Lovely Saturdayness.

There is a lot of beautiful empty space where we once kept all our junk. What a lovely thing a Saturday can be. We've been pretty busy most of the day, getting things unpacked and put away. Between the two of us, we had gotten most of the damage taken care of earlier, but most of what was left was stuff that M didn't know what to do with. I guess I'm a little better at coming up with places to put stuff than he is, and there was all of my stuff that he didn't know where I wanted. Anyway, we made a huge dent. The computer room is looking pretty good. Not perfect, but good. And we got a few things hung on the walls, too--that makes it feel much less like a hotel. We have cream-colored walls, with relatively high ceilings. (Compared to the old place, anyway--not high ceilings as most people would say.) There's also gray carpet and tile.. it all feels very mass-produced with the empty walls.

We also opened a checking account here in town, and watched the second LotR movie tonight. I fell asleep for a while during the middle, just as Aragorn returns, and was just hovering below wakefulness as Merry gave his speech to Pippin about how the whole world was going to hell and everything would be lost, and there wouldn't be a Shire anymore. When I woke up, I completely just felt like crying--I guess I really took it to heart. I was so depressed at the hopelessness of the struggle against evil, and just as I sat up and rubbed my eyes, my least-favorite part of the movie came on. It just kills me when the elf dies at Helm's Deep.

The parents talked last week about coming down to see us today and checking out what we've gotten done with the apartment, but they didn't end up coming. My grandparents have a house about an hour away, up in the country, where my grandmother grew up. We used to go up there every year at Memorial Day and have a bit of a reunion, with family coming in from Ohio and various other places. I guess last year was the first year we didn't go--my grandmother's just not able to do it anymore. Also, last year people started breaking in, so they pretty much emptied it out of valuables. Anyway, they sold it this week, and they had gone up to get the last of the stuff out. It's quite sad

My husband just got up, walked across the room to stand under the stuffed moose head that he hung up this afternoon, and calmly stuck his finger up its nose. It's not at all unusual that the moose's nose will get a finger up it on any given day, but usually there's some sort of lead-up to the nose-picking. This was just completely out of the blue, which made it much funnier. I don't know if I've mentioned that before. M's parents and sister sent that to us not long after we got married. It's honestly one of the strangest items I've ever seen. It's stuffed, as in a teddy bear and not as in a previously-living creature, and it glares down at the room looking superior. As we always say when it's questioned--and it is invariably questioned by every single visitor to our home--his parents thought long and hard about what we most needed in the world, and then they bought for us a stuffed moose head. With friends like that... :) No, I'm kidding. It really is a funny item, and we've had lots of brilliant conversations about it. It's just one more thing that is a little hard to place.

My parents ran into my brother's grade school best friend the other night at the Italian place in Morehead. He, and this is getting less surprising but still quite odd, is living in Frankfort now with his wife and little boy. That's not too coincidental, really.. I mean, it's the state's capital. Lots of people move here, presumably. Right? The weird part is that his wife apparently works at the same place I do. I'm beginning to feel like I'm in a crossfire of coincidences lately.

Mick Farren posted an interesting thingiemabob list about the results of the last election compared to the average IQ levels for each state. It's worth looking at, although I'm too tired and too uninterested to really get into anything more about it at the moment. I don't personally know how accurate the statistics are.. just thought I would pass it along. And uhh, buy one of his books. I bet he'd like that.

I found the cutest picture of M today. It's one of the ones he had done for the INS, but they didn't like it for some reason or another. Digitally reproduced, I think they said. I should scan it sometime. Maybe I will when we get the thing hooked up again.

This is getting even more random than normal. Guess it's bed time.. M is hovering over me by now, waiting for me to post. He's silly. And I'm sleepy, so I guess it evens out.