This journal entry has been transcribed from the paper journal I kept while I was offline. There were frequent interruptions, so if bits sound incomplete, that's because they were left unfinished while writing, not because I forgot to type them up.

7:30 AM: Well, Becky's arrival wasn't the end of the slow moments, but I didn't get any more time alone to write.

Friday night finishes pretty quickly: Jen got to town around 8:30, just as we were decided to go get dinner without her or Brian. (Brian, it turned out, had had to stay home to work on a sudden and urgent deluge of research theses.) Anyway, the nine of us (me, Matt, Braz, Kris, Jen, K.T., Shbee, Karen, and Jeff) went over to the Mongolian BBQ / Peking Chinese buffet for dinner. After dinner, we divided by gender - the boys slept at the house, and us girls at the apartment, except for Shbee, who slept over at K.T.'s so he could give her a ride back up on Saturday, so Kevin could use their (the Hicks') car. (Yeah, things tend to be convoluted like that around us.)

So, yesterday:

As I said, Kris, Jen, Karen, and Braz went out to breakfast. Matt, who hadn't taken a change of clothes to the house, wanted to go back to the apartment to shower and change.

So I headed over to the house, stopping first to put gas in my car and get some breakfast at McDonald's. But we realized when I got to the house that there wouldn't be time for Matt to shower and change before we had to pick up the U-Haul. So he and Jeff went to pick up the truck before they went back to the apartment.

Around 10:30, Becky pulled up, and I got her to help me put the dining table together. Around the time we finished that, Chuck showed up and I sent him over to the apartment. Then the breakfasters arrived (if I'd known they'd go to Denny's, I'd have woken them up earlier) and I sent them over to the apartment.

It wasn't too long after that that the truck from Lowe's arrived with the refrigerator. It took about 45 minutes to unload and install, and shortly after they left, the first U-Haul load arrived.

I didn't carry a box outside of the house even once. I stayed on the porch and directed traffic, I re-arranged boxes and stuff indoors, and I unpacked boxes, but I didn't carry or "move" anything.

When the first load had been mostly unpacked from the truck and we were trying to figure out the logistics of moving our ugly 500-pound hideabed couch, Chuck offered us his - it turned out that their friends Byrd and Lisa were buying a new couch and offered their old one to Chuck and Anita, who then needed to get rid of their old one. (I told you things tend to be complicated around us.) I've seen the couch, and while it's not what I'd pick given a choice, it's not awful either, and it's worlds better than our old sagging, iron-framed monstrosity. So they moved the old couch into the garage, to be disposed of later.

Anyway, once we'd moved everything (except the cat - we figured he'd be less unhappy in an empty apartment than an unfamiliar and rather crowded house) we got down to FUN! I called Chanello's and ordered 9 pizzas, 7 of which were gone before we even really got started. It took me a shower and three bottles of the hard cider Karen brought to actually relax, but it turned into a pretty good party. There was dancing in the kitchen, cards at the table, and conversation in the living room. I lost track of the bottles of cider I had - it was definitely more than four, and almost certainly less than nine, but beyond that things were a bit hazy. We rounded out the night playing a drinking game called "I Never..." - only by the end we were all playing with water, hoping to stave off our hangovers. (We're not as young as we used to be.)

Most everyone else is still asleep, but I woke up and couldn't drop off again, so I thought I'd write a bit. I'd be disgusted by the fact that I'm eating Fritos for breakfast if I didn't know that half the people here were going to be eating cold pizza...

Jen, Sbhee, Braz, and Kris have to go home today, but Karen and Jeff came from sufficiently far away that they won't go home until tomorrow.

9:00 PM: What a day. For some reason (theories are so far specific but varied)...

10:00 PM: This is going to be moderately shocking, but brace yourself: It's difficult to write in a journal with four other people around.

As I was saying, for some reason yet to be determined, the drain that takes water away from our AC unit is not doing so, and the water ended up all over the floor in our closet.

11:50 PM: Finally around 6 the emergency repairman called to insist that he knew what the problem was and suggest Matt plug a crack with Play-Doh until morning, when he (the repairman) could come and do a better temporary plug until a new part could be ordered.

When they (I refused to get involved) took off the panel the repairman told them to take off, a consultation of at least four people couldn't find the crack that Kevin the Repairman said would be there. But Karen the Amazing devised ways to siphon off the excess water and add a spout so the leak would empty (mostly) into a bucket instead of on the floor.