Requiem for a Shelf

Last week The Wife and Kid Sis did some decorating here at Casa AIH. They set up shelves, hung (hanged? I can never keep that straight) art, and generally spiffied up the place.* I was wise enough to stay the hell out of the way and then show appropriate appreciation for what the ladies can do when they get me out from underfoot.

The masterpiece of their efforts is what I have taken to calling the Wedding Shrine, a lovely little display of assorted artifacts related to our wedding, including some lovely pics of The Wife, a heirloom pen (for signing guestbooks), and, most importantly, the really awesome (and rather fragile) champagne flutes that The Wife customized for the wedding.

Today, the shelf fell down and went boom.

The flutes did not survive. Not even a little bit.

The good news: No one was seriously lacerated on the broken glass, which has (I think) all been cleaned up. The shelf is back up and (I think) more stable now, with nothing fragile on or under it.

All in all, not an awful Friday the 13th.



*Fun Fact: The Wife has four shelf-feet of Mr. Potato Heads.

Stuff

It's hard to believe it's been almost 8 weeks since we bought the new house. Moving is interesting; it always seems like a good idea until you're actually doing it...Like the game hoist/cargo net system I rigged up to lower boxes from my third-floor condo to street level so I wouldn't have to hand-carry 'em down several flights of stairs. Didn't break anything or hurt anyone, but wow it wakes you up to drop a box of fragile stuff off a 3rd floor balcony.

The two main moving days were pretty intense, and thanks to Eric we got a hell of a lot done. Heather and I finished it out over the next couple of weeks, to occasional comments of "you're still moving?" from the locals. I absolutely recommend moving over the course of several days (as opposed to all at once) whenever possible. After we got out of there, I hired a service to come in and clean the place, touch up the paint, and generally make it look super-rad for the sale. It cost about a grand, but the realtor maintains I should get about 10 times that much back.

The old place goes on the market this weekend. I'm guessing it will take about two months to sell, but I really have no idea. Anybody want to buy a condo in N'awlins?

Congratulations

This post is a little a lot overdue...It's a fact of life that the more you have to blog about, the less time you have to blog with.

It took four years. Despite natural disasters, illness, injury, displacement to strange places, late nights, obstreporous faculty and frankly incompetent support staff, she did it.

And then she selflessly skipped her moment in the limelight--her graduation ceremony--so that everyone could go to her sister's.

Congratulations, Mary. You deserve it. We're all very proud of you.

Operant Conditioning

It's called positive reinforcement, people.