thank you Sue!!) and then Ekami Thai and the Farmer's Market for lunch. At the market we got this incredibly dense loaf of wheat bread that has been turned into some pretty choice sandwiches, let me tell you. It was a really fantastic day.

+ Our apartment already has new tenants to move in. We showed the place on Sunday and an adorable pair of Mormon boys fresh off their mission decided to take the place. Now we don't need to worry about leaving our landlords high and dry, and our apartment was nice and clean for...

+ Josh Rottman and his girlfriend Tori came to visit on Tuesday! That's right, they stayed in our teeny, tiny little apartment (though they did say that by east coast standards, it was spacious). They came in late Tuesday afternoon and we had a great dinner at Mazza and then chatted late into the night. Unfortunately they had to leave the next morning, but it was a really great little trip and it was WONDERFUL meeting Josh (finally) and Tori.

+ We watched the entire Sherlock mini series (as you suggested, Will!) and it was AMAZING! I want more!

+ This one is really old, but the stove is fixed. I was SO CLOSE to being able to fix it myself! I knew there were two screws that I needed to take out, but the stupid things were incredibly well camouflaged. We ended up having to get a repair guy to fix it. I was totally smacking myself in the head when Andrew told me how he did it (the screws weren't directly underneath the lip of the stove, they were on the side panels) but we have been enjoying the luxury of heating elements that aren't sitting on the counter top plugged into the wall and that's all that really matters, ultimately.

+ I also replaced the blinds that Linus ate when we went on our honeymoon (measured, ordered AND installed, what what!) and sanded, puttied and repainted the baseboard that he decided to masticate in what I can only imagine was a total emotional meltdown. It's like it never happened. I'm about .01% on my way to being a contractor now.

And on a less enthusiastic note...

- Suzy, my car, was in an accident on Monday. Andrew was coming back from class, taking a left out of the University Stadium parking lot, and a huge marquee was blocking the view of oncoming cars. So we are currently down a car and experiencing our first round ever of having to try to solve insurance issues after an accident. I unfortunately can't say this is the least stressful thing that I've ever done, but I am incredibly grateful that Andrew is ok. Somehow he managed to turn the car at the last second so the oncoming car that hit him struck the front passenger side and not the driver's side, so no one was hurt. Quite the ninja move, really.

- Of course when it rains, it pours. Our vacuum has sustained a potentially fatal injury but the thing is, I'm not sure HOW. I'm becoming a bit of a MacGyver with fixing things right now (as you can see with the baseboard, blinds and... almost the stove) but I feel a bit like we might have a poltergeist living in our apartment, making things just a little more difficult right when things are already stressful. I feel like we can fix the vacuum (maybe? I hope I can find the busted part) though it won't be in time for our move out, so I need to find another solution for extracting animal hair from a carpet and quickly.

-Work is a tad stressful at the moment. I'm learning more and more that some people are better built to more easily let go of social stress throbbing around them, but sadly I don't think I am one of those people. There are some interpersonal issues between my department and another department that feels like a huge cleaver hanging over my head. Just when things were really starting to improve, these problems really started to come to a head. It's just helping to cement my decision to do whatever I can to get into grad school next fall, though, so I suppose that isn't a bad thing.
Overall, though, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. It's been really great being able to see so many people that we care about in the past week and the move is really exciting and going to be a really good thing for us. I've even been watering the garden out back (look, I'm helping!). If we can just pull ourselves out of this week in one piece, next week is hopefully going to look and feel a lot brighter.