Ang's Journal

OK, Part 1 of 2 of the G.T.H. (Gone to Houston) move has been completed. We drove down Monday with a U-Haul trailer carrying all of our heavy stuff & perhaps 50% of our boxes. The truck (recently christened "Bubba", BTW) & the trailer were packed to the hilt, & Saabastian the Saab was pretty much at capacity as well.

All of the packing, loading, & driving took place, incidently, in the midst of one of the worst heat waves to hit Texas in the last decade. The temperature in Austin was a constant 100 to 105 degrees. Houston has been about 95-100 degrees, but with staggering humidity. So, thank God hotpantsgalore had the foresight to hire a couple of laborers to unload everything into our new apartment yesterday morning. It took the two of them about 45 minutes, & would've taken me & HPG.... well, it wouldn't have gotten done. We don't have much furniture, but some of it is very heavy.

Our new apartment is SUPER-awesome. It is a 1BR/1BA, but it is over 1,000 square feet of space. It is on the second floor of a four-plex, & is part of a little community consisting of four four-plexes. The four-plexes share a large, fenced area, which is used for parking & as a communal yard. Many people have dogs, & the dogs roam freely within the fenced area. Shadeaux has already made some new friends!



Our apartment has a cathedral-ceilinged living room, & a two-room loft in the attic space. It also has a formal dining room (!), a large if outdated kitchen, & SIX closets. We also have an en-suite washer & dryer, ceiling fans, & beautiful hardwood floors. To me, the building appears to be from the 1930s.

We are living in Midtown Houston, approximately one mile north of Hermann Park, near the Museum District. By Houstonian standards, the area is rather densely developed. There is a stop on Houston's one & only light rail line located two streets away. There are restaurants, theaters, bars, & lots of museums located in all directions. The Midtown Farmer's Market is held on Saturdays, about six blocks away. The University of Houston is 5-10 minutes' drive away. The URS-Houston office is about a 20-minute drive. We can walk to one grocery store & easily drive to two others. Our street is quiet & shaded with beautiful old live oaks. The neighborhood is a trifle shady, but with locked off-street parking it seems safe enough.

My friend B* gifted us with a lovely new sofa & chair, & as I relaxed in the chair yesterday afternoon, watching HPG & Shadeaux snoozing on the sofa, I was pretty happy with our new living arrangments.



G.T.H. Part 2 will take place this weekend, when we return to Austin to get the remaining boxes, a few smaller pieces of furniture, & to clean the old apartment in faint hopes of getting our security deposit back. Then - THEN! - we will be done with moving.

For at least a couple of years, hopefully.

This entry is full of personal relationship angst, so if you're not interested, ( don't click here )