Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

settling in

Well, we’re all (mostly) moved into our new place. Dari, John, Amie and Shawn put in a long day yesterday helping us move all our furniture and heavy boxes from apartment to condo. There’s still a good bit of smaller stuff left at the apartment, but Rob and I can handle that ourselves in the car over the next week.

So far, it appears that just about everything made it through the move unscathed, save a dining chair that was on its last legs anyway, so to speak. There were a few pieces of furniture I’m not overly fond of which I was half-hoping wouldn’t survive or wouldn’t fit … disappointingly, all of them stubbornly held on and have already found homes in the new place.

We finished the move-in just in time to head over to the Light the Night 5K walk for leukemia and lymphoma at Freedom Park in D.C. I was still feeling pretty under the weather, but I wasn’t about to wuss out on this. (Besides, if I could do Race for the Cure with a sinus infection, I could manage this.)

Rob and I were issued red “supporter” balloons with built-in blinking lights. (Survivors got white balloons.) With the strong gusts of wind that evening, we kept our balloons close to us to avoid hitting each other or folks walking near us.

The race route took us down Pennsylvania Avenue, around the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol, and back. The marching band from Ballou High School led us on our way for part of the walk, then continued to play as walkers headed past them to the finish line. Looking back at the walkers behind us (especially when we were walking around the reflecting pool), all those clusters of glowing red and white balloons made for an impressive sight.

After that, we headed back home and crashed. We’d planned to also attend the 10th anniversary dinner for our grad program, but by that point, we were running late and simply too exhausted to do it. Besides, with our things in boxes and scattered across two living spaces, we couldn’t find everything we needed to make ourselves presentable anyway. Instead, we began the process of settling in.

Right now I’m sitting in my new living room, poaching a neighbor’s unprotected wifi connection. (Rule of thumb: If someone didn’t know enough to rename their wireless network from “linksys,” they probably didn’t know how to password-protect it, either.) Comcast is coming out on Monday to set us up with our own Internet (and cable) connections.