Hiya folks!

So after 2 long years, I'm pleased to report that all our stuff is once again in the same state. I've spent the last 2 days going through boxes, and I've come to a few realizations.

Number one, Man, we have a lot of crap, and every last bit of it has now had a nice ride across the country in a Uhaul with my in-laws. Seriously y'all, I actually packed a bag of dried beans. Like, a ziploc baggie. I'm assuming I used to use them for baking pie crust (you know, as a weight). I do actually have an excuse for this one... when we left Macon, we didn't have all that much time to pack and sort and throw stuff away. Pete found out that he got in to Georgetown in late May 2009 and we moved in early August. Yes, that is a good amount of time, except that one of us was working more than full time, and the other was studying for the bar exam, so it's not like we had gobs of time to prepare. Furthermore, DC was such a drastic downsizing from even our smallest apartment in Georgia, that we probably only took 1/3 of our stuff. The rest was shoved into boxes with pretty much no thought or organization and put into storage.

Number two, our apartment in Macon was disgusting. Again, not really my fault. Specifically, all of my kitchen stuff is absolutely filthy. (Ok, it's not as bad as it sounds. The part of the kitchen where I made food was always clean. It was a very big room with lots of stuff stored around the edges, if that makes sense. That's the stuff that's dirty.) See, our washer and dryer were shoved over in a kind of alcove around the corner from the kitchen, which was fine except that the dryer didn't have a hose that went through the wall to outside like a normal dryer. We had to get one of those lint trapper things for people who live in crappy apartments (yo.), and we still ended up getting dust and dryer lint all over the place constantly. Add to that the fact that this contraption made the place outrageously humid, and the fact that we lived in Macon, Georgia (aka, one of the most hot and humid places I've ever been, and y'all, I'm from Alabama), and... yeah. I did what I could. It was liveable, but looking back I'm kind of appalled.

Taking all this stuff out again is really interesting though. Not to be overly dramatic, but when I packed these boxes I was a completely different person. It's amazing what living in 538 square feet with another person for 2 years (and through the 2 worst blizzards in 40 years or something) will do to your sense of space. With that little room, you either trip over stuff constantly (which gets old really fast, trust me), or you wean yourself off of the pack-rat hoarder mentality that so much of American culture beats into our heads. I've reverted to a few of my old suburban habits-- buying toilet paper and paper towels in bulk, for example, because now I have room to store it, and it's easier and cheaper. But so much of this other stuff-- I can't help but wonder why I ever thought I needed two egg separaters (or one, for that matter. Such a uni-tasker! Thanks AB) or two can openers or 2 sets of sheets for a mattress I don't have anymore. (Actually, I'm not sure about that one. Add to to-do list: check to see if sheets fit on any of our beds.) Or why I needed to keep a baggie full of used dried beans. This whole experience has made both of us very minimalist, as well as just a smidgen OCD.

Man, am I excited to put all this crap in a yard sale.

I am the world's worst blogger

Seriously, if there's an award for that, I would win. Or maybe lose, as the case may be.

Anyway, I'm thinking that blogging more would be good for me, so I'm going to get back in to this song challenge deal for a while.

Whatever number day it is that we're up to, today's theme is "a song no one would expect you to love."

This is mine:



There are probably other songs I love that would surprise you more, but mainly I think it's surprising that I love this song because of it's inclusion at the end of "Fight Club." "Fight Club," it may surprise you to know, is one of my most favorite movies. This surprises the heck out of me anyway.

I first saw this movie during my freshman year at Sewanee, when I had to write a paper for Dr. Peterman's Philosophy 101 class comparing it to Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil." I don't remember what I thought of it, honestly. But it's grown on me significantly over the years, which I find pretty weird. I'm not overly sensitive to blood or violence (in movie form), but generally I don't enjoy watching people get beat to a pulp. Normally, I tend to hate movies that other people think are "like, so incredible and deep, man." Normally, I find Brad Pitt incredibly irritating and don't like watching him. Normally, I hate movies that are... I don't know the word... have kind of a defeatist attitude? I don't know... movies like this one. But "Fight Club," I love. And considering the other things on my list of favorite movies are "Love Actually," "Dead Poets Society," and "The Muppet Christmas Carol".... yeah. I'm gonna go with this being at least a little surprising.

(A warning-- this is not the original video for this song. It's sort of a "Fight Club" montage, complete with... well... if you've seen "Fight Club" you know what Tyler liked to splice in to children's movies. If you're some place where that would be inappropriate, or you don't want to see some guy's junk, turn it off before the last 5 seconds. You're welcome.)