Greetings from the Double R Diner

My excitement for Saturday was getting a Massachusetts driver's license, though at the moment I only have a temporary one since they mail the Real IDs. We were hoping to change the car registration too, but they only do that on weekdays, so we'll have to go back for that. It was a gorgeous day, nearly 50 degrees and sunny, so we also managed a walk in between trying to figure out which boxes meant to be in the bedroom ended up in the living room, the basement, or the garage. 

We watched the first couple of episodes of the new season of The Night Agent, which is a little convoluted and they may just have fridged my favorite character. Now we're watching Connor Storrie on SNL (loved seeing the Olympic hockey players, that was a nice shift in the conversation). I'm sure you're sick of my snow and home pics, so here are a few of Double R Diner a.k.a. Twede's Cafe in Twin Peaks a.k.a. North Bend (and yes, I meant to post this on February 24th but I was a little distracted):

Greetings from the Sunny Patch

Today my breaks from packing included a trip to Home Depot to get plastic basement shelves and replacement chandelier bulbs and a visit from son to pick up the air mattress he loaned us because one of his high school friends is coming to visit this weekend. Otherwise, there were reams and reams of packing paper, dozens of boxes, and many paper cuts. 

The cats, at least, are more comfortable; they love how much sun we get through the windows all day long, and one spent a lot of the afternoon sleeping on our bed, the other on the couch in the second bedroom. Now we're watching the second half of the fourth season of Bridgerton, always worth watching for the costumes, hair, flowers, and music.

Greetings from Box-Cutting

Pretty much my whole day was unpacking, with breaks to go to Target to pick up a closet organizer and a bookcase, to watch an hour of The Rings of Power with the friends I usually watch on Wednesday, and to chat online with my Thursday night regulars. Because I tracked down and assembled both bedroom lamps and completely unpacked my clothes, now I'm watching The Pitt. More (unpacking) tomorrow!

Greetings from Clutter

Moving van came. House and garage are absolutely stuffed with boxes and half-assembled furniture, at least a couple of pieces of which will have to be replaced, hopefully at their expense. And you know how they promise that they'll reassemble anything they take apart? My experience of our last three moves with three different national moving companies says that's half-true at best. 

So don't expect to hear from me much for the next couple of weeks, particularly since I haven't figured out where my desktop computer is packed and my desk is in many pieces! At least the cats are speaking to me now that the movers are gone, and even while they were hiding in the shower, they ate when we brought up treats. Plus I half-watched The Masked Singer while sorting bookshelf pegs!

Poem for Tuesday and Wolf Haven

The summer I lived as a wolf 

By Pippa Little 

I knew the names of stones at the river mouth,

crossed giving thanks to their uneasy spirits.

I heard killings in the shadows, knew to turn keen and quick,

travel in the presence of  thunder, leave no scent or spoor behind.

Preferring the high places closest to the moon

where the wind ran with me, I practiced abandon,

my spine a scimitar, star-whetted, flayed old disguises

into strands and rips, underneath I was sleek, open:

my muzzle carved air into four queendoms and I knew them all

as they knew me, tooth, soul, tatterdemalion heart,

and I flew, I think, in that time, when nobody needed

or shamed me and I was always hungry, bloody-tongued

but louche and free and supple, perfumed in pine and ashes.

-------- 

The moving van is supposed to arrive with all our stuff on Wednesday *crosses fingers* so I spent most of Tuesday doing chores in anticipation of that -- breaking down the boxes for things we've bought since we arrived, moving everything in the garage and basement into corners to make room for shelves and boxes, rolling up carpet remnants and things left by previous owners and rearranging a rug in front of the basement sliding doors. I also chatted with my DS9 watch group and we watched "The Jem'Hadar" -- the season two finale. 

