Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Well, for those of you who didn't know... we moved. How's that for Captain Obvious?

Two weeks ago (was it only that long ago?!) we finished packing up most of the house. We had planned to load the truck on Tuesday with some of our church members' help and we wanted to be mostly packed up before they came. We like efficient moves where everything is ready and we only need manpower to move things from our apartment into the 16 foot truck. How did we ever get enough stuff to fill a 16 foot truck? I don't know. I blame unsold artwork which clutters our lives.

Rebecca's parents and her brother Bryan were in town to take care of some things (mostly unrelated to our move), but they also were there to help us out, which was greatly appreciated. Monday, we celebrated my birthday (since my actual birthday we were going to be driving a huge truck out to California) with ice cream cake, presents, and then a "going away" party with some friends when we had a film screening of my latest project. The party was fun and it was sad to say goodbye to some really good friends. I guess that's the hardest thing about moving, other than the backbreaking work shuffling furniture around.

Tuesday, we learned a couple of hard lessons. Lesson number one: never use Budget truck rentals again. With Uhaul, we have always called a month in advance, made our reservation and they have had what we asked for on the day we asked for it. I understand that lots of other people have had problems with Uhaul and that "officially" a reservation is only a "reservation...it is not a guarantee." But we've NEVER had that problem because we always called a long time in advance. This time, we arrived at Budget, they told us they had a truck, but no car carrier attachment. We stared at the guy behind the counter in disbelief and he shrugged his shoulders and said "it's the busy season," as if that was to answer all our problems. The rest of the day we spent on the phone getting more and more frustrated with Budget's lack of customer service, until we ended up with a car tow dolly (the step down from what we had reserved) that evening. Lesson number two: an "almost" packing job doesn't mean you're anywhere near being finished. In fact, it's always the last little things which take the longest to pack up. We spent most of Wednesday rearranging the truck and packing the last things.

With all that over, Rebecca had a great thesis defence on Thursday and passed. We came home and continued to rearrange and pack the truck until we finished before we went to a BBQ party at her advisor's house that evening. Instead of waiting until the next morning to leave for California, we left that night and drove all through the evening. Lesson number three: driving a 15 foot truck with a rickety tow dolly and car behind is very stressful, especially through the Sierra Nevada mountain range. But we survived and arrived at the apartment office with one hour to spare.

Our biggest fear was the piano. We learned that there is a difference between upright pianos built in the past 80 years and the ones built around the 1900's: antique pianos weigh a great deal more. After unloading the entire truck up one flight of stairs, we concluded that even with five able men, we weren't going to get the 600 lb piano up the stairs on our own. That's when we called piano movers. On such short notice, only two claimed the could possibly help us, but for a price we weren't willing to pay. One called us back and adjusted his conditions: if we supplied the men, he'd supply the tools and teach us how to go up the stairs on our own. With three people and a moving "sled," we got that piano up in under 20 minutes.

And that is how we began this last week: all our things in boxes, our apartment a disaster, clueless about the area and ready to go to church on Sunday morning and work on Monday. Church was very nice. This ward is always in a state of transition (people moving in and out), which is very similar to our Provo wards; but this ward was starkly different from our Provo wards because there was a full chapel and overflow, not to mention a large youth group. There are a good number of young couples, but plenty of mid aged families as well. I introduced ourselves as being big into games and have come into contact with two other couples who are into games as well. We learned when we lived in Seattle that we really enjoyed Sunday evening games played with other couples in our same position (graduate students, etc.) and the best way for us to meet them and get to know them is over board games.

Monday morning, Rebecca went to her first day of work, which was mostly HR meetings, getting computers set up and other non-work related experiences. It took her until almost the end of the week before they gave her any REAL work to do. She really enjoys the people she works with at Magma and has a good future there. I, on the other hand, am completely lost in my program and feeling really confused. I spent half the week working on unpacking and running errands. Tuesday, I had a department graduate orientation and spent a couple hours talking with two students from the digital media arts department. It got me really excited about the things they were doing and one of them comes from a similar background as myself, however I still have no idea what I'm doing or going to do in grad school and can't figure out how to get involved. Classes officially started on Wednesday, but I've only had one class so far which was the standard first day get-your-syllabus-and-get-out-of-here class period. I spoke with the professor after class and explained that I'm a new grad student and we worked something out that I will be the TA for that class, but I'm still really nervous about it all.

We played games and ate dinners with friends. By Friday, I was really sick of being locked in our apartment without doing anything so we drove down to Santa Cruz Saturday morning to play at the beach. Ah, silly old Santa Cruz. We found that the beach we went to had a good number of people who just walked around naked at the beach! Lucky for us the beach had an unspoken rule that one half was naked and the other half was clothed and we picked the far side of the clothed beach where we only KNEW that the other side wasn't, but didn't see anything. Crazy Santa Cruz. Maybe I'll take Rebecca to Half Moon Bay next time.

For the most part, we're unpacked. We're trying to do our decorations right in this apartment and that is really all that we have left to take care of. I'm hoping that classes go better this week and Rebecca gets all of Friday off as well as Monday for Labor day, so we'll be going up north to go camping with Jon and Faith. Yay for friends!