In ridiculous news, Niantic accepted a Pokestop I submitted at the gazebo down the street, which was very important because we had no Pokestops reachable via sidewalk within walking distance, and still no gyms. At least I can still play! We watched some spring training baseball (Orioles have been audio-only, so it's been Seahawks and Red Sox) and now we're (re)watching Song Sung Blue because it's on Peacock and delightful. My local pics are all still snow, so here are the Wolf Haven residents in the rain a few weeks ago:

Greetings from West Coast Spring

We woke to about nine inches of new snow, which wasn't as bad as the worst predictions, though snow continued to fall for several hours and the wind increased before it decreased. The neighborhood crew plowed a couple of times and shoveled our front steps a couple of times, but we had to get the weight of a foot and a half of new snow off the deck, so since Paul was working, I had another day with long hours of shoveling big piles of snow over the side. There was a lot of wind blowing a lot of snow off the trees, but the sun peeked out weakly, so despite the fact that they still don't have our streets clear, I was hopeful it meant our power would stay on -- not everyone in New England was so lucky. 

We took a walk when Paul was finished working to see the neighborhood under huge piles of snow, but it was very slippery and quite cold, so I tried submitting a new Pokestop (this whole neighborhood is a Pokemon Go wasteland, sadly) and went home quickly. We talked to my parents before dinner (frozen veggie riblets and mac & cheese, the kind of thing we can cook until our pots and pans arrive). Afterward we watched the first three episodes of the new season of Paradise, two of which are very different from last season but still enjoyable; awesome cameos and flashbacks, though Silo-level plot holes. Because it's all snow here, some spring from Bellevue Botanical Garden a couple of weeks ago:

Greetings from a Nor'easter

There were various places we had thought about going on Sunday, but when we woke up, we realized the one thing we had forgotten yesterday in all our pre-blizzard shopping: a snow shovel, which we really needed so we could get the two feet of snow on our deck cleared before two more feet fell and potentially put too much weight on the wood. We also realized that, although we have a private garage for the first time in our adult lives, we should get an ice scraper for the car, and listening to the dire warnings on the radio about potential power outages, we also picked up a couple of books and card games at B&N in case our Kindles can't be recharged in a timely manner. Hopefully we have enough candles! 

The US men's hockey team were picking up their medals before we got home, which I wouldn't care about at all but I'm happy the Jewish player from New Jersey scored the winning goal. I shoveled the entire deck myself (I needed the exercise), then cut up the box the cat tree came in to make a cardboard cat house while watching the closing ceremonies live. I also did all the laundry just in case we have power or water issues from the storm -- at present we have flakes falling but not much accumulation, that's supposed to be tomorrow along with wind and colder temperatures. We watched Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere which is educational but feels long and grim; I wish it had been 45 minutes of a happier movie.

Greetings from New Hampshire

Worcester is supposed to get two feet or so of snow on Sunday, so we spent most of Saturday elsewhere while we could! We drove to Adam and Haley's new house in Fitchburg in the morning, getting a tour from them and Pepper before driving them to Parker's Maple Barn in New Hampshire, where Hildy and Tom took us all out to brunch. We walked to the shop on the property (crafts, kids' books, jewelry, regional kitsch, sasquatch, locally made magic wands, and lots and lots of maple syrup) and admired the historic farm equipment in the snow.

We drove to the outdoor-and-clothing store Evans on the Common on the way back to Fitchburg, where we briefly visited Hildy and Tom's house, then took Adam and Haley home to Pepper. We then stopped at Walgreens, Target, Shaw's, and the gas station on the way home to pick up everything from nail repair to bottled water to a stove pot to matches and batteries in anticipation of blizzard conditions and potential power issues; at least we have a gas stove here. Now we're belatedly watching the figure skating gala at the Olympics.

Greetings from Holden

Our car arrived from Seattle at 6 a.m., so we had an early morning, but now the RAV4 lives here too! We took it later in the morning to try The Bagel Inn in Holden (pretty good sesame bagels, not quite New York level but similar to Blazing Bagels) and to stop at Shaw's for some groceries because of the great and terrible snow forecast. That arrived in the afternoon, and we ended up getting over three inches, which was lovely to watch falling. 

We did some computer work while watching the men's halfpipe and the US hockey victory, with cats who decided to snuggle us, probably to keep warm. I also built them a new little stand for upstairs and we're trying to move the litterbox down the basement. Since the evening Olympic coverage reran what was earlier, we watched Blue Moon, which made up nonsense about Lorenz Hart being a lot less gay than he really was, but had fabulous music and performances